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Institution Settings: Course Groups

Tawnya
  • Updated
Specific 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 co-operation with a number of our partner institutions.

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.

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

You can map your courses from the Courses page in Institution Settings. 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!

 

Mapping your Courses

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. All Course Groups in Handshake will be listed on this page, divided into categories.

3. Click Map courses to groups button in the top right of the page

Map

4. This brings in a side bar from the right side of the screen. A list of course categories are provided. Select the course group category that you’d like to modify.

 

Map

5. Choose the course group you want to map the course to.

Choose

 

6. Search for the course you plan to map to this course group. Select the course from the dropdown menu and click Save to proceed.

Selecting

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

 

Repeat Step 3 as needed for each Course Group.