VIP is a curricular program, so you will need course numbers. The final goal is to have a campus or college-level subject code, or better yet, a VIP subject code. Many sites begin with temporary course numbers, either from a single department, the college, or the university. These temporary course numbers are often designed for this purpose, to pilot new courses.
Credits Per Semester
The credit structure of VIP is designed to allow students to participate for multiple semesters without maxing-out the available space in their program of study. To this end, the general goal is to enable students to participate in VIP for the equivalent of a half-course each semester. At GT, a standard course is 3 credits, which would imply that VIP should count for 1.5 credits per semester. Unfortunately, fractional credits are not allowed. We thus restrict sophomores to 1 credit, and we allow juniors and seniors to choose between 1 and 2 credits each semester.
Course Numbering
As a baseline structure, we offer courses at the sophomore (second year, 2000), junior (third year, 3000), senior (fourth+ year, 4000) and graduate (6000) levels. The number of credit available at each level vary, with only 1-credit for sophomores, 1-2 for juniors, and 1-3 for seniors. Per Georgia Tech’s numbering convention, the first digit indicates the academic rank of students in the course (2 for second-year students, 3 for third year, etc.). The last digit in each course number indicates the number of credits.
| 1 credit | 2 credits | 3 credits | For pay (0 credits) | |
| 2nd Year | VIP 2601 | |||
| 3rd Year | VIP 3601 | VIP 3602 | VIP 3600 | |
| 4th+ Year | VIP 4601 | VIP 4602* | VIP 4603 by dept. request** * | VIP 4600 |
| Graduate | VIP 6601 | VIP 6602 | VIP 6603 | VIP 6600 |
| * Additional course numbers have been created for use in Senior Design sequences. ** The 3-credit option is restricted to students from departments have requested it. Additionally, within those majors, it can only be used by students in their third semester with at VIP Team. |
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In the numbering system above, there are twelve course numbers for VIP. Each VIP team is one section of each of the VIP courses, such as section VP1 for team one, section VP2 for team two, etc. These sections numbers are used for all twelve of the VIP course listings. This means that team one, which is section VP1, will have students enrolled across many courses (VIP 2601, VIP 3601, etc.). At the beginning of the semester, each instructor merges his/her/their classes in the course management system.