Course Section Form

Field reference for course section offerings.

Fields

Backed by records.course_sections.

Field	Column	Type	Required	Notes
Section ID	section_id	Integer	Auto	Primary key
Course	course_id	Integer (FK)	Yes	Parent course
Term	term_id	Integer (FK)	Yes
Sub-Term	sub_term_id	Integer (FK)	No
Section Code	section_code	Text(20)	Yes	e.g. 001, ONL1
Section Descriptor	section_descriptor	Text(100)	No	Subtitle, when the course allows one
Campus	campus_id	Integer (FK)	No
Credit Hours Min / Max	credit_hours_min, credit_hours_max	Decimal	No	Section-level credit range; when blank the course's range applies
Students Choose Their Credits	is_variable_credit	Boolean	Yes	Default false. The student picks credits within the range at planning or registration (migration 279). Only on a section of a variable-credit course (refused by trigger otherwise), and only meaningful when the range is a real one
Credit Increment	credit_increment	Decimal(4,2)	Yes	Default 1, must be > 0. Allowed choices are min, min + increment, ... up to max (the max is always allowed). The range must span at least one increment
Billing Credits	billing_credits	Decimal	No	Credits used for billing, if different. Must be blank on a variable-credit section, which bills the credits the student chose
Max Enrollment	max_enrollment	Integer	Yes
Current Enrollment	current_enrollment	Integer	Yes	Maintained by the system
Seats Planned	seats_planned	Integer	No
Seats Blocked In Process	seats_blocked_in_process	Integer	Yes	Held by in-flight registrations
Waitlist Capacity	waitlist_capacity	Integer	Yes	Most students the waitlist may hold. 0 (every imported section) = no limit. A student can join only when the section is full; see Waitlist
Current Waitlist	current_waitlist	Integer	Yes	Maintained by the system
Delivery Mode	delivery_mode_id	Select (Lookup)	No	DELIVERY_MODE
Instruction Mode	instruction_mode_id	Select (Lookup)	No	INSTRUCTION_MODE — modality, derived (see below)
Instructional Method	instructional_method_id	Select (Lookup)	No	INSTRUCTIONAL_METHOD — pedagogy, declared by Colleague
Grading System	grading_system_id	Integer (FK)	No
Status	section_status_id	Select (Lookup)	Yes
Is Cross-Listed	is_cross_listed	Boolean	Yes
Enrollment Deadline Override	enrollment_deadline_override	Date	No	Overrides the term deadline
Section Fee	section_fee	Decimal	No
Section Lab Fee	section_lab_fee	Decimal	No
Fee Type	fee_type_id	Integer (FK)	No
Billing Method	billing_method	Text(1)	No
LMS Platform	lms_platform_id	Integer (FK)	No
LMS Course ID	lms_course_id	Text(200)	No	Identifier in the external LMS
Colleague Section ID	colleague_section_id	Integer	No (system)	Colleague's COURSE_SECTIONS_ID, stamped by the nightly import (migration 293). The import matches on it, so a section Colleague renames is renamed in place, and a stamped section Colleague deletes is deleted when nothing student-facing or financial references it. NULL for sections created in the SIS, which the import never touches

There is no CRN, no title override, no is_open flag, no section-level start/end dates and no registration window on a section. Dates come from the term, moderated by enrollment_deadline_override. Staged registration windows belong to the term too. There are no notes columns either.

Variable credits

The section API returns effective_credit_hours_min / effective_credit_hours_max (the section's range, else the course's) alongside the flag and increment. The student's choice is stored on the plan (planned_courses.credits_selected) and then on the enrollment (student_section_enrollments.credits_attempted). Billing, GPA, the degree audit and the credit-load checks all read it. A value sent for a fixed section is ignored, and a missing value means the minimum.

Meeting times and rooms are not columns here: they hang off the section through the scheduling endpoints (/academic/sections/{sectionID}/scheduling).

Computed Fields (Read-Only)

Field	Description
Available Seats	Max Enrollment - Current Enrollment
Section Display	Course Code + Section Code (e.g., "BIOL 101-001")
Waitlist Count	Number of students on waitlist

Instructor Assignment Sub-Form

Field	Type	Required	Notes
Teacher	Select (FK)	Yes	Faculty member
Role	Select (Lookup)	Yes	INSTRUCTOR_ROLE (Primary, Secondary, TA)
Assignment Percentage	Decimal	No	For shared sections (totals 100%)
Start Date	Date	No	If different from section dates
End Date	Date	No	If different from section dates
Source (source)	System	-	SIS (the default: added on a screen) or ODS (imported). The nightly import deletes an ODS assignment once Colleague stops listing that instructor on a Colleague-owned section; SIS assignments are never removed by it (migration 293)

The name shown for an instructor is their instructor display name.

Meeting Time Sub-Form

Field	Type	Required	Notes
Days	Multi-Select	Yes	M, T, W, Th, F, Sa, Su
Start Time	Time	Yes	Class start time
End Time	Time	Yes	Class end time
Building	Select (FK)	No	Meeting location
Room	Select (FK)	No	Specific room
Start Date	Date	No	If different from section dates
End Date	Date	No	If different from section dates

Modality vs. instructional method

These are two fields, not one, and they are populated by different means.

instructional_method_id is what Colleague declares — the pedagogy: a lecture, a lab, a practicum, an internship, a music lesson. Twenty-six values, decoded from Colleague's own XODS_INSTR_METHODS valcode and stored verbatim. It is fully editable from Admin → Lookup Tables like any ordinary lookup.

instruction_mode_id is derived from it — the modality: where the student physically is. Four values, and the one students and advisors actually read on the registration and planning screens. The importer (internal/migration/daily/sections.go) derives it from four declared Colleague fields:

Result	When
ONLINE	SEC_INSTR_METHODS is ONL, or any meeting's CSM_INSTR_METHOD is ONL, or any meeting's CSM_BLDG is ON/WEB (placeholders for "no room", not real buildings), or SEC_LOCATION is one of ON, ONAH, OA, OF, AD
HYBRID	otherwise, if SEC_INSTR_METHODS or any meeting's CSM_INSTR_METHOD is HYB
IN_PERSON	otherwise

Do not read modality off the section number

1,685 sections are numbered WEB, and it is tempting to treat that as the answer. In a four-year window 25 of them carry no online signal in any declared field, and 1,111 genuinely online sections are not numbered WEB. The importer counts and reports those 25 for the registrar to correct in Colleague rather than guessing — a classification comes from the source system's declared field or from a human, never from the shape of a code.

Before migration 263, this column was fabricated

The importer never read any ODS field for instruction_mode_id. It resolved IN_PERSON once at startup and wrote that same id to every row, so all ~76,000 sections read "In Person" — including the 1,111 Colleague declares as online. The value was shown to students, shown to advisors in the planner, and published to external dashboards as dashboard.fact_section_enrollments.instruction_mode. Any analysis of section modality drawn from this database before September 2026 is wrong; re-run migrate-daily -steps sections to repair it.

Validation Rules

1. Course + Term + Section Code must be unique
2. Credits must be within the course's min/max credit range
3. Max Enrollment must be greater than 0
4. Meeting times must not overlap for the same instructor
5. Room capacity should accommodate max enrollment (warning only)
6. Students Choose Their Credits requires a variable-credit course, a maximum not below the minimum, a range of at least one Credit Increment, and blank Billing Credits

Related Screens

• Courses - Parent course definition
• Enrollment - Student enrollments in this section