Student Planning Video Transcript – Creating a Plan

Welcome to the Student Planning informational series for the University of Guelph, Ridgetown Campus and University of Guelph-Humber. Student Planning is a self-serve system available to all U of G, Ridgetown and Guelph-Humber students who are actively enrolled in a program. It combines optional degree planning with intuitive course search tools and registration in a new, easy to navigate online environment. To assist both new and returning students, a series of training videos has been developed to help guide you through the most common features of Student Planning.

In this video, we will cover how to create a course plan. Creating a plan of your degree allows you to take a proactive step in ensuring all your degree requirements are covered without any surprising setbacks that may hinder your graduation. This can be done by planning current and future semesters based on previous terms. 

You create a plan by adding the desired courses to a “course plan.” It is important to understand that you have not registered in these courses but rather you “plan” to register for the course in the term you have added the planned course to. You are not obligated to register for a planned course nor are you billed for the planned course until you register. You can add, remove or move planned courses into any path that you want.

To get started, go to WebAdvisor and click on the Access WebAdvisor button. Enter your central login username and password if you are not yet signed in. Then, select Student Planning.

This brings us to the “Planning Overview” page. 

At a glance, you will find a variety of features which may be helpful for planning your degree. Such features include your overall cumulative average, your approximate overall progress towards your degree completion and your program and major, if applicable. Additional majors, minors and areas of specialization are not displayed here. This page also shows your current semester’s timetable. Lectures for registered courses are represented in green, and labs and seminars are shown in purple. Planned courses are shown in yellow. Don’t forget to register in your planned courses! Distance Education courses that do not have scheduled lectures, labs or seminars will be listed below the table. For students on the Guelph campus, final exams will also show in this timetable in blue once the schedule has been posted. Because exams are generally spread out over multiple weeks and this schedule shows a single week, you may see overlap in your exams. We recommend going to the “Plan your Degree & Register for Classes” page for full exam details.  

Aside from the helpful information, this page has two main options - (1) “View Your Progress” and (2) “Plan your Degree & Register for Classes.” For this video, we will be focusing on the first option “View Your Progress” as this is where the most powerful planning features are located. 

The “My Progress” page shows all the degree requirements for your program including up-to-date information about what requirements have been completed, what requirements remain and what requirements are currently planned. Scrolling down on this page, you will find more in-depth requirements related to the types of courses that must be completed and the number of credits for each one.  

On the My Progress page, there are key course search and planning features available within the Requirements section. 

To plan for courses in bulk, scroll down to a requirement looking for courses that have a status of “Not Started.” For this section, click on the “Search” button towards the top. This performs a custom search, loading only the courses listed under that requirement section. 

To add an unplanned course, simply click on the “Add Course to Plan” button. 

Once you are done, you can view all updated changes by clicking on the “Back to My Progress” towards the top left of the page.

To plan for a single course at a time, scroll down to a requirement that has several unplanned courses and click on the course code of a desired unplanned course. By clicking the course code, this will perform a custom search with results only for that course. You can add this course to your plan by clicking the “Add Course to Plan” button. 

Once you have planned your required courses, you can search and plan electives and make modifications based on your major, minor, specialization or overall progression. We recommend that you review the Schedule of Studies or program requirements for your program in the Academic Calendar to ensure your plan meets all of the requirements for completing your degree.

From the Plan and Schedule page, you can navigate among terms using the arrows on the left-hand side. To receive a greater view of your degree, click the Timeline tab. The Timeline displays completed courses, in-progress courses and courses planned in the future for each term you add to the view.

Here, you can easily rearrange your planned courses by term using the drag and drop feature. 

You can move any course you have not completed or have not registered for. Please note that most courses are not offered every term. If you drag a course into a term that it is not usually offered in, a message will appear below the course title. If a course is missing a prerequisite, a warning message will also appear below the course title. It is the student’s responsibility to ensure that prerequisites are planned accordingly to avoid scheduling complications in future terms.

To add more terms to your plan, simply press the “Add a Term” button and select the desired term. If you wish to discard a course or an entire term, hit the X located next to each one. To discard all planned courses, hit the “Remove Planned Courses" button. 

You can register for courses if you’re within the course enrolment period for one of the terms. Watch our "Registering for courses" video for more details. You can also print your planned schedule using the “Print” button on the Plan and Schedule page

We hope that you are now familiar with how to create a course plan using Student Planning. Watch our other Student Planning videos for more information about degree planning and course enrolment at the University of Guelph, Ridgetown Campus and University of Guelph-Humber. If you have any questions, visit your campus's Student Planning website: