Glossary

ABS Elevate's vocabulary is small, but several of its words mean something narrower here than they do in ordinary speech, and three of them mean very nearly the same thing without being interchangeable at all. This page defines each term in a paragraph and points you at the article that explains it properly.

If somebody has used a word at you and you do not know it, you are in the right place. If you want to understand how the pieces fit together rather than what each one is called, read Key concepts instead — the same vocabulary, told as a story rather than as a list.

Administrator

Anyone who works on the administration side of ABS Elevate — program officers, academic staff and the teams around them. Administrators publish programs, build catalogs, open registration windows, decide who gets a place on which course, create classes, keep gradebooks and manage people and fees.

What an individual administrator may do is decided by their role rather than by which screen they open. See Roles and access.

Allocated credits

The part of your cohort budget you have decided to spend in one registration window. You set it in the panel headed Allocate Credits, and the two numbers beside the shortlist button — 5/20 — read as credits allocated to this window over credits left in the cohort.

Allocating is not spending. You are setting a ceiling for this window, and you can change it at any time before the deadline, as long as the new figure still covers the courses already on your list. It matters because allocation spends nothing but allocated credits: a course you want, ranked below more than your allocated figure can cover, is never reached with anything left to pay for it. See Shortlist and credits.

Catalog

The set of courses available inside your cohort, and the screen where you browse, filter and read about them before deciding you want one. A cohort's catalog is shown either as a flat list of individual courses or grouped into modules; the choice is made when the cohort is set up, and both show the same courses.

The catalog has a shortlisting button of its own, and it carries the same label as the one inside a registration window — both read Add to Shortlist. They do not do the same thing. The catalog's button writes to Your Offerings, which is unranked and spends no credits; only the one on a course opened from inside the registration window adds to the ranked shortlist. Pressing the catalog's button has not registered a ranked choice, and nothing on the screen says so.

See Key concepts and Catalog.

Class

A course that is actually running: its own participants, its own instructors, and the lectures that make it up. A confirmed course you have a place on becomes a class and appears among your own courses with its dates.

Courses and classes are not the same thing. A course is an entry in a catalog; a class is that course happening. See My courses and Classes and lectures.

Cohort

One intake of a program, running between a start date and an end date. It is the thing you are actually part of: your catalog, your credits and your registration windows all belong to a cohort, not to the program above it. Two people on the same program who are in different cohorts may never meet.

A cohort appears under My Programs only while it is running, and only once a program officer has added you to it. Each cohort also carries a Public or Private setting, which only program staff see on an administration screen; in practice a program officer adds you either way. See Key concepts.

Course

A single subject in a catalog — the thing you shortlist. A course has a cost in credits, a difficulty, a set of skills it covers, and, once the school schedules it, one or more offerings.

A course is not a date. The dates belong to its offerings. See Key concepts and Catalog.

Course offering

One scheduled run of a course, with its own dates, location and sessions. Offerings are listed on the course page under Offerings, and a course with nothing scheduled says "No Offerings available at the moment!".

Do not read this entry across to Your Offerings, further down this page. An offering is a run of a course; Your Offerings is a list of your own. See Key concepts and Catalog.

Credit

A day of teaching — not an academic credit, not an ECTS point, and not a grade. A course that costs 3 credits takes three days of your time, and the platform says so directly: "Costs 3 days". A cohort can be set up to count credits in hours instead; either way a credit is an amount of time, and spending it is spending time.

Every learner in a cohort is given a budget of them, shown as "You have 8/20 credits remaining". See Key concepts.

Deadline

The closing date and time of a registration window, shown on the window's own page as Deadline followed by the date.

It is a hard stop rather than a formality. After it, your shortlist page becomes read-only, Add to Shortlist is greyed out on every course page, and there is no grace period to ask the screen for. If something has gone wrong, that is a conversation with the program office. See Shortlist and credits.

Instructor

Someone who teaches a class. A class lists them under Instructors. Instructors are not the people who decide who gets a place on a course — that is the program office. See Classes and lectures.

Learner

Someone following a program: the other half of the platform from the administrators. This manual uses "learner" throughout, though screens and staff may also say student or participant. See For learners.

Main list

For one course in one registration window, the people who have a place on it. The other list is the waiting list.

You will not read this off a screen of your own — ABS Elevate shows you no status beside your own name. In Main List is one of the four labels on the program office's planning screen, and it is the vocabulary staff will use when they talk to you about your outcome. It also means "as things stand": until a program officer confirms the course, the lists are recomputed as other learners edit their own shortlists. See Main list and waiting list.

Mandatory course

A course the program office has marked as compulsory. It carries a Mandatory Course label on its page and Required beside it on your shortlist.

A registration window can attach a minimum spend to them, phrased one of two ways: "For this period, we recommend spending at least 3 credits on mandatory courses", or "For this period, you must spend at least 3 credits on mandatory courses". The difference is entirely in the wording. The platform behaves identically either way — it shows the sentence and counts your spending against the figure, and it does not stop you building or submitting a shortlist below the minimum. An enforced minimum is a requirement you are answerable to, not a limit the screen applies on your behalf. See Shortlist and credits.

Maximum capacity

The largest number of places a course has. Once the working main list fills them, the course is full, and trying to shortlist it warns you that you can add it anyway but will go on the waiting list if a place comes free.

