Instructional Support: Admin Units

Admin Units are used to organize authorization as finely or coarsely as needed. An admin unit may be activated for a term; this is called an Offering. Admin Units are also used to organize instructional sections into groups that are managed together.

Admin Units

There is an admin unit corresponding to each course. Additionally, there may be admin units corresponding to different editions of a course (for example, two different instructors) or two or more courses combined together (when they are taught together). There are also admin units corresponding to relevant University divisions such as academic units, faculties, and others as needed.

Admin units are organized into a hierarchy, in which each admin unit has a level. An admin unit may be recorded as “containing” another admin unit; sometimes we say that the contained unit is a child of the containing unit. The containing unit must be higher in the hierarchy than the contained unit. An admin unit may be contained by multiple admin units; the structure does not have to be a tree.

Admin units corresponding to courses are automatically created based on calendar and class information imported from Quest. The admin unit structure can be viewed, and provides links to information about each admin unit.

Offerings

An admin unit may be activated for a term. This allows examinations to be created by corresponding course staff. The activation of an admin unit for a term is called an offering.

Admin units used for teaching will have sections attached to them. These are updated automatically from Quest every morning. The update process creates new admin units as needed to correspond to new courses.