Harding changed the degree audit system on Pipeline to a new software called uAchieve, which is more user-friendly and understandable and will help students and advisors create a clear path for graduation.
When the old degree audit company called to say they no longer offered the software Harding’s previous software for online degree audit viewing, was discontinued and the university explored a few companies before deciding uAchieve was the most user-friendly and easy to navigate.
Jacob Brownfield, director of academic affairs, believes he chose the simplest program for both faculty and students to learn.
“The whole purpose of this is to help academic advice,” Brownfield said. “If you just give someone a transcript, you have to go through and mark stuff off, and it’s kind of a pain. It’s really nice having software that just pulls everything up and tells you right there what a student has already taken, what are they in and what they need.”
Associate registrar William Perkins spent last summer entering each year’s catalogs for every major and minor, dating back to the 2013-14 catalog.
“Our hope is that completion rates will go up because you’ll be planning directly from the audit,” Perkins said. “The audit will tell you everything that you need in order to graduate. If you have everything planned on the audit, then you ought to be able to graduate on time as well.”
Junior Lynsey Rardin stumbled upon the system while on Pipeline and found it to be practical and easy to use.
“I went on to do my degree evaluation and look at classes for next semester, and I saw it pop up … so I clicked on it and had to request the audit, but it was really simple to send in,” Rardin said. “I’m a very visually-oriented person, so looking at the graphs and the color coordination, and being able to see my GPA levels is really neat.”
There are multiple phases in this transition to uAchieve. By next year, Brownfield said they are planning to expand the system for incoming students to be able to create four-year or five-year degree plans online instead of on paper.
The second phase is developing the capability to drag and drop courses into the audit and categorize them by semester, like on the current paper degree evaluations. The third goal is to be able to register for classes through those planned semesters on uAchieve. However, the timeline for these additions is tentative.
