How do I search for courses in the Lesley Self-Service portal?

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Need help searching for courses on the Lesley University Self-Service portal? Below you'll find instructions for using the portal to search for courses by specific criteria like term, discipline, date, keyword, and more. For more in-depth instructions on using Self-Service, consult our instructional video for first-time users. You might also like to visit our tutorials on registering for courses via the Course Catalog or registering for courses using Student Planning.

To begin searching for courses, log in to your Self-Service account and select "Academics" and then "Course Catalog" from the menu on the left sidebar. Here, you can choose to search by subject or perform an Advanced Search. In the Subject Search, the results will be displayed as a Catalog Listing by default, but in the Advanced Search, you can choose to display the results as a Section Listing, which will display the individual course sections separately.

If you select Catalog Listing, you will be able to view and add a course section to your schedule by selecting "View Available Sections for {Course}" as below:

If you select Section Listing, each section for a course will be listed separately. The results will look like this:

If you would like to perform an advanced search, here are some examples to assist you:

Term + Discipline Search

• Term: Spring 2021 Semester
• Subject: Art History
• Days Of Week: Wednesday
• Location: Main Campus

This search will return all College of Art and Design Art History courses that meet on Wednesdays in the chosen term.

Term + Subject

• Term: Spring 2021 Semester
• Subject: Art History
• Days Of Meeting: Wednesday

Returns all College of Art and Design Art History courses that meet on Wednesdays in the chosen term (same as last example).

Date

• Meeting Start Date: 09/09/21
• Meeting End Date: 11/30/21
• Location: Main Campus

Returns all courses available on the main campus during September, October, and November.

Subject + Date

• Subject: Creative Writing
• Meeting Start Date:  09/09/21
• Meeting End Date:  11/30/21
• Days Of Week: Friday
• Location: Main Campus

Returns all Creative Writing courses that meet during September, October, and November, on Friday (and any additional days), on the main campus, including weekend intensive courses that meet on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

8-Week + Online Terms

• Term: Spring 2021 Term 1
• Subject: Anthropology
• Academic Level: Lesley Graduate

Returns all 8-week/online Anthropology graduate-level courses for the chosen term.

Discipline + Location

• Term: Spring 2021 Semester
• Subject: Education (GR)
• Location: Belmont Day School

Returns for the chosen term all sections of Education courses in the Graduate School of Education Collaborative program with Belmont Day School.

Online Courses

• Term: leave blank
• Meeting Start Date: 9/1/21
• Meeting End Date: 12/31/21
• Location: Distance Learning (online courses)

Returns all online courses meeting between the two dates.

When searching courses by subject, please note that:

• If the search is done by selecting a subject from the catalog page the courses are sorted in alphanumeric order by course name (Example: ACCT-100 ACCT-200 etc). However, if there are differences in the course number length (Example: ACCT-201 vs ACCT-2014 etc) that may cause discrepancies in the sort order. 
• Subject search results will display at the top "Filters Applied: Subject". (Example for Subject Accounting: "Filters Applied: Accounting")

Keyword

To search for courses by keyword, use the "Search for courses..." field near the top right of your screen. For example, if you type in "pedagogy", the search will return all courses that have the word "pedagogy" in the course title. You can then filter the result by term, subject, location, etc. Please note that this is the least reliable search mechanism because course titles often contain abbreviations.

Meeting Time + Day

• Term: Spring 2021 Semester
• Time Of Day: Evening (4pm-8pm)
• Days Of Week: Thursday

Returns for the chosen term all courses meeting between 4pm and 8pm on Thursdays. This search will include courses that meet on multiple weekdays, so be careful choosing!

January Mini-Semester
January mini-semester courses can best be searched by date:

1. Consult our academic calendars for the date range of the January mini-semester (usually begins within 2 business days after New Year's Day and concludes the Sunday after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day).
2. Enter the mini-semester start date in the Meeting Start Date field; in the Meeting End Date field, type the mini-semester end date.
3. You can still narrow your search using disciplines, subjects, locations, etc. This will keep your list to a much narrower grouping.
4. Finally, when you're looking over the resulting list, be sure the section code on the course you choose begins with "J" (i.e. CPSYC-2433-J1). This will assure that you have a mini-semester course.

When searching courses by keyword, please note that:

• If the search is done by keyword (Example: “ACCT”) the courses appear in the list based on weight using a philosophy similar to a Google search where the most likely results bubble up to the top. In this case, the results will not look like they are in any particular order, but this is by design.
• Keyword Search results will display at the top "Filters Applied: None".