Academics

Preference Windows

Let students rank course or section options while final enrollment stays controlled by staff.

What preference windows do

Preference windows collect ranked student choices between existing course or section options. They are advisory: staff still control final cohort and section enrollment.

  • Use section choice when students choose between equivalent sections of an existing course or offering.
  • Use course choice when students choose between existing course options for the next placement step.
  • Options must already exist as courses or sections with schedules before a window is opened.
  • Preference windows do not create courses, sections, teachers, rooms, or schedules.

Opening a window

  1. 1Open Preference Windows from the Academics navigation.
  2. 2Create a draft and choose Section choice or Course choice.
  3. 3Select existing section or course options.
  4. 4Choose the audience by course, cohort, or section. If a course audience is selected, its sections are already included.
  5. 5Set start time and deadline.
  6. 6Activate the window to publish it and create high-priority announcements for the selected audience.

Announcements are the call to action

Activated preference windows create announcements with a link to the student choice page. Use urgent priority only when the window needs immediate attention.

Student voting experience

Students see open preference windows in the Preferences tab of the student portal and from the announcement deep link. They rank every available option before the deadline.

  1. 1Open the announcement or the Preferences tab.
  2. 2Review option cards with course, section, teacher, schedule, room, and capacity context where available.
  3. 3Move options up or down until the order matches the student preference.
  4. 4Submit before the deadline. If the window is still open, the student can update the ranking.
  5. 5After the deadline, submitted rankings remain visible for review but cannot be changed.

Results and enrollment

  • Results show audience size, submitted count, pending count, first-choice votes, rank distribution, and student-by-student rankings.
  • For section-choice windows, Admin and Sub Admin users can enroll a student into one of the polled sections directly from results.
  • The quick enroll action uses the dedicated enrollment workflow and stops if the student is already enrolled in that section.
  • Capacity and schedule issues are warnings only; they do not block staff from enrolling a student.
  • There is no automatic allocation in this version.