THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

RPG On-line Course Registration System

User Guide

on

Course Approval

June 2013

Prepared by:

Information Technology Services Graduate School

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1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 2

2 USER ACCOUNT ............................................................................................................. 2

3 SYSTEM ACCESS ........................................................................................................... 2

4 COURSE APPROVAL IN THE COURSE ENROLMENT PERIOD .................................. 3

4.1 Supervisor Approval ................................................................................................... 4

4.2 DRPC Approval ........................................................................................................... 7

5 COURSE APPROVAL IN THE ON-LINE ADD-DROP PERIOD .................................... 10

5.1 Supervisor Approval ................................................................................................. 11

5.2 DRPC Approval ......................................................................................................... 11

6 APPROVER ADMINISTRATION ................................................................................... 12

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1 Introduction This is a guide for primary supervisors and DRPC Chairmen/their designates to do on-line course approval in the Course Enrollment Period and On-line Add-drop Period. Questions about this guide should be directed to: Graduate School, Registry (email: gradsch@hku.hk, Tel: 2857-3470), or Mr. Clarence Kam of Information Technology Services (email: hfckam@hku.hk, Tel: 3549-5249)

2 User Account In order to access the system, users should have a valid HKU Portal account. HKU Portal account can be applied online (http://www.its.hku.hk/forms). Primary supervisors with valid HKU Portal accounts will be automatically granted access to the supervisor approval screen. The Graduate School will grant the DRPC approval right to all DRPC Chairmen and their designates.

3 System Access The main menu of RPG On-line Course Registration can be accessed under HKU Portal Student Information System Research Postgraduate RPG On-line Course Reg System. Please click “Approval (for Supervisors and DRPC Chairmen)” on the main menu to enter the approval menu.

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4 Course Approval in the Course Enrolment Period After an MPhil/PhD student has finalized his/her course selection during the Course Enrolment Period, an email will be sent by the system to invite his/her primary supervisor to endorse the course selection on-line within a specified period of time. Supervisors will be provided with a web address, i.e. an url, to access the system using their HKU Portal UID and password. Alternatively, supervisors may access the system from HKU portal. If a supervisor has not indicated his/her endorsement by the specified deadline, the system will assume that he/she has no objection to the course selection. After the specified period of time for supervisors to indicate their endorsement on the course selections, DRPCs will be invited to approve the course selections of students in their respective departments within a specified period of time. The course selections of students MUST be approved by the DRPC before confirmation. After the DRPC approval period, an email will be sent by the system to inform individual student of the result of his/her course selection and the enrolment data will be transferred to the central database in the Registry. There are two levels of course approval, namely Supervisor Approval and DRPC Approval. The status of approval of each course will be represented by its status code summarized as follows (the SN, TA and TN status codes are terminal): STUDENT SUPERVISOR DRPC

TW (Waiting for approval)

SA (Supervisor’s approval granted)

SN (Supervisor’s approval not granted)

TA (DRPC’s approval granted)

TN (DRPC’s approval not granted)

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4.1 Supervisor Approval Step 1 – Click the URL provided in the email Please click the Url provided in the email to access the approval system. Alternatively, you can access from the HKU portal as indicated in Section 3. Click “Supervisor Approval” from the approval menu to view course selection details of student(s) under your supervision.

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Step 2 – View course selection The screen will show a list of students under your supervision who have finalized their course selection during the Course Enrolment Period. The last column shows whether any actions are required, i.e. “Need Action” means that supervisor approval is required while “Completed” means that supervisor approval has been completed. Click on the “View course selection” button on the left of the corresponding student to view course selection information of the student concerned.

“Need action” means that one or more subjects have not been endorsed by the supervisor.

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Step 3 – Approve course selection The brought up screen will show the courses selected by the student. Please pay special attention to the “Remarks” column, e.g. 50 means possible timetable clashes and 60 means pre-requisite not met. The last column, “Action”, is for approving (or disapproving) the student of taking the corresponding course. Click the “Save” button at the bottom left of the screen to confirm the action. Once the supervisor has indicated approval/disapproval and saved, the decision CANNOT be reversed in order to avoid possible confusion. (Before saving, you will see the following prompt on the screen: “Saved actions cannot be reversed. Confirm to save?”.) If the primary supervisor disapproves a course, the status is terminal and no further change, including that from the DRPC, can be made. Click “Back” to return to the screen in Step 1.

Please indicate your approval here.

Remember to click “Save” to confirm your decision.

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4.2 DRPC Approval Step 1 – Enter the system DRPC Chairmen or designates of the DRPC Chairmen are requested to approve course selections of students in their respective department within a specified period of time to be determined by the Graduate School. Please click the DRPC approval link on the approval menu to bring up the following screen. (Please refer to Section 3 for accessing the approval menu.) Click the first option, “To approve course selection”, to approve course selections or the second option, “To view all students in the department who have finished their course selection”, to see the complete list of students in your department who have finalized their course selections, with or without DRPC’s approval.

