Setup Considerations: Standard Academic Period Spanning
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of standard academic period spanning. It explains:
- Why to set it up.
- How it fits into the rest of Workday.
- Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
- Security requirements and business process configurations.
- Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Once you enable standard academic period spanning, you can’t disable or change the setting. This setting is institution-wide and irreversible.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.
What It Is
Standard academic period spanning enables you to schedule course sections outside of the start and end dates of a standard academic period.
By default, Workday prevents this to protect data integrity across all functional areas and limit downstream impacts on financial aid, student financials, and academic statistics.
Business Benefits
With standard academic period spanning, your institution can have increased flexibility for scheduling course sections, for courses with unique timelines that don’t align with your standard academic periods.
Use Cases
Institutions might use academic period spanning to support programs with courses that don’t follow the standard academic period calendar. Examples:
- A course section that starts in the Fall semester and ends in the following Spring semester.
- Dynamic course sections that aren’t tied to a specific academic period.
- Specialized courses, such as intersession, intensive seminars, or independent studies, that have unique start and end dates.
Questions to Consider
Subjects | Questions | Considerations |
|---|---|---|
Academic Structure | Does your tenant support multiple institutions? | For tenants with multiple institutional academic units, you can enable standard academic period spanning for each institution.
For tenants with only 1 institution, enabling standard academic period spanning applies tenant-wide. This option can’t be configured for specific courses or subordinate academic units and levels. |
Academic Calendars
Curriculum Management | How do you manage academic calendars and course sections for your institution?
Does your institution offer nonterm course sections that start in a standard period and end in a different standard period? | The standard academic period spanning option applies across an institution for all past, present, and future course sections.
This option is irreversible. Once enabled, standard academic period spanning can’t be disabled. Consider the risks and downstream impacts of enabling standard academic period spanning. Discuss the decision with stakeholders from the offices of financial aid, finance and bursar, and the registrar. Course sections can be unintentionally edited to be associated with a different academic period or across academic years. Consider how you will prevent schedulers from creating and editing course sections inappropriately. |
Academic Period Record of Nonterm Courses | How do you categorize the academic period for nonterm courses? | For financial aid and Student Financials purposes, Workday considers a course registration to be in the standard academic period as of the course section start date, even if the course section ends in the following standard academic period.
On reports for finding courses and course sections, Workday displays courses by the standard academic period as of the start date of the course section. |
Financial Aid | Do you offer courses that are used in programs of study that are eligible for Title IV? | Courses which overlap standard academic period dates can cause programs to become nonterm for financial aid.
Even if the program of study isn’t designated as nonterm, the program will become nonterm if an associated course section is configured to span across standard academic periods. |
Financial Aid | How do you evaluate satisfactory academic progress (SAP) for courses that span standard academic periods? | Workday evaluates SAP based on the standard academic period in which a course starts. If a course isn’t completed and graded at the end date of the standard academic period, the SAP evaluation will result in an Undetermined status. |
Financial Aid | Does your financial aid office have capacity for manual processing of student records? | Credit-hour or clock-hour programs that have courses that overlap standard academic periods can be processed for financial aid, but may require heavy manual monitoring and handling. Examples:
|
Date Controls | Does your institution use dynamic course section date controls on academic calendars? | Workday enables you to set up date controls for dynamic course sections not associated with a fixed academic period, and create rules to offset the date controls. If you have date control offsets based on the end date of the course section, academic period spanning can impact dates for course registration and leave of absence requests, for courses that span academic periods.
Example: Your institution has a Drop without Record End date control for dynamic course sections, with a 45-day offset. With academic period spanning enabled, an extended course section would have a longer period of time after the course has started when students could request a leave of absence or drop the course without a record on their transcript. |
Recommendations
Create custom audit reports to ensure that no course sections for an academic period start before the standard start date of that academic period.
When configuring Financial Aid:
- For students enrolled in courses in programs of study that aren’t Title IV eligible, generate attendance plans to support non-Title IV aid and billing.
- For non-Title IV course sections in Title IV programs of study, exclude these courses from being eligible for financial aid. On the course section, specify the Other Unit Value for Financial Aid Load as0units to omit the course from financial aid load status calculations.
