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DARS User Group Meeting

Tuesday, April 12, 2005
St. Cloud Technical College
St. Cloud, MN

Present:  Sharlene Allen, Gina Boeckermann, Lois Carkhuff, Mary D’Andrea, Gloria Deick, Marla Delaney, Fred Forseman, Michelle Frenzel, Gin Forseman, Shawn Handwrek, Rita Moore, Ann Nelson, Joe Schider, Laurie Tralle, Brenda Zamlen

Minutes of September 21 meeting were presented to the User Group.  Minutes are posted on the web at http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/usergroup/Minutes_092104.htm

Intro of new DARS Team members
Two new staff have been added to the Office of the Chancellor DARS team.  Marla Delaney, formerly from Saint Paul College, is the Projects Technology Coordinator, and Joe Schider, formerly on contract with e-Services, is our Web Sites Content Manager.  Laurie noted that special thanks go to Margo Mueller and Lori Kirkeby who served on the search committee.

Training/Presentation reports
Training sessions since the September meeting include Basic Encoding September 27-29 (5 attendees), and March 1-3 (8 attendees).  Three Transfer Articulation training sessions occurred during the same calendar frame: Nov. 2-3 (17 attendees), Nov. 9-10 (11 attendees), and Jan. 25-26 (8 attendees). 

Monthly Third Thursday and Friday ETC open lab sessions, between October 2004 and March 2005, accommodated 77 individuals. 

The first DARS open lab sessions in Bemidji occurred Dec. 2, 2004.  Bemidji SU hosted the one day session, and provided lunch for all 12 attendees.  Ten people have registered for the April 13^th open lab session.  The User Group agreed that we will continue DARS Up North as long as the facilities at BSU are available.  Sessions would occur in fall and spring terms, with exploration of summer sessions.  Future announcements for DARS Up North will be sent to Gloria Deick and Central Lakes College.

CAS Administrator training was offered October (13 attendees), November (15 attendees), January (8 attendees), February (8 attendees), and March (8 attendees).  In total, 61 individuals have attended CAS Administrator training.  Campuses who have not attended the training are: Mesabi Range CTC, Rainy River CC, and MSU Moorhead.

CAS Advisor Training occurred in February (19 attendees), and March (9 attendees).  Laurie Tralle created a PowerPoint presentation for campuses to use in training campus staff for CAS.  The PowerPoint presentation   http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/updates/HowtoUseCASforadvisors_files/frame.html details all of the features in CAS and is recommended for campus use.  The PowerPoint will be updated, as necessary, when enhancements from Miami University are announced.

Individual lab sessions, for a total of 8 attendees, occurred in September and October.

Linda Baer presented a CAS Update at the January 19, 2005 Board of Trustees Meeting  She reported that all MnSCU institutions are now in production on the MnCAS website. 

Laurie Tralle and Margo Mueller presented CAS to the Iowa public transfer group in October.  The group of transfer specialists wanted to get a perspective on electronic systems, and may prove to be future CAS partners.  Eighty people attended the all day session.  `

The Second Annual Minnesota DARS User Conference was held Oct. 13-14, 2004, at the St. Cloud  Civic Center.  The conference focused on highlighting campus best practices.  Additionally presented were Job_queue tables, transfer issues, interactive audit, CAS, International transcripts in CAS & DARS, and roundtables for 2 years and 4 years schools.  Campus requests and enhancements were put on the DARS Team task list.  Total attendees: +70.

Gina and Mary attended the Advance Methods training at Miami University in Nov., 2004.  The sessions focused on DARS Phases, Exceptions, Course Grouping, Reference Values, Marker Requirements, Dump Reading, String Table, Residency Requirements, X & Y lines.  Session topics documentation will be made available to users as needed.

