Summary
In late 2019, Unizin Order Tool will provide a new billing workflow feature. To support that feature, Order Tool will need additional data from institutions provided in its SIS feeds. The proposed changes are described below.
We ask our institutions to implement the following changes by <insert date here> for our test environment and <insert date here> for our production environment.
Student choice
Supporting and capturing student opt-out and opt-in choices regarding titles is a precondition to accurately billing institutions and students for digital content.
Unizin will create a "student choice" feature to enable students to either opt-in or opt-out of their Inclusive Access course materials. To accommodate different institutional approaches to student choice, Unizin will create a configurable model, which is applied institution-wide, to deliver an institution's student choice experience.
Among the features that "student choice" will support is student choice policy exemptions. Some students are exempt from paying for their inclusive access digital course materials but still have access to the course materials. Usually, this is because a student is a member of a student population that is exempt. Institutions will be able, on an enrollment level, to assert which students are exempt from paying for their digital course materials and the reason for their exemption. The reason provided by the institution will then be presented in the user experience.
Student choice policy exemptions are not assertions that neither the student nor the institution will pay for the digital content accessed by the student. Rather, they assert that the student is not responsible for paying for the digital content, but the institution is responsible for paying for the digital content.
Student Choice policy exemptions must be defined globally to all campuses, courses, and sections. For example, institutions cannot enforce a particular exemption to one campus and not to another.
To accommodate the student choice feature, the following changes are proposed to the student_enrollment.csv SIS data file:
Header | Data Type | Description | Required? |
|---|---|---|---|
sis_user_id | String (255 max length) | The foreign key to a User who is a student enrolled in the section. | Yes |
sis_section_id | String (255 max length) | The foreign key to a Section being taught. | Yes |
| is_exempt_from_payment | Boolean | NEW. A boolean value indicating whether or not the student is exempt from paying for the section's commercial course material(s). If true, the student's experience in Order Tool will communicate that they will not be charged for the commercial material(s) in the section. If false, the student is required to pay for the commercial course materials. | Yes |
| is_exempt_from_payment_reason | String | NEW. A string whose value communicates the reason that a student is exempt from paying for the commercial course material(s) in the section. I.e., this explains why a student cannot opt-out or why they were automatically opted-in. The string will be presented to users in the user interface. |
Section-specific Indicators for Billing and Deliverability
The following additions were included to account for any parent-child sections permutations that may exist across our institutions. The broader goal is to capture any information that may impact Unizin's ability to accurately supporting billing and invoicing.
Header | Date Type | Description | Required? |
|---|---|---|---|
sis_section_id | The unique SIS ID for the Term; e.g., "201890-22-BIO-101-0001." | Yes | |
sis_org_id | The foreign key to the Organization at which the Section is being taught. | Yes | |
sis_course_id | The foreign key to the Course to which this Section belongs. | Yes | |
title | The course title; e.g., "Introduction to History." | Yes | |
lms_id | This is the unique ID that identifies the Course Section in the LMS. I.e., this is the string provided by Canvas to uniquely identify the Section. It is essential that the values for this data point match the LTI parameter that uniquely represents a Section in an LTI launch from your LMS. | Yes | |
| label | A human-readable label for the Section that should uniquely identify the Section for a user in Order Tool. | Yes | |
| section_type | The type of Section. Typical values may include "Lecture," "Lab," "Recital," etc. Some institutions call this a Section "component." | Yes | |
| class_number | This number is unique to the set of Sections for a Term. The values are typically integers. | Yes | |
| section_number | This number is unique within the set of Sections for a Course offering. Often, values may be 001, 002, 003 to distinguish the distinct Sections of a single Course offering. | Yes | |
max_enrollment | The maximum allowed student enrollment in the section. | Yes | |
start_date | The date (YYYY-MM-DD) instruction begins. Must follow the date format in ISO 8601. | No | |
add_drop_deadline | The date (YYYY-MM-DD) of the add/drop deadline. Must follow the date format in ISO 8601. | No | |
end_date | The date (YYYY-MM-DD) ends begins. Must follow the date format in ISO 8601. | No | |
| is_orderable | Boolean | NEW. This is a boolean value corresponding to whether or not a particular section can have contents ordered for it. In some parent-child section relationships, the child section will inherit the course materials delivered to the parent section. Thus, the child section cannot be ordered for. The default value should be TRUE. | Yes |
| is_deliverable | Boolean | NEW. This is a boolean value corresponding to whether or not a particular section can have course materials delivered to it. In some parent-child section relationships, the child section will inherit the course materials delivered to the parent section. Thus, the course materials of the child section cannot be delivered to the child section. The default value should be TRUE. | Yes |
| is_billable | Boolean | NEW. This is a boolean value corresponding to whether or not a particular section can be billed for particular course materials. The default value should be TRUE. | Yes |
| is_combined | Boolean | NEW. This is a boolean value corresponding to whether or not a particular section is combined or is the parent or child section of another. The default value should be FALSE. | Yes |
| parent_id | String | NEW. This specifies the sis_section_id of the parent section this particular section belongs to. The default value should be NULL. | Yes |