Searching for Courses

Now that you know a bit more about your Penn State degree program, how do you go about searching for courses to take? For this task, we need to look no further than LionPATH. To start with, you'll go to your Home Page in LionPATH. Once there select the Find Classes button (see Figure 2.6). This will direct you to a page with multiple criteria that you can use to narrow your search.

Figure 2.6. Find classes in LionPATH page

The page that you'll be directed to will open with the Search for Classes function opening automatically. When selecting the criteria for your class search, you should make sure to select World Campus so that you're only searching courses that will be available to you at a distance (see Figure 2.7). Additionally, if you would like to search for courses that will fulfill certain areas of your degree, such as Gen Eds, you can select the Additional Search Criteria arrow. This will provide you with the ability to further refine your search.

Figure 2.7. Class search page

One thing to note when using these search criteria is  that the Show Open Classes Only box will be checked by default, so if you're looking for courses to wait-list you should uncheck this box.

Selecting Your Course

Once you've filled in all of your desired criteria, click on the Search button in the bottom right-hand side of the search screen. This will bring up a listing for all of the courses that meet the criteria that you selected. On the right-hand side of this screen, you'll see a column of status indicators and a course select button or buttons. If the course status is showing a green circle, that means that the course is open and that you can select it for your schedule by clicking the appropriate Select button. If the status column has a yellow triangle, that means that it's currently full, but that you can wait-list it if you wish. We will cover this process in detail in an upcoming lesson.

If you would like further details on one of the courses that came up in your search, simply select the link in either the Class or Section columns on the left-hand side of the screen. This will take you to the class detail page, which will provide you with a description of the course as well as information on the class capacity, the name of the instructor, and course materials as it becomes available. From this screen, you can either return to your search results by selecting the View Search Results button or adding the course to your shopping cart with the Select Course button, both of which are at the bottom of the screen. You'll repeat this process until your cart contains all of the courses that you're planning to take in the upcoming semester. Just as is the case with online shopping sites, things placed in your shopping cart are not “yours” until you finish the transaction—we'll cover how to do this in the next section.