HEI Faculty-Staff Data Submissions

Distance Learning Course Offerings (DO) File
Questions & Important Memos

Questions
Memos

Questions

Q: The file description indicates that this is used to identify course sections, but it appears that you are collecting only course-level information in this file. Are we correct that this is a course-level and not a section-level file?

A: Yes, it is a course-level file. That was a typo and has been corrected in the latest version.

Q: There are several subject code options we can provide in this file. We are curious how this would map to the CI file, where there is only one subject code. Am assuming that at least one of these needs to be that reported in the CI, but would it matter which? Why has the decision been made to have three subject does?

A: The first subject code in the DO should match with the subject code used in the CI file for a course. We have edits in the DO that will provide warnings if these subject codes are not consistent (provided the course has been previously submitted in the CI). We are also considering supplying a subject code for a recognized course id in HEI when using the data entry portal. The three subject code options are part of the OLN system that was in place prior to the conversion. These are used for listing and searching purposes in their catalogue.

Q: Undergraduate course type asks that we enter a 'Y' if the course serves undergraduate programs. How are you defining undergraduate programs? Would certificates or short-term certificates be considered undergraduate, or in our case, are you only looking for associate degree program association?

A: Your certificates would be considered undergraduate. Undergraduate courses would be any course that your institution offers that would be accepted as course credit in your undergraduate program.

Q: Certificate course type - including both short-term and 1 year certificate programs?

A: Yes.

Q: We need a definition of continuing education course type. How does this differ from non-credit course type?

A: There is clearly overlap here. However, some institutions suggested that there was a distinction for them. I would recommend that you choose the best definition for your institution and continue with it.

Q: We are concerned about the course title field. If this maps to CI, we assume you are looking for the same abbreviated title. However, those titles are often not as meaningful to the naive reader (potential students) as the full-title carried in the catalog. Is the expectation that the course title compare to the CI course title?

A: There are no edits or validations between the course title in the DO and CI. The only fields that will be edited between the CI and the DO are Course ID, subject code, institution, year and term.

Q: You ask about prerequisites, but not co-requisites. Wouldn't that also need to occur to inform the end reader?

A: The use of the term co-requisites was never raised. To get around this, I would recommend that you could state that course XX must be taken concurrently in the prerequisite field in the DS file.

Q: I am curious about the deactivate switch. The file seems to be term specific, so at what point would the coordinator need to deactivate a course? Wouldn't the OLN catalog just display those courses associated with the term submission? What are we missing?

A: The deactivate switch simply removes the course from the website, giving control over what your institution wants to advertise on OLN to your institution. This is an option that OLN staff and catalogue coordinators wanted. We also want to capture all of the distance learning offerings, and this will allow us to capture these courses, but prevent them from being advertised.

Q: Certificate Program courses are defined as non-credit courses. Is this accurate, that these are only NON-CREDIT courses? We have a number of certificate programs that are credit programs.

A: This would include BOTH credit and non-credit courses.

Q: In the new system, what fields will be accessed for user searches? Currently, I use the keywords field because it is my understanding that the present system does not use the subject code or even the title fields for user searches. If we do need to use keyword fields, what do we use as delimiters?

A: Keywords will be used for user searches. A comma is used as the delimiter. In addition, users will have the opportunity to search by subject code.

Q: I received the following failure message: Invalid Subject Code (259999), not used in a previous term. Does the above mean that this course code does not match that which was entered in the HEI database? Is this another issue to address with the HEI coordinators?
 
A: I queried our table and did not find a course id for your institution that had ever been assigned that subject code. Yes, this is something to ask the HEI reporters. For matching enrollments, the subject codes need to be the same for HEI and OLN. However, you can enter the subject code assigned by the HEI reporters for this course in the first subject code field, and enter this subject code (259999) in the second subject code field. The second and third subject code fields are not matched between HEI and OLN. Also, you can use the first add course screen to enter in the course id, and the program will look for that course id in our database and return (if found) the course id with the subject code. I hope this is helpful.

Memos

There are no memos for this file. For information regarding the OLN Data Area and Training, please see the Additional Questions - OLN Area In General section.

If you require further assistance, please contact Melissa Sponseller at mwright@regents.state.oh.us or (614) 728-8858.