Updates
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May 2023
This month we reached the one year anniversary of the project and have exciting milestones to share. At the end of May, updated transfer articulation rules for 14 schools were moved into production. These 14 schools accounted for roughly 30% of all courses transferred from California Community Colleges in Fall 2022. With recent releases at the end of last month, one-third of all majors, concentrations, and minors have been updated to the new DPR. Finally, a new section of the Degree Audit Project website is being developed which features resources and training materials for both students and staff. We anticipate rolling that out in June.
April 2023
Visual modifications to the Academic Advisement module have been created in the developmental environments of AIS. We will be soliciting feedback from advisors and students on these changes to share with our ITS partners. Transfer Articulation Rules for 15 California Community Colleges are on their path to production. These schools account for roughly 40% of the Fall 2022 incoming transfer cohort. DPRs continue to be updated with over 10 additional majors, minors, and concentrations releasing in the next one to two weeks. Finally, we are in the preliminary stages of requesting an update to the existing Statistics and Senior Residency sections of the DPR. These two sections are PeopleSoft modifications that display UC GPA, cumulative credits, pass/no-pass percentages, and senior residency compliance. These important requirements will be moved to the top of the DPR and add additional requested information such as current program status, expected graduation term, and academic plans. Our hope is that these types of continued improvements will solidify the DPR as a one-stop location for all degree requirements.
March 2023
A steering committee has been established for the Degree Audit Project consisting of key partners from the Office of the Registrar, Undergraduate Admissions, Advising, and ITS. The committee will review recommendations made by the project team in collaboration with its stakeholders. The initial pilot programs have been released and are available to students and advisors. The University and General Education requirements sections have also been updated for all students in the 2021-22 catalog onward. We have developed a progress page on our website so anyone can track the status of our work at any time.
February 2023
All pilot programs have been moved to production using future effective dating. This method allows the build to exist in production while not allowing students access to the updated DPR. Going forward, our process will be to build all DPRs in production using future effective dating rather than building in the testing environment then duplicating work to move to production. We anticipate our pilot programs to be made active for advisor and student use in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 catalog years in the next month. As reported in our January update, we worked with ITS to propose visual improvements to the entire Academic Advisement module in AIS. Current planning estimates these improvements to be in production in the Spring Quarter.
January 2023
The degree audit has been renamed the Degree Progress Report (DPR). Though the underlying system for the audit is still the same, many changes have been made to improve the funcationality, so distancing it from the previous name, Academic Advisement Report, is necessary. We have established visual standards for the updated DPR which provide better readabiilty and understanding of degree requriements for end users. Further modifications for visaul improvements such as the use of new colors and icons, are being explored. Our pilot programs have been coded and testing is ongoing.
December 2022
Sierra-Cedar has been working with the Academic Advisement Team to mock-up several versions of degree audits based on industry practices and the requests from advisors. We are balancing the biggest requests from our users with the feasibility and limitations of Campus Solutions (AIS/MyUCSC).
November 2022
A pilot group of programs has been determined for the inital updates to the degree audit. These are Anthropology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Computer Science and Engineering, History of Art and Visual Culture, and Literature. These five programs represent each division and a diverse range of curriculum complexity. At the end of the month Sierra-Cedar began working with the various teams of the degree audit project to understand the wants and needs of campus and the current state of the degree audit.
October 2022
We have entered into a contract with Sierra-Cedar, a consulting firm, to assist in the degree audit project. Sierra-Cedar has already been working with Undergraduate Admissions on the transfer articulation rule building project. Having one consultant for both pieces of the Degree Audit Project will ensure cohesion between the two integral parts. Sierra-Cedar will guide the teams across UE, Office of the Registrar, and Undergraduate Admissions to update all degree audits, provide training and documentation, implement automated graduation processes, and other technical modifications in PeopleSoft. The Degree Audit Working Group was formed and consists of 16 major and college advisors and preceptors. This working group gives a space for advisors to provide feedback and input in the degree audit project. The project team has also been working through processes with the Office of the Registrar on situations where the degree audit deviates from the published catalog, and how to establish communication channels between programmers, departments, and students.
September 2022
The Degree Audit Team has worked closely with the Academic Advisement Team in the Office of the Registrar and Processing and Articulations team in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to increase communication and transparency into each others processes. Admissions continues its work with Sierra-Cedar to create transfer credit rules. The Academic Advisement Team is creating a processes to more easily track curricular changes from year to year and is developing a coding schema template to serve as the foundation for all current and future AAR updates.
August 2022
The Academic Advisement Team in the Registrar's Office is now fully staffed and new hires are training in the Academic Advising module. Admissions is making progress with their transfer credit rule buidling project with the aid of their Sierra-Cedar consultants. The work will pull data from assist.org and create transfer credit rules which automate many of the current manual processes. The project is on track to complete on time in December 2022.
July 2022
Work began in June 2022 on the degree audit overhaul project. Team members have been working with partners in Admissions, the Registrar's Office, and Advising to assess the scope of the project and the many inputs that go into the degree audit. It is clear there are several inefficient processes which hinder AAR updates, cause duplicative work for advisors, and leads to a poor user experience for both staff and students. The team is compiling relavent data to inform its first steps.
