Teaching and Learning Domain - Overview

Key Entities

This domain contains:

• The Course and CourseOfferings entities, which represent subject matter and course availability at a school in each session.
• The Section entity, which represents the specific classroom unit where instruction is provided.
• The Program entity, which represents any program that works in conjunction with, or as a supplement to, the main academic program.
• The StudentSectionAssociation entity, which represents a student’s class enrollments in sections, and the StaffSectionAssociation entity that indicates the teacher(s) assigned to that section.

Key Concepts

The key concepts include the following:

• The Course entity is the actual definition of the material to be taught, often defined at a state level by the Board of Education to meet certain learning standards.
• A CourseOffering entity is simply the local availability of a course at a school during a specific session. It’s the equivalent of an entry in the school’s annual or semester course catalog.
• The Section entity represents the specific classroom unit where attendance is taken and content is delivered. 
• In practice, it’s possible for multiple sections of a Course to be taught within the same classroom by the same teacher, with the students being administered a slightly different curriculum in each. The model provides support for this situation.
• Program entities are associated at the Section entity level. This is somewhat counter-intuitive since students in different sections may be in the same program. However, this model allows for flexibility and keeps the two entities aligned with regard to how attendance is modeled.