Courses by Cluster

How to set up qualifications that are delivered by internal clusters where units of competency overlap

Clusters, in this case, refers to an internal grouping of units of competency that a college delivers to break up a qualification into teaching-focused groups of units. Sometimes one unit from a qualification may be delivered across multiple clusters, and a student must successfully complete the assessments in each cluster to achieve competency in the unit. For example the Qualification Certificate IV in Training and Assessment has 12 units in total, but the four Environment units are assessed in each cluster.

The course is delivered in three clusters and each cluster has a fee that applies to it.

Creating the Qualification

Create a new course and attach all the units that you deliver as part of the qualification. This is the formal enrolment where you will record the student’s completion of outcomes once assessment has been sufficiently completed across your various clusters.

This is the course that you will advertise on your website, so make sure you include the full course description and information about how you deliver the program.

Next, create a class for this course, entering the dates, student fees and venue information. Details on how to create a class is available in our creating Classes chapter. Make this class visible online so students can enrol.

You may choose to set up this course as an 'application fee enrolment' and advise the students of the full fee within the course description. You can learn more about enrolments by application in our Applications chapter.

Creating the clusters

The cluster courses that you create are for your scheduling and management purposes only. They will not be advertised online, as you will enrol students in these classes as appropriate.

The clusters that you create are not VET courses - do not attach the qualification or units of competency to these records. You can put details of the units and content covered in the description if you wish.

Set up each course and class with the assigned sites & rooms, tutors and sessions.

Enrolments and Payment

As onCourse will invoice students class fees, you can allow students to make full payments or part payments at the time of enrolment.

For example, you could set the full fee on the first class and track students as they make payments towards this total amount. Alternatively, you could set up multiple classes with fees attached, so students are only invoiced for a portion of the course fee each time they are enrolled in a new cluster.

Learn more about payment plans in our Payment Plans chapter.