The UW Youth Program Registration System (YPRS) asks you to register your youth program activities using the framework of “programs” and “sessions.”
What is a program?
A “program” is a program, event, activity, or research with a specific stated purpose and goal. Each program requires a separate registration submission in the YPRS. The Program page in the YPRS collects “big picture information” about the purpose, program type, and leadership information, information that is likely to remain constant over multiple cycles of your programming.
Your programming should be registered as different programs if it:
- is guided by different goals or intention, or
- targets different populations with different activities to achieve those goals.
What is a session?
A “session” is a unique offering or iteration of that specific program. Within sessions, you will list DATES or OCCURRENCES of that session, as well as location and, for UW led programs, staffing information. Sessions serve to link personnel with the dates and locations of youth interactions.
The goal is not to register every individual interaction with youth as a session, but instead to use sessions to group similar interactions based on those commonalities, and then indicate the dates on which those interactions take place. Session information will be populated and updated frequently, with each new iteration of a program.
Your programming may register as a single-session if it involves the same staff and generally the same ongoing activities each time the group is together. Most third party led programs will be registered as single-session programs.
Your programming may register as different sessions of the same program (aka a “multi-session program”) if it:
- involves different populations (e.g. one camp for 2nd graders and one for 8th graders);
- takes place at different locations (e.g. Friday Harbor Labs and Hitchcock Hall);
- involves different staff across different days/times and/or locations; or
- involves very different “attributes” or programming components (e.g. an overnight retreat at the end of your otherwise day-only leadership camp).
Example: The Office of the Youth Protection Coordinator
As an example, pretend our office serves youth, instead of youth program professionals. Since our programming generally serves one audience, with one goal in mind (youth protection), we would register our office as the PROGRAM.
The different events or activities we offer, like our Annual Youth Forum or our Summer Programs Planning meetings, would be registered as SESSIONS and the various DATES those activities happened would be listed with each session using the calendar feature in the YPRS. Notice individual Summer Programs Planning meetings are not registered as their own sessions, but instead, all meeting dates are listed under the “Summer programs Planning Meetings” session.
Recommendations for registering your programs and sessions
- Think about what logistical groupings already exist for your programming. Can you mirror your internal organization in your registration in the YPRS? For example, if you divide your office’s work among an outreach team and a summer camp team, you might register an outreach program and a summer camp program.
- Consider creative ways to group programming. For example, if you host several one-time events with a common educational purpose but that touch on different topics, consider registering them as a session called “Educational Events”, with the date of each indicated, instead of registering each as its own session. (Keep in mind, if the events have different staff or attributes, you should register them as separate sessions.)
- Email uwminors@uw.edu for help!