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Staff: Create a Primary Grad Plan

This article explains how to create a primary grad plan and build the graduation requirements within the plan.

Janelle Safford avatar
Written by Janelle Safford
Updated over a week ago

What is the Primary Grad Plan?

The Primary Graduation Plan outlines the requirements students must fulfill to graduate, along with the courses that satisfy those requirements. While multiple Primary Plans can be established to address various requirements and needs, each student can only be linked to one specific Primary Graduation Plan. This designated plan dictates the requirements that will be displayed in the student’s course plan, guiding their course selections to meet those requirements.

Access the Primary Grad Plan

  1. Click Admin in the left side navigation bar, select Course Planner Configuration.

  2. From the Grad Plans tab, click the + Create new plan

  3. Expand each section to learn how to create a primary grad plan and build the graduation requirements within the plan.

Required Info

This section configures the general settings for this plan and must be completed before course requirements can be added. The required information includes:

  1. Plan name: If you are creating multiple grad plans, this will help distinguish between the various requirements. This name will be displayed to students to confirm their assigned graduation plan.

  2. Plan abbreviation: This will be used in reports and on the Course Planner dashboard when space is limited, but the graduation plan still needs to be identified.

  3. Plan type: Select Primary Graduation Plan. If creating a supplemental plan, refer to this article 👉 Create a Supplemental Plan.

  4. Total credit amount: This number will indicate the total number of credits needed to satisfy the overall requirements of this plan. Students will see an error on their course plan if they do not have enough courses selected to meet this requirement.

  5. Yearly credit amount: Set a minimum and maximum number of credits that students can earn each academic year. The minimum credit number will be visible on the student’s course plan next to each school year column, serving as a denominator to help students understand how many more credits they need to add for that year.

  6. Type of school: Select whether this plan applies to High School or Middle School planning.

  7. Grade range: The grade range will determine which grade levels students are planning for if assigned to this plan. Typically, for a High School plan, the grade range would be 9-12.

  8. Description (optional): The description will appear in the “Graduation Requirements” section of the Course Catalog.

    *Note: It is important to review your Course Plan Configuration Settings to confirm if students and/or counselors can change their assigned grad plan. Learn more 👉 Initial Course Planner Configuration and Setup Guidance

Programs

Provide the necessary details to set up programs (pathways, endorsements, etc.) that students will view if assigned to this graduation plan.

  1. Click Add selection

  2. Complete the following sections, then click Save.

    1. Program Slot Name: This defines the terminology shown to students

    2. Program Minimum and Maximum: This allows you to establish criteria for the minimum and maximum number of programs students can choose. A program minimum of zero is acceptable if the selection is optional.

    3. Eligible Grade Levels for Program Modification: If no grade is selected, only the counselor will be able to update the student's program choice

    4. Instructions for Program Selection: These will guide students on the purpose and process of their selections

  3. Click Add or remove programs to review all available programs. You can either select all programs or choose specific ones that align with this graduation plan. Once you have made your selections, click Save to confirm your choices.

    Learn more 👉 Overview of Course Planner Programs

Requirements

This section defines the subject area and course requirements needed to meet graduation requirements. You will also build a requirement tree that determines:

  • Which requirements appear in the Course Planner, and the order in which they appear.

  • The courses that can be selected to meet a requirement.

  • How courses are added based on the sequences or free pickers configured, including automatic selection.

  1. Click Add selection

  2. A "New requirement" window will open for completing the following information:

    1. The name of the requirement shown on the student’s course plan (typically the subject name)

    2. The description is displayed when students select a course for this particular requirement. It serves as a great opportunity to provide guidance and details for students about their selection.

      *Note: Offer clear requirement descriptions to minimize student confusion, decrease errors in course planning, and streamline the process.

    3. There are three different ways to define a requirement. You can choose any combination of these options based on your preferred approach to explaining the requirement and fulfilling tracking needs. Below is a description of each option:

      • Complete a set number of credits from a list of courses

        • When checked, the student will need to take the number of credits entered from the designated list of courses to achieve the requirement. For example, use this when students need to take 1.5 credits of Physical Education to graduate.

