Program Pathway and Pathway Unit

Pathway refers to the recommended path through a Program.

For example, a Bachelor of Business might have 2 Major options (Accounting and Management Major), so there will be 2 Pathways a student can choose to take. Each Program Pathway has its Pathway Units (which are Courses) throughout the Program duration.

Program Pathway and Pathway Unit objects are templates.

When a student enrolls and they get a Program Enrollment record, an automation will create the relevant pathway information. It will pick up the Program Pathway from the Program Application‍ /‍ Program Enrollment‍, otherwise it will try to take the Default Program Pathway set in the Program Plan‍.

The automation will create the PE Pathway‍ record. One PE Pathway record will be created for each Term that is in the pathway.

Linked to each of these records will be Course Connections when a student is enrolled in a Course‍.

RIO Education will show students the relevant pathway when they are enrolling based on the templates set.

In some cases, there may be a full time pathway that spans 8 Terms (4 years) or a part time pathway that spans 16 Terms (8 years) or more. Pathways will be optional. If a HE institute decides to not use a pathway then students will still be able to enroll in Courses.

An example of how this will work to keep things simple.

Program = Diploma of Management and there are 4 mandatory Courses and 8 Elective Courses, of which 4 need to be completed to earn the diploma. The Course is a 1 year (2 Term) Course full time, or 2 year (4 Term) Course part time.

The mandatory Courses are in a group called Mandatory, and the elective Courses are in a group called Electives.

In this scenario, let's assume that all the mandatory Courses get completed first in the recommended pathway, and the electives are taken after that. To setup the pathways, we will create 2 pathway objects. 

Program Pathway

Pathway Unit (for full time Pathway)

Pathway Unit (for part time Pathway)

One PE Pathway record will be created for each Term that is in the pathway. In the example above, for a full time Course, 2 records will be created, and for a part-time Course, 4 records will be created.

Linked to each of these records will be Course Connections when a student is enrolled in a Course‍.

Custom Pathways

Optionally custom PE pathway unit records can be created for individual students. E.g., a special needs student that needs to deviate from the standard pathway. If individual PE Pathway Unit records are created for a student, then RIO Education will show those to the student rather than the default pathway.

(See: PE Pathway)‍

Note:

In the Course Enrollment screen (in the student community), the Courses displayed by default is based on the pathway unit configured in the Program Pathway.

The PE Pathway Unit in the Program Enrollment is empty by default. This will be configured only if the student has a custom pathway that is different from the Program Pathway above.

If the PE Pathway Unit is configured, the Courses displayed in the Course Enrollment screen will be based on the PE Pathway unit (instead of the Program Pathway's pathway unit).

Pathway enhancement

[ Added in v3.0 ]

Currently Pathways are linked to Study Mode. There is no way to define a pathway for another purpose, e.g. a specific pathway for a discipline or track. We introduced some new field(s) to allow this:

• Name (text).

• Recommended Credits per Term‍.

• Max Credits per Term.

On the Program Application‍ and Enrollment we introduced a new field to match:

• Pathway (Lookup to pathway record).

If this is not set on the Application, then the default Pathway will be chosen. 

The default Pathway will be a field on Program Plan‍:

• Default Program Pathway (Lookup to pathway record).

If the pathway on the Program Enrollment is updated, then the non-completed PE Pathway Records should be re-linked to the correct Program Pathway record. We could use the link on the PE Enrollment record in the enrollment wizard and leave the field on the PE Pathway‍ as a historical record of the Pathway that was used for that term.