2020-05-01

Order Tool

Student Choice

Version	-
Release Date	2020-05-01

Key features

Delivers a new student choice feature that will allow students to opt-out or opt-in to digital course materials on a title-by-title basis. This feature also enables program administrators to opt-in or opt-out on behalf of a student, as well as exempt titles from student choice.

Institutions can customize their student choice experience in Order Tool based on the institution’s policy, consent language, and student choice periods.

Details

Detailed information on the student choice feature is provided below. For more information, please refer to our resources site.

Opt-out and opt-in support. Students can opt-out (or opt-in) to eligible titles in Order Tool.

An eligible title is one that is not exempt from student choice (see “title exemptions” below). Also, students cannot opt-out of titles when they have a payment waiver for that section (see “student payment waivers” below).

Student choice will be defaulted based on the institution’s policy. For example, if your institution has an opt-out policy, all students will be opted-in to materials unless they choose otherwise. Students will see cost savings for each title when making their opt-out (or opt-in) decision.

If a student is opted out of a title, that title will become unavailable in Engage after the student choice period closes for the section.

Opt-out and opt-in on behalf of a student. Program administrators can opt-out (or opt-in) on behalf of a student for any eligible title.

An eligible title is one that is not exempt from student choice (see “title exemptions” below). Also, students cannot opt-out of titles when they have a payment waiver for that section (see “student payment waivers” below).

Access to titles in Engage. Students cannot access titles in Engage that they opted-out of (or did not opt-in to) during the student choice period. Title opt-outs will be enforced by the Services team after the student choice period closes for the section. Students can access any materials uploaded by the instructor to the Engage section, regardless of their opt-in/opt-out choices for ordered titles.

Student payment waivers. A payment waiver indicates that a student will not be responsible for paying their course material fees; rather, someone at the institution will pay on their behalf. For example, student-athletes or high school students may qualify for a payment waiver.

Institutions define payment waivers for students, on an enrollment basis, in the SIS 2.0 feed (see specifications here). If a student has a payment waiver, they cannot opt-out (or will be automatically opted-in) to course materials for that section.

Title exemptions. An exempt title is one that is excluded from student choice; therefore, students cannot opt-out (or will be automatically opted-in) to the given title.

Institutions have the right to exempt titles (or disable opting out) according to the Higher Education Opportunity Act. Eligibility criteria might include titles that are (1) deemed critical to success in the course and (2) cannot be easily purchased elsewhere, if at all. Ultimately, each institution must exercise judgment to determine which titles should be exempt from student choice. For more information, please refer to the Code of Federal Regulations.

Program administrators can exempt titles from student choice in the master catalog. Title exemptions are specific to each institution and apply to all offers of that title.

Final declined offers feed. This feed will include any students who have declined to pay for course materials for a section (once the student choice end date has passed). Specifically, it will only include declined offer decisions that are final. For each term, the feed will begin once student choices are final for at least one section (i.e. the day after the first student choice end date). The feed will end one month after the last student choice end date (for sections in the term). During this period, the feed will deliver files daily to the “declined-offers-feed” bucket on BrickFTP. For more information, please review the specifications on our resources site. **Please note that a new field was added for the section lms id.**

Student choice rates report. This report will include all courses for the given term and their student choice rates. Institutions can request this report from the Unizin Services team. This report will be delivered via email.

Custom publishing flag. When custom publishing titles are offered at an institution, the Unizin Services team can denote those titles as “custom publishing” on the back-end. Program administrators, course coordinators, and instructors can filter for “custom publishing” titles in the catalog.

Deprecation of profile switching. Users can view their "highest level” profile actions without having to "switch" profiles. For example, if a user is both an instructor and a student, they can order content for the sections for which they are an instructor and opt-out of titles for which they are a student without “switching profiles”. Details regarding additional updates are provided below. Catalog import bug fix. This bug fix will enable the content catalog and offer catalog imports to handle duplicate data more gracefully. Instructor filter bug fix. The Instructor Name filter for courses in the Place an Order view is now working as expected. Schedule of Classes messaging bug fix. Messages can now be sent via the Schedule of Classes email feature.

Known Issues

None.