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Step 2 – To approve course selection You will see the following screen after you have clicked “To approve course selection” as indicated in Step 1. Click on the student name to view student particulars and click on the University number to view the course(s) selected by the student. There are 2 ways for DRPC to approve course selection: individual student approval or individual course approval. DRPCs can make reference to the status column to decide if they will approve the course selection by individual student or by individual subject. For example, the status codes on the following screen show that of the 7 courses the student has chosen, 3 (SA) were approved by his supervisor, 2 (SN) were disapproved and his supervisor has not indicated his approval on the other 2 (TW) courses. The SN status is a terminal status meaning that DRPCs cannot approve the student of taking a certain course if the supervisor has disapproved it. (a) Individual Student Approval This is a quick way to do course approval by using the dropped down box on the right to approve or disapprove all courses chosen by a student, except those course(s) disapproved by supervisor, with the status code of SN. Once you click the “Submit” button to save your action, the decision is final and CANNOT be reversed.

Please indicate your approval here.

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(b) Individual Course Approval This method is useful when the decision to an individual student is not the same for all the courses selected, i.e. the DRPC would like to approve some of the courses selected and disapprove the others. Click on the “University Number” on the screen in the previous page to view the courses taken by

the student. Pay attention to the remark code besides each course. For example, there is a possible timetable

clash for GRSC6011 and IEIM6001 as shown on the following screen and you may click the “Timetable” button to view the timetables of the 2 courses.

Click the course code on the left and two action buttons will be displayed at the top right hand side of the screen, i.e. “Approve (TA)” and “Disapprove (TN)”.

Click the “Approve (TA)” button to approve the course OR the “Disapprove (TN)” button to disapprove the course. Alternatively, you may click “Auto TA” to approve all courses except those courses already disapproved by the supervisor.

Repeat the steps for all courses. Click the “Save” button to save your decisions.

Click here to approve or disapprove course selection.

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5 Course Approval in the On-line Add-drop Period Students can do more than one round of add-drop during the on-line add-drop period after the supervisor and the DRPC have approved the course selection of the previous round. For example, if the on-line add-drop period is January 10 – 21, 2011, a student adds a course on January 10 and finalizes the course selection on the same day, the student’s supervisor will be invited to indicate his/her endorsement to the student’s course selection within 2 working days, i.e. by January 12. The DRPC will then be invited to indicate its approval to the student’s course selection within 2 working days, i.e. by January 14. After the DRPC has approved/disapproved the course selection by January 14, an email will be sent to the student and one round of add-drop will then be completed. This student can make further changes to the course selection anytime after January 14 until January 21, 2011. The procedure for a supervisor to endorse the course selection will be exactly the same as in the Course Enrollment Period and he/she will be given 2 working days to indicate his/her approval. For the DRPC approval, instead of requesting the DRPC to approve the course selection on a fixed schedule, the DRPC Chairmen and designates will receive email notifications on a daily basis inviting them to approve add-drop applications of which supervisor approvals have been given or the supervisor approval period has passed. DRPCs are requested to approve the applications within 2 working days of the email notification. Approval is required to add or drop a course. For change of sub-class, approval is not required. The status of each course will be represented by its status code. Please refer to Section 4 above for the status codes for adding a course. The status codes for dropping a course are summarized as follows (the DN, AD and DD status codes are terminal):

STUDENT SUPERVISOR DRPC

DW (Waiting for approval

- drop)

DS (Supervisor’s approval granted - drop)

DN (Supervisor’s approval not granted-

drop) *Course status will be changed to TA after

sending the notification email.

AD (DRPC’s approval granted - drop)

DD (DRPC’s approval not granted –

drop, i.e. the student still has to take the course)

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5.1 Supervisor Approval The procedure for supervisor approval will be exactly the same as in the Course Enrollment Period. Please refer to 4.1 above for the step-by-step instructions.

5.2 DRPC Approval The procedure for DRPC approval is very similar to those in the Course Enrollment Period. Please refer to 4.2 above for the step-by-step instructions. Please pay attention to the fifth column, i.e. “Deadline”, showing the deadline for the DRPC to approve the course selection. “As soon as possible” means that the deadline for DRPC approval has passed already. The second section of the screen, i.e. student no. 3, is just displayed for your information as it is, still within the supervisor approval period. Once the supervisor has endorsed the course selection or the supervisor approval period has passed, the record will be moved to the first section for your action.

This case is still within the supervisor approval period and no action is required for the time being.

This column shows the deadline for DRPC to approve the course selection. “As soon as possible” means that the deadline has passed already.

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6 Approver Administration DRPC Chairman can nominate up to 3 designates to approve the course selection on-line on his/her behalf. This screen can be used to add or delete approvers within the department. The DRPC Chairmen are assigned the administrative right to add or delete approver(s) within the department.

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Only the DRPC Chairman is assigned with the admin right to add or delete approver(s) within the department.