Overview

This article covers how institutions can use Program Offering, such as offering an Academic Program to different cohorts/batches of students, or offering it in different campuses.

Use case

An education institution offers the 'Bachelor of Business Information System' to its students.

The institution will be conducting the Program in multiple separate campuses (e.g. Sydney and Brisbane), whereby students will enroll to the Program based on the campus that they are studying at.

The institution can create multiple Program Offering records for that same Academic Program account, and denote the campus location where the Program is conducted.

Program Offerings can also be used for reporting purposes, where they can track where (which campus) the Program was conducted.

The Program Offering by default is linked to the Program, as that is typically what the student sees they are enrolling into.

A Program typically has only one Program Plan as the current, and when a student applies to the Program, it finds and links to the current Program Plan on the enrollment. The Program Plan is therefore not needed on the Program Offering record itself.

There may be use cases where multiple active Program Plans are used. If this is the case, then on the Program Application, we will need to find a way for the student to identify which Program Plan they are applying for. This could be achieved through a custom link from the Program Offering, or a lookup on the Program Application directly.

Additionally, you may want to control the starting Term. The Program Offering has a Term field that can be used to identify the Term that this Program Offering is for, and could be used to populate the starting Term on the Program Application‍.

If it is not set, then the default in RIO is to take the starting Term that is set on the Program Plan record.

Offering the Program by student cohort/batch

The institution plans to offer the 'Bachelor of Business Information System' to its students by their cohort or batch.

Instead of having one Program record for any student to enroll to, the institution can create multiple Program Offerings for different academic years.

For example, when students apply to the Program, they will be enrolled to the Program Offering that matches their cohort.

Another potential scenario is where the institution might not be offering this Program every year.

For example, the Program could be offered in the 2022 - 2023 academic year, but due to a lack of faculties, it might not be available for students to enroll in 2023 - 2024. The Program could only be available again in 2024 - 2025, once there are sufficient faculties.

In this scenario, a single Program record is not recommended, since any student can enroll to it at any time.

Hence, the institution can create Program Offering records for the specific years that it will be offered (to the matching cohort of students).

Note: The admin will have to make their own customization to the Program Offering to support these additional information.