How Does This

Course Transfer? AACRAO 2012

Session 058

Wednesday, 8-9am

Dawn Light

Alexis Ribeiro

Sue Eveland

Today’s Transfer Topics

Introductions

Decisions about course transferability

Processing transfer courses

Challenges with transfer credit

Policies about course transfer and

Articulation Agreements

Automation

Useful tools for students and advisors

Intro’s

Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges

Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges

Background: SOC & The DNS

• The SOC Consortium: 2000+ institutions who agree to flexibility in transfer for military students

• The SOC Degree Network System: a participatory articulation system providing colleges, courses, and transfer credit based on a selection and peer review process

• The program started in 1981 and includes: > 159 colleges

> 460+ Course Categories

> 8600+ course articulations

> 500+ Associate degrees; 460+ Bachelor’s degrees

> More than 857,000 Student Agreements to date

University of The Pacific Small private institution

Total enrollment 7,000 – approx 4,000 undergraduates

Main campus in Stockton, California

SIS-Banner, Degree Audit-CAPP, Scheduling-Ad Astra

Alexis Ribeiro – Assistant Registrar/Transfer Articulation Specialist

University of Oregon

4-Year public, Research 1, AAU

24,447 students; 20,631 undergrads

30 staff/10 students

Banner, u.achieve, 25Live, Singularity,

EDI, AVOW, TES

Decisions About Course

Transferability

• Content - Is the overall content comparable?

• Outcomes - Are the learning outcomes the same?

• Level - How can differences in level be resolved when content is comparable?

• Credits - Are policies flexible regarding credit conversions? How are credit deficits/surpluses handled?

Best Practices in Articulation

Deciding Factors For Course Transferability

• Regional Accreditation • Compare course descriptions

• units, level, pre-reqs, looking for 60% comparable content

• Course will transfer 1 of 4 ways

• Non Transferable • General Elective • Pacific course credit and/or GE • Tran Pend, requires syllabus

• Pacific aligns with California Community College course transferability to the University of California system

Which Courses Will Transfer?

Courses must be from a regionally

accredited Institution

Courses must be college level (not

remedial)

Courses may transfer but may not be

applicable to the degree the student

chooses to earn

Processing Course

Transfer

SOC DNS Course Categories • The Course Category is the foundation of two-way

guaranteed course transferability among Core DNS members

• Codes are developed to identify comparable courses in a given subject area

• Deciphering the Code: EC201A > Two-letter prefix indicates subject area

(EC = Economics)

> Three-digit number identifies the specific category topic (201 = Principles of Macroeconomics)

> Appended single letter indicates degree-related category > A - Associate Degree

> B - Bachelor’s Degree

Category Development Process

100% approved : Course is entered into T-Tables Or: not 100% approved : New course not added to Category Code or rejecting college’s course removed from Category Code

Categories

developed by SOC

DNS staff and

subject-matter

experts

New courses

“tentatively”

assigned Category

Codes based on

content

Courses are sent out

for peer review;

resulting in either of

the following:

Peer Review Example

Processes of Course Transfer

• Once admission file is complete Admission-Processor performs data entry of applicants transcripts using Banner • If all courses are articulated in database file is

ready for review and sent to Admission-Counselor

• If there are courses that are not articulated copy of transcript is sent to Registrar-Articulation Specialist for review

• Database consists of 80K+ course to course

articulations for CA, out of state and international institutions as well as testing programs i.e. AP & IB

Process for Course Transfer

Transfer work processed for applicants for admission (prior to offer) and for “in-schools”

UO maintains complete course-for-course artics for all Oregon 4-year public (7), private (17), and community college (17) courses.

UO has about 500K course pairs stored in Banner

UO Course Transfer, cont. New courses at lower division level are

processed in the RO, using TES for information; gen ed satisfying also determined in RO

Upper division determined in RO if possible (good match of course descriptions) OR artic’d as a generic upper division elective pair.

