Define an organization's structure

The Org Unit Type Editor allows you to modify the types of org units used within an organizational structure. There are six default org unit types: semester, department, course template, course offering, group, and section. You can add additional org unit types to your hierarchy, change the names of existing org unit types, and change the hierarchy of org units.

Of the six default org unit types, the department and semester org unit types are standard org unit types typical to all organizations. You can rename these org unit types, but D2L recommends you use them in your organizational hierarchy.

Department type org units are the parent org units for course templates. In a typical organizational structure, course templates are attached to a department and course offerings are attached to templates.

Course offerings are also attached to semesters. Course templates are not attached to semesters. This means that different course offerings attached to the same course template can belong to different semesters.

Departments organize course offerings into subject categories, while semesters organize course offerings into time categories.

Do not set two different org unit types to semester or department at the same time. One org unit type should be set to the standard type semester, and the other to department. All other types should be set to other.

You aren’t required to have an org unit type set as a semester or department. For example, if your organization uses open-ended course offerings that continue for years with new users enrolling whenever they like, then you might not use a semester type org unit.

If you choose not to use a department or a semester type org unit, be aware of the following:

• If you’re using SIS Integration, the mapping process assumes that course offerings are associated with semesters and that course templates are associated with departments. If your SIS has structure corresponding to semesters or departments, you will probably need to have these types in your D2L system as well.
• If your My Courses widget groups course offerings by department or semester, the system uses the org units of the corresponding standard type to group course offerings. If no org unit type is set to department or semester, course offerings are not grouped.
• When an org unit type is set as semester, org units of that type are listed in the Semester field when creating new course offerings or editing existing ones. This field is controlled by the form element in the CreateCourse and CourseOfferingInfo forms. The name of the field is updated to match the name of the org unit type set as the semester standard type.
• When an org unit type is set as department, org units of that type are listed in the Department field when creating or editing a course template, and when editing a course offering. This field is controlled by the form element in the CreateCourse and CourseOfferingInfo forms. The name of the field is updated to match the name of the org unit type set as the department standard type.