Managing Sessions

A session in CourseMill is a unique instance of a course which defines the location, date and time. As an administrator, you define the rules of the session and grant permissions to the instructors who can manage the session.

Session Menu

The menu bar on the Session provides the following tasks:

Add Session

Opens the session Details window to build the scope of the session’s functionality.

View/Edit Details

Opens the session Detail for viewing and editing of an existing session.

Delete

Deletes a session.

Removing a session will remove session enrollment data for enrolled users.

Notifications

Provides the ability to turn on/off pre-set, customizable notifications regarding the workflow for a session. These notifications will be sent to the student using the email system that was selected for the session, from the instructor’s email address. If there is no instructor, the email will come from the system administration email address.

Call Roster

Provides a listing of the students in the course session.

Gradebook

Provides the ability to change scores, status, and dates.

Allows instructors/reporters (who have been given permission) to register students or organizational groups in the session.

Mail

A messaging system between session instructors and students. Based on CourseMill configuration, it allows email attachments.

Help

Provides access to the Help documentation.

There are two more functions which can only be accessed by right-clicking on a course session from the list. They are Duplicate Session and Waiting List which are explained at the end of this document.

Session Search Area

The Search area at the top of the dialog provides the ability to easily find sessions when the list of sessions becomes too large. Use the controls as follows:

Org ID	Org ID under which the session is registered.
Course ID	Enter any combination of letters/numbers to search for any sessions that contain that combination in the Course ID. For example, if you have two courses, one with an ID of “Accounting” and the other with an ID of “FingerPaint”, your search for “ing” will display sessions for both courses.
Course Name	Enter any combination of letters/numbers to search for any courses that contain that combination in the title. For example, if you have two courses, one with a title of “Accounting 101” and the other with a title of “Biology 101” your search for “101” will display sessions for both courses.
Location	Select from a list of all locations defined in the organization.
Show	Filter your view by displaying one of three states of sessions (All, Open, or Closed). If you choose ALL, any past/expired sessions will display in gray .
Session Name	Enter any combination of letters/numbers to search for sessions that contain that combination in the session name. For example, if you are looking for all online courses, search for "Web based".

Adding a Session

The session is unique to a site by Session ID. The Session ID can be sorted on in numerous catalogs and reports. A management naming convention should be devised to allow the courses to sort as desired on My Courses or the Course Catalog. For example, you might want to have city name first or state name first based on where your physical locations reside.

Any administrator, instructor or reporter, who has been given the permission, can add sessions. To add a session to your organization, select Manage Sessions on the left navigation bar, then click the Add Session button.

Add or View/Edit Session Details – Session Tab

Select the course for which you want to build a session.
Location defaults to Online and should be set to the specific location that you select from a drop-down list. Locations are defined by the admin in the Manage Locations section of the Admin Tasks. See the note below.
Session ID is automatically generated for you
Session Name is required.
Notes provide users with additional information on the session. Students will see this in the course catalog.

Add or View/Edit Session Details – Dates Tab

Session Start and End Dates can be selected using the calendar icon. If they are part of a curriculum, make sure these dates coincide with your curriculum dates. See the note below on integrating with Outlook calendar files.
Start/End Times are on a 24 hour clock.
Allow early access to materials (days) - Set the number of days you would like to provide early access to the course materials. By doing this and if the session is in the future, the student can still launch some of the online content of the course.
Student Limit - The default of zero (0) specifies unlimited number of students allowed. If a limit is set and it is exceeded, a waiting list icon will appear to the right of the session in the list of sessions (see Waiting List below). The system will show how many students are currently registered to the right of this field.

Meeting Days - Check the boxes for the specific days of the week the session will run. This is only used for displaying on the student calendar. If you have a session that has a start date of 8/1 and an end date of 8/31 but your class only runs on Mondays, for example, you will need to check only the Monday box in the session record, otherwise it will show on the calendar for all the days you have checked. When you add a session, the default will leave all check boxes blank so be sure to set them correctly.
Registration Start Date and Registration End Date allows you to set registration/enrollment time periods. Even though this course is set for the future, you may want to allow students to register ahead of time.
Student Invitation URL – This Web address is automatically generated and can be used to copy and paste in an email if you wish to send out invites to students to take the session. This URL will take them directly to the CourseMill logon screen to allow them to log in, and then will direct them to the catalog to enroll in the session. It does this by placing the Course ID in the Catalog ID search field to only display that course when displaying the course catalog.

