Setting Up Block Courses and How to Order Courses in a Report

Sometimes you may have a 4-week seminar in the middle of a term, or a specialized art class that only lasts a couple of weeks. In these scenarios, a block course is what you are seeking.

This feature also allows you to affect the order of how your courses appear on reports. Many of the BigSIS report layout options will list block courses first and by making a course a block course you can affect the layout of your reports by affecting the start date for the block. This might seem confusing but once you work your way through this setup you will see how this works (jump to #3 below for a more advanced description on how this works!

How to Setup a Block Course 

From the Dashboard:

1. Go to Courses > Courses and either edit the course that should be a block course, or create a new course.
    
2. If you're creating a new block: Click the Block Information [+] fieldset. Now, click the Is Block Course? checkbox. Once you click this checkbox the Block Begins On and Block Ends On fields will appear.
   
   
   
   1. If you are editing a course that is already a block course: Click the Block Information fieldset to expand the options and this will let you edit the dates or remove it as a block if necessary.
      
      
      
3. Add a Block Begin and End Dates
   1. Note: The start and end dates affect the order of the block courses on your reports. Courses with an earlier start date will appear first in the list of courses for several of the report styles you can choose from. For example, Style 1 of assessment reports, Style 1: Ordered by block courses first (if any), then by department, will list out your courses first by block courses and it will order those block courses based on their start date, then it will order the rest of the courses by department. The important aspect to note is that it is the start date of the block courses that will dictate their order.
      PRO TIP! This is a great way to get courses of any kind ordered exactly how you want if the order you need isn't quite met by the report styles offered. 
       
4. When you're finished, click the Save or Save and Back button at the top of the screen.