Course

A course is the teaching of a subject to a class (or to one of its groups), over a given period. It is the basic unit of your course offering: what must be taught, to whom and in what volume — independently of when it will land in the timetable.

A course carries:

• a subject (the discipline being taught),
• optionally a course type (lecture, tutorial, lab, exam…) — the (subject, type) pair forms a distinct course,
• a target number of hours (hours per week, or a number of lessons),
• one or more assigned teachers,
• optionally constraints: pedagogical weight, required specialised room, incompatibilities, placement preferences.

Course, subject, lesson: do not confuse them

• The subject is the pure discipline (mathematics), in the school's catalog.
• The course is that subject applied to a class, with a volume and attributes: "mathematics in Grade 9 A, 4 h per week, as a tutorial".
• The lessons are the concrete occurrences that implement the course in the grid (the four weekly slots actually placed).

A course therefore gives rise to one or more lessons; deleting a lesson does not delete the course.

A concept the interface keeps implicit

The interface does not say "course" at this point: you build one by assigning a subject to a class (the Courses tab of a class), then filling in the volume, the type and the teachers. The notion remains useful for reasoning — particularly in higher education, where the course (the definition) is clearly distinguished from its lessons (the occurrences).

All the courses together: the program

The set of courses of a class — or of a program of study — forms its program. Depending on the level and the school's vocabulary, it is also called a curriculum, a course catalog, a degree plan or a syllabus. Omniscol does not impose this vocabulary: it handles courses (class subjects, possibly typed); their sum is the curriculum.