AACRAO 91^st conference as was March 28-31, in New York City.  Office of the Chancellor staff presented along with campus members.  On Tuesday, Laurie Tralle, Mary D’Andrea, Michelle Frenzel (BSU), Pat Carmody (Southwest MSU) and Lori Kirkeby (North Hennepin CC) presented “Minnesota’s ‘Big Bang’: Degree Audits and Transfer Information to 240,000 Students at 32 Institutions in 5 Years or Less.”  On Wednesday, Gina Boeckermann, Angie Alley (Century College), and Jim Anderson (MSU-Moorhead) presented  “Minnesota’s One Stop for Transfer and Articulation Information – www.mntransfer.org.”  Also on Wednesday, Laurie Tralle and Margo Mueller presented “Using MnCAS to Discover How a Course Will Transfer.”  All three presentations are posted to the AACRAO program site: http://www.aacrao.org/nyc/program.htm. At the conference, Laurie attended multiple sessions of XML, Gina focused on state transfer systems, and Mary attended International Baccalaureate sessions.

Future training sessions for Basic Encoding and Transfer Articulation will continue as needed.  CAS Administrator training will likely occur again in June, promoting fall start up of classes.  The CAS Advisor training power point is available for campuses, reducing the need to continue training.  Training for CAS will be Administrator training in the morning and Advisor training in the afternoon.

 

Report on dars.mntransfer.org hits
DARS.mntransfer.org web hits for the September to March intervening months:
October - 6121
November - 4580
December - 5168
January - 7702
February – 13193 (posting of CAS Advisor PowerPoint)
March – 8817

Website review of www.dars.mntranfser.org will resume this summer.  Gina and Mary will review and revise the documentations to reflect changes from ISRS, DARS 3.5.1 & 3.5.2, and the interactive audit.

 

Review DARS Team Task List
Completed Tasks
Completed tasks (since last User Group meeting - September 2004) include:

The CAS deadline of having all MnSCU institutions live in CAS was completed Dec. 29^th, 2004.  Awesome!

Fred and Laurie loaded new course banks into CAS, January 2005.

The 2004-2005 curriculum updates were posted 2-15-05, http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/updates/currchanges/2004_05/mntc_catalog_changes_2004_05.html .  Announcement of the updates was sent on the DARS and Transfer Specialists list serves.  Twenty schools returned updates for the Feb. posting.  The remaining schools will be contacted by Mary for updates (including MnTC course designations), and updated on the web site.  This year’s curriculum project did not include MSCTC or Northwest TC.  2005-06 DARS catalogs for these two institutions will be offered this spring. 

Table changes in the ISRS Admissions roll-out have affected some of campus DARS processes.  Current problems: campuses are getting multiple web audits, including at least one NO AUDIT, reflecting un-reconciled program choices from the old ST1104UG and admissions screens.  “Pending Major” can’t be printed from the web.  DARS prints majors, even when ISRS does not acknowledge “invalid” majors.  Test scores may not be showing.  Campuses with incorrect, invalid majors, needing a “clean-up” are encouraged to contact the ISRS Helpdesk or Janet McMahon.  DARS encoders are also encouraged to use DARSHelp to post problems.

Two hundred thirty-two DARS catalogs were transported to MnSCU institutions since the last meeting.  An index of over 1000 IREF and TA tables from MnCAS (U of M) was sent to Metropolitan SU.  A directory of 27 Iowa schools, with lower division general education courses, 4 South Dakota schools, and three MnSCU quarter catalogs have been added to the DARS catalog collection.

Ongoing tasks
As of January, DARS catalogs, for non-Minnesota schools, are being sent in a database directory.  The directory allows campuses to import catalogs from Iowa, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and North Dakota.  The process is less time consuming administratively, and allows campuses to use current catalogs in DARS and CAS while working on an update.  Documentation is at http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/updates/importingDARScatalogs.pdf .

 

Enhancement requests/ bug fixes       

• #RC – Advisor Access Code – change end date logic
  Southeast Technical and South Central TC would like to have Advisor Access Codes available on audits to a specified date.  Currently, this information only prints to the end of term.  It was suggested that it point to the last day to add a class on the future term.  Fred will check on varied date ranges and put in parameters.
• Inver Hills and Bethel FICE codes in most campus DARS data bases for Inver Hills and Bethel College are incorrect, and do not work with the AACRAO list of institutions in CAS.  Fred has a cross-walk for the CAS server, but we would rather clean this up.  On the student side, the clean-up would require identifying all students on each campus who have the incorrect FICE attached to their record.  These would have to be cloned to the new FICE.  On the IREF and TA side, all tables would have to be cloned and re-numbered.  The clean-up would be school by school, within region.  Within ISRS, the incorrect institutional FICE numbers would have to be made inactive, and the correct number made active.
  
