Connect sites with the Service Learning Module (SLM) may need to import new students, courses, and course rosters with each new block. Galaxy Digital's Customer Care team can import this data for you, or we can train you to import it at your request.
Importing Course Rosters
While there is no individual template for importing course rosters you do have two options for associating students and instructors with a course:
- Import students (using their Connect ID numbers) as part of a user-group import
- Include user group IDs in a user import
Either method works; the benefit of using the user import is that you can use the email addresses (rather than Connect IDs) as identifiers. When you import users who are already in the system, you can specify that those users' accounts be updated (rather than duplicated) in the import.
Importing Courses
Because a course is a specialized user group (an SLM user group), you should use the template for importing user groups for importing your courses. This template includes a Users column that you can use to import the course roster. The columns in the template are listed in the table below. The SLM-only columns are marked by an asterisk.
| Column | Description/Guidelines |
| User Group Title | Title of the course |
| (Course) Description | Description of the course; for administrative use only (does not appear on the front end of the site). |
| Allowed Domains | New users whose emails include listed domains will automatically be added to the user group; we recommend that you leave this column blank. |
| Users | User IDs of course members; we recommend that you leave this column blank. Once you have imported the user group, you can then import (or re-import) students with the existing user group attached. |
| User Group Type | Type SLM if the user group is to be a course within a block, with certain recommended hours and one or more designated leaders (professors, assistants, etc.). Type GC if the user group is to be a regular user group. |
| Approved Hours Only* | If hours must be approved (by an instructor, agency manager, or site manager) for course credit, type "1." If approval will not be required, type "0" or leave blank. |
| Goal* | Type the required number of volunteer hours per student for this course. |
| Block* | Indicate the block ID for this course. |
| Agencies (comma-separated)* | Assign an agency to a course if the professor or assistant should be allowed to post needs for their course on the agency's behalf. Use agency ID numbers only. |
| Leaders (comma-separated)* | Indicate the user group leaders (professor, assistant, etc.) by their user ID numbers. Note that user group leaders must have accounts on your site before you can make them a user group leader. |
| End Date* | Type the end date of the course using YYYY-MM-DD format. |
Note: You can find users' Connect IDs by going to Volunteerism > Users and running an export. You can also use the Table Filter to show IDs in the table on your screen. Finally each student's Connect profile includes their Connect ID. For more information on accessing user profiles, click here.
Importing Students
You may find it easier to import courses without students in them, and then import (or re-import) students with the courses attached.
When importing students that already have an account on your site, you only need to import each student's email address and the user group (course), using the user group ID number. The students' existing accounts will be updated (not duplicated) to reflect the new course.
Note: You can find users' Connect IDs by going to Volunteerism > User Groups and running an export. You can also use the Table Filter to show user group IDs in the table on your screen. (These should already be displayed by default.) For more information on accessing user group IDs, click here.