1. Georgia College & State University June 10, 2008
Using DegreeWorks as a Tool to Improve Students’ Academic Advising Experiences
Georgia College & State University
June 10, 2008
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share some information about DegreeWorks with you today. This is a product that we’re proud to provide to the students and advisors, and we’re particularly excited about the many ways that we’ll be able to use this tool to improve academic advising on our campus.

2. Why Use Degree Evaluation Software?
Provides a clear, efficient, and reliable method to track degree progress and to prepare for registration
Supports and facilitates academic advising
Degree evaluation programs provide students, faculty, and advisors with a clear, efficient, and reliable method to track degree progress and to prepare for registration. Each of these descriptors is critical for a successful product.
Clear because we want students to receive all the information they need in a easy-to-read format.
Efficient because we want to save time. An audit of degree requirements can take up to 15 minutes to process manually. An online degree evaluation takes seconds to process. This literally saves hundreds of hours of advisor and staff time. As a result, degree information is available to students at any time, rather than only when a staff member is available to process the information.
Reliable because we want students to have accurate information, and these programs help reduce human error.
It’s also important to note that degree evaluation software, like DegreeWorks, is designed to support and facilitate academic advising, but is not intended to replace face-to-face advising sessions. DegreeWorks is a tool to help us achieve our goals, not to replace the personal relationship and critical interaction between an advisor and advisee.
At Georgia College, we’ve identified a number of ways that this tool will help us achieve the goals that we have as an institution and as a system. Before I talk about these goals, I’d like to take you on a brief tour through the product. After you’ve had a chance to see what DegreeWorks can do, I’ll further explain how we will use this product to help us improve our students’ advising experiences.

3. The main feature of DegreeWorks is the student worksheet
The main feature of DegreeWorks is the student worksheet. This worksheet automatically loads when the student accesses her record.
Student worksheets contain a wealth of information for the student and advisor, and can be customized by the institution.
Our worksheet begins with a summary of key academic information from the student’s record.
The second part of our worksheet is the Degree Progress Bar. This feature is one of our advisor and students’ favorites. It shows a student – using a very clear measure – approximately how far she is on her path toward degree completion. We hope this progress bar will serve as both a reminder and a source of encouragement for students. You can see what a powerful tool this can be by looking carefully at this student’s worksheet. Because of some choices the student made, he has already completed enough hours to be classified as a junior, but has only completed 1/3 of his actual degree requirements.
Next, we provide students with a legend to help them understand the information that comes later in the worksheet. If a student needs help, we also have a FAQ section, and a help section, linked from the top of every page.
From this point, our worksheet outlines specific requirements for a degree. We begin with overall requirements such as total hours and courses in residency. For example, this worksheet shows a student how many more hours he must earn in order to complete the 120 hour requirement for a degree.

4. The next sections of the worksheet addresses specific requirements in the student’s curriculum: core, major, and, if a student has chosen to complete them, minor and concentrations. To illustrate how this information appears, I’ve pulled this example from one student’s core curriculum requirements.
All requirements are listed on the left hand side of the page.
If a student has completed the requirement, the box at the left is checked, and the course that she used to fulfill that requirement is listed to the right. If the course was transferred from another institution, the sending institution and the course number from that institution is also noted.
If a student has not completed a requirement, then the box is not checked, and a “Still Needed” message appears, along with a list of courses that the student could use to complete that requirement. These courses are linked to our catalog, so students can find more information about the course and any prerequisites that it might have.
Courses appear in these sections as soon as a student registers. That means that after registering, a student can immediately double-check to ensure that she is in the courses she needs to remain on track.
The section for a student’s major, along with the sections for any minor or concentrations that he might have, are also listed in this same format.

5. The final part of the worksheet that I want to highlight includes non-course requirements for the degree. This is where we check to make sure that the student has completed his Regents’ Reading and Writing tests, as well as requirements set by the state legislature.
These student worksheets are based on the program of study that each student has on file with the Registrar’s Office. Undeclared students receive a worksheet that includes core requirements, testing requirements, and information about the resources available as she investigates possible majors.

6. Another tool that we have to assist students – particularly undeclared students – with the major selection process is the “What If” function. This function allows a student to process a worksheet “as if” she had another major. For instance, an undeclared student could look at what her requirements would look like if she were a Biology major. This would be particularly important because our Science majors have different core requirements than our Non-Science majors, and using the “what if” function could help the student make better course selection choices.
This tool also gives students the information necessary to make informed choices about changing majors, adding a minor, or making other changes to their degree completion plans.
At Georgia College, we have already implemented the worksheet and what-if features, and they’ve been very well received on our campus. The next two features that I’ll briefly discuss are part of the second phase of our implementation, which we will complete by the beginning of the Fall semester.

