Best Practices for Course IDs

Mar 05, 2018

Hello, I am tasked with creating a standard naming convention for our course IDs. I work in a healthcare system, so some examples of subjects would be Nursing, Lab, Epic, Leadership, IT, Human Resources, etc. There are also a few major subcategories to these subjects such as Nursing > Stroke Education or Epic > Reporting. What are some best practices for determining a course ID that is part alpha and part numerical? Any help is greatly appreciated!

3 Replies
Phonethip Ketnouvong

Hi Courtney,

 

For unique courseID, I would follow the university model.  For example:

Catalog or Folder: Medicine (MEDI)

Course Name: Inpatient Medicine

Course ID or Course Code: MEDI S124S

**The course ID prefix (MEDI) would be the main course catalog/folder. "S1245" can be an internal number or anything you prefer.  It just needs to be unique.

 

Bob S

Hi Courtney,

I don't want to add complication for you, but you are kind of treading into the are of curriculum management. By that I mean you may want to take a step back and think about how you are going to group, deploy, and track courses.... this may impact your naming scheme.

For example, If you are going to organize courses by specific roles (only) , you might want to go with "Nurse: ER Course1B - Triage".  But if you are organizing by topic instead perhaps that same course is "Emergency Medicine: Triage Basics - Course #XYZ"

Not advocating a particular approach, just suggesting that you may want to consider which way you plan on slicing the catalogue up first as it may illuminate the naming conventions required.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Bruce Graham

Bob makes a great overall point, and I would go further to say that you are DEFINITELY looking at Curriculum Management.

Think about the big picture, and the long-term picture.

How might you reuse courses in curricula?

It's much easier to get it right, (or at least close!) the first time around, rather than having to go back in a few years and retrofit everything to fit a naming structure that works for your inevitably exploding course catalog!

Good luck :)

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