Rolling intakes
How XPortal lets students start almost any week, join the course wherever it is up to, and loop through every subject.
A rolling intake means there is no single start date that everyone waits for. The course is always running. Subjects follow one another in a fixed order, week after week, at each campus. A new student simply joins the loop at the next subject they can still catch, works their way around, and finishes once they have done every subject once.
Picture a train running a circular route. Nobody boards at "the beginning", because there isn't one. You board at the next stop, ride the whole loop, and step off when you are back where you started. Two students who start a month apart are on the same train, just a few stops apart.
XPortal does the planning for you. You describe what a program teaches, when each subject runs at each campus, and which sessions each group of students attends. From there, XPortal builds each student's personal study plan, keeps it steady once it has been agreed, and keeps their weekly classes up to date for as long as they study.
This section covers rolling intakes only
Rolling intakes are one way of running a course. XPortal will offer other intake types later, chosen in Settings, and they will schedule students differently. Everything in this section describes how rolling intakes work.
The five building blocks
Everything in a rolling intake is built from five things. It helps to know which question each one answers.
| Building block | The question it answers | Where you set it up |
|---|---|---|
| Program and its Academic Rules | What does a student study, and in what order? | Academic Planning → Programs |
| Subject delivery | When and where does a subject run? | Academic Planning → Subjects → the subject's Academic Planning page |
| Group | Who studies together? A batch or stream of students at one campus. | RTO → Groups |
| Class | Which sessions happen: the actual date, time, room and trainer. | Inside a subject delivery |
| Student study plan | Which run of each subject this student takes, and on which dates | Built automatically in the application's Enrollment tab |
A short way to remember it: the program decides what, deliveries decide when, classes decide which sessions, and a student's group decides which of those sessions are theirs.
A student's journey, start to finish
- You set up the course. The program lists its subjects in order. Each subject has deliveries at each campus: runs of that subject between two dates. Each delivery has classes, and each class is linked to the groups that attend it.
- An application is created. In the Enrollment tab you choose the program, the student's preferred campus and the earliest date they can start.
- XPortal builds the study plan. It finds the first subject run the student can still join, then lines up every other subject after it, looping round the program until every subject is included. You see the result in the Auto Enrollment Preview.
- The application is submitted and approved. The plan is locked in. The student now has an enrolment with their own dates for every subject, each tied to a specific run at a specific campus.
- The student is oriented. Staff choose the campus and the group the student will attend. XPortal gives the student every class of that group that falls within their subject dates.
- The student studies. Their classes stay in step with their group. A session added, moved or cancelled for the group reaches them automatically. Anything they have already attended stays exactly as it was.
What stays fixed and what keeps moving
This is the most important idea in rolling intakes, and it answers most "why did that happen?" questions:
| Part of the student's record | Once agreed… |
|---|---|
| Which subjects they study | Stays fixed. Changing the program's academic rules later does not rewrite existing students. |
| The dates of each subject | Stays fixed. The deliveries they are placed in are locked so their dates cannot move underneath them. |
| Which run (and campus) each subject belongs to | Stays fixed, unless staff deliberately move the student, for example with Change Location. |
| Their individual classes | Keeps moving with their group after orientation. Future sessions follow the group's timetable. Past and attended sessions never change. |
So the plan is steady, and the timetable is live.
Words used in this section
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Program | A course or qualification, such as a Certificate III in Carpentry. |
| Subject | A unit within a program. |
| Academic Rules | A program's list of required subjects, their order, and any prerequisites. |
| Delivery | One run of a subject at one campus, between a start date and an end date. |
| Midpoint | The halfway day of a delivery. A student can join a run until its midpoint. |
| Group | A batch or stream of students in one program at one campus, with a set number of seats. |
| Class | A single session: a date, a start and end time, a room, a class type and usually a trainer. |
| Study plan | The list of subjects and dates XPortal builds for a student. The application screens call it the enrollment preview or learning plan. |
| Orientation | The step where a student is placed in a group and receives their classes. |