What it does
The course catalog is where a program defines its curriculum offerings: name, unique code, description, credits, dates, academic level, and academic period. From the catalog you create, edit, duplicate, archive, and remove courses, and assign the faculty who direct each one.
Who it's for
Program administrators and coordinators build and maintain the catalog; program and course directors oversee individual courses, from the administration portal's Curriculum workspace under Courses.
How it works
The Courses page. Lists every course you can access with its code, name, readiness, footprint (sessions and groups), directors, credits, and dates. Search by name, code, or description, or filter by academic period, course type, academic level, and active/archived state. Lists are paginated server-side, so large catalogs stay fast.
Directors. Each course can have one or more directors from your people directory. Directors appear on the course and on learner-facing course views, and views like "my directed courses" can be scoped to them.
Duplicate, archive, remove. Duplicating copies a course's properties, not its sessions — within the same period the copy gets a "(Copy)" name; into another period it keeps the original name and code. Archiving hides a course from the active list without deleting it and can be undone with Activate. Removing a course is a soft delete handled server-side.
Self-enrollment. A course can optionally allow learner self-enrollment, with an enrollment deadline and a maximum enrollment cap. These settings power the elective catalog learners see — see the elective self-enrollment article for the learner-facing side.
Before you start
You need program-management access to the Curriculum workspace to create or edit courses.
Pick or confirm the academic period first — every course belongs to one, and you can't create a period-less course.
Course codes are capped at 15 characters to comply with AAMC curriculum-reporting limits.
Do this
Open the Courses page (
/curriculum/courses) → you should see the course list for the current academic period.Select Add Course in the toolbar → the Add Course sheet opens with Name, Code, Type, Academic Level, and Credits fields.
Enter a Name and a Code (both required) → confirm the code is 15 characters or fewer, or the field rejects it at save time.
In the sheet, choose a Type (Course or a rotation-style type) and set the optional Academic Level, Credits, Description, and dates → confirm the values show in their fields before continuing.
To let faculty own the course, select people under Course Directors in the sheet → their names appear as chips.
To open enrollment to learners, turn on Allow Self-Enrollment in the sheet → the Maximum Enrollment field and Enrollment Deadline field appear.
Select Add Course at the bottom of the sheet → you should return to the course list and see the new course row.
To edit later, select Edit on a course row → the sheet reopens with the course's current values; change what you need and select Save Changes → the row reflects the update.
You're done when
✓ The course appears on the Courses page with the code, type, and academic level you set.
✓ Directors you assigned show under the course's Directors column.
✓ A self-enrollment course shows the Self-Enroll tag and its enrollment cap or deadline.
Boundaries and limits
Course names are capped at 255 characters; course codes at 15 characters, rejected at save time if longer.
A course must belong to an academic period — you cannot create a period-less course.
Credits cannot be negative.
Duplicating copies course properties only; sessions must be duplicated separately.
Removing a course is a soft delete: it disappears from lists but isn't destroyed. There's no end-user "restore removed course" screen.
Course types are limited to course and rotation-style; there is no free-form type field.
Some institutions require a new course to link to a graded gradebook entry before it can be created; when that's required, creation without the link is blocked, and the link can only be set at creation, not afterward.
A shared course your program doesn't own is read-only — edit, archive, and remove are disabled, with a note on which program owns it.
Common questions
Q: Why is my course code being rejected? A: Codes are capped at 15 characters to comply with AAMC curriculum-reporting limits. Shorten the code and save again.
Q: Can I copy last year's courses into the new academic year? A: Yes. Duplicate courses one at a time into another academic period — the copy keeps the original name and code. Sessions are not included in a duplicate.
Q: What is the difference between archiving and removing a course? A: Archiving marks the course inactive and hides it from the active list while keeping it in the archived filter; you can reactivate it anytime with Activate. Removing takes it out of the catalog entirely and can't be undone from the UI.
Q: Who can be a course director? A: Anyone in your people directory. A course can have multiple directors, and you can change assignments anytime from the Edit sheet.
Q: My program shows a course I can't edit. Why? A: It was shared from another program. The row shows which program owns it — switch to that program to make changes there.
MD allopathic programs
Applies to: md-allopathic. Differences from the base article only.
What it does
In an MD program the catalog typically holds two kinds of entries: preclinical courses and blocks (anatomy, biochemistry, organ-system blocks) for the M1–M2 years, and clerkships and electives for the M3–M4 clinical years. Both live in the same catalog with the same fields — name, code, credits, dates, year level, and academic period.
How it works
Model preclinical blocks as standard courses with the year level set to 1 or 2 (M1/M2), and clerkships as rotation-type courses with year level 3 or 4 (M3/M4). Where the base article says academic period, medical schools usually map one period per academic year or per preclinical block cycle.
The 15-character course code limit is not arbitrary for MD programs: it matches the AAMC curriculum-inventory code length, so codes entered here stay valid when your curriculum data is reported to the AAMC. The same limit applies to session codes inside each course.
Where the base article says learners, read medical students; course directors are typically the block directors and clerkship directors of record.
Common questions
Q: Should clerkships live in the curriculum catalog or in clinical scheduling? A: Define the clerkship as a rotation-type course in the catalog when you need its didactic structure — sessions, objectives, materials, enrollment. Site-level placement of students across hospitals and services is handled by the clinical scheduling capability, and the two can coexist.
Q: How do we represent M1–M4 years? A: Use the course's year level field: 1 and 2 for the preclinical years, 3 and 4 for the clinical years. Year level is filterable on the course list, so each class year can see its slice of the catalog.
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