TADA Project

Best practices

One objective of the Transfer Articulation and Degree Audit (TADA) project was to establish and implement best practices across all five University of Minnesota campuses. The goals of this effort include:

Improve the student and advisor user experience
Allow for more consistent training and support
Reduce the maintenance overhead
Increase the utility of data for analysis

The best practices established are the result of system-wide discussions and user research focused on the look and feel of the APAS; curricular quantification, clarification, and encoding maintenance; audit output data; and the connections between PCAS and APAS. Additional best practices related to transfer credit entry and articulation are currently in development.

These practices help keep our use of APAS/uAchieve aligned and efficient in serving students. Best practices are meant to be alive and growing and are explicitly not a rigid set of rules. Encoders and leadership aspire to follow these practices when possible, and to continue to bring forward new ideas to share and improve practices across all campuses.

Some of the established best practices were already in use on one or more campus and will be adopted by the others.

Terms

Curricular clarification and quantification - the process of ensuring that program requirements can be explained clearly in the APAS and PCAS systems, counted by credit, and student progress through those requirements can be tracked meaningfully.

Encoding - Programing work done to set up rules in APAS/uAchieve. Those rules define academic program requirements and sub-requirements in the APAS system based on the approved program in PCAS. Some encoders also use APAS/uAchieve to set up Transfer Articulation rules.

Progress to degree - a calculation of credits that helps communicate to students exactly how each class they select moves them toward their degree. Progress to degree encoding requires curricular quantification and clarification.

Have questions on other terms in the best practices? Let us know! tada@umn.edu

Best practices in APAS design and user experience

Several practices were identified that increase accessibility, readability, and ensure a consistent experience for students and advisors regardless of the program, college, or campus a student is in. The established best practices include:

Using title case at the requirement level and sentence case for other text (a change from the previous practice of using all capital letters for text)
Minimal, concise text at the requirement level (details available in the expanded view)
Use of common language for common and comparable requirements across audits
Use of plain language that avoids undefined jargon, passive voice, and complex sentence structures
Use of spacing between sub-requirements to increase readability
Using encoding fields so that there is a hierarchy of data compatible with screen readers
Displaying the program admission requirements within the major requirements section of the APAS
Displaying a section that organizes data as it relates to quantifying a student’s progress to degree
Not displaying the graphical depiction of degree progress at the top of the audit (it was commonly misunderstood)
Using a formatted legend that appears as a pop-up accessible by a link (rather than a text-only legend built into the audit)

Best practices in curricular quantification, clarification, and encoding maintenance

The practices identified in this category are not changing curriculum, rather ensuring that the requirements reflected in the University catalog degree audit accurately reflect the intent of the faculty. This benefits students seeking to successfully complete degrees and those who advise them.

All major, minor, and certificate requirements should be listed in PCAS and APAS. The content in both systems should match.
Course groups should trend toward being smaller and APAS requirements should trend toward not including large number of sub-requirements.
The “Program Requirements” section in PCAS should be reserved for extra explanation of the requirements of the major, minor, or certificate. Collegiate or division requirements may also be added to these areas if not stated elsewhere in PCAS.
Admission requirements for majors should be listed in the “Admissions Requirements” section of PCAS.
All active identities of a cross-listed course group should be listed any place where one of them is listed as an option.
Requirements not defined by a course or credit should be included in PCAS and use a system that can control for the requirement (e.g., student group, milestone).
Each course group in PCAS should indicate a minimum number of credits.
When possible, the number of credits required should be expressed with the “course list” functionality in PCAS and should add up to the “Required credits within the major” field.
The number of required credits for the major should equal the total entered in the “Required credits within the major” field. This includes major requirements listed under Admissions Requirements and under Program Requirements.
The “Required credits within the major” field does not need to include collegiate or University requirements, but the decision to consider a University or collegiate requirement as part of the overall major required credits should be consistent within a campus.
Requirements in PCAS should be documented in a manner that can be encoded in APAS to document a student’s progress toward and ultimate completion of requirements.
Requirements should be encoded as needed to control for the requirement, without over-encoding.
University requirements such as the following for should be controlled for on the APAS:
- University minimum credit requirement
- University of Minnesota GPA requirement
- University of Minnesota S grade credit limit
- Related to credits completed on a given campus, where applicable (“residency”):
  - Overall
  - Upper-division
  - Final semester/year
  - Upper-division in the major
  - Upper-division in the minor
Each major requirements section on the APAS should include the following requirements (including transfer credits counting toward major requirements):
- Major GPA
- Major minimum credit requirement
Course sequences and paired courses should be encoded (APAS) within each course in its own sub-requirement
Settings should not allow credit splitting across requirements.
Progress to degree should not reference multiple requirements fulfilled by the same courses.

Best practices in data entry and data management

These practices increase accuracy, create efficiencies, and increase the potential for data analysis.

Implement the consistent practice of using “GPAName” field to categorize requirements.
Where possible, use consistent names across common and comparable requirement groups for queryable fields (e.g., requirement names for Liberal Education requirements).
Use the same uAchieve requirements across programs when possible (i.e., the curriculum is the same across programs).
Audit output data should be regularly analyzed in order to test for correct/appropriate encoding.
Transfer articulation data should be regularly analyzed.
All audits have a status completion summary statement at the top, statement language is consistent on all audits.

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