• #TS Test Score – add date range logic for condition code assignment.   Northwest TC has new test cut scores. 
• #TP & #20– add display of test date for test scores, percents and placement levels, for display in INCLTOP.
• Populate Form ID field of DA0001CP automatically – HP16p or HP16l??? *  Fred will check out attaching Form ID field to User ID so it will default to the form indicated automatically, eliminating the need to enter this information the form details each time.  This may be current ISRS user-id functionality.  If so, announce via DARSHelp.
• Run a batch of audits directly from DA0001CP without creating aGR_Output * - Can transcript functionality be applied to DARS?  Currently, a GR_output complies in printing front to middle and back to middle feature.  Each campus is capable of creating unique variables.  Fred will see if this could be changed by a bug fix.  If this is an enhancement, then the User Group agrees to table this request until a later time.
• Have Joe Cool processing make a call to ISRS each time a student is accessed. * Check for name changes, etc & overlay that information into Joe Cool.  The U of M uses a source code and has programming staff to handle this.  Two options were discussed: 1) re-run “x” StID from ISRS to manually update or 2) annually refresh to “x” all StIDs to update DARS student data.  Conclusion – do it manually for now.
• Batch mail merge or email merge in DA0001cp *
  Group asks “what is the value of batching e-mails?”  Concerns of sending audit to wrong person were expressed.  Group agrees to table this request unless or until it comes up again.
• Run to clean up Joe Cool to get rid of students not admitted in ISRS *             Discussion consisted of attaching it to “end-date.”  What if college doesn’t end date?  Colleges could look at “no active registration, last modified & end-date.  Each college would have to determine what to look at.  DARS Team will ask Margo what the U of M does.  Functionality to include campus defined years (0=no delete, 1 to 9 years), per their policy.
• XML populates Joe Cool & TA.  Source & designated target course created. *   Discussion of this task resulted in two separate tasks:  A. Getting an XML transcript is first, a MnSCU task.  B. In TA processing, have the Joe Cool entered data make a call to IREF, if not found, build an IREF (campus would have to define FICE, grades, institution type, mask, begin and end dept, begin and end number fields).  Additionally, once the IREF is present, if course in Joe Cool is not in TA table, build group and course number and title (based on dept. indicator on student record).  Did not talk about: What if dept and number were in TA but title was different.
• Load into grad app tracking – students who have “met all requirements” * 
  The group was not sure if this is a date or a message load.  This may or may not involve major/minor buttons or degree approval information.  The ISRS Grad Tracking screen ST3602UG will need to be researched before initiating any changes.  Get further clarification from Pat Carmody.    
• Reduce paper output of report generated by export process *  
  Print report for export always has a cover page and a summary page.  Fred will determine if this can be a suppressed feature.  If not, an enhancement of controlling the number of pages printed for export from DA0001CP screen.
• Ability to request one student with multiple ‘what if’ programs from DA0001CP*
  After discussion on this topic, it was concluded that staff should simply change the degree code and run another audit, rather than trying to get multiple programs.
• Ability to request one student with multiple catalog years from DA0001CP
  User Group recommended tabling this request.
• Clone Joe Cool transfer data when FICE has been incorrectly entered. *         
  The DARS Team will forward an enhancement request to Miami.
• Create a way to display (# item) all exceptions from Joe Cool   . 
  INCLTOP request to list Exception Information (probably for Grad checking purposes with specific COM).  The feature would include Ctl Code, Dprog (if present), and Note fields. 
• #AT Active Term.  Create a # item to tell DARS to only print an audit when a student’s DARS catalog is set to a specific term only (don’t get multiple audits for multiple active majors). 
  
