WWCC Completion Estimates Process
Executive Summary
The WWCC completion estimates process is an attempt to provide automated estimates of
degree/certificate completion. The primary benefit of doing automated estimates is to have more
complete coverage of a students progress towards a degree or certificate across the college’s entire
portfolio rather than just the degrees for which the student applies. The estimate engine uses degree
template information derived from the SBCTC Degree Audit application database along with transcript
information extracted from the CTC SMS (Student Management System). Since the estimate engine
cannot guarantee an exact match to what the full Degree Audit system would produce the completion
algorithm produces a completion estimate which ranks matches on a scale from 0 to 6.0+. Any match
ranked 6.0 or higher should be interpreted as a near certain probability that a full degree audit run with
the official SBCTC degree audit will show all required credits applied.
Technology Overview / Technology Components
Platforms used: Microsoft SQL Server 2005+, Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET 3.0+, Microsoft WCF
The data required for the estimate process comes from two major sources.
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SBCTC Degree Audit - full database backup from SBCTC production environment is restored to a
local WWCC server and used as-is.
College SMS data – Data is first staged to a local HPSA (HP Staging Area) conforming to the
Bellevue design. This data consists of student transcript and degree certificate completion
information. The data is transformed from the HPSA format to an internal format used by
WWCC that predates the existence of the ODS (Operational Data Store) project in progress
within the CTC system. As long as the required source tables can be staged to the HPSA there is
a fairly portable canned process to transform the data to the required WWCC format.
Aside from the required data sources there are two additional required components. The degree
template service and the completion estimate calculation engine. The degree template service is used to
insulate the completion calculation engine from changes to the SBCTC Degree Audit database schema.
The template service reads the raw SBCTC degree audit database and creates template objects that are
used by the estimate engine and any other application that might want to display degree information.
The template service is implemented as a WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) service and is
hosted in an ASP.NET website to allow IIS to be the service container rather than deploy the service as a
full windows service.
The final component is the degree completion estimator application. It is implemented as a windows
console application and require access to the Degree Template service and replicated SMS data. It also
requires read/write access to its own database which it uses to store the results of the estimate
computations. The computation engine currently takes 3 parameters:
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Maximum # of past quarters: is used to limit the number of students that are included in the
computation batch. Only students with LAST_YRQ_ATTND >= (Current quarter – past quarters)
will be included in the batch.
Catalog YRQ: This parameter is used to select the set of Degree Audit Degree Templates used for
calculation of the estimates. Only active templates which are marked valid for YRQ_BEGIN <=
Catalog YRQ <= YRQ_END will be included.
Minimum College Level Credits: is used to trim down the number of students included in the
batch by requiring at least this number of college level credits to have been earned.
As of this writing only estimates which have a metric of 2.0 or more are retained in order to keep the
number of database records generated down. All estimates are bundled tagged with a batch id and
timestamp for the current run and all results are stored to the estimates database.
Every estimate record generated by the calculation engine includes:
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Student’s SID
Program Code (EPC) of the degree template used.
EffYrqBeg – a CTC YRQ value when combined with the EPC uniquely identifies which Degree
Audit template was used for the calculation.
DegreeTitle – title replicated from the SBCTC degree audit template.
CompletionMetric: decimal valued metric aka the completion estimate.
BatchID – marks which unique computation batch this estimate belongs to. Each batch is
marked with a timestamp indicating when the batch completed.
Points of integration
WWCC Advisor’s Data Portal (ADP)
WWCC Public Degree Display via Online Catalog
Degree Boost Report – intersects the
Results/Successes
Appendix A – Required Data Sets
The following tables must be staged to the HPSA from the college’s application databases.
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SM.STU_D
SM.STU_COURSE_D
SM.STU_CLASS_D
SM.YRQ_M
TRAN.TRAN_DEGREE_D
Appendix B – current production deployment at WWCC.