Version 5.1 sees ILIAS expanded with a new tool: This new tool, called Study Programme, allows multiple courses to be combined into a single superordinate Programme, thereby allowing a complete curriculum to be allocated to a large number of learners. This also works if the learners are not synchronised in their learning or need to fulfil different requirements: The structure of the Study Programme can be branched, weighted and adjusted to the needs of individual users as required.

The Study Programme is therefore useful if you are running a degree or vocational training course that consists of many courses/modules. Degree courses, modules and vocational training courses that you offer, can be be represented accordingly in ILIAS. You can take already existing courses and combine them, give them different weightings and display them in a hierarchical tree with multiple thematic threads. Each course can be marked as compulsory or optional, allowing learners to free select his/her own combination of courses within the given parameters. Upon completing all the branches of a tree, the overall Programme is then considered to have been passed.

In ILIAS 5.1, you can create a Study Programme as an object like any other. This is possible in all parts of a repository for which you have the necessary permissions. The name and icon of the Programme and its branches can be set freely. This allows you to recreate the hierarchies of existing training courses 1:1 in ILIAS. For each superordinate subject or module you just need to create a new branch. At the end of these branches there are always references to courses that you have already created in ILIAS.

Both learners and tutors can quickly get an overview of which parts of the overall Programme have already been completed. If more than one combination of courses is possible, it is also possible for tutors to see which courses the learners have chosen. If necessary, it is possible to change the weighting of courses for individual learners or groups of learners. A huge advantage of the Study Programme is that it can still be used if changes are made to your study regulations or to the main focus of your training/education. For example, learners whose training/education started earlier have to fulfil different requirements to learners who started later. Nevertheless, both can be members of the same Study Programme.

An example: Learner A is required to do two from three propadeutics seminars for her mathematics degree. These are defined in the Study Programme as elective compulsory courses. The propadeutics branch is considered to have been passed if at least two of the three courses on offer have been passed. A year later the study regulations for the first semester are changed so that only one propadeutics seminar has to be completed. You adjust your Study Programme accordingly. If then a Learner B is added to the the Programme, he/she only has to do one of the three seminars to successfully complete the branch. Learner A, however, still has to complete two seminars. Should you wish to change this, you can of course manually change the curriculum for Learner A.

With the help of extended metadata you are able to categorise all Study Programmes and branches. This makes it much easier to keep an overview if you have a large number of Programmes in your ILIAS. You could, for example, add metadata to a Programme intended to train and develop junior managers and thereby make it absolutely clear which branch goes with which area: i.e. self-organisation, team leading, budget planning etc... The metadata sets can be created according to your requirements in your ILIAS Administration.

Study Programmes open up many interesting possibilities in ILIAS. We'd like to invite you to experiment with them yourself. Our support partners are of course happy to advise and help you with any questions you may have when implementing degree or training courses in ILIAS.

Overview: The advantages of Study Programmes