Students with generic upper division courses can petition the department for a equivalency (for just that student or for all students)

Challenges and Pitfalls

With Transfer Credit

• Content - Topic percentage matches; vague course catalog descriptions

• Outcomes - e.g., English composition--type of text read, as opposed to writing skills

• Level - Upper vs. Lower; unconventional numbering systems

• Credits - Exact match requirements; quarter vs. semester

• Process - Faculty vs. Registrar/evaluation team; academic petition requirements

• Accreditation - Regional versus national; specialized

• Other - Proprietary vs. “traditional” institutions; academic discipline variations

Pitfalls in Articulation

Challenges to the System

• Balancing institutional autonomy with flexibility required for military populations

• Poor course catalog descriptions; excessive requests for syllabi

• Late responses to course circulations • Updating new or changed courses

• Degrees falling below DNS transferability standard result in

removal

Challenges of Course Transfer

• Prior to 2006 articulation did not exist on campus

• Building from the ground up was a challenge

• Gaining trust and cooperation of faculty was our

biggest hurdle

• Private Institution: faculty perceptions of validity of

courses from other institutions

• Not many problems building AP articulation, IB was

more of a challenge and CLEP continues to be an issue

• In the first 2 years all courses went through faculty

review, this caused a VERY slow turnaround time and

created problems for Admissions.

• After trust was gained Articulation Specialist is able to make decisions with little to no faculty input. This allows for a quicker and smoother Admission process

Challenges

Keeping up with all changes in Oregon

Schools (OrACRAO created an excel

template to record and share changes)

International Schools – harder to find

course information; different numbering

systems

Lower-Division/Upper-Division mis-matches

and managing student expectations

Policies for Course Transfer

& Articulation Agreements

• Major/major-related degree requirements for degrees in GT networks must attain 40% transferability

• For general education elective requirements, (e.g., “Humanities Electives”) SOC DNS institutions accept each other’s courses in transfer within designated course area families ( Arts and Humanities, Communications, Mathematics, Sciences, and Social Science)

• 4-year institutions accept approved DNS associate degree programs in related networks as 45% of credits required for Bachelor’s degrees

Articulation Agreements & Policies

Articulation Agreements

• University of The Pacific does not have signed articulation agreements • All articulations are unilateral

• Currently articulation is course to course, eventually

we will create major to major articulations with our top feeder schools

Articulation Agreements

UO’s definition of an “articulation

agreement” is that we will process a

course-for-course crosswalk for every

course in the other school’s curriculum

(sometimes just done for one college at

another university).

UO has no major-to-major articulations

and no signed agreements

Automation

Transfer Credit Automation

• Currently Admission processing and articulation are a data entry manual process

• Document Imaging will go live for the Fall 2012 semester

• CollegeSource TES is used by Registrar & Admission staff.

• CollegeSource.org is open to anyone using a campus computer.

Transfer Credit Automation We strive for a 3-5 day turnaround on all

incoming transfer articulations

EDI for college transcripts

Loads into Banner

Matching to Banner record

Creates image in Singularity

Indexes the image to the record

Fires off workflows

Loads course data into Banner

Transfer Credit Automation AP Upload for awarding credit for scores Loads scores into test score tables

Job runs to create transfer equivs based on scores

We process about 18,000 transcripts and scores each year; 49% are EDI or AP

We notify students by email when equivs and degree audit are ready to view in DuckWeb

Useful Tools for

Students and Advisors

Transfer Tools

• Courses listed by College

• Courses listed by Code

See Chapter 8 of the DNS-2

or DNS-4 Handbook or visit: http://www.soc.aascu.org/dnstools/GrntdTransfCrs

Useful Tools for Student Transfer

• Database in Banner consists of courses articulated Fall 2006 and forward

• ROAR (Roam Online Articulation Reports) was created in Jan 2008. An interactive website used by entire Pacific campus as well as prospective students and CC advisors. • ROAR is a live feed from Banner

• List serve for CA Articulation Officers sends out

annual curricular updates • Articulations already in place are kept up to date

using this tool

• Articulation Evaluations are available to view through student portal once applicant has confirmed

• CAPP Degree Audit available through InsidePacific

Useful Tools for Students

UO’s Transfer Course Equivalency site:

http://registrar.uoregon.edu/current_students/transfer-articulation

Enter a Subject here

Or dump entire current

catalog OR all catalog

records

ATLAS

Articulation Transfer Linked Audit System

http://registrar.uoregon.edu/uo_atlas

ATLAS

Anyone can use ATLAS (current students,

prospective students, advisers, parents)

Upload or type in courses and grades

(completed or planned)

Run “what if” degree audits to see how

credits will count toward chosen major

Questions?

How to Contact Us:

• Dawn Light

Degree Network Project Director

Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges LightD@aascu.org

• www.soc.aascu.org

Contact SOC

Alexis Ribeiro, Assistant Registrar aribeiro@pacific.edu ROAR: www.go.pacific.edu/roar

Sue Eveland, University Registrar

seveland@uoregon.edu

registrar.uoregon.edu/current_students/

transfer-articulation

Thank You!