The Road toAutomated Course Exceptions

@Elon University

Session M2.01Monday, February 2, 2015

11am-12pm

Melissa HolmesELON UNIVERSITY

Course Exceptions/Substitutions are granted at Elon University in special circumstances when the Department Chair or Program Director considers an adequate exchange for a graduation requirement has been met or the intent of a requirement has been met in some way other than the traditional requirement as listed in the academic catalog.

What are Course Exceptions/Substitutions at Elon?

They may only be granted by the Department Chair or Program Director.

Where we’ve been: Overview of the old process

• Seniors came into the Registrar’s Office for a graduation audit appointment with Susan Patton, Sr. Associate Registrar. Intermittently, a senior would find out they were missing a requirement or were under the assumption something was counting for that requirement, however, it had not been officially approved.

• Mrs. Patton would send the student to the Department Chair or Program Director to inquire about the possibility of receiving a “note of substitution or exception” to fulfill the requirement.

• Student would email or walk to chairs office and request the “note”.• If approved, chair would then call, email, send a signed piece of paper back across campus with the student,

send note via campus mail, carrier pigeon, pony express or other method to get these notes of substitution back to the registrar official.

• If Mrs. Patton remembered, and had time between meeting with 1200-1400 senior students during fall semester, to forward the information on to Jim Donathan, Assistant Director of Academic Support, (the person who actually programs the colleague degree audit and manually makes the changes to degree audit), then the degree audit would reflect the substitution/exception correctly for the student and advisors in the future.

• If Mr. Donathan, a power advisor on campus, had the same scenario reversed, and received documentation on an exception in multitude of methods of arrival, he too would try to let Susan know. At the time the old process was in place Susan wasn’t using the degree audit to help certify graduates due to inaccuracies caused by situations like this. Our staff re-created each degree audit on paper by hand prior to the senior meeting and she then added the noted exceptions when she received them.

• This process was very disjointed, inaccurate, and difficult (impossible) to maintain.

1) BIO 375 Toxicology can be applied to the Biology elective requirement in the Biology major. This substitution applies to both the BA and BS degree. It can apply to any catalog year.

2) Student has permission to replace SCI 121 Science Without Borders with ENS 111/113 Intro to Environmental Studies.

3) This student transferred in PSY 2XX Crime in American Cities for 3 semester hours. It can apply towards the electives in their Criminal Justice Minor. Since it is a 3 sh course, the student can satisfy the CJS minor with 19 credits instead of 20.

4) For the Peace and Conflict Studies Minor, student has permission to replace PCS 350 (Foundations of Peace and Conflict Studies) with the course transferred to Elon International Human Rights taken summer 2014 at the Washington Center. PCS 350 cannot be offered Spring 2015 and it is required for this student to graduate Spring 2015 with a PCS minor.

5) MKT 418 to replace the SEM class requirement no longer offered by the SEM Department: SEM 426 Sport Governance

6) STS 112 will satisfy requirement for STS 212

Examples of course exceptions/substitutions:

Was SharePoint the Solution ?A meeting with one of the department chairs (Elon Core Curriculum), academic support representatives, the registrar, senior associate registrar, and multimedia technology was facilitated to discuss the needs for an electronic process to see if SharePoint was a viable solution. After the initial meeting: • The online form was first visualized and created with the idea that the

student would submit the form with advice/help of Susan (registrar team) or Jim (academic support team). The form would then route to the registrar for approval and the correct approving chair would be added by our office. The form would then route to the department for approval. All parties would be emailed of the outcome at the end of the process.

• After completely building and testing the form this way, the process wasn’t approved by upper management so we recalculated and developed another (pre-approved) process. (Words of wisdom--make sure new process visions are approved all the way up

the chain of command prior to spending hours building forms)

The New Process

• The student comes in to meet with Susan Patton or another advisor and are instructed to contact the chair to request an exception or substitution.

• Student emails or meets with the chair and the chair either approves or denies the exception/substitution request.

• If the chair approves the exception/substitution they then determine if it is an individual or blanket exception/substitution and fill out the online form located on our webpage under the faculty resources link from our webpage.

• As an added security measure, only Department Chairs and Program Directors have access to view and fill out the form.

