DEGREE AUDIT ADVISORY BOARD MEETING NOTES
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9TH
UPDATE ON MAJOR CODING –
Every major is coded, and almost all are “live” in the system. The exceptions are Forest
Engineering and Bioengineering. Marty has still not been able to set up meetings with
these two majors.
International is now “live” for all colleges. International is run as a separate audit but it is
still tied to the primary major native college, so specific course requirements are enforced
where possible.
Honors College was not coded as of our meeting. However, since that date, it has been
implemented and Marty will be meeting with Rebekah Lancelin soon to go over the
sample results. Expect to see it included on the next batch run. Honors is run as extra
areas on the primary major audit.
UPDATE ON TESTING OF ADJUSTMENTS –
Marty has been working on a bunch of test students from HHS and Liberal Studies to get
an idea of what we need to include/exclude from the functionality available within the
Banner System. A brief rundown of findings so far:
 “Waivers” for no credit works as expected. This will also work for details the
University does not track, such as Mecop or Work Experience requirements.
 “Substitutions” also works well as a 1-to-1 tool. The course choice is not specific
when substituting LDT courses where there are multiple LDT of the same subject,
but many articulation problems can be cleared up using this function. We also
will be able to build custom plans for individual students (such as an applied area)
by substituting for a list of dummy courses within an area.
 “Targets” do not work as well as hoped. Problems arise due to the targeted course
being reserved for use in only the area it is targeted for, while we often use the
same course for multiple areas, such as major requirements and upper division
credit counts. Marty is working out a way to use the substitutions rather than
targets for most common uses.
 “Comments”- While there is an area for comments attached to the adjustments
area, there is currently no function for displaying these comments on the audits.
NEXT STEPS FOR ADJUSTMENTS Marty is continuing to work with a few advisors on what their needs are as far as
common adjustments, and will be broadening the scope as work progresses. He has also
developed an instruction sheet on how to do these adjustments using the native Banner
forms.
The big step, once we have a better idea of what we need to include in the nuts and bolts
of adjustments, will be getting it implemented in a more user friendly interface. There
was discussion about the merits of various flavors, including “Click and Drag”, “Drop
Down List”, and text entry. All were in agreement that some sort of Web-based system
was needed. The question also arose as to who would be able to develop a Web-based
system, since it is not currently available as part of Banner. According to Phil Brown,
any adjustment or modification to CAPP/Banner base code is strictly reserved for Central
Computing. We need to develop specs for what is needed. A couple of agreed on items:
 We need to be able to see transcripts, including original courses and where they
are from.
 It needs to be fast.
There was discussion on whether or not substitutions should be allowed to areas that are
used in common across the colleges, most notably Baccore areas. If an advisor
substitutes a particular course for one major, should that substituting hold for a different
major, especially one in a different college? We do have the ability to constrain the
baccore substitution or waiver to a particular “program”, which keeps it to the college.
We also discussed who should be allowed to make what adjustments. Right now it
appears to be an all or none security level for advisors. Perhaps more security levels are
needed. The system does track which user makes each adjustment.
UPDATE FROM ADVISORS ON ITEMS NEEDED FOR AUDIT REPORT (and
NEXT STEPS)The general consensus, as always, is that the layout needs to be improved. We will
probably forge ahead with incremental improvements for the time being, rather than
waiting for the “ultimate” solution. The big item needed is the “What’s Left?”, which is
not a function Banner currently offers. Marty has been able to get it to generate the
information using course text displays, but the reports end up being over twenty pages
long. He will explore with Phil Brown ways to get this information into our “short”
version of the audits.
There was some discussion on where the data from the audit runs is stored, and how often
this data should be updated. Should we have changes to a student’s record, changes to
the areas affecting the student, and changes to articulation tables trigger a new report?
Should reports be regenerated at specific intervals, with no new report generated if
nothing has changed? There was a feeling that advisors should not have to generate a
new report as they meet with students if the currently displayed report is the up-to-date
version.
Mary Ann brought to the table the idea of what we could end up doing with these reports
in the future, such as eliminating some processes and seeming redundancies (e.g. the
“blue forms”). Would we be able to use the audits to sign off graduation requirements?
DEGREE PROGRESS REPORTS –
Should we continue with the printed Progress Reports? Some departments and colleges
do use them. We may be able to run them on a college by college basis.
OTHER -
Marty briefly brought up the issue of updates to major requirements. He currently is on
the CAT II distribution list, so he gets the information on added/dropped options and
courses. As each course comes across, he searches the Excel “changes” sheets to see
what majors have the course listed in their major requirements/electives.
Of course, there are many changes to majors that don’t go through the CAT II process.
The question is how to keep apprised of these changes and to make sure they are included
in the system. We are open to any ideas as to what advisors feel would work best for
them. Should we send out the Excel sheets once a year for advisors to mark up if they
need to? Is there another approach that would be both time effective and accurate?