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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-05-01
Setup Considerations: Curriculum Management

Setup Considerations: Curriculum Management

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of curriculum management. 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.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What It Is

Curriculum management is the system of creating and managing courses, activities, and instructors. It’s a part of the Student Records functional area in Workday.

Business Benefits

Curriculum management enables you to manage your course inventory and offerings, instructor assignments, and activities outside the classroom efficiently.

Use Cases

  • Establish the course inventory.
  • Create and manage course sections for a specific period.
  • Assign course and course section materials.
  • Establish meeting patterns and instructional locations.
  • Track activities such as orientation, practical learning, and study abroad.
  • Designate instructor eligibility to teach courses and course sections.
  • Track competencies and learning outcomes for students.
  • Reserve capacity for specific student populations in a course section.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
Which academic units and levels should own or offer courses?
Only the academic units and levels you configure to offer courses are available when you set up courses.
What metadata do you already have about your courses and curricula?
Prepare yourself with this information to save time and effort when you set up courses and course sections in Workday:
  • A list of approved subjects along with their names and abbreviations.
  • A list of courses and course sections your institution offers.
  • Grading bases you currently use.
  • Instructional formats and delivery methods you use for courses.
  • Unit types you use for your courses.
  • Which courses are cross-listed.
  • Course materials, such as textbooks, you want to associate with courses, and their ISBN and price information.
What prerequisites must students complete before they can register for courses?
Create eligibility rules to set up prerequisites for courses.
How do you want to handle courses that overlap?
Create course equivalency groups where courses in a group can count toward academic progress or units for each other.
Do you have both term and nonterm course sections?
You can create course sections that:
What course tags fit your institutional needs? Do you want to group them?
Add tags to courses to:
  • Filter them in search reports.
  • Report on them.
  • Identify common attributes.
  • Group them.
Examples: GE - Natural Science, Global Cultures.
Grouping tags into categories makes them easier to find in prompts. Example: General Education.
What information do you want to record about your institution's course assessments?
Set up and schedule course assessments for your institution and track them as they occur. Example course assessments: Midterm, finals.
What information do you want to track about your campuses?
Set up detailed information about your campus locations, such as:
  • Campuses.
  • Location types. Examples: Classroom and lab.
  • Instructional locations and their capacities.
  • Location hierarchy.
  • Attributes on the instructional locations. Examples: Piano, computers, SMART Board.
What meeting patterns do you want to use?
  • Standard and custom meeting patterns.
  • Overlapping or colocating course sections.
Examples:
  • Monday, Wednesday, Friday (weekly) 1:00 - 2:00 pm
  • Tuesday, Thursday (biweekly) 9:00 - 10:00 am
  • First Friday (monthly) 10:20 - 10:50 am
What educational offerings do you track outside of courses?
You can configure student activities to track:
  • Orientation
  • Practical Learning
  • Study Abroad
Should students earn competencies and learning outcomes from completing courses?
You can associate competencies and learning outcomes with courses.

Recommendations

  • Select the department responsible for defining and updating the course and course sections as the course inventory owner.
  • Associate at least one of your instructor roles with the Workday-delivered
    Instructor
    role for reporting purposes.
  • Know whether yours is a multi-institutional tenant. Workday secures some items, such as course subjects and course tags, to institutional academic units.

Requirements

  • Set up these components in Academic Foundation:
    • Academic units
    • Academic levels
    • Academic calendars
    • Programs of study
    • Eligibility rules
  • Configure the academic unit and level to offer courses on the
    Configure Academic Unit for Level
    task.

Limitations

No impact.

Tenant

No impact.

Security

Security
Considerations
In the Student Records functional area:
  • Set Up: Curriculum Management
  • Manage: Curriculum Management
Users with access to these domains can set up and manage curricula.
Public: Curriculum Management
in the Student Records functional area
Users secured to this domain can find and view courses and course sections.
Roles enabled for
Academic Unit
These roles can set up curriculum.
Examples: Student Records Manager, Student Records Administrator.
Roles enabled for
Course Section
These roles can access instructor functionality.

Business Processes

These business processes in the Student Records functional area control the setup and approval of courses and course sections:
  • Course Event
  • Course Section Event
Consider setting up notifications on the
Course Event
business process to notify other impacted administrators when a new course is added to the inventory. Example: If your institution uses the
Configure Student Course Fees
task in Student Financials to assign course fees, you might want to notify the bursar.
These business processes control the setup of course instructors and instructor assignments across your institution:
  • Designate Instructor Eligibility
  • Manage Instructor Load

Reporting

Access the
Workday Standard Reports
report and select
Student Records
as the report category to view a list of available reports.
Access these domains to view a list of the report data sources you can use to create custom reports:
  • Set Up: Curriculum Management
  • Manage: Curriculum Management
Workday recommends that you add:
  • The
    Curriculum and Enrollment
    worklet to your
    Home
    landing page.
  • Custom reports and external links to the
    Curriculum and Enrollment
    worklet based on frequency of use and your institutional needs.
Identify the custom reports you want to enable as worklets and add them to the
Academics
dashboard for student use.

Integrations

The
Student Records
web service includes the operations you can use to set up and manage curriculum data.

Connections and Touchpoints

Feature
Considerations
Instructional Locations
You typically set up locations during a Workday HCM implementation. You can use the same location in Workday HCM (Business Site) and Workday Student (Campus).
You can only assign locations marked as
Instructional
to course sections and activities.
Changing location details after initial setup might impact curriculum data.
Instructors
You can designate academic affiliates, academic persons, and workers in Workday HCM as instructors in Student.
Instructors must have an academic appointment with a track type that includes instructional activities.
Period Activity Pay
Period activity pay in Workday HCM incorporates course section assignments so you can seamlessly:
  • Pay workers for courses they teach.
  • Report on instructor payments.
Create a custom notification on the
Student Course Section Cancel Event
business process to notify your HCM administrator of course section changes.
Competencies
If you want to associate courses with competencies, define competencies in Workday HCM.
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships across your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.