Full is a statement about right now: other learners are still editing their lists, and a course full on Tuesday can have room on Thursday. See Main list and waiting list.

Minimum capacity

The smallest number of people a course needs. A course that does not reach it may simply not be run — the school will not schedule a room, an instructor and a week of somebody's time below a certain point.

That decision belongs to the program office, is taken after the window closes, and is another reason to keep your shortlist long: being on the main list of a cancelled course gives you nothing. See Main list and waiting list.

Module

A grouping of courses inside a catalog. A cohort's catalog is presented either as a flat list of individual courses or grouped into modules, in which case you pick a module first and then look at the courses inside it. Both presentations contain the same courses; only the grouping differs. See Key concepts and Catalog.

Program

A course of study Africa Business School offers — an executive master's, a certificate, a corporate programme. It is the name on your diploma, not the thing you register for.

A program holds one or more cohorts and, on its own, has no dates and no participants. See Key concepts.

Program office

The people who run your program: program officers, academic staff and the teams around them. They open registration windows, review what allocation produced and adjust it by hand, confirm or cancel courses, and answer the questions the platform cannot.

They are also the only people who can see where you ended up on a course, which is why several pages here end by telling you to ask them. See Getting support.

Program page

The page you reach by choosing My Programs and then one of your cohorts. It is the way in to that cohort's catalog, its classes and its registration window, and it carries the closing date when the cohort has a single window — "Registration window open until Jun 12, 2026".

If My Programs is empty you will see "You aren't enrolled in any program yet", which means no cohort you belong to is currently running. See My programs.

Registered

One of the four labels on the program office's planning screen, and the one that means it is settled: the course has been confirmed and you are on its final list. You do not see it on your own screens. See Main list and waiting list.

Registration window

A period during which you choose courses, with an opening date and a closing date. Outside those dates you cannot make or change your choices, and ABS Elevate tells you so where you would have acted rather than in a banner.

A cohort can have several windows one after another, each with its own dates, its own courses and its own rules — but your credit budget belongs to the cohort as a whole and is spent down across all of them. See Key concepts and Registration windows.

Removed

One of the four labels on the program office's planning screen: a program officer has taken you off this course's lists by hand — for a prerequisite you do not hold, a clash they can see and the platform cannot, or a conversation you had with them. See Main list and waiting list.

Session

One individual meeting that makes up an offering: a day, a morning, a slot in a room. An offering is a set of sessions; a session is never the offering itself.

Sessions are why two courses can be incompatible. Two courses whose sessions overlap in time cannot both be on your shortlist, and the platform stops you with a dialog naming the course already in the way. See Key concepts.

Shortlist

The list of courses you want from one open registration window, ranked in order of preference. You add courses to it from the window with Add to Shortlist and order them with Move up and Move down, most wanted first. Saving matters: reordering the list on screen changes nothing until you choose Save.

The ranking is the single most important thing you do in a window. When the window closes your list is walked from the top down, spending the credits you allocated, and every entry is reached — a course you can still afford when it is reached puts you on its main list, one you cannot goes to its waiting list, and the walk carries on either way. What runs out is credits, not attempts. There is no Submit button: whatever is on the list at the deadline is what goes forward.

This is not the wishlist, and it is not Your Offerings. See Shortlist and credits.

Waiting list

For one course in one registration window, the people who asked for a place and did not get one, kept in order.

It is not a queue that advances on its own. While the course is still being worked out the order is recomputed as people change their shortlists; once the course is confirmed, a place changing hands is a program officer's decision. In Waiting List is one of the four labels on the program office's planning screen, so you will hear it from staff rather than read it on a screen of your own.

Being on one is not a rejection. If the window is still open you can still act — raise your allocated credits, reorder your shortlist, or swap the course for one you can actually get — and that is far and away the most effective thing you can do. See Main list and waiting list.

Wishlist

A record of courses you want the school to know you want — later, or instead, or whenever the course is next run. You add one with Express Interest on the course's catalog page, and the bookmark icon in the top bar opens the list.

It takes no credits, gives you no place and registers you for nothing. It is unranked, it has nothing to do with any registration window, and your interest is counted alongside everybody else's so program officers can see what to schedule next.

Whether a course can be wishlisted at all is decided course by course by the program office, through a setting labelled Allow students to express interest. That has nothing to do with whether anything is scheduled: a course with offerings running right now can still carry the button, and a course with nothing scheduled will offer none if interest has been switched off for it. See Wishlist.

Your Offerings

The list the Catalog's own shortlisting button writes to, shown on its own screen under Your Offerings.

It is a third list, separate from both of the others. It is unranked, it spends no credits, and it plays no part in the allocation that decides who gets a place.

The two buttons are labelled identically — the catalog's and the registration window's both read Add to Shortlist — so the label cannot tell you which list you are adding to. Only the screen can: the catalog, or a course opened from inside the registration window. The catalog adds one more ambiguity, because the button that brings you back to this screen is labelled Shortlist, though it does not open your shortlist.

One other tell, if you happen to meet it: this list applies the same overlap rule as the shortlist, but through a dialog headed Shortlist Conflict rather than the registration window's You already have a course at this time.

If what you want is to register for a course in an open window, the list you need is your shortlist. See Shortlist and credits and Catalog.

Related pages