Institution Settings: Course Groups

Please note: Your list of courses will be populated by your student import. Do NOT manually add courses to your institution instance until your student file has been uploaded and finalised.

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.

Course 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 Courses

During implementation, you'll need to upload your core student data file. In the file you'll have a few required headers, one of those being "primary_education:major_names:" This student data import is what will populate your list of institution courses in Handshake. Please do not manually add your list of courses. This is to ensure that both only courses actively used by students are used and proper student linking (vs a misspelling or an extra space added), as this can cause complications for student course qualifications in any area of 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 courses (those imported in the student data upload) will always display on the student profile. Employers can see this name when reviewing their application) - the course groups are just the backend qualifications.
1:1 Matching: You can map your institutional courses 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 course 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 Course page OR the Course Groups page. Either way, you'll want to start with a pre-populated list of courses from your student data import. Please do not manually add your list of courses. This is to ensure that both only courses actively used by students are used and proper student linking (vs a misspelling or an extra space added), as this can cause complications for student course qualifications in any area of Handshake.

Map from the Course Group page

1. Click on your name in the upper-right corner of the Handshake screen, then click Institution Settings.

2. From the left menu on that page, click Course Groups. All Course Groups in Handshake will be listed on this page, divided into categories.

3. Click the name of the Course Group you'd like to edit, then click Edit Courses.

4. A list of all courses at your institution will popup.

Tick the box for a particular course to map to this particular Course Group in Handshake.
Untick a ticked box to remove the course from the selected course group.

Note: Individual courses may only be mapped to 3 course groups max simultaneously.

5. Click Save in the lower-right corner of the popup to save mapping changes.

Repeat Step 4 as needed for each Course Group.

Map from the Course page

1. Click on your name in the upper-right corner of the Handshake screen, then click Institution Settings.

2. From the left menu on that page, click Courses. Courses that have been added for your institution will be listed on this page alphabetically.

3. Click the name of the Course you'd like to assign to a Course Group.

If you accidentally click the X to the far right in the row, a prompt will appear to confirm or cancel the course deletion. Select Keep this Course to cancel the deletion or click Delete this Course to proceed with deletion.

4. A popup will load with a full list of Course Groups in Handshake, organised by category. The name of the course you clicked on will be at the very top of the popup.

Tick the box(es) of the Course Group to add the current course to this group.
- Note: Courses may only be mapped to 3 course groups at a time.
Untick a currently checked box to remove the course from the selected group.

5. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, then click Save in the lower-right corner of the popup to save your changes.

Repeat Step 4 as needed for each Course.

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