Banner Briefs: March 5, 2007

Banner Course Catalog

The Course Catalog is alive and well in Banner. The "Catalog" in Banner takes the place of our 'Course Master' in the legacy system. All of the information in the CRMUPD and CRMTXT screens has been migrated into the new system. You can view the course catalog at http://newapp01.itec.suny.edu:8484

As advertised, our two digit subject codes have been replaced with three character codes and these subject codes have been grouped under departments. In most cases, the subjects and departments are the same but there are notable exceptions (FOR - Foreign Languages includes FRN - French, SPA - Spanish, etc.).

All of the various requirements that a course fulfills have been collected under the general heading of Course Attributes. This includes the general education area, writing intensive, competencies, and liberal arts credits. These attributes will be automatically attached to each section of a course when it is created in the schedule of classes. From there, they can be adjusted for a particular section in a particular term.

The most significant change has been in the area of course restrictions. Banner gives us the ability to control registration by looking at the classification of the student (major code, year in school, level, etc.) and this has enabled the department chairs to re-write the overworked 'permission of instructor' requirement into an appropriate set of restrictions. This means that in cases where we were using a PI to make sure that only senior accounting students may register for a class, we can instead restrict a section to accounting seniors (by major and class). This group will then be able to register without any special action, but everyone else wanting to get into the course will need to see the department to get an override. (A subsequent Banner Brief will cover course restrictions and overrides in detail).

The other significant change in course restrictions is that Banner gives us the ability to enforce course prerequisites and corequisites. One of the tasks that fell to department chairs was to rewrite the course and exam prerequisite statements into unambiguous rules with all of the appropriate ANDs and ORs. This was the 'easy' part. The Records Office has made very good progress on the enormous task of keying in all of our current student's prior college work. In parallel with that effort, the transfer admissions staff has entering the established course articulations into DARS. The end result of these efforts is that in about a years time we expect that we will be able to 'turn on' course prerequisite checking and have Banner automatically enforce this during registration.

When you are viewing the catalog via the Web, you need to drill down into the course (by clicking on the course title) in order to see the prerequisites and other course restrictions.

Please review the courses in you area. Please address any questions or comments to Laura Schultz in the Records and Registration Office.

Contributed by Jonathan Lewit