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.
Payment waivers
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 waivers. Some students are waived 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 waived. Institutions will be able, on an enrollment level, to assert which students are waived from paying for their digital course materials and the reason for their waivers. The reason provided by the institution will then be presented in the user experience.
Student choice policy waivers 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 waivers must be defined globally to all campuses, courses, and sections. For example, institutions cannot enforce a particular waiver 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_waived_from_payment | Boolean | NEW. A boolean value indicating whether or not the student is waived 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_waived_from_payment_reason | String | NEW. A string whose value communicates the reason that a student is waived 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. | Yes |
Section billing indicators
At times, the content ordered for one section determines what is ordered, billed, and provisioned for other sections. For example, suppose that a section is cross-listed in another department or even another campus. Students can enroll in the home section and cross-listed sections. However, the content ordered for the home section must determine what is delivered and billed in the cross-listed sections. In this case, the choices made about the parent "home" section determine what is ordered, delivered, and billed for the cross-listed sections.
To support such scenarios, Unizin is adding indicators and variables to the section feed. The following indicators and variables may account for any parent-child section dependency that impacts how digital course materials are ordered, delivered, and billed.
Changes to the section.csv file:
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 | |
| student_choice_start_date | NEW. this date (YYYY-MM-DD) indicates the first day a student can choose to opt-in or opt-out of their course materials. | Yes | |
| student_choice_end_date | NEW. This date (YYYY-MM-DD) indicates the last day a student can choose to opt-in or opt-out of their course materials. | Yes | |
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) instruction ends. Must follow the date format in ISO 8601. | No | |
| is_orderable | Boolean | NEW. Indicates whether or not users may order digital course materials for this section. If TRUE, then authorized users will see this section in the Order Tool and may order for it. If FALSE, then this section is a child to a parent section (see below), and the section will not appear as orderable in the Order Tool user interface. Instead, this section will receive the same digital course materials as its parent section, if that parent section is placed on an order. The default value should be TRUE. | Yes |
| is_deliverable | Boolean | NEW. Indicates whether or not the digital course materials for this section must be distinctly delivered in the learning environment. In some parent-child section relationships, institutions will configure their Learning Management System such that cross-listed or other "child" sections are tied to the parent section. In this case, content delivery providers (such as Engage) do not need to establish a separate configuration to deliver content in the child sections. If TRUE, then the content delivery provider will configure their system to deliver content for this section. If FALSE, then the content delivery provider will not configure their system to deliver the digital course materials for this section. The default value should be TRUE. | Yes |
| is_invoiceable | Boolean | NEW. Indicates whether or not a particular section can be invoiced for particular course materials. If TRUE, then Unizin will change the institution for all applicable digital course materials and student enrollments in this section. If FALSE, then Unizin will not charge the institution for the content delivered in this section. The default value should be TRUE. | Yes |
| is_combined | Boolean | NEW. Indicates whether or not a particular section is combined, with one or more other sections, as children of a parent section. If TRUE, then this is a child section of a parent section and it is assumed that parent_id is a non-null value. If FALSE, then this is a parent section. 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 |