      • Complete a set number of courses from a list of courses

        • When checked, the student will need to take the number of courses entered from the designated list of courses in order to achieve the requirement. For example, use this when students need 2 Fine Arts courses to graduate, but it doesn’t matter if the course is 1 credit or 0.5 credits.

      • Complete sub-requirements that have a set number of credits or courses

        • When checked, you can define the total number of sub-requirements to be created under the main requirement, and how many of those sub-requirements need to be met in order for the overall requirement to be fulfilled. For example, use this when students must complete 4 credits of Math to graduate; 1 credit must be from Algebra I, 1 credit must be from Geometry, but credits 3 and 4 can come from any additional math course.

    4. Additional Requirement Configuration Options: If selected, students will see suggested courses based on the student's chosen career cluster during course planning.

    Learn more 👉 Configure Course Details

  3. Once the requirement structure has been created, a new section to add courses and define sub-requirements will become available.

    • If courses have already been selected, click the pencil icon to edit the list of courses.

    • If adding courses for the first time, click +Course

  4. The Choose Courses window will open which allows you to add and remove courses to and from the requirement.

    1. You can filter courses by tag or subject, and search courses by name or number.

    2. Courses not yet added to the requirement appear on the left, and courses already added to the requirement appear on the right.

    3. Multiple courses can be searched for at a time by using the box on the far left to paste a comma or line-separated list of unique course IDs.

    4. Courses can also be added and removed in bulk by clicking the check mark (Select All Courses) or the x (Remove All Courses) icons.

    5. Click a course on the left to add it to the requirement, and click a course on the right to remove it from the requirement.

    6. Select the Include Equivalent Courses box to ensure that courses equivalent to what you already selected will automatically meet the requirement.

  5. Once a requirement structure is built and courses are added, the final step is to choose a Sequence Picker. The Sequence Picker is an additional setting that guides students on how and which courses to select based on their grade level, student groupings, or various course trajectories they are following.

    Learn more 👉 Configure Sequence Pickers

Electives

This section allows you to set or update elective course settings.

  1. Indicate if elective courses should be included and count towards the overall credit total for this graduation plan.

    • If yes:

      • Student course plans assigned to this graduate plan will contain a default elective section.

      • Courses that are elective-eligible and satisfy the other requirements in the grad plan will be placed in this section

      • The credits from these courses will count towards the overall credit total

    • If no:

      • There will be no default elective section on students' plans

      • Any courses that do not satisfy any other requirement set up in this grad plan will no longer be present on the student’s course plans.

  2. If you selected Yes above to add an elective, you will see an additional option. Checking this box will enable suggested courses to be displayed to students and counselors in the elective course picker as they are planning courses.

    *Note: Additional course configuration may be needed

Alternated Courses

This section includes settings for Alternate Courses.

  1. When this setting is enabled, students will be asked to choose alternates for a specific course in addition to any overall alternate requirement set by grade level in the Configuration Settings.

  2. This setting specifies which requirements will need an alternative course selection if a student selects a course that falls under that requirement. The options will include all of the requirements established in the “Grad Plan Requirements” tree mentioned above, including any sub-requirements that may have been added.

  3. Once the requirements are selected, configure the criteria by choosing either the minimum credits or the minimum courses needed to meet the alternate course selection requirement.

    ☝️Example Scenario:

    Advanced English elective courses vary from year to year, and there is no guarantee that a student's planned elective will be offered. You need to know specifically, within the Advanced English options, which alternate courses would work for the student should you need to change their schedule.

    In this scenario, you can use the Alternate Courses setting to designate Advanced English as a requirement that will need alternate courses selected once the student plans for their first Advanced English course.

    Learn more about basic Alternate Course settings 👉 Initial Course Planner Configuration and Setup Guidance

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why would a course not be available to a student?

This is typically due to one of two reasons:

  1. The course is not listed as “Requestable by students” in the course details page

  2. The course has not been added to the requirement bucked for that subject in the grad plan

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