When configuring Student Financials:
- For charge adjustment schedules, select the schedule basis using class meetings, to account for the potential overlap in academic periods. Determine the value and risks associated with enabling the Evaluate by Course Length option.
- For charge due date rules, specify the anchor date as the course section start date.
For Student Records:
- When students are building saved schedules or registering for courses, direct students to use theFind Course Sectionsreport to search for available courses, instead ofFind Courses. On these reports, Workday categorizes courses by the standard academic period as of the start date of the course section. However, theFind Course Sectionsreport includes in-progress course sections for spanning courses that are still open for enrollment, when the course start date is in the current or past standard academic period.
- Consider updating transcript layouts to distinguish courses that aren’t taken across a standard academic period. Example: Display course section start and end dates.
Requirements
Set up academic calendars with standard academic periods.
Limitations
Once you enable standard academic period spanning, you can’t disable or change the setting. This setting is institution-wide and irreversible.
For Curriculum Management:
- Once a course section is created, an administrator can edit the section to associate it with any academic period, regardless of the start and end dates of the course section. Academic period spanning applies to all past, present, and future course sections.
- A user can create a course section that spans across academic years without any warning.
For Financial Aid:
- Workday doesn’t flag or exclude nonterm students with spanning courses from being processed alongside traditional students for financial aid.
- Future functionality may not be focused on streamlining nonterm financial aid when academic period spanning is enabled.
For Student Records:
- When registering a student for a spanning course, Workday may not warn the administrator if the registration date is outside of the date controls on the course section. The administrator should verify the date controls before confirming registration for the student.
- On student transcripts, Workday displays courses by standard academic period based on the start date of the course section. Example: A course that begins in the Fall semester and ends in the Spring semester displays on the transcript under the Fall semester. Since the transcript displays the start and end dates of the standard academic periods, this may lead to an assumption that all of the listed courses have the same start and end dates as the academic period.
- Students enrolled in a spanning course may have trouble requesting a leave of absence and selecting a valid request date, due to validations in place on theRequest Leave of Absencetask. Those students can work with an administrator to request the leave of absence as of:
- The standard start date of the academic period after the period in which the spanning course ends.
- A date before theDrop without Record Enddate control on the course section. If this date is in the past, an administrator can backdate the leave of absence request using theRequest Leave of Absence for Studenttask.
Tenant Setup
You can enable standard academic period spanning for each institution by using the
Designate Standard Academic Period Spanning
task. You can’t change this setting once enabled.Security
The
Set Up: Course Section Calendar Options
domain in the Student Records functional area allows users to enable standard academic period spanning.Business Processes
No impact.
Reporting
Reports | Considerations |
|---|---|
Find Non-Term Course Section Definitions
| Find course sections that span standard academic periods.
Security: Manage: Curriculum Management domain in the Student Records functional area. |
Find Programs of Study with Non-Term Enrollments
| Find students enrolled in course sections that span standard periods of the calendar that their primary program of study uses.
Example: A student with a primary program of study on a quarter calendar registers for a course section that uses a semester calendar. Security: Reports: Course Registrations domain in the Student Records functional area. |
Integrations
No impact.
Connections and Touchpoints
Features | Considerations |
|---|---|
Financial Aid | Courses that overlap academic period dates can cause programs of study to become nonterm, requiring manual processing financial aid and special consideration for SAP evaluation. |
Student Financials | The start date of the course section determines the standard academic period in which the registration counts for billing and payment-related transactions. Examples: Waivers, sponsor contracts, and refunds.
For revenue recognition for student charges, revenue can be recognized only for the months within the standard academic period. |
Student Records | Courses that span multiple academic periods are counted in the academic period of the course section start date for:
Academic period spanning can also impact dates for course registration and leave of absence requests for offerings that have dynamic course section date controls. |
Curriculum Management | Scheduled assessments are defined, scheduled, and attached to course sections in Workday. Academic period spanning will permit course-related activities to occur past standard period end dates. Scheduled assessments that fall outside of standard academic periods can impact cost and aid. |
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.