7. By far, the beneficial and exciting functionality that comes with the DegreeWorks product is the Student Planner. This feature allows a student or advisor to develop a semester-by-semester, degree completion plan. The plan can be started at any time and created for any number of future semesters. This means that a student can begin developing a plan as soon as she arrives on campus. Academic departments can also create templates for their major programs that students can use to start this process. All of these plans are designed to be saved, updated before or during advising sessions, and used as a reference during registration.
This screen shows how the student planner works. The worksheet that we viewed previously appears on the left hand of the screen (slightly scrunched). Students enter their course plans on the right, either by typing in the courses or dragging and dropping them from the worksheet. Once the plan is entered, the student can check to makes sure that her plan will help her complete degree requirements simply by clicking one button.

8. The worksheet that is generated shows the student whether or not her plan would fulfill all of her requirements. This process is also a good example of how DegreeWorks needs to be used in collaboration with our existing advising process. This product will not tell a student whether or not the course will be offered in the semester that she lists it on her planner. In fact, because students might be planning courses three or four years in advance, it would be impossible to accurately predict if all the courses will be offered in the semester that a student wants to take them. However, our faculty advisors are very familiar with the course offering patterns in their departments, and can help a student with appropriate sequences and alternatives.
The information stored in the student planner is also critical because we can develop reports to access this information, which will help us do an even better job of offering the courses that students need, when students need them.

9. Finally, DegreeWorks also provides us with the ability to create advising notes that become part of the student’s record. To help you see how this will work, I have created some sample notes for a student record. I’ve noted that this student attended advising appointments and was counseled to be careful about financial aid implications before dropping a course.
The benefit of these notes is that they stay with the student’s record. No matter how many times the student changes her major or advisor, these notes remain part of her permanent file.

10. Improving the Advising Experience
Take academic advising to a higher level
Encourage student preparation
Empower students
Shift focus of advising sessions
Focus on student development
With that introduction, I’d like to talk about how the tools DegreeWorks offers will help us improve the advising experience for our students.
First, we plan to use this product to take academic advising to a higher level. When I say that, I mean we’re hoping that advising becomes much, much more than students simply coming to their advisor to find out what classes they need to take the following semester.
We envision an advising setting in which students are encouraged (strongly encouraged) to review their worksheets and planners prior to meeting with their advisors. They come to an advising appointment prepared with proposed courses and questions. They are active, responsible, and empowered participants in the advising and course selection process.
This kind of preparation will allow us to shift the focus of advising appointments. Because we can spend less time with course selection, we can use that time to focus on career and professional development, post-graduation planning, and relevant academic issues
We will also have more time to address key development issues for each class level, such as reviewing the importance of Regents testing and adjusting to college-level work with freshmen, and applying for graduation with seniors.

11. Improving the Advising Experience
2. Emphasize retention and graduation, starting at matriculation
Encourage development of degree completion plans
Track progress toward degree completion in measurable terms
Help students understand how their choices may affect them (Guaranteed Tuition Plan, HOPE)
Another reason that we are excited about this tool is that it will help us talk about graduation with students from the moment they arrive on our campus.
Using the student planner, we will encourage students to begin a semester-by-semester degree completion plan as soon as they matriculate, and to maintain that plan throughout their enrollment. This Fall, we will make completion of a plan a requirement in our first year seminar courses for our undeclared students, and will encourage other faculty across campus to do the same.
We will use the degree progress bar on student worksheets will allow students and advisors to track their progress toward degree completion in measurable terms, and see graduation as an attainable goal.
We will also use this tool to help students research and understand how their choices may affect their ability to participate in the Guaranteed Tuition Plan, maintain HOPE, and use other key programs. We know and understand that these programs are critical to student retention and the ability of many of our students to afford college, and that students must have the tools to make informed, responsible choices in order to fully benefit from these programs.

12. Improving the Advising Experience
3. Increase institutional and student accountability
Document advising sessions
Minimize errors and misunderstandings
Use reporting features to develop semester course schedules
Help students become active participants in the advisee-advisor relationship
Finally, we’re excited about DegreeWorks because it will help us increase our level of accountability, and to encourage student accountability as well.
As I mentioned earlier, DegereWorks will help us document advising sessions. This will be one way that we monitor the frequency of advising sessions, consistent with the recommendations in the Advising Task Force Report.
DegreeWorks will also help us minimize errors and misunderstandings that sometimes occur during the advising process. This will happen as students and advisors have access to the same information, information is available to both advisor and student at any time.
The feature in the Student Planner that lets us gather information about what courses students need to take and when will help us develop semester course schedules that help students meet graduation goals.
And, finally, it helps a student developmentally by helping them take responsibility for their education and an active role in the advising process. At Georgia College, we consistently stress three Rs with our students: reason, respect, and responsibility. Students need to take responsibility for their choices, but we recognize that we need to give them the tools to do that. We believe that Degree Works is one of these tools.