The Course OSID provides course management services for
educational offerings or other learning units related to
an event or curriculum. Courses may be used
to model a class, conference tutorial session, or even a
meetup group.
The Course OSID defines two sets of interfaces.
Courses and ActivityUnits represent
canonical curriculum. Canonical Courses and
ActivityUnits includes the description of
the curriculum, requirements, and learning objectives
independent of any offering. CourseOfferings
and Activities are offerings of a
canonical unit in a Term.
Courses
The Course is a canonical learning unit
describing the overall content of a course, related
learning Objectives, and any credit or
grading options available that serve to constrain related
offerings. The content of a canonical Course
can be managed through a set of
ActivityUnits .
ActivityUnits
An ActivityUnit is a component of a
canonical Course that describes in more
detail a learning activity. An ActivityUnit
relates to a set of learning Objectives.
Learning Objectives managed at the
ActivityUnit level can be rolled up to the
canonical Course.
An ActivityUnit also describes target
efforts split between contact and individual durations,
and whether the an offering of an ActivityUnit
is intended to repeat on a weekly basis. The
ActivityUnit maintains the high level data
to which offerings are scheduled.
Example
Course 6.111 Digital Systems Laboratory has a
prerequisite of 6.002 and offered at 12 credits. It as
three associated activity units. One activity unit is the
lecture recurring weekly at 3 hours per week. The second
activity unit is the lab recurring weekly at 7 hours per
week. The third activity is preparation recurring weekly
at 2 hours per week. MIT calculates the credits ("units"
as they would call them) as the sum of the weekly effort
hours; 12 credits (transformable to 4 semester hours in
the Grading OSID). The total target effort for all three
activity units is 168 hours. When an offering is scheduled
during a Term, the actual effort can be compared to the
target effort based in the weekly effort estimates.
CourseOfferings
A CourseOffering is a canonical
Course offered during a Term.
CourseOffering replicates some of the data
managed in the Course in the case it is
refined or tweaked. CourseOffering adds
some logistical information such as requiring
registration, instructors, and overall constraints on
seating count. Like its canonical counterpart, a
CourseOffering is made up of Activities
.
Activities
An Activity is an offering of an
ActivityUnit. The Activity allows
for some information, such as seating constraints and
instructors, to be managed at this level instead of the
CourseOffering level. The Activity
also allows for the effort numbers to be refined
fromits canonical counterpart.
The Activity also manages scheduling
information. Schedules, as managed by the
Calendaring OSID, can be related to an Activity.
When the Schedule is applied to a
Term, a series of meeting times can be
visible as either a series of implicit Activities
in the Course OSID or as a RecurringEvent
in the Calendaring OSID.
The interplay between the Calendaring OSID and the
Course OSID for scheduling is apparent by the similarity
between the Activity and the
RecurringEvent. At a conceptual level, the
Activity is an ActivityUnit offered
on a recurring Schedule duing a Term
while a RecuringEvent is an event
offered on a recurring Schedule during a
Term.
Like a RecurringEvent, an
Activity may be "unravelled" as in expanded to a
set of Activities where each
Activity represents a single meeting time. This
unravelling allows for a single meeting time to be
identified and potentially modified to add or change
information for one occurrence. An eample would be to
implement a rotating instructor for each class in a
series.
A "superseding" Activity be be applied
to an Activity to replace individual
occurrences. The Schedules for each the
Activity and the superseding
Activity are expanded into individual meeting
times. If any individual times overlap with any individual
times of the superseding Activity, the
superseding Activity session replaces the
original one.
Terms
A Term is a time period in which
Courses can be offered. The Term
includes a set of course related milestones included a
date range in which classes occur. This class date range
drives the expansion of the Schedules in
the Activity.
The Term in the Course OSID is
analogous to the Term in the Calendaring
OSID but has extra course-related information. The
Schedule expansion in the Course OSID is based on
the class date range while the expandion of the
Schedule in the Calendaring OSID is based on the
date range of the Term itself.
Course Catalog Cataloging
Courses, ActivityUnits,
CourseOfferings, Activities,
and Terms can be organized into federateble
OsidCatalogs. CourseCatalogs
can be used to represent a set of CourseOfferings
offered in a specific Term, year,
or by subject area or sponsor.
Orchestration
The Course OSID is orchestrated with a Calendaring
OSID to manage Schedules or to offer a
calendar view of offerings. The Course OSID may also be
orchestrated a Resource OSID to manage instructors and
students, with an Ontology OSID to organize Courses by
subject matter or with a Learning OSID to manage related
learning Objectives. The Resourcing OSID
may be used to manage the instructor pools and apply their
expertise to course offerings. The Grading OSID serves to
manage GradeSystems for the grading options
available for an offering. The Commenting OSID may be used
to gather feedback and ratings for course offerings. The
Course OSID provides the slice that includes curriculum
and offering management around a suite of other services.
Sub Packages
The Course OSID includes a Course Program OSID to
manage Programs, a Course Registration OSID to register
students in CourseOfferings, a Course Requisite OSID to
manage course and program requirements, a Course Syllabus
OSID to manage the content of an Activity, and a Course
Chronicle OSID to provide an academic record, and a Course
Batch OSID to manage Courses,
ActivityUnits, Terms,
CourseOfferings, and Activities in
bulk.
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