About setting up individual plans of study

Students typically must meet certain requirements, including taking certain classes, to graduate. Campus Cafe’s degree audit tool lets you configure which courses are required and lets students and advisors track their completion. The individual plan of study tool provides a way for you to suggest when and in what order students take the required classes. Students can track their progress against the plan and adjust their plan if they become out of sequence by failing a class, taking a leave of absence, etc.

Because curriculum requirements can change over time, you can create different plans of study versions for different catalog years. This allows you to set different plans for students who entered your institution at different times and are following different requirements - even if the students are in the same academic program.

Prerequisites

Create semesters corresponding to when students will plan to take classes. If your students plan four years out, create all the semesters from now until four years in the future.
Use registration control to set as active semesters corresponding to when students plan to take classes. If your students plan four years out, activate all the semesters from now until four years in the future.
Create majors for which students plan.
Create courses required to complete the academic program in the course catalog.
Set up in STParm using Parameter Code RPCTSR to define requirement categories. For example, major requirement, elective requirement, general education requirement, etc.
If you plan to use a degree audit template as a basis of an individual plan template, create the degree audit.

Required permissions

Module	Number	Description

Module	Number	Description
Registration	1268	Create plan of study requirements and templates; inactivate a tempalte
System Admin	465	Add link to plan of study to student portal

Create plan of study template

The plan of study template outlines the order students should take their required classes to graduate in a timely fashion. While students can adjust this order, the template is the default recommendation.

Campus Cafe offers three ways to create a template:

Start with a blank template. Use this option if you don’t use the degree audit tool or prefer to start with a clean slate.
Use a degree audit template as the basis. This saves you time by importing the requirements you’ve already created in the degree audit tool.
Copy from another template as the basis. This saves you time if two degree programs are similar, especially if you are creating a template for a new catalog year where changes are minimal between years.

Start from a blank template

Go to Registrar > Plan of Study.
In New Template select the academic program and select the catalog year for the plan of study template.
Select Create Blank Template.

Here we create a plan template for biology for the catalog year Fall 2024.
Click Create Template.
On the first row work your way right. First, select the semester the student should plan to take the course.
Next, enter a course code of the required course. This course must exist in your course catalog.

Here we indicate students should plan to take BIO110 during Fall 2024.
Continuing to work you way right, add the required credits, requirement category and minimum quality points.
You can add a course requirement by clicking the plus.
As you organize courses by semester, Campus Cafe sums the required credits each semester and highlights changes you’ve made to credits. Click Expand Filters to see sum of credits by requirement category.
When done, click Save Template.

Start from a degree audit template

Go to Registrar > Plan of Study.
In New Template select the academic program and select the catalog year to use as the basis of the plan of study template. You must have a degree audit configured for this major and catalog year. Only individual course requirements, not course groups, will import (copy) to the plan template.
Select Copy from Degree Audit.
Click Create Template.
The required courses for the academic program appear as a list. The first step is to assign a recommended semester for each course. For example, if we’re creating a plan for the Fall 2023 catalog year, we likely want to assign classes the student is expected to take their first semester to Fall 2023.
Working your way right across each row, you can also change the course provided the course exists in your course catalog, required credits, requirement category and minimum quality points.
You can remove a course requirement by clicking the minus.
You can add a course requirement by clicking the plus.
As you organize courses by semester, Campus Cafe sums the required credits each semester and highlights changes you’ve made to credits.
Click Expand Filters to see sum of credits by requirement category.
When done, click Save Template.

Start from copying another template

Copying from another template is useful when your curriculum has changed in only minor ways or if you have two programs with similar requirements.

Go to Registrar > Plan of Study.
In New Template select the academic program and select the catalog year for the new template.
Select Copy from Degree Audit.
In Template to Copy select the template to use as the basis for your new template.
Click Create Template.
Campus Cafe imports the plan and attempts to adjust the terms each course is required to match. For example, you have a template for catalog year 2023 that requires MTH101 in the first semester Fall 2023 and MTH102 in the second semester Spring 2024. You copy this template for catalog year 2024. Campus Cafe automatically slots MTH101 into Fall 2024, the first semester of that catalog year, and MTH102 into Spring 2025, the second semester of the catalog year.
Campus cafe looks at the the first term and subsequent terms by difference between the template term of the new template, and the template term of the source template, and increases the terms based on the number of defined terms of difference. If there are 8 terms of difference between the source and new templates, each semester will be increased by 8 terms in the new template. Non-traditional or extra terms that do not follow the regular term structure may inaccurately increment the terms. Be sure to review all term assignments after copying from an existing template.
Working your way right across each row, you can also change the semester, course provided the course exists in your course catalog, required credits, requirement category and minimum quality points.
You can remove a course requirement by clicking the minus.
You can add a course requirement by clicking the plus.
As you organize courses by semester, Campus Cafe sums the required credits each semester and highlights changes you’ve made to credits.
Click Expand Filters to see sum of credits by requirement category.
When done, click Save Template.

Inactivate plan of study template

If you no longer have need for a plan of study template, you can inactivate it.

Go to Registrar > Plan of Study.
In Existing Templates select the template to inactivate.
Click Load Template.
Unselect Active.
Click Save Template.

Link plan of study from student portal

If you’ve disabled the side menu for students, a student portal dashboard tile or link will need to be added for the student to access to the plan of study.

Go to Admin > Adjustable Text.
In Search enter ENTRY_PAGE.
Click the pencil.
In Value (the larger box) update your code to include a link to https://***-web.scansoftware.com/cafeweb/tl/IPOSList?mode=1 where *** is the institutional 3-digit code.
Go to Admin > Refresh Data Cache.

Next steps

Associate the plans of study to students.

Knowledge Base

Set Up Individual Plan of Study