Course Planner: Overview

What's the purpose of the Course Planner?

The Course Planner is a module for course management. The aim is to create and run courses automatically and efficiently from the quotation.

With the Course Planner, the planning work can be separated from the content creation (in the author area).

Of course, you can also create OpenOlat courses without Course Planner. However, the Course Planner provides you with a tool that consolidates the organizational tasks.

without Course Planner	with Course Planner
only independent individual courses	Single or multiple courses with several sessions
everything is administered and managed individually in the courses	central administration
x	Functional separation between administration and content
x	Central planning of several courses
x	Central member administration of several courses
x	Central tendering of several courses
x	Central control and management of multiple courses

The Course Planner can be used to manage

single courses
course bundles
structured educational programs/products

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Planning tasks

The planning tasks include:

Create different offer types (e.g. chargeable / not chargeable)
Plan several courses, each with its own time slot
Place offers in the catalog
Define space quotas in the courses
Prepare automatic course creation from template
Set up automated status changes in the course

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Planning single courses

The Course Planner can be used to create several courses for a course and offer them in the catalog.

This administrative planning work can be done by a course planner even if the course has not yet been created or is not yet available in its final version.

Independently of these administrative tasks (carried out by a course planner), a course can be created by authors as a template and then integrated into all courses.

The courses can also be instantiated automatically on a definable date.

For example, members can be added directly to the individual tours by booking an offer themselves in the catalog.

Please note:

Course members in the template course are then only the course owners with the author role.

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Planning for course bundles

Just as multiple instances can be created for an individual course, instances can also be created for an entire course bundle and offered in the catalog.

If desired, the combination of courses/learning resources can also be modified in the individual implementations and deviate from the standard implementation ("copy template").

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Planning for structured educational programs

Structured products/educational programs have an additional tree structure compared to course bundles. They contain structural elements.

Even if participants are to complete an educational product consisting of several courses, they are made members of a specific implementation. (Not members of individual courses or members of the educational product template).

In addition, a billing system can also be set up for the implementation.

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Who can use the Course Planner?

After activation of the Course Planner by a system administrator, it is available to all users with the role "Course Planner". (When using organisational units, the role course planner may also be restricted to certain organisational units.)

Administrators and principals also have access. (These roles may also be restricted to organisational units.)

Principals have exclusively read access to the entire Course Planner: actions such as Change status, Remove or Instantiate are not available to them. If a principal opens a course directly from the Course Planner, the same read-only restriction also applies to the course view.

Note on the restriction as principal

The read restriction is active whenever the principal only holds this role. There can be overlaps if a user has several roles in a product, for example. In that case, this user can become active wherever the role permits, for example in a to-do assigned to "them".

Limited to a specific product, product owners and element owners can access it within their area of responsibility.

Other OpenOlat roles

Authors and learning resource administrators do not have access to the Course Planner. Their role, rights and responsibilities focus on content creation rather than on the planning, scheduling and administration of courses and implementations.

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Roles and rights in the Course Planner

Access in the Course Planner is based on three areas of responsibility:

subject-related and structural responsibility: setting up and maintaining products, implementations and elements
administrative responsibility: managing members, for example by a secretariat
content-related responsibility: content, events and tasks of the individual elements

Depending on the role, one, two or all three areas are covered:

Course planner (organisation role): covers all three areas and has unrestricted access to all products and certification programs of their own organisation.
Administrator: has the same rights in the Course Planner as a course planner.
Product owner: takes on the same tasks as a course planner, but limited to the products for which they are registered as product owner (regardless of the organisation).
Element owner: holds the content-related responsibility for their own elements (regardless of the organisation). They have full access to the content and events of their own element, but can only read members and settings and cannot change the structure.
Principal: has exclusively read access to the entire Course Planner (see section above).

In addition, owners of certification programs have access to the Course Planner.

Rights matrix

The following overview shows which actions the individual roles can perform on the objects of the Course Planner.

Legend: access or action available · no access · the remaining entries name the actions available in each case.

	Administrator	Course planner	Product owner	Principal	Element owner
Access to the Course Planner
Product (active)	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Read, Edit	Read	Read
Product (deleted)	Read
Implementation	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Read
Element	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Read	Read, Edit
Event	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Read	Create, Read, Edit, Delete
Template	Add, Read, Instantiate, Remove	Add, Read, Instantiate, Remove	Add, Read, Instantiate, Remove	Read	Add, Read, Instantiate, Remove
Course	Add, Read, Remove	Add, Read, Remove	Add, Read, Remove	Read	Add, Read, Remove
To-do	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Create, Read, Edit, Delete	Read	Create, Read, Edit, Delete
To-do (assigned or delegated)

Course and group roles in the Course Planner

Course owner, Master coach, Coach and Participant are course or group roles. They have no management rights in the Course Planner itself; their tasks lie in running the course. One exception are to-dos that have been personally assigned or delegated to a person: these can be edited by the person concerned regardless of their role in the Course Planner.

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Where can I find the Course Planner?

If you have the role and rights of a course planner, you will find the Course Planner as a menu item in the main navigation in the header.

Requirement

In order to use the Course Planner, it must be activated by a system administrator. If the option is not available in the header menu, please contact your system administrator or the support of your OpenOlat instance.

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Dashboard

When you open the Course Planner, you are taken to the overview page with the access buttons, the search, and an area with configurable widgets (implementations, events, members).

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Products

An educational product is an inwardly or outwardly directed learning offer with implementations. In most cases, these are multiple courses, i.e. learning opportunities of the same "type" (-> product). The Course Planner simplifies the work considerably through the shared central administration.

Curricula/products often consist of several courses and have a certain structure/sequence in which the included courses are combined.

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Implementations

An (educational) product can be offered and implemented several times. For example, a single course can be repeated each semester, as can a structured educational program consisting of several courses.

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Events

The dates specified here refer to one implementation or a part thereof.

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Certification programs

Certificate programs are used when a certificate is only awarded after completing several courses.

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Reports

Various reports can be generated using report templates.

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To-dos

To-dos can be recorded in the Course Planner at various levels: in the overview, on the product, on the implementation and on each individual element. A central overview brings together all to-dos across all products. The to-do widget on the dashboard shows open and overdue tasks at a glance.

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Room management

Under "Tools", Course Planner users find the "Room management" area with a read-only overview of the room scheduling and the rooms they can access through their organisational affiliation. Rooms and buildings themselves are maintained in the module "Rooms" in the administration. Deleted rooms only appear in the administration.

Manage rooms (administration) >
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Further information

How do I create my first OpenOlat course? >
How can I plan and carry out implementations with the Course Planner? >
How can I plan and run a course with the Course Planner? >
Activate Course Planner (Admin) >
What rights do the roles have within a course? >

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