Are you on track? Degree evaluations

How to Generate a Degree Evaluation
Program Evaluation
Group/Area Evaluation

Thanks to Professor Andy Langewisch for the original document. It has been modified some by Registrar Ed Siffring. Andy’s initial draft was very helpful in cleaning up the underlying program, as well as in providing this useful resource for users. The good stuff is all Professor Langewisch’s; the mistakes are all mine.
Also, thanks to the unnamed student who walked by my office and allowed me to use screenshots of his/her data.

Disclaimer:
The results from these evaluations are not official. Your catalog is still what we use to determine if your program is complete.
Developing this tool has been a big project and it still contains some errors. General Education, especially, is tough. Transfer credit proves problematic. At this point, substitutions and waivers previously granted on RGQs don’t show in Banner.
If you find errors in the degree evaluation or find a better way of providing these instructions, please send details to ed.siffring@cune.edu     

How to Generate a Degree Evaluation:

Log into Banner using your student ID and PIN
From the Main menu, choose Student and Financial Aid, then Student Records, then Degree Evaluation.
Choose a term. If there is more than one available, the difference will be in which ‘in progress’ courses are evaluated. (At some point you will be registered for next semester and still not have grades for this semester.)
Click the Submit button.
You will receive a “Degree Evaluation Record” screen which lists the academic plan recorded for you. (If it is not correct, go here: acadprgdeclaration.pdf, download the form, print it, fill it out, sign it, have your advisor sign it, and bring it to the Registrar’s office.)

select the Generate New Evaluation link in the bottom center of the screen.

You will be prompted to choose your program and a term from drop-down menus. Do so, then click the Generate Request button.
Wait a few seconds while the computer does its work.

Choose View Detail Requirements and check Click for printer friendly version (which isn’t all that well formatted, but only deletes the cell borders--otherwise it looks a lot like a screen dump).  Click the Select Desired View command button.

Actually, printing the report is not particularly helpful, and is definitely wasteful.

If you choose to view General Requirements you will get a screen summarizing whether you have met the overall requirements, like GPA and total number of hours. It doesn’t give details of required courses.

Program Evaluation

Catalog Term: Originally your catalog term will be the fall semester of the first year you take courses at Concordia. If you start in the summer it will be the next fall.
Your catalog defines the requirements you must meet to graduate. The University may make changes each year, but your requirements don’t change.
You may choose to move to a newer catalog, but not to a catalog prior to your matriculation here. (Changing catalogs requires the same process as changing a major; see the instructions earlier in this document.)

Request Number:  Each evaluation is stored.  If you requested it, you can also delete it, by following the View Previous Evaluations link (visible in the screen just above this) Deleting evaluations is fine, but not required; the registrar will periodically clean out the system.

Major(s)/Minor(s):  Note that the Lutheran Teacher Diploma (LTD) certification shows up in two places: in a major with a different name than that used by public education students (Elementary Education – LTD), and in  LTD students take classes that are classified as a minor.  Unlike some reports which only list Major 1, all majors and minors being pursued will be listed here.

Concentrations: Education students note that Banner uses three categories in its academic plans: Majors, Minors, and Concentrations. Minors are not associated with specific majors. Concentrations are associated with specific majors. By coincidence it is the same word as our Elementary Concentration. The Banner term “concentration” also applies to secondary Fields, Subjects, Content Teaching Areas, Broad Subject Areas, etc.

Total Required:  If the institutional requirement of (typically) 128 credits is met, the report will say ‘Yes’.   The number of credits Used towards this requirement is listed next.  If you requested a report that Includes In-Progress Courses, this number Used will include the courses in progress.  The rightmost columns count courses, not hours, in the case where we might do that. Some programs, like education, have minimum GPA requirements, which are listed, if applicable.

Group / Area Evaluation

The catalog’s specific course requirements are broken up into groups and areas, which are sets of courses. Within the areas and groups are various types of instructions Banner uses to compare the courses which a student has taken to the catalog requirements.
Areas are roughly analogous to majors, minors, concentrations, etc., and also to the ‘modules’ of the RGQ. (See note above regarding the term “concentration.”)
Areas are either a series of course requirements or a combination of groups.
Groups are subsets of areas used to make the logic of the requirements work most efficiently. Groups will be made up of a series of course requirements.
Everyone will have a number of Areas in their evaluation, but you might not have any Groups.
Just like at the program level, you may see whether you have met the general requirements and/or the detail requirements of Areas and Groups.

Met: the evaluation answers the question “Is this requirement met?” one line at a time. It tells you the answer by printing Yes or No.  Details are logically combined with OR statements, as in take THEO 241 OR THEO 242 OR THEO 251 OR THEO 252.  If the student has only taken one of these, three lines will report “No” (not met), and one will report “Yes.”

