The Course Market

The Course Market feature is currently in beta. We're making it available to Populi schools on a case-by-case basis while we continue to build out its features and workflows. If you would like to enable it for your school's Populi site, please contact Populi Support. As this is a beta feature, we'd really appreciate your feedback and questions!

To access the Course Market features, you need both the Academic Admin and Bookstore Admin roles.

Course Market lets you "sell" courses directly to students through Bookstore. Here's how it works:

1. Over in Academics > Term > Courses, an Academic Admin adds courses to an academic term.
2. In Bookstore, you add a course item based on one of those courses.
3. A student finds the course item on your Bookstore—the student might already be known to you, or he might be a random person interested in a one-off course.
4. He purchases an enrollment in the course, paying upfront.
5. Once his payment goes through:
   • He is given the Student role and a user account so he can access the course.
   • He appears on the Course Roster and has full student-level access to the course's content and materials.
   • Depending on how the course is set up, he might also be assigned a program.
   • The charges for the course item will appear on his profile. They will be associated with the tuition schedule or fee you have designated for the enrollment option he has chosen.

Get oriented

The Course Market lives within Bookstore. Here are the various ways you'll find, create, and use course items:

• A course item is linked to a specific course offering that has already been added in Academics > Academic Term > Courses. Each item, therefore, is a course that is being offered in a specific term with specific details. Let's say your school is offering two sections of MATH301 in your Fall and Spring terms, and you've made them all available in the Course Market: each of those four offerings will be a separate course item.
• Individual course items show basic information like the term, start/end dates, description, and price, and also provide ways to generate "Buy Now" links and QR codes.
• You can include course items in bundles: say, a bundle of a single course together with its textbooks, or maybe a series of three consecutive courses.
• The Course Market view in Admin provides three looks at course items:
  • All Courses shows you every course offering that has been entered for that term in Academics, together with a tool to bulk-create new course items.
  • Course Items shows you the items that have been created for the term shown.
  • Enrollment Options breaks down your items in terms of the different enrollments (and their billing settings) offered to shoppers for each item.

Groundwork

Before setting up Course Market, here are some other items elsewhere in Populi you'll need to make sure are in place:

• Course offerings: All course items are based on specific course offerings from academic terms. If you wish to create a course item, an Academic Admin must have already offered it in Academics > Academic Term > Courses.
  • Academic Terms: For reporting and other purposes, you may wish to sequester your course market offerings in different terms separate from your regular offerings. These would need to be added by an Academic Admin in Academics > Settings > Academic Years.
• Tuition Schedules and Fees: The charges for enrollment options must be linked to a tuition schedule or fee; you also have the option to place the student on a payment plan. Depending on your accounting setup, you may want course market income to be routed to different schedules, fees, and accounts than regular tuition/fee income. See below for more details. A Financial Admin will need to set up these items in Financial > Billing > Settings.

Creating course items in bulk

The most efficient way to create course items is by using the bulk-create tool Admin > Course Market > All Courses.

1. Filter the list and/or check the offerings from which you wish to create course items.
2. Click Create Items.
3. Make your selections for whether these items are visible to shoppers, which Bookstore category they'll appear under, and whether you wish to charge sales tax for them.
4. Make selections for the enrollment options:
   • Price: The price will be visible to shoppers and is the amount that they will be charged at the time they purchase the course item. The minimum amount you can charge is $50: this is meant to dissuade scammers, pranksters, time-wasters, and haters. (The list price is optional.)
   • Enrollment: Choose whether this is an enrollment or an audit. Each unique enrollment offering will need its own enrollment option (more below).
   • Billing type When the student pays you, the charge will be mapped to a tuition schedule or fee and mapped to the selection you make here. It will appear on the student's Profile > Financial > By Term view as this charge. It will also affect your accounting and figure into your billing reporting. See below for more details.
   • Payment Plan: (Optional) This will add the plan to the student's profile. It will not place the charge for this enrollment option on the payment plan—that charge must be paid upfront. See below for more details on how payment plans will figure in.
5. You can add as many enrollment options as you wish.
6. When you're done, click Save.

The course items you create will inherit the course image and description from their respective course offerings. Populi will also auto-generate an SKU for each enrollment option for each item.

After creating course items, if you want to make bulk updates to their visibility or category, you can do so using the Actions button on the Course Items report.

Creating a (single) new course item

You can add new course items wherever you see the Add Course button: Bookstore > Home, Other category pages, and in the left column of Bookstore > Admin.

1. Click Add Course.
2. Search for a course offering and select one from the results. Pay special attention to the term, campus, and section number and make sure you pick the one you mean to offer in your Course Market!
3. Add an image and description, or leave those blank to have the course item inherit those from the course offering.
4. Add enrollment options; see above for details.
   • If you add more than one enrollment option, you'll also be able to enter SKUs for each one.
5. When you're done, click Save.

Updating course items

If you're offering the same course item term after term (e.g. ENG 101 in Fall, ENG 101 in Spring), to avoid cluttering your Course Market with multiple versions of the same offering that differ only in what term it's being offered, you can update a course item by going to its page.

1. On the course item's page, click Edit item.
2. In the Course Offering field, click X to remove the offering. Then search for the new offering (and make sure to mind the term, campus, and section number!).
3. You can update any of the other fields and enrollment options as well.
4. Click Save to finish.

Billing for course items

Course item billing is based on the price you charge for a given enrollment option and the tuition schedule or fee listed for that option. Here are a few scenarios that illustrate how billing will work for a course with the following characteristics:

• HIS101 is offered in your Fall Term. It is a three-credit course.
• The HIS101 course item is offered by itself and as part of the "HIS101" bundle; the bundle includes $300 worth of books for the reading list.
• Your Undergraduate Tuition Schedule charges $900 per credit.
• Your Audit Fee charges $300 per credit.
• Your Four-Month payment plan charges four equal installments plus a $25 payment plan fee.

100% Upfront Cost

You set up an "Enrolled" option that charges $2700 for enrolling in the HIS101 course item, and a $900 "Audit" option.

• A student buys an enrollment and is charged $2700 at the time he buys the course item.
• After everything goes through, he will show an invoice for $2700 tuition and a payment of $2700 that has been applied to that invoice.
• Likewise, another student buys an audit, is charged $900 at checkout, and shows a $900 invoice for the audit fee and a $900 payment.

Partial Payment

You set up an "Enrolled" option that charges $300 for enrolling; the enrollment option has the Four-Month payment plan attached to it.

• A student buys an enrollment and is charged $300 at the time he buys the course item.
• After everything goes through, he will show a $300 invoice for tuition together with a $300 payment applied to it.
• He'll also show a $2400 pending tuition charge and the Four-Month payment plan.
• When you invoice that remaining tuition, the payment plan kicks in and he has four upcoming payments of $606.25 to pay down the $2400 tuition charge together with the $25 payment plan fee.

Partial Payment for HIS101 bundle

The bundle includes the same $300 "Enrolled" option as the previous example.

• A student buys the HIS101 bundle and charges it to his account. At checkout, he is charged $300 for the enrollment and is informed that he will be charged $300 when the order for the other items is fulfilled.
• The order is quickly fulfilled by your lightning-quick bookstore staff.
• After you invoice his pending charges, his Financial > By Term view shows:
  • A $300 invoice and $300 payment covering that invoice from the checkout.
  • A $2725 invoice covering the remaining tuition, the books that were charged to his account, and the $25 payment plan fee.
  • Four upcoming payments of $681.25 from the payment plan.

Refunds

If charges for a course item need to be refunded, those will not be handled via Bookstore. A Financial Admin or Student Billing user will follow these steps to issue a refund.