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Institution Settings: Course Groups

Tawnya
  • Updated

 

October 7, 2020 Community College Update:

We have added 25 new course groups to incorporate Community and Technical College areas of study (Technician roles, Manufacturing and Production, Medical Assisting Services, and more), allowing employers to more easily target job postings to students with specific skill sets.

 

We highly encourage all partners to transition your courses to the new course groups. Refer to “How to Map Your Courses” below for a review on how to edit your course groups. Please reach out to the Handshake Support Team should you need assistance. 


If you’d like to communicate the change directly to your employers, here is an email template you can send to encourage employers to update their existing job postings to the new course groups

 

About Course Groups:

Exact program and course names can vary from institution to institution, so to help employers avoid confusion when evaluating student qualifications across the network, Handshake uses Course Groups.
 
Each course group on Handshake’s list represents a relatively broad field of study (for example “architecture” or “advertising”) which typically incorporates a number of your institutional courses.
 
When employers post jobs or search for students, they have the opportunity to use either a course group, or specific courses. Typically employers will only select the course group because the postings can easily transfer between institutions on Handshake. In order for students with those courses to be shown as qualified, your list of course names must be mapped to these groups. 
 
Major Groups are not editable on a per-institution basis. These lists were developed in cooperation with a number of our partner institutions.
How to Upload your Institution Majors: During implementation, you'll need to upload your core student data file. In the file there are some recommended headers, one of those being "primary_education:major_names:" This field will not show up on a student's profile, and is primarily used for FDS. This is the student's primary major. Only 1 major can be supported in this field. The major name must already be added to the primary_education:major_names field in order for the primary major to be backfilled into Handshake.
Course Mapping: Once your student data file has been uploaded, the Career Services team will need to map your courses. Things to keep in mind:

Student Profile: Your custom institution majors (those imported in the student data upload) will not show up on the student profile. 

1:1 Matching: You can map your institutional majors to up to 3 different course groups - this will ensure that if there isn't an exact 1:1 matching, students will be qualified for a variety of roles in related fields. Outside of this, Handshake limits mapping each major to 3 course groups in order to keep our search and recommendation algorithms relevant for both students and employers. If we were to increase this threshold, students would technically qualify for all jobs, yet they would be at a disadvantage (and not populate) in employer searches and filters.

 

How to Map Your Courses

There are two options for mapping - either from the Courses page OR the Course Groups page. Either way, you'll want to start with a pre-populated list from your student data import.

Map from the Course Group page:

  1. Click on your institution name in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

  2. From the drop down menu, click Institution Settings.  You will see a list of tabs on the left.  

  3. Click Course Groups on the left.  You will see a list of all Course Groups in Handshake, divided into categories.

  4. Select the Course Group you’d like to edit.

  5. Click Edit Courses.  You’ll see a list of all courses at your school.

  6. Check the box to select any courses you’d like to map to this particular Course Group in Handshake. Note:  You may uncheck the box of a particular Course to remove a Course from a Course Group.

  7. Be sure to scroll down and click Save in the lower right hand corner when you are finished.

  8. Repeat steps 4-7 for each Course Group you’d like to define.

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Map from the Course page:
 

  1. Click on your institution name in the upper right hand corner.

  2. Click Institution Settings.  You will see a list of tabs on the left.

  3. Click Courses.  You will see a list of Courses at your institution and Course Groups in Handshake.

  4. Click on the Course at your institution you’d like to assign to a Course Group in Handshake.

  5. A list of all Course Groups in Handshake will appear. Check the box of the Course Group you’d like to map this Course to.  You may select more than one.

  6. Be sure to scroll down and click Save in the lower right hand corner when you are finished.

  7. Repeat steps 4-6 for each course you’d like to map to a Course Group.

 

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