This past October saw part of our transfer credit setup go-live which enabled the admissions offices to enter student data for transfer applicants. This functionality is currently being utilized by only the undergraduate admissions and undergraduate international admissions staff, but within the next few months transfer applicants will begin to see their transfer work in the new UBSIS.

The transfer credit team is currently testing articulation rules with student data as part of our November go-live validation process. Once the data has been validated and the rules are activated, the student data being entered by admissions will be operational with the new rule-sets in place.

The Transfer Credit team has begun the process of merging the converted data with our manually encoded data.  Testing of this data as well as reviewing other configuration set-ups and customization testing continues as we prepare for our October 4th “Go-live.”  The first transfer credit change will support Admissions and International Admissions in entering and processing their Fall 2011 transfer applicants.  User acceptance testing and training will begin soon.

One change we can report is how audit reports will be identified by their grade assignment.   If a course comes in from transfer it will have a grade preceded by a ‘T’ (TA, TB, TC…).  If a course reflects an averaging of transfer grades the letter grade will be preceded by an ‘M’ (MA, MB, MC…).  The first population of students who will see this change will be the Fall 2011 applicant.

The Transfer Credit team has converted all of our transfer institution subjects and courses, and completed our first round of data testing.  The TC team is using this data to begin entering values needed to encode some of our articulation rules.

One focus of this work is the transfer credit grades – where transferred courses will now show up with their own identified grades.  Reports will show a grade of TA, TA-, TB+, etc.  When two or more courses map to a UB course and an average is needed for these courses a grade of ‘M’ will show up (MA, MA-, MB+, etc.)

Students, advisors, and admissions should realize a streamlined process as the result of this additional functionality, starting this October when they begin to process transfer work.  This change will make it much easier to identify what courses came from an external source.

This represents a change in business for current students and staff, who are familiar with the current legacy system.   Communication (and staff training) will be necessary to make sure everyone understands the business process redesign, especially staff using transfer grades for admissions purposes.

The Transfer Credit team has been continuing the focus on converting data from the legacy system into UBSIS.  We successfully migrated all of our transfer institution subjects and courses, and have completed the first round of data testing.  The team is using this data to begin entering values needed to encode some of the articulation rules.

The team is labeling the converted student data populations “pre-DARS,” “DARS inactive,” and “DARS active” in order to differentiate the information when accessed by departmental advisors, the Student Response Center, Academic Processing Services and others.  Once student transfer data is converted in support of Student Records (targeted for March 2011), it will consolidate the data from two systems into a single integrated solution that will reduce errors and create up-to-date reports.

Training will concentrate on working with students from these different populations.  This will reduce the risk of students not graduating because of lost or inaccurately reported credits.  In the old system, staff members were often frustrated by having to manually re-adjust a student’s course work due to changing transfer course evaluations.  UBSIS makes articulation rules less variable by major and locks down a student’s transfer evaluation.  Should a student change majors, there is less chance they will inadvertently repeat a course and lose credit due to a transfer course evaluation changing.

The Transfer Credit Team has been focusing on converting data from the legacy system into UBSIS.  Our technical team has been busy converting some of our articulation rules while Transfer Articulation Services has been working on those rules that we were not able to convert programmatically. 

One of the changes that we are preparing for is a transition toward more global, consistent articulation.  The team is setting-up rules that will be applied in a more global fashion, so that courses do not have different rules for different majors.  Additionally, evaluated transfer work will be posted to a student’s transcript, allowing us to ‘lock’ down articulation.  These two changes should prevent students from inadvertently losing credit because the identity of their course changed.

In the old system, staff were often frustrated by having to manually re-adjust a student’s course work due to changing transfer course evaluations.  Students were placed at risk of not graduating because they had lost credits.  UBSIS makes articulation rules less variable by major and locks down a student’s transfer evaluation.  Should a student change majors, there is less chance they will inadvertently repeat a course and lose credit due to a transfer course evaluation changing.

The Transfer Credit team has been working closely with representatives from Transfer Articulation Services, Academic Processing Services, the DARS teams, as well as both Admissions and International Admissions to ensure a smooth process. 

The team has welcomed Claudine Sikorski and Starlynn Ferguson to the project.  They are working in the Transfer Articulation Services office to assist in cleaning up our articulation rules and in configuring transfer rules in UBSIS.