I know, old post, too bad I missed it because its a familiar topic for me.

Here's the hierarchy I got used to when I was in education:

- departments, like your CS department, Business department, etc. Under departments you have:

- programs / curriculums, make sure you have effective dates, students might stay enrolled in old versions of curricululum models. your curriculum / program model contains:

- courses, this is the definition for work needed for a course. make sure you have effective dates here also, ie., course definitions change all the time but you need to retain history. Since courses are DEFINITIONS of course work, actual instances will be:

- sections, these are _instances_ of courses, a section occurs in a semester / quarter, where a course remains a DEFINITION. since a given section might have lectures and labs, you'll need a list of:

- meetings, this is where your scheduling and facilities use are defined and instructors assigned.