This article is for site managers using the Service Learning Module (SLM). For more general information on the SLM, click here.

As a site manager, you are responsible for setting up SLM blocks and user groups (courses). While you can set these up in any order, we recommend setting up the block (academic period or term) first. This article focuses on the setup and management of courses, and it covers the following topics:

Once you have set up a course, use articles in the Related Articles section at the bottom of this page to add instructors and students, add reflection questions, and assign agencies and needs to the course.

Understanding User Groups and Courses

Your Connect platform has a feature called user groups, which allows you to group volunteers or students into units who can associate their volunteer hours with a particular group. Outside of SLM, user groups may be companies, clubs, churches, or nonprofit groups. Within SLM, user groups typically take the form of courses.

Note: To override the term User Group, contact our Customer Care team with your request. This article uses the default term throughout in the instructions and screenshots.

Accessing the Course-Management Area

All courses are managed in the User Groups area of your site manager panel, accessed from Volunteerism > User Groups.

From this area, you can view existing courses and add and edit courses. This is also your area for general course management. See Related Articles for details on other tasks you can accomplish from this area.

Adding or Editing a Course

To add or edit a course:

From your site manager panel, go to Volunteerism > User Groups.
To add a course, click the Add New User Group button. To edit an existing course, click on the course title in the table of courses.

Complete or update the fields in the form that appears:

Field	Description
Status	Select Active to make the course accessible to agencies, instructors, and the students who will be assigned to it.
Type	Select SLM.
Title	Type the course title, including the section as needed.
Public Description	This course description that appears on the front end of the site in the user group banner.
Private Description	Use this space for additional, internal-use-only notes about the course.
Allowed Domains	If you enter a domain (such as @galaxydigital.com), then any new users who join your site will be automatically added to the user group. For courses, we recommend leaving this field blank.
Icon	Sor the user group banner, select the icon that will appear with the course title on the user group banner.
Color	Select or enter the hex code (color) for the user group banner.
Text Color	Select whether to have white or black text for the user group banner.
Suppress Resume	All user groups and courses have access to a user group resume that displays their hours and impact. To prevent course members from accessing this resume, select Yes, meaning you do want to suppress the resume.
Block	Select the applicable block (academic term) from the dropdown.
Goal	Indicate the volunteerism goal (number of volunteer hours per student) for this course.
Approved Hours Only	Switch to On to require that a student's volunteer hours be approved by an instructor, agency manager, or site manager in order to count toward their course goal.
Limit	By default, students can associate this course with any volunteer hours that they submit. To prevent students from doing this (and require them to select this course only for certain, pre-assigned service opportunities), select Yes.

Save your changes by clicking Create User Group or Update User Group, as applicable.

Now that the course has been saved, it will appear in your table of courses (the Manage User Groups table). You can now add instructors and students, add user-group join questions, add custom questions for student reflections, and assign agencies and needs to the SLM user group. For further instructions, see Related Articles below.

Note: To deactivate a course, change its status to Inactive. Deactivated courses are not available to front-end users.

Cloning a Course

If a block is going to include multiple sections of a single course, the Clone Course feature enables you to copy information quickly and easily from one course to another.

What Happens When a Course is Cloned

When a course is cloned, the following information is copied from the original course to the new one:

Type, title, description, banners, and allowed domains; the title of the cloned user group will include the word "copy" in parentheses.
Block, goal, approval requirement setting, and "Respond by" date
Reflection questions
User group leaders (i.e., course instructors)
Assigned agencies and needs

In addition the new, cloned course automatically has a status of Pending.

How to Clone a Course

To clone an existing course:

From your site manager panel, go to Volunteerism > User Groups.
Click on the course (user group) you wish to clone.
At the bottom of the Update User Group form, click Clone User Group.
Click Yes to confirm that you want to clone the user group. The user group is copied, and the Title in the new form has the word "copy" in parentheses at the end. All other user group information is identical to original.
Make changes to the user group fields as needed, remembering to remove the word "copy" in the title.
Click Update User Group to save the new information.

When you are ready to make the course available on your site, change the status to Active.

The Student Perspective

Students can access their courses from their My User Groups link in their profile menu.

Once they've clicked to view needs for a specific course, they'll be taken to a page the features their course banner (which includes a course icon, title, and description) and any needs that have been assigned to the course.

You will learn more about creating the banner for the user group in the following section on setting up a course or user group.

For an overview of the SLM, see Service Learning on Your Connect Platform.

Setting Up an SLM Course