Those users that are self-enrolling can see the Location, Begin Date and End Date of an instructor-led session if your admin has enabled the managed properties, ShowLocInCatalog and ShowDateInCatalog, for display of these columns in the Course Catalog. You might have these turned off if all your courses are on-line.
If you set specific dates and times for your session, and you have the course enrollment notification being sent, you can also send a calendar (.ics) file to be sent as an attachment that will allow the student to automatically log the session date/time in the Outlook calendar. Your admin can do this by setting the manage property CreateCalendarEventFiles to Yes.
Setting the managed property CalendarReminderTime will set the calendar alarm warning notice prior to the beginning of a scheduled class starting time for all students. The default value is 15 minutes.

Add or View/Edit Session Details – Community Tab

Chat and IM support can be selected.
Discussion Boards or email can be enabled in the Discussion Board and Email Support fields.

This restricts communication using the specific community feature to only those users registered in the session.

If the administrator disabled community items at the organization level, you will not be able to set them at the session level.

Add or View/Edit Session Details – Instructors Tab

Instructors available for assignment to a session will appear in Instructor(s) Available.
To add an instructor select an instructor in the Instructor(s) Available, click the <<< button and the instructor will appear in Instructor(s) Assigned.
To remove an instructor select an instructor in the Instructor(s) Assigned, click the >>> button and the instructor will be removed.

An instructor must be assigned if you would like course/session notifications to be sent.
Only those users that are flagged as instructors in the profile can be assigned as an instructor. Ensure that the instructor’s user profile includes the selected Instructor flag so that he or she can be assigned to one or more sessions.
If a reporter is also an instructor and the instructor is assigned to a session, reporting as a session level instructor takes precedence when running reports. In other words, the reporter can only run course level reports for sessions he/she is assigned to as an instructor.

Add or View/Edit Session Details – Session Info

This tab will only display if the administrator has set up categories for sessions in the Manage Org area.

The categories set up for sessions will display here (for example,: Department 1, Department 2, Department 3, Location Contact Information, and so on) so data can be entered for this particular session.
Up to eight categories can be defined at the organization level.
Each content line retains up to 200 characters.
Students do not see this information.

Session Info can be used for administrative tracking for each session via custom reporting.

Course/Session Notifications

There are several types of course/session notifications.

To modify the contents of each notification click the pencil icon.
Each notification contains sample content. This can be customized to your preference.
The notifications that have numbers in the title are what we call Scheduled notifications and can be defined with a managed property. The administrator is the only one that can set this up. You can define any number of days for each notification. The first example to the left is saying that a reminder should be sent 30 days prior to the start of the course, then also 25 days, 20 days, 15 days, and so on..
Variables are field names that can be pulled from the database to personalize messages. They appear in < > as shown.
Select Help to view a complete list of available content variables and their exact spelling.

See the table below for the various managed property settings for these types of notifications.
The Course is Completed Notification is what drives a physical paper certificate to be created for a course, if one exists. You can set up the course to use the standard certificate, but if you want to use a course specific certificate, you must set up a PDF file named the same as the CourseID This PDF file must have been loaded on your server. (See Working with Certificates for more detail.)
The Entry Made in Discussion Board Notification sends an email to the course instructor as well as anyone else who posted in the discussion board.
The CourseMill email management service must be enabled for notifications to function. If your system is using an External Email service, the notifications will be mailed to the email address specified in the User profile. If the system is using the internal CourseMill email service, the notifications will be displayed in the users Mail tab on the student interface.
If the typical user does not have an email, use the manager’s email in the student’s profile to alert or distribute the messages OR set CourseMill email to be Internal Only allowing the user to read email messages when they log in.
Notifications that are turned ON at the session level override notifications at the course level.
Notifications that are turned OFF at the session level are overridden by the course level notifications.

If turned on, seven of the 12 notifications are sent immediately upon the corresponding action. For example, when a student is enrolled in a course the corresponding notification is sent immediately. This is true if the instructor/administrator performs the enrollment, or the user self-enrolls. This is also true if existing users are auto-enrolled as well as future students that will match the auto-enrollment rules.

However, the other five notifications are scheduled for distribution by setting up a managed property telling CourseMill when to send the notification. They are actually sent during the nightly Notification Maintenance run (Admin Tasks:> Manage Scheduled Tasks> Notification Schedule). These five are shown below with their corresponding managed property that the administrator will need to set up.

