Program Offering: what is it for?
This article explains the concept of Program Offering in RIO Education
Description
What is Program Offering and how is it used?
Resolution
As of RIO Education v3.3, Program Offering is not the equivalent of Course Offering at Program level. This is a common misconception.
While Course Offering relates Term and Course (among others), Program Offering does not relate Term and Account (RT Academic Program). In fact, there is no relationship between Program Offering and Term.
In a nutshell, Program Offering is a lightweight object that allows us to attach a sort of 'label' to a student that enrolls into a Program. No more, no less. Just think of Program Offering as the student intake.
The Program Offering object relates the Program Application and Account objects as follows (remember that Program and Campus -Location- are just two record types in the Account object):
Two students may be enrolled in the same Program to different Fees, Terms, and study modes, but this has nothing to do with the Program Offering.
In their enrollment, one student's 'Program Offering' field might show "online" whereas another might show 'Face-to-face' and both of them might be doing exactly the same Course Offering. This is irrespective of whether these Course Offerings are intended to be for on-line or F2F students. Therefore, 'Program Offering' has no effect on which Course Offerings students see and are allowed to enroll into.
If we need to expose only specific Course Offerings to a subset of students, this can be done as explained in this article here.
In summary, if your use case requires a cohort of students to be identified somehow, this is to be done by means of Program Offering. The value in the 'Program Offering' field within the student's Program Application has no further implications down the track.