Teaching and Learning Domain - Best Practices

Owned by Gabrielle Garonzik
Last updated: Dec 17, 2019 by Eric Jansson
3 min read

CourseLevelCharacteristics can be defined in the Course, Course Offering, and Section entities and are important to categorizing these entities for operational and analytical purposes (e.g., if a offering is "Dual Credit", "AP", "IB", "remedial" or similar). As noted above, these entities form a hierarchy:

  • Course ← Course Offering ← Section

One issue is that allowing for each level of this hierarchy to be independently categorized opens the possibility of conflicting categorizations (e.g. a CourseOffering is categorized as "Dual Credit" but a Section of that CourseOffering is not – is the Section assumed to be dual credit or not?).

As a result it is recommended that implementers set CourseLevelCharacteristics at the highest level at which it can be assumed that ALL children in the hierarchy also have that characteristic. For example, if a Course is generally considered an "Dual Credit" Course, and yet sometimes it is not offered for dual credit, implementers are recommended to categorize the CourseOffering or Sections (whichever apply) as "Dual Credit" rather than apply this to the Course.

If necessary, it is possible to override a characteristic set at a higher level, but note that doing so it is recommended to use a negative characteristic (e.g. "Non Dual Credit") as the absence of a value should not be used to signal the negative (this is a unwelcome practice especially in API bindings, and leads to ambiguity that can be misinterpreted).

Define When Different

By default, all CourseLevelCharacteristics defined at the Course-level are assumed accurate at the Course Offering-level. If this is not the case, then the CourseLevelCharacteristics need to be re-defined at the Course Offering-level. The same logic applies between CourseLevelCharacteristics going another step down from Course Offering to Section. The main idea is to allow CourseLevelCharacteristics defined at a lower level to overwrite those defined at the upper levels.

Use Cases

This section is offered for dual credit (i.e. may be taken for dual credit, but doing so might require some additional work, etc.)

The Section will have a CourseLevelCharacteristic = "Dual Credit" (or the referenced Course Offering or Course, if these are the same). Student achievement of the dual credit is reported in a Course Transcript record with Additional Earned Credits and an Additional Earned Credit Type = "Dual Credit".

This is an AP course (i.e. everyone in it is taking it with the plans to take the AP exam)

The Course will have a CourseLevelCharacteristic = "AP". Course Offerings and Sections created from this Course will not have any CourseLevelCharacteristics defined. Student results for the AP exam are reported in Student Assessment records.

Student X is taking Section X as a means of satisfying a CTE concentration (i.e. but other students are not necessarily doing that)

Section X will have a CourseLevelCharacteristic = "Career Technical Education" (or the referenced Course Offering or Course, if these are the same). The student will have an active Student CTE Program Association record and the CTE credits reported in a Course Transcript record with Additional Earned Credits and Additional Earned Credit Type = "Career and Technical Education".

This course is for gifted and talented students (only)

The Course will have a CourseLevelCharacteristic = "Gifted and Talented". Course Offerings and Sections created from this Course will not have any CLC's defined.

This section is being offered as a remedial course (i.e. all students in it are there for remedial purposes)

The Section will have a CourseLevelCharacteristic = "Remedial" (or the referenced Course Offering or Course, if these are the same).