Prioritize Eligible Courses is a way to adjust degree requirements if a course would normally be filling a different requirement, and you’d rather prioritize it elsewhere. It is important to note that this is not an exception - "prioritize eligible courses" can only be used if the course already satisfies the constraints of the requirement.
To better understand how Stellic automatically prioritizes courses prior to the user intervening by using the Prioritize Eligible Courses functionality, it is important to understand two rules of the platform:
- Requirements placed at the top of the requirements list get higher priority than the bottom of the list. In the example below, "Business Electives II" will always be filled before "Law and Ethics" if there is a course that can count for both requirements simply because it is located higher on the requirement list.
- Stellic will optimize courses by fulfilling the most number of requirements possible (and still respecting the double counting limits). Using the same example listed below, if a student had taken a different course that could fulfill the "Business Electives II" requirement, ECON 313 would be bumped to the second category in order to maximize the number of requirements fulfilled.
In the example below, ECON-313 is a course that is permitted to fulfill multiple categories of the degree requirements. This can be noted by looking at the requirements of both categories within the degree audit, or by clicking on the course and seeing the "counts for" in the course sidebar. Since the student can only use the course for one category, Stellic automatically places it into one of the requirements.
If the student or advisor would rather use the course in a different category, they can move it using the Prioritize Eligible Courses functionality. To move the course to this requirement, the advisor (or student, depending on the permissions of the institution) can select the dotted menu icon at the requirement level. This will generate a prompt asking to specify the course to be prioritized (note, this will only accept courses that are already permitted to count for the requirement), and also requires a justification.
Once the prioritization has been submitted, it shows successfully with a green checkmark in the preferred requirement. You can also see a green "1 prioritized courses" note on the requirement that was just adjusted. Clicking on the green "1 Prioritized Courses" icon will give further details about the prioritization, and clicking the details of that will give you the name of the person that inserted the prioritization, along with their justification.