Semester Start Workflow¶
What to do at the beginning of each semester.
Goals¶
- Capture initial course assignments
- Record your role declarations before the semester gets busy
- Establish baseline for drift detection
Steps¶
1. Update Your Catalog¶
This picks up any new courses assigned to you for the upcoming term.
2. Deep Ingest Your Teaching Courses¶
For courses you're teaching (not just enrolled in), deep-ingest to capture the initial roster:
# Ingest each course you're teaching
uv run cl ingest offering 12345
uv run cl ingest offering 12346
Finding Course IDs
Course IDs appear in Canvas URLs: https://canvas.edu/courses/12345
Or query your timeline and look at the output.
3. Declare Lead Instructor¶
For co-taught courses, record who is lead/grade-responsible:
This annotation survives future ingestion runs and appears in queries alongside Canvas-reported instructor data.
4. Add Involvement Notes¶
Optionally classify your involvement:
uv run cl annotate involvement 12345 "Lead instructor, developed all materials"
uv run cl annotate involvement 12346 "Co-instructor, handled labs"
5. Verify Your Setup¶
# Check your timeline includes the new term
uv run cl query my-timeline --format json | jq '.[] | select(.term | contains("Spring 2025"))'
# Verify annotations are recorded
uv run cl annotate list
What You've Accomplished¶
At semester start, your ledger now contains:
- All your course assignments for the new term
- Initial rosters for courses you're teaching
- Lead instructor declarations for co-taught courses
- Your involvement classifications
When you re-ingest mid-semester, the system will detect any changes (adds, drops, role changes) and record them as drift.