  *2004 User Conference requests
  
  
•  Populating DARS catalog field in ST_AREA_STUDY – Fred/Laurie
  Both the major and minor dates are the same as effective YRTM.  DARS is not currently pointing to it.  College needs to define meaning to the major.  A question will go out to the national listserv about various YRTM Major/minor/alt catalog.
• Update on Interactive Audit                                                                         
  Interactive Audit progress has been halted until the MnSCU Web developer reviews the IA.  Marla will request using Saint Paul College as a pilot for the IA. 
• Update identifiers on DARS table – Fred
  All tables will be matched identically MnSCU wide.  Campuses should not notice (in compliance with auditors).  This will happen over the weekend of 4/16/05.

CAS Update
DARS tables within CAS are automatically updated for every institution every other week.  The mnemonic is: M for Money, (S for opposite).  If your region begins with the letter “M” (Mete, Mnscu1), then your CAS update coincides with the pay-period weekend.  If your region begins with the letter S (Saturn, STC2), then your CAS update occurs on the alternate week ends.  If this is confusing, you can see the CAS Load Schedule for 2005 posted at http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/updates/CASLoadSchedule.html

Future possibilities include updating from DARS directly to CAS.  This would require each campus setting up a COM for CAS.  The advantages would be real-time information in CAS.

CAS Pocket Guide – future/Posters
The CAS Pocket Guide has been circulated to all MnSCU and U of M campuses.  We are considering a poster appropriate for posting in high school. 

Migration to the new Callisto CAS server has started.  A UNIX system manager has been hired for the system office, and will be working on performance issues.  Initial problems between Miami support staff and MnSCU server support staff have been resolved.  After the transition to the new server, Miami will send support staff to work on performance issues. 

CAS is the desired repository for MnSCU institutions displaying transfer rules.  Word tables, Excel documents, or TA Rule Report to MnTransfer.org postings will no longer be posted on MnTransfer.org after June 30, 2005.  Transfer equivalency tables for MnSCU institutions, previously posted on MnTransfer, will be sent back to campuses if requested to maintain on their own web sites or they will be displayed in CAS under “Course Equivalency Guide.  Campuses may continue to post their transfer tables on the campus web site and the link will be maintained on MnTransfer.  Notification will be sent to on the Transfer Specialist and DARS list serves in mid to late May.

Third annual DARS User Conference (Oct 3-5, 2005) Logistics
The Third Annual Minnesota DARS User Conference will be Oct. 13-14, 2005, at Grand View Lodge, Nisswa, MN.  The campus cost for the two night one and a half day conference is $80/day for double occupancy, $130/day for single occupancy, or $160 for the conference -double and $260 for the conference - single.  The cost includes the conference, lodging and breaks.  We have announced dates and costs, but not details on reservations.

The conference would begin with dinner on Monday evening, with a full day of sessions, breaks and meals on Tuesday, and breakfast, lunch and morning sessions on Wed.  Conference ends no later than 3 p.m. on Wednesday.

The User Group is asked to consider topics for the next conference.  Possible topics are: NCAA audit; “Ask Al”; ISRS & DARS integration; IB in DARS; Chad Schmidt’s presentation on creating a catalog from ISRS and DARS.  Conference theme has not been decided, but one suggestion was “Back to the Beginning.” 

We will try to have Jack Southard be our key note speaker.  Laurie will communicate with Jack (and spouse) about presenting and attending. Bemidji SU has offered to pay for the transportation costs.

Other
T.J. is working on a project for MN online to allow a student to find a specific course by reviewing all DARS TA tables.  The relational table would ideally identify all courses associated with a specific, commonly offered course, for example, English Composition.  The premise behind the project is that a commonly offered course (English Composition) should have a reciprocal course. 

Consider different web audits for advisors. 

Brenda question: Does CAS search pick-up second of “or’d” situation.  If not, could this be a possible enhancement request.

Memo could be retained in CAS functionalities if campuses request this. 

DARS needs to be part of Seamless discussions for consortium issues. 

Donna Marzolf is no longer on the User Group, and her place must be filled.  Also, adding another CC representative, since Fergus Falls is now a CTC.

Next meeting recommendation is mid September.