Notification	Managed Property
Nn,nn,nn,nn prior to the start of the course	CourseNotificationDays – specifies the nn values
Nn,nn,nn,nn prior to end of session reminder	SessionEndWarningDays - specifies the nn values
Nn days after completion of the course	SessionFollowUpDays - specifies the nn values
Nn,nn,nn,nn prior to the course due date	DueDateApproachingDays - specifies the nn values
	DueDateWarningThresholdDays – specifies the number of days prior to the due date that the Yellow/Red visuals show up in the My Courses area
Nn,nn,nn,nn after the course due date	DueDatePassedDays - specifies the nn values

Session Class Roster

When you select Class Roster, the roster report will automatically generate. You can print it if necessary.

Session Gradebook

All students registered in the course will display in the Gradebook. You can narrow the list down by using the Filter button.

Click on the student you wish to grade.
Select the Gradebook Item.
Select the Status from the drop down.
Enter the Score value.
Select the Completion Date from the calendar icon.
Enter the Reason for Change to the Gradebook if you want. The student will see this on their transcript.

If a course has been completed and a certificate is available, select Resend Certificateto allow an instructor to email that certificate notification to the student.

Registering

Anyone who has permission to register students can do so here. Initially, this will display the students already registered in the session.

Use the controls on this dialog as follows:

The Select button opens a window to allow the selection of additional students.

Select the students you want to register. (Use Ctrl/Shift to select multiple users.)

Use the

to remove users from the list. This action will unregister the student but will also remove all the history for this session. Use this with caution as the records cannot be recovered.

The Register By SubOrg button will open a window to create parameters to filter users by SubOrg values.

When registering by SubOrg, select one or more values for each Sub-Org and then select Register by Sub-Org or Delete by SubOrg.
Delete by SubOrg will delete that group of students and essentially un-register them.

The Filter button will allow you to drill down even further by selecting a particular user by entering in one of four fields or any of the SubOrgs. For instance, you might want to find those with the first name of George. This feature helps you find people more quickly.

When selecting the SubOrgs, you can select one or many values in each category.

Session Mail

All students who are registered in this session are displayed in the To: area.
Remove a student from the email list by clicking the red .
Create the Subject, Message, and add attachments.
Enable the Send copy of email to me check box if you would like a copy of the message.
Click Send Message to complete the process.

Waiting List

Waiting lists are created when a student registers for a class and there are no more available seats in the class.

If there are more students registered for a class than what the class size limits, then the administrator or instructor will see a Waiting List icon to the right of the session.

If you select the session that you have a waiting list for, you may right click to open up the Waiting List for the session (as shown below)…...

Upon clicking, the following screen will display all the students on the waiting list in date order. This screen allows you ONLY to delete the people off the wait list. This function REMOVES them from the waitlist but does NOT enroll them in class. he student will receive the Removed From Waitlist notification, if that notification is activated.

There are two other ways to manage your Wait list:

If the instructor/admin goes back to the session and increases the student limit, the next person in line on the waiting list will automatically be enrolled in the class. Be sure to have your enrollment notifications turned on, so the student will be notified that they are now off the wait list, but enrolled in the session.
The instructor can simply click on the Register tab and register the student in the class. If an instructor/admin registers a student, they are allowed to go over the class limit with no ramifications.

When a student wishes to enroll in a course that is full, they will see the course session italicized and in red with the notation “( Go on Waiting List)”, as seen in this example, which notifies the student that they will be added to a waiting list if they enroll.

After the student enrolls, instead of “Waiting List”, they will see a different notation stating which position they are in on the waiting list as shown here:
There are two Wait List properties that can be set by the global administrator using the Managed Properties dialog: MaxWaitListSize and WaitListDisabled.
- To set the maximum size of the Wait List, the MaxWaitListSize property needs to be either a percentage of the session’s student limit or an actual number of students. By default, this property is set to 25%. So if the student limit is 30, and the MaxWaitListSize is 10%, then the max wait list size is 3. Once the wait list is filled to 3, no more attempts to get on the wait list will be allowed. If the MaxWaitListSize is 5, then the 6th person to get on the wait list will not be allowed.
- The property WaitListDisabled can be set to enable the wait list functionality or to disable it. The default value is No which means the wait list functionality is enabled.

Duplicating Sessions

Access using Right-Mouse Click

The Duplicate Session option is not listed in the top menu bar. This function allows you to select a previously built session and duplicate it including all details. Once you click Duplicate Session, the following screen will display.

By default, it appends a -1 on to the Session ID as it has to be unique. But the user can change the name to anything as necessary.
This option is only available to administrators.

Help

Select the Help button from within each topic of the session for context-sensitive information.