• The form then routes to the registrars office and academic support. Susan documents the changes on the applicable senior graduation audit and then sends the form to Fortis, our electronic student record database. Our student assistants then index the emailed copy of the form to the correct student file. Associate Registrar, Robin Straka, or Jim (depending on if the course was taken abroad) then modifies the colleague student degree audit or programs the degree audit if it is a blanket substitution or exception.

• The student, Chair and the student’s academic advisor are all are emailed a confirmation of the substitution/exception at the end of the process.

Where we’ve gone:How SharePoint Has Helped

• Centralized and standardized the process• Keeps all offices aware of pertinent information• Quick overview page developed for key people using the process• All exceptions/substitutions are housed in one location• Reports can be created based on any or all fields in the form• All exceptions/substitutions that affect individual students are now sent to Fortis

document imaging in a standardized way• Reports can be generated at the end of a term/academic year to review catalog

requirements to discuss possible changes to the curriculum• All records are delivered and maintained in the same easily searchable format

verses notes/emails/phone calls etc. in the past.• Deans requested to be included in the workflow and are now notified by email

when an exception/substitution is submitted. They were never included in the prior process.

• Academic advisors are notified of exception/substitutions to their advisees record.

Submitting & Processing Exceptions/Substitutions

in SharePoint

The Substitution/Exception form is housed on our Office of the Registrar homepage under faculty resources and chair forms.

Chair/Program Director forms are housed here.

On the next page, the added protection measure will return an error message if the person logged into the computer is not the correct chair of the chosen department.

We made the rule- if the person loggedonto the computer doesn’t equal thedepartment chair then display the errormessage.

If the correct chair is logged in, the form appears and they fill out and submit the form.

Upon chair or program director submission, an email is automatically generated to Susan and Jim with instructions for each.

I later added the students name to the email subject for easy search in inboxes. (blocked here for privacy)

Clicking the link in the email takes you to the next screen

This is where Susan and Jim (and Robin if abroad box is checked) access the information the chair filled out on the form.

Jim/Robin checks the Degree Audit box once the audit has been programed

Susan checks the send to Fortis box which generates an email that she quickly “prints to fortis” which sends it to our scan station where student assistants attach to correct students file.

Once both buttons are checked the approval email is automatically generated to everyone.

If Susan, Jim or Robin have questions or comments they can add them here, each time the field changes a new email with the update goes to all three.

When Susan clicks the send to fortis button on the previous screen, an email is automatically generated to her which contains all of the information from the form which she then easily scans the email to Fortis (our document scanning system for student records)

Susan simply clicks the Add-Ins button at the top of the email and clicks send to fortis, chooses the Registrar In Basket on the next screen that opens and then clicks ok. Our student assistants then receive the file in the fortis in basket and index the file to the appropriate student name and id on the form.

I also created an overview page for Susan, Robin or Jim that they saved to their favorites in their web browser to quickly pull up and sort on any of the columns in the form if they need to go back and review the form itself for any reason. This is an alternative to searching emails.

You can sort or search on the submitter, the student name, or id# etc. on the overview page.

The Advantages

• Everyone involved with the process gets notified

• Reporting. The reporting aspect of this new process leads to Chairs/Deans/Registrar/Provost getting a “big picture” of overall substitutions/exceptions that are being made. These reports could eventually lead to curriculum changes or at the very least a review of why and how many variances are being made to the existing curriculum.

Reporting

SharePoint forms have great reporting functions. You can sort or group by any item listed on the form to create custom reports. All reports created can then be exported to Excel.

Sample Reports

Grouped by term for end of year reporting

Grouped by type of substitution/exception

Grouped by Department

Report downloaded to Excel

We have operated this process successfully for one full semester. Both Susan and Jim who are the primary end users have been extremely pleased with the results of the new form.

“The S/E form provides the documentation I need to make exceptions and overrides in the degree audit and ensures that the department chair is aware of an exception and approves it. It provides a way for the Registrar/Provost to monitor the number and kind of exceptions being made and delivers the information to both Susan and me in an efficient and timely manner. The S/E form also allows the department chair to make blanket substitutions so that a message isn’t needed for each individual student” ~ Jim Donathan

“I really, really do appreciate that correct information goes to all parties involved in the audit process. I also love the cumulative spread sheet so that I can look back and see if a substitution has been made previously for course so that I can benefit from this information.” ~Susan Patton