Courses Guide¶

Prism Courses enable instructors to provision research workspaces for entire university classes — with per-student budget limits, template enforcement, and bulk enrollment.

Overview¶

A Course in Prism represents a class or semester-long research computing allocation. It provides:

• Template whitelist: restrict students to approved environments
• Budget management: per-student spending limits with centralized tracking
• Bulk enrollment: enroll students individually, in bulk via CSV, or via invitation tokens
• Workspace monitoring: view all student workspaces, usage, and spending from a single dashboard

Creating a Course¶

Via GUI¶

1. Navigate to Courses in the sidebar
2. Click Create Course
3. Fill in: name, code, description, term, institution
4. Set a total budget (distributed to students later)
5. Click Create

Via CLI¶

prism course create \
  --name "BIOL 5100: Genomics" \
  --code BIOL5100-F26 \
  --description "Graduate genomics computing lab" \
  --term "Fall 2026"

Enrolling Students¶

Individual enrollment¶

prism course members enroll <course-id>
# → Interactive: enter email, user ID, display name, role, budget limit

Bulk enrollment via CSV¶

Prepare a CSV with columns: email,user_id,display_name,role,budget_limit

prism course members import <course-id> students.csv

Via invitation tokens¶

Create a shared enrollment token and distribute to the class:

1. GUI: Course → Members → Create Enrollment Token
2. Students redeem it: prism invitation redeem <token>

Managing Templates¶

Enforce which templates students can launch (template whitelist):

# Add allowed templates
prism course templates add <course-id> python-ml
prism course templates add <course-id> r-research

# List allowed templates
prism course templates list <course-id>

# Remove a template
prism course templates remove <course-id> genomics

When a whitelist is set, students can only launch workspaces using approved templates. When no whitelist is set, all templates are available.

Budget Management¶

Distributing budget to students¶

# Set per-student budget
prism course budget distribute <course-id> --per-student 50.00

# Or set individual limits
prism course members enroll <course-id> --budget 75.00

Monitoring spending¶

In the GUI, the Budget tab on a course shows: - Total budget vs. spent - Per-student breakdown with status (ok / warning / critical) - Running cost projections

Students receive alerts when approaching their limit. Workspaces are stopped if a student exceeds their budget.

Monitoring Student Workspaces¶

Overview tab¶

The Overview tab shows all enrolled students with: - Current spend vs. limit - Active workspace count - Budget status (green / yellow / red)

Reset a student's workspace¶

prism course members provision <course-id> <user-id>

This terminates the student's current workspace and provisions a fresh one using the course's default template.

Course Settings¶

CLI Reference¶

prism course                                    # List your courses
prism course create                             # Create a course (interactive)
prism course members list <course-id>           # List enrolled students
prism course members enroll <course-id>         # Enroll a student
prism course members unenroll <course-id> <uid> # Remove a student
prism course members import <course-id> <file>  # Bulk CSV import
prism course templates list <course-id>         # View template whitelist
prism course templates add <course-id> <slug>   # Add to whitelist
prism course templates remove <course-id> <slug>
prism course budget distribute <course-id>      # Set per-student budgets
prism course members provision <course-id> <uid>  # Reset student workspace