University of Colorado students will soon be able to electronically chart their course toward earning a degree, thanks to a collaboration between UIS and CU campus partners.

This project was to implement the new uAchieve Planner tool to enhance the uAchieve Degree Audit suite for all CU campuses and provide the next step in facilitating student success.

The tool expands upon the Degree Audit and Transfer Credit (DATC) system, allowing students to track degree progress and craft personalized degree program based on their individual degree requirements and past completed coursework, in consultation with academic advisors.

New tool aids planning, enhances student retention

This tool allows students to digitally map out their degree plan against university course data. Students can use this information to work with advisors, either in-person or remotely, to determine the best plan for them.

“The tool will help with retention by allowing students to know from a very early time, whether their planned courses will satisfy degree requirements and ensure they are on a path toward graduation,” said Joseph Ciecior, the project lead and Application Manager Degree Audit for UIS.

Departments can access student plan data through administrative reports, which allows them to set class schedules based on how many students have planned to take that course.  This enhanced course demand data has the potential to increase efficiency when establishing course offerings.

Collaboration for student success

As the centralized owner of the uAchieve suite for all campuses, UIS undertook this project with its campus partners from April 2017 to December 2017. This project took an estimated 1,000 hours to complete, not including campus testing.

UIS worked closely with the vendor CollegeSource to install this new tool.  Many integrations were already created as part of advanced work during the uAchieve Degree Audit project, which allowed for a smooth implementation.

UIS released the tool to campuses in December, and campuses are configuring the system for an anticipated rollout later this year.