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School-level feature — managed within your school portal at yourschool.deandesk.com.

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Video walkthrough

This walkthrough uses the real DeanDesk interface with the fictional Northstar Academy demo school and a calm, AI-generated English voice. Payments and outside services are not connected in the demo.
Screenshots use fictional Northstar demo data. Curriculum maps are your school’s planning layer. A map describes the structure of a program — divisions, grades, subjects, and the course templates inside them — without creating any live courses. You design the map once, refine it over time, and instantiate templates into real courses whenever you run them. Maps and templates are reusable planning documents; live courses with students, schedules, and gradebooks stay separate. Admins manage curriculum maps; teachers can view them.

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The Curriculum page

In the Admin Dashboard, go to Academics → Curriculum. The page has two tabs: The School curriculum tab lists your maps. Each map’s ⋯ menu offers Edit details, Duplicate, and Archive.
Northstar demo: Curriculum — School curriculum

Northstar demo — Curriculum — School curriculum

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Curriculum maps

A curriculum map carries: DeanDesk also records where a map came from — built by hand, created from a course, imported from the library, or duplicated from another map.

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Starter templates

When creating a map, you can start from a starter template that pre-builds the hierarchy for you. Each preset is configurable before it’s created: You can also start from a blank map and build the hierarchy yourself.

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Nodes: the map hierarchy

Inside a map, the structure is a tree of nodes. Each node has a name, an optional code and description, and a sort order. Node types include program, department, subject, grade, level, stage, track, and category — and you can use custom types. Course templates sit at the leaves of the tree. Open a map to edit it. The editor gives you:
  • A search box (Search name, code, subject…) to jump to any item
  • Node and Course buttons to add a node or course template
  • Expand/Collapse all controls and drag handles to reorder items
  • Actions on the selected item: Add child, Add course, Move, Move up/down, Remove, and Edit node

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Outline and diagram views

A Map view toggle switches between two ways of seeing the same map:
  • Outline — a collapsible tree with drag handles, in a resizable pane.
  • Diagram — a canvas of node cards you can pan and zoom (Drag to pan · Scroll to zoom · Click to open · Hover to add). Zoom in/out and Fit controls frame the map, and hovering a node reveals a + to add a child node or course beneath it.

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Multiple placements

A node or course template can live in more than one place in the map — for example, one course template under both “Grade 9” and “Science Department”. The Placements multi-select lets you choose multiple parents, or leave it empty to place the item at the map root. Use the Update curriculum placements dialog to change placements later.
Items with multiple placements can’t be drag-reordered in the outline — you’ll see “Shared courses cannot be reordered”. Removing a node only removes children that have no other remaining parent.

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Course templates

Course templates are the reusable building blocks at the leaves of a map. A template carries a name, code, description, subject, grade or level, credits, instructional hours, version, status, prerequisites (other templates), and a snapshot of curriculum content — units, modules, materials, and assessments. In the template editor, each module has a title, a Visibility setting (Visible, Hidden, or Scheduled), an objective, and a description. There are three ways templates connect to live courses:
Click Course in the map editor to add a blank template, then fill in its details and curriculum content.

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The DeanDesk Library

The DeanDesk Library tab is a catalog of curriculum maps and course templates published by DeanDesk. Search across subjects, levels, programs, and tags to find something that fits your school. Library maps are marked with a Read-only source badge. To use one:
  • Copy entire map — imports the whole map into your school curriculum.
  • Copy to map — on any row in a library map’s Course templates list, copies just that template into one of your own maps.
Imported copies belong to your school. You can edit them freely, and they are unaffected if the library map is later unpublished.
Northstar demo: Curriculum — DeanDesk Library

Northstar demo — Curriculum — DeanDesk Library

Open full-size screenshot

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Course groups

Course groups are a simple, named grouping of live courses — a name, a description, a list of courses, and an active flag. Group names are unique within your school. Admins manage groups; teachers can view them. Manage groups under Academics → Course Groups — see Course groups. Groups also appear in Bulk Enrollment: on the Enrollment tab under Select course groups, and on the Distribution tab, where a Course Groups section lists each active group with its number of courses.

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Template editor tabs

Select a course template in a map to open its editor. Curriculum organizes the reusable units, modules, learning materials, and assessments. Class details holds the template’s identity and academic details, such as its title, code, description, subject, grade or level, credits, hours, status, and version. Save changes before closing the editor. Use the placement controls to change where the template appears in the map. Editing a template changes the reusable source; review and create a live course when you are ready to offer it to learners.