Departments

By default, all administrators and department administrators will have access to the department menu within the school settings. Department administrators will only be able to edit the departments to which they have access. They can also add new departments. Lastly, they will see all other departments, but they will not be able to edit these departments. To navigate to the department menu within the school settings and add a department, follow the steps below.

1. Click the domainSchool name in the menu on the left.
2. Click settingsSettings in the menu at the top.
3. Click Departments in the menu on the left.
4. Click New department and fill in a name.

To change the name of your department, follow the steps below.

1. Click on the Name of the department.
2. Click the tab Settings, next to the Department administrators button.
3. Change the name of the department and confirm your changes by clicking 'Rename'.

Remove a department

To remove a department, follow the steps below.

1. Navigate to a department.
2. Click the tab Settings, next to the Department administrators tab.
3. In the Danger zone section, click on Delete next to 'Remove department'.
4. Click Confirm. 

error_outline Please note, it is not possible to remove a department if its studie(s) are connected to courses.

As soon as you created your departments, you will have to add at least one study to your department. Most schools use departments as an equivalent for faculties, which contain different studies. A study can only be allocated to one department. As mentioned before, it is not possible to define a role on study level. You will have to manually add users to all courses in a study. To add studies to your department, follow the steps below.

1. Navigate to a department.
2. Click on New study and fill in the name of the study

From the settings of an existing course, the course can be added to the study. This can also be added when creating a new course. It is possible to add a course to multiple studies. 

error_outline It is not possible to move a study to a different department via the Ans interface. It is only possible change the study's department via our API.

As mentioned before, department administrators can be added to departments. The department administrator role will have full access to anything that is created within the department. As you can see, this includes all studies, courses and assignments.

Add department administrators to a department

Keep in mind that department administrators first need to be created on school level before they can be added to a department. To add a department administrator to a department, follow the steps below. 

1. Navigate to a department. 
2. Click on the tab Department administrators.
3. Click on Add department administrators. 
4. Type in the user's name or paste the email address. The name will appear as a chip if the user is included in the list.
5. Click on Add.

Remove department administrators from a department

If needed, you have the option to remove department administrators from a department. To remove department administrators from a department, follow the steps below.

1. Navigate to a department.
2. Click on the tab Department administrators.
3. Check the box next to the department administrator(s) you want to remove.
4. Click on the delete icon.
5. Click Confirm. 

In the sections above, the use of departments and studies to separate roles and set your school structure is described. Using departments and studies has other benefits as well. Ans provides multiple insights on a departmental level and studies can be used to filter certain interfaces for a better overview. The following insights and filters can be found in the platform:

Study filter in the courses overview

In the overview of all courses in your school, you can filter on one specific study to see all courses that are allocated to that study. By default, Ans will show all courses of all studies.

Overview of usage per department

In the school insights, you can filter on the usage of one or more departments. The usage graph shows the number of active users per month. An active user is a student with at least one result in the previous 12 months. If you filter on the number of students per department, the graph will only count the number of active users that have a result in assignments that are allocated to courses and studies within the selected departments.

Overview of assignment takings per department

The second filtered overview is in the assignment takings. In this overview, the amount of written and digital assignment takings are shown. You have the possibility to adjust this graph for all assignments within courses and studies of the selected department(s).

Assignment analysis per study

The third and last filter that is provided by Ans in the school insights is the study filter in the assignment analysis. Ans provides a filter to select one or more studies. Ans also provides filters for all studies (the default filter) and assignments without studies. In the filter menu, you can also see the department to which the study belongs.