What's New with DARS and CAS
12/21/07
The MnTC Guiding Principles in DARS has been posted here. The Guiding Principles is a list of encoding options recommended for encoding your MnTC Audit.
9/21/07
DARS/CAS User Group meeting minutes for September 11, 2007 are posted here(.pdf).
9/12/07
College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) in DARS and CAS has been revised here (.pdf) to include paper and pencil administered examinations.
9/6/07
Documentation has been added here (.pdf) to help you update CAS. The documentation has step-by-step examples on how to delete academic programs, add new catagories, add academic programs, change academic programs names, and purge and re-run.
8/21/07
Documentation has been posted here (.pdf) to help you trouble shoot an error message indicating that a batch export has aborted.
7/26/07
The DARS/CAS Team would like to announce our sixth training/tutorial using Macromedia Captivate. This tutorial is called "Interactive Degree Audit Tutorial" Captivate Presentation. It is designed to aid both students and staff in the interpretation of an Interactive Degree audit report. It is posted at http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/. Click on Support, Documentation, under Interactive Audit. Click "Interactive Degree Audit Tutorial" Captivate Presentation to view this 10 minute tutorial. You are welcome to link to this presentation directly once the Interactive Degree Audit is available at your institution.
If you have questions or comments about this session, please contact us at http://dars.custhelp.com.
The DARS catalogs for North Central University and Concordia University - St. Paul are now available.
Request catalogs here.
7/2/07
Exceptions documentation on the dars.mntransfer.org website has been redesigned by Action to make it easier to locate an example by type. We have also added three new examples which are marked as "** NEW **" so that you can easily locate new samples as they are added. All examples have a "Posted" date listed at the end of the documentation, as well. We hope that you will find the new layout useful.
Exceptions Documentation
7/2/07
A numerical summary of the new courses for each of the MnSCU schools is now available. The summary identifies, by institution, the number of new courses and the number of MnTC courses for each MnSCU institution.
2006-2007 is the first year that we have compiled this list, but we plan to continue creating this summary each year. The summary will be useful, over time, to track curriculum changes. Feel free to share the summary with others.
Request the 2006-2007 Curriculum Summary via an e-mail to DARS info.
7/2/07
The Curriculum Updates for academic year 2006-2007 are available for inserting into your DARS. You can request all the new courses (almost 3000!), or just the 287 new MnTC course inserts.
Request the Curriculum updates with the form posted on the web-site: here
3/16/07
Export from DARS to ISRS functionality change
A change was rolled out to the export process that was requested by our user community.
The logic of export has changed so that an existing transfer education record entered into ISRS is updated with DARS information only when:
1) The YrTr Accepted field for that institution is blank (education tab - ST1100UG)
2) The blank record for that institution has the highest sequence number **
3) No transfer courses are already in ISRS for that institution in the same year/term of the courses being exported
Our export documentation has been revised to reflect the changes in this process and is available here. (.pdf)
2/27/07
Advanced Placement (AP) set-up in DARS has been revised.
Ap_TArulewriting.pdf
2/27/07
DARS Catalog in ISRS ST1100UG, Area Study/Int tab, and hierarchy rules has been posted here.
2/8/07
CAS Glossary of Terms has been posted to the web site here (.pdf).
This glossary of terms is a compilation of commonly used CAS terminology. It was established as a guide for campus staff interacting with CAS users and for the general the public.
1/30/07
The DARS/CAS Team would like to announce "CAS Overview" using Macromedia Captivate. This is an introduction and brief overview of CAS functionality. It is posted at http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/ . Click on Documentation, then click on CAS. Click "CAS Overview" Captivate Presentation to view this 5 minute presentation. You can also access the Captivate directly here. You are welcome to link to this presentation directly from your websites if you wish.
DARS staff should consider forwarding this announcement to others at their institutions (deans, faculty, administration, etc) to help introduction students/new staff to CAS.
1/25/07
Interactive Audit Hyperlinks documentation has been posted here. (.pdf) The documentation illustrates how to encode hyperlinks for the Interactive Audit.
1/23/07
The DARS catalog for the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (003969) has been updated through 2007-2008. Since the U of M DARS catalog was released in 2004, several U of M-Twin Cities department changes have occurred: Speech (SPCH ) is now COMM Communication, Women's Studies (WOST) is now GWSS Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, and General College (GC) is now PSTL Post Secondary Teaching and Learning.
Northeast Iowa Community College's (004587) curriculum changed in summer 2007 from numbered to alpha departments.
Request the new course inserts for the U of M-Twin Cities with the catalog request form here.(.pdf)
Request the new DARS catalog for Northeast Iowa Community College (20071-999999) with the form located here (.pdf)
1/18/07
Interactive Audit Update
Two new documents have been posted on www.dars.mntransfer.org pertaining to Interactive Audit. One is "Encoding Summary/Groups for Interactive Audit" (.pdf)at and the other is "How to Read Your Interactive Audit Degree" (.pdf) at These documents have been posted in conjunction with the availability for campuses to begin Interactive Audit encoding in a test environment beginning February 5, 2007.
1/9/07
The DARS/CAS Team would like to announce "How to Use CAS" training session/tutorial using Macromedia Captivate. It is designed to aid both students and staff in the various areas and functions within CAS. It is posted here. Or you can go to http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/, click on Documentation, under CAS, then click "How to Use CAS" Captivate Presentation to view this 13 minute tutorial.
You are welcome to link to this presentation directly from your websites if you wish.
Please consider forwarding this announcement to others at your institution (students, faculty, administration).
If you have questions or comments about this presentation, please contact us at http://dars.custhelp.com/.
