How to Approve Courses without an Existing Course Equivalent

Would you like to approve for a course to appear in the student app, but you don't have a direct course equivalent to map?  Perhaps you are fleshing out a new program at your institution?  How do you expand your inventory on Acadeum Course Share when you don't offer an equivalent course in your catalog?

To get started on this process, please refer to Map, Approve, and Schedule a Course.  In Step 4 of the "Mapping and Approving a Course" section, you'll see that "At least one course equivalency must be mapped to approve a course."  In place of an existing course equivalent from your institution's course catalog, Acadeum has identified several options for providing a course equivalency during the course mapping process.

To implement any of the options identified below, we recommend these three steps:

1. Decide with stakeholders upon which option below your institution will follow.

2. Apply this option consistently for all Acadeum course approvals which don't have an existing equivalent in your course catalog.

3. Disseminate this information to your Registrar, Academic leadership, Advisors, Students, and other Acadeum users.

Option A:  Utilize one uniform Course ID and Course Title

This option is helpful when you are bulk mapping many courses (such as all courses from a particular consortium) or if a course on Acadeum may have numerous course equivalencies in your Course Catalog. We recommend that you apply this same Course ID and Course Title consistently as the course equivalent for all Acadeum course approvals which don't have an existing equivalent. You may add this Course ID and Course Title to your course catalog, or you may determine an alternate documentation process.

Examples:

ACS 101 Acadeum Course; ELE 1000 Consortium Elective; TRNS 999 Course Sharing Elective

Option B:  Utilize a series of Course IDs and Course Titles based on course level and program

This option is helpful when your institution will be mapping courses from various Teaching Institutions, but you would like the course equivalency to provide a bit more detail while remaining generic. We recommend that this series of Course IDs match the general format of your institution's courses, and an explanation or list of these Course IDs could be added to your institution's Course Catalog. The Course ID may include "ACS" to indicate that it is a course through Acadeum's course sharing platform or a particular consortium.

Examples:

CRJ 100 Criminal Justice, CRJ 200 Criminal Justice, CRJ 300 Criminal Justice;

PR 1001-ACS Consortial Course, PR 2001-ACS Consortial Course, PR 3001-ACS Consortial Course

Option C:  Utilize the Teaching Institution's Course ID and Course Title

This option is helpful when you desire for the course mapping provided in Acadeum Course Share to be explicit, and you do not plan to list every Acadeum course equivalency in your Course Catalog. Although it is not necessary for the course equivalency provided in Acadeum Course Share to match your institution's SIS, a benefit of this option is that the descriptiveness of a Teaching Institution's Course ID and Course Title may appear on a student's transcript and in your SIS.

Examples:

If the Teaching Institution lists a course as NUR 4410 Cultural Competence in Nursing, your institution would also utilize NUR 4410 Cultural Competence in Nursing as the Course ID and Course Title for the course equivalency.