Carmen & Enrollment: Unrolled

It’s nearing that time again.

While you may be asking yourself, “Didn’t the semester start yesterday?”—and it certainly feels as though it did—Spring enrollment is here!  Course Schedulers have long since created your courses, though they may still be assigning Instructor and Assistant roles in the Student Information System (SIS) [a.k.a. the Faculty Center, Master Schedule, or Registrar’s System]. Before you know it, your course will be created, your Carmen site ready, and Spring semester in full swing.

In the midst of this madness, you may be wondering how your Carmen site interacts with the Registrar’s System.  Maybe you’ve wondered why your TA doesn’t show up as a Grader for your course or why the student you enrolled through Carmen was suddenly no longer in your Carmen site 24 hours later.  You may even wonder why you’re not enrolled as the Instructor of your own course.

If these questions have ever plagued you, here are a few pieces of information I hope will clarify how the University Registrar and Carmen communicate:

• The most important bit of information to know is that Carmen is automatically updated each night with the Registrar’s System.  This means that in courses associated with the University Registrar, students and instructors are enrolled through the Registrar and not Carmen.  Therefore, if you (as either a student or instructor) have been enrolled in a course through the Registrar’s system …
  and then unenrolled, you cannot be manually enrolled in the Carmen course for longer than 24 hours.  Since the Registrar’s system does not consider you enrolled, when the Carmen system syncs with the Registrar’s system overnight, it will automatically unenroll you from the Carmen course.  To fix this issue, instructors should speak to their departmental Course Scheduler to be re-enrolled in the course.

For more detailed explanation of student enrollment, Carmen and the Registrar’s system, please see the Carmen Help document: http://elearning.osu.edu/carmen-help/instructors/classlist_basic.htm#roster

• The Carmen roles of Instructor, Assistant, Grader and Student are automatically assigned based on the individual’s role in the Registrar’s System.  For example, individuals assigned the role of TA or Lab Assistant in the Registrar’s System will automatically be given the Assistant role in Carmen.  If you need to add a TA to your course, and he or she does not appear in your Carmen site, please speak with your departmental Course Scheduler to add that individual within the Registrar’s System.

The Carmen Help documents include a more exhaustive breakdown of roles and permissions: http://elearning.osu.edu/carmen-help/instructors/classlist_roles.htm

• Academic course sites are automatically created for each course at approximately the same time as student enrollment starts for any given the semester.  Faculty and staff may request a course development site, or a site for a project or other activity not associated with the Registrar’s System here:  https://ocio.osu.edu/help/requests/carmen-space-request/carmen-space-request-form/

• The MyCourses Widget allows you to view all the courses you are enrolled in, as well as whether those courses have been activated.  To access the widget, click the “Courses missing” link to the right of “My Courses” on your Carmen homepage.

Happy Enrolling, everyone!