Programme Configuration - Optional Unit Approach

Introduction

Configuring your programme with optional units in the Bud portal allows for a tailored learning experience. This guide will walk you through the process of selecting and managing optional units, ensuring your programme aligns with your interests and career goals. By following these steps, you can customize your learning path to best suit your needs and aspirations. 

User Roles

This feature can be used by the following user roles:

  • Programme Contributor
  • Programme Manager 

How to: Create a Programme with Optional Units

During programme creation, you can add qualifications some of which may have optional components. You must consider these optional components when building your programme.  Firstly, we recommend doing a unit analysis so you can understand which are the common combinations. Then select one of the below approaches:

Approach:  Method: 
Pre-defined pathways

Select the optional units that you will deliver to all learners on this programme, the benefits of this are: 

  • Reassurance minimum credit value is met
  • Allows for logical programme build
  • Quality assurance of task
  • Sets expectations from the outset for all involved

The impact however is that you will not be able to select any other units that were not selected as part of the programme build.
Offer a range of optional units

Choose whether to offer a small or large range of units, the benefits of which are: 

  • More flexibility, but must be considered at programme design

  • Optional units can be exempt or reinstated at any point as long as they were part of the original programme build.

We do not recommend you allow every optional unit, we suggest it is stripped back as much as possible to give only a limited range. Here are a couple of available options: 

  • Create activities for every optional unit - By doing this, you’re assuring that there is learning content for every possible combination of optional units in Bud. The impact of this is that every learner enrolled will see every activity for every optional unit. You will need to exempt the relevant activities for every individual learner.

  • Only create activities for mandatory units - This way you know that every learner will have the necessary relevant units and learning content. You will then need to add activities and learning content on a learner-by-learner basis for the optional units chosen. If you take this approach, we would suggest having a central folder populated with all the instructions and resources for all the optional units. A trainer can then copy and paste the relevant information for the relevant optional units into a learner’s programme.

However, this approach will impact your programme in the following ways: 

  • All optional units will default to be included in enrolment. Units that are not going to be delivered need to be exempt, one by one.
  • If you have created activities for every optional unit, these activities will also need to be exempt.
  • This approach provides less control around the programme configuration compared to the "pre-defined pathway" option.

 

Please note: If you have added a qualification into a programme, and need to, or have exempted ALL of the units in the qualification, at enrolment Bud will automatically remove this qualification from the Learner Progress Record, but you will need to manually remove the AIM from the learner's ILR.