DARS User Group Meeting Minutes
April 23, 2002
Present: Sue Bayerl, Melanie Callister, Pat Carmody, Gloria Deick, Mary D’Andrea, Fred Forseman, Michelle Frenzel, Shawn Handwerk, Daryl Johnson, Kelli Kienitz, Donna Marzolf, Laurie Tralle, Larry Uhlir. Guests: Gin Forseman.
- Minutes of the Dec. 17, 2001 meeting were reviewed and approved as written.
- Reviewed the tentative new DARS security. It was suggested that the underlined wording in the middle of the page be changed to: After you select “Create new user account” above, …etc.
Further, it was suggested that the DA_04H through DA_07H be changed such that the “H” be replaced with “L” on all of them.
It was also suggested that the wording for each of the DA_04 through DA_07 be changed from (Limits the …….) to (View only ……..)
Also, for each of the DA_04 through DA_07 there needs to be both an “add” and a “delete” choice.
Larry will redraft the security form and send it out again to the group for review. Then after any redraft it goes to the website people to make it available for general use. When the form is available on the website, Larry will inform via the listserv that everything is in place for the new security to be used.
- The last DARS encoder training was held Feb. 27, 28 & March 1. The next DARS encoder training will likely be after the add/drop period during the fall semester. We have had an open lab in April, allowing campuses an opportunity to work on encoding needs. This included a presentation on Exceptions. Also included was a discussion on Alternate Catalogs. Documentation on these will be posted to the web as an Update. Another open lab with a little more TA emphasis will be held May 15.
- The next DARS TA training will be held on May 6, 7, & 8. There is another TA training session planned tentatively during this summer at a date yet to be determined.
- TA improvements by Mary are documented on the web as Updates 19 – 21. Campuses can request the transport of MnSCU catalogs to their DARS. The catalogs include course (source) and goal identification. The transport includes Institutional Reference tables and Transfer Articulation tables.
- Name import from ISRS, using the tech ID, is also available. The current documentation refers to this process as the “Q” Option because it brings the student and any quarter credits into Joe Cool for a Home to Home articulation. Using an X instead of a Q only brings the student into Joe Cool.
Mary requested a possible INCLTOP option to list transcripts identified in ST1111UG that are not already articulated in DARS. #T1 might identify transcripts in ST1111UG and #T2 might include the credits on these transcripts awarded (from the Transferred: field). The process would not list transcript data if the FICE were found on the student in Joe Cool. Fred will research these possible options.
- There is little new to report on CAS. More TA work needs to be done to effectively implement CAS on a wide scale basis.
- Fred & Laurie demonstrated DARS Online Audit. Audits online are part of the e-learning initiative. They are accessed under the “Student Services” line on the ISRS Online Student sign-on. A student could request only one web audit a day. Campuses may want to run batch audits at night for current students to have them available rather then have them request audits. The audits will be running from ST1104UG. There would be only D audits (Degree Audit), not A (Audit and Evaluation) audits.
- There was some concern about what would happen if an institution was not yet ready to have their audits be out on the web. Would there be a way to not put that choice on the website for an institution until they had audits ready for the website? Or, would there be some type of message saying something such as “Not yet available”? Or would nothing happen? Fred will try to find out what would happen. We also discussed using the RUNSTATUS COM setting to set audits not to print if they are only in Test status, versus Web or Production status (set at the program level in DARS). Fred has more work to have the audit appear with color, bold, underline, etc. We also discussed the potential for hyperlinks in ‘select from’ lists to go right to course descriptions and actual registration for the courses.
- Larry submitted the request to change the “attendance dates” fields on ST1111 to “First yrtr” and “Last yrtr” has been submitted to Cynthia Mehoves.
- Fred has changed the #04 item in INCLTOP to pull from the “appl. applied date” rather than the “plan filed date” field on ST3602.
- Fred will look at adding an option to allow for “hours” in the COM field in DA0001CP. This would allow clock hours to be pulled from the student records in ISRS into DARS to be processed for those that wanted to generate “hours” audits. Potential users might most likely be the technical colleges.
- Users can now add notes to INCLTOP that will not show up on any audits, but are notes that are for the benefit of the encoders. Users may create a note within INCLTOP by beginning a line with the semicolon (;) without the parenthesis. The feature can be used throughout INCLTOP; its purpose is for documentation. This behaves similar to the normal “notes” fields on some of the other DARS screens.
- Users can now have more than one INCLTOP. The user would add an item called “CLIENTS” in the COM table. Then the name an alternate INCLTOP would be added in the “Value” field. Then a text requirement with that same name as in the “Value” field would need to be created. If the user then wanted to run several audits with that different INCLTOP, the user would have to go the COM table and punch in the “Value” field name, then run the audits. A use for this might include creating a different INCLTOP for a transfer or a web audit.
- Fred will be doing research on the possibility of adding another # code (possibly #M) to INCLTOP to print in INCLTOP transcript messages that a campus has on ST1135 (like Ridgewater’s PTK membership). The desired message code from that screen might be used to target the desired messages to be printed.