Cond: A conditional, or logical connector; i.e., AND or OR for the detail on the previous line and the detail on the current line.  Some of these have parentheses.  For our purposes, there is no difference between the connectors with parentheses and those without:

)AND(               is equivalent to AND

)OR(                 is equivalent to OR

Of the requirements connected with “OR” statements, the student must meet only one.

Of the requirements connected with “AND” statements, the student must meet all the individual requirements. (the group of “OR” requirements is probably one of the requirements connected by an “AND)

Rule:  Sometimes it is easier to represent the requirement with a rule. But you can only see the name of the rule. The rule itself has ANDs and ORs in it.  For example, the GE_SOCSCI rule is satisfied if the student has taken 6 credits from two areas of social science.  These rules correspond to catalog requirements.  If a rule is not met and you are not sure why, the name of the rule may help you as you check the catalog.

In the example above, you can see the General Education Core Area. It’s made up of three groups, of which one is shown.

Fine Arts is separated into two groups to allow checking for the requirements of “courses in two areas” and “6 hours of  Fine Arts.” (I’ll give $10 to the first student to tell me how to check both of those requirements in a more efficient way.)

Students in the new Gen Ed program will have a much different set of requirements.

In the example below, the student has met the LTD requirements for Old Testament, New Testament, and the Interp course.

Even though the lines for Theo 241, 242, 252 all say No, those four are connected by OR’s so if one is met, that requirement is met.

The student still needs Doc I, Doc II, and CTM to fulfill all the LTD course requirements.

The left half of the page describes the requirements; the right half describes the course used to fulfill the requirement.

Left side: (the requirement)

Subj  - The subject area of the requirement.  Usually this refers to a department.  Often it is a hyperlink, so if the degree evaluation is printed out, it may be underlined.

Attr – Not used. Short for “attribute.”

Low and High – A range of course numbers may satisfy a condition, as in history, where any History course numbered 115 – 132 will satisfy the general education history requirement.

Required Credit(s) – If Low and High are used, then this field may list the number of credits in that range that are required.

Required Course(s) – Can be used in combination with the Low and High specification.  Its use so far is rare.

Right side: (how the requirement is filled)

Term – The year and term in which a course was taken.  200310 refers to the year 2003, semester 1.  200320 refers to the year 2003, semester 2, 200330 is May term and 200340 is summer session.

Subj  Crse  Title – The department, course number and course title.  

Attr – Not used.

Credits – The number of credits the course was taken for.  Note that audited credits do not count in totals.

Grade – Besides the standard letter grades, P stands for Pass, WD for Withdrawal, and AU for Audit. 

Source – H stands for History; i.e. the record for that course is from a previous term; R means the student is currently registered for the class, and T means the course was transferred in.

Some requirements are very difficult to logically represent, and so there may be unresolved errors in the way a degree is being evaluated.  For example, a student may have started when CTA 102 and 103 were requirements, but while here the courses were recast as ECTA 104.  I’ll spare you the details.  Likewise, a music student may have ensemble requirements that can be met by auditing courses, but note that rules typically count credits.  If you think there is an error, check closely, then notify the registrar with the details. (Reporting “my evaluation doesn’t work” isn’t helpful. Reporting “the English major in catalog year 2002 is missing the requirement for English 231” will get the problem fixed.)

Note that “double-dipping,” where a course counts to meet requirements in more than one area, is allowed and is accounted for properly.

If you still have an undeclared program and major, only courses that count towards GE will be included in the in-progress total.

If you don’t need to take GS 101 because you transferred her with more than 24 hours, that waiver isn’t shown. You can report it so we can make an entry so it will show as if it’s met, or you just not worry about it, because that won’t prevent your graduation.

What If analysis allows you to analyze ‘what if’ you change majors or catalog years.

It’s found by clicking the link in small print at the bottom of each page.

You will be able to enter a chosen program, major, minor, concentration. When it asks for “Entry Term” you will enter the term corresponding with the catalog you wish to evaluate, ie Fall Semester 2003 is the 2003-2004 catalog.

Changes in the catalog year will recognize any changes the faculty has approved to the majors/minors/concentrations, and the General Education requirements.

(If you move to the Fall 2003 catalog to reduce Gen Ed Science requirements from 6 to 3 hours, you will have to take GS 201 and 301.)

Click the Continue button.

choose a program. Programs are nearly like the degree pursued.

Click the Continue button.

You can skip the campus selection.

Choose a major: the available major list will depend on the program you entered.

You can add details to the major you chose by clicking the Add More button.

Click the Continue button.

It will offer you the chance to add concentrations then minors.

It doesn’t care at this point if the concentrations make sense with the major you chose. It seems you can mix and match at will. That doesn’t mean that you will be able actually pursue the combination you test.

click the Submit button, and the Generate Request button as it appears. Then wait.

Read the results just as you did for the original evaluation.

The change you make in “What if” does not change the student record in Banner. Remember, to actually change your major fill out the form at: acadprgdeclaration.pdf and deliver it to the registrar.