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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Using Prerequisites and Consent requirements in ECAS

If you are an Electronic Course Authorization System (ECAS) user you may have spent some time puzzling over when to use non-enforced prerequisites versus enforced prerequisites versus consent requirements. Let’s shed some light on that.

First, in ECAS there are two types of prerequisites.

Course Prerequisites for Catalog are non-enforced. This field in ECAS may be used to describe a consent, class standing, or prior class prerequisite, such as having completed a college-level algebra class at any college. Students will see this type of prerequisite in the catalog and class schedule and hopefully will self-opt out of the class if they do not meet the requirement, but it will not prevent students from registering. Course Prerequisites for Catalog are advisory in nature. If you want to enforce the prerequisite, you may use the following options.

Enforced Prerequisites restrict access a course. An example of this would be a prerequisite that says you must be a senior in the College of Science and Engineering to enroll in a particular course. In this case, the system looks at the students’ records as they attempt to register for the course. If they meet the requirements and there is space in the class, they are allowed to enroll. If not, they are excluded from the class. Those that are excluded would need a permission number or student specific permission to enroll.

In addition to prerequisites, ECAS users may also choose a Consent Requirement including Instructor, Department or College consent. Consent requirements are appropriate to use when registration for the course always requires someone’s approval, BUT be aware that this requires all students to get consent to enroll - even those that meet any course prerequisites. If you select “No Consent” in ECAS, what you are really saying is that no consent is required provided the student meets the prerequisites of the course. So, if you are using Enforced Prerequisites for a course, a Consent Requirement is often not necessary.

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