DARS User Group Minutes

Present: Daryl Johnson, Gin Forseman, Gloria Deick, Kelli Kienitz, Gina Boeckermann, Shawn Handwrek, Laurie Tralle, Fred Forseman, Donna Marzolf, Sue Bayerl, Ann Nelson, Pat Carmody, Michelle Frenzel, Mary D’Andrea. 

·         Minutes of April 23, 2002 meeting were reviewed and approved as written.

·         Gary Langer, Fred Forseman, Laurie Tralle, Margo Mueller, Gina Boeckermann, Daryl Johnson, and Mary D’Andrea met July 15-16, 2002, to plan for DARS projects for the forthcoming year.  Training & scheduling, project progress, user support, staffing changes, service level agreement, future projects, technical projects, ISRS projects and SPEEDE were discussed.  The DARS Team 2002-2003 Task List identifies the planned projects.  As projects are assigned or accepted, and competed, the task status will be updated on the list.  The list includes carry over User Group items from 2001-2002.  The list has been added to the web page at http://www.dars.mntransfer.org  under Project Reports.  Monthly notices of changes to the list will be conveyed to the DARS Team and the DARS User Group.  

·         Catalog Year/Term update: the ISRS ST1104UG functions need to include validated year/term dates for catalog and majors.  The over all default for the degree should be ST1104UG with year/term.  Students major should be in the “alternate catalog”.  The year/term issue is critical to DARS and campuses that have students returning to earn a second degree.  Additionally, the catalog, which is used for DARS and institutional integrity reporting, needs to be a validated field.  User group concern and request has been forwarded to Registration User Group. 

·         Need a “turn off” function in Incltop.  The capability is needed for campuses that are posting testing information in the Incltop, but wish to turn it off after a point of completion.  Discussion centered on turning off ACT scores once a student attains sophomore status, and turning off the math assessment with completion of a specific math.  Other “turn off” Incltop items might be considered.  Mary will query the User Group before the end of the fall term for additional turn off items.  Optionally, we could explore additional # (pound) items. 

·         PPST scores:  When later PPST scores are entered on the student, do the obsolete scores drop off?  A recurring question which needs testing. 

·         User questions over grades of Pass/No Pass and AU.  What happens when a P/No Pass course or an audit course is identified on an audit as Z (in-progress)?  Grades of No Pass and AU, while in “Z” status, functionally indicates that the student will successfully complete the course.  If P/No Pass courses were identified from ISRS with an X (instead of a Z), then a condition code could be assigned on the X grade in the audit.  Explore “X” as a grade given to courses in DARS based on their grading method.  Explore grading method options.

If campuses identified audit courses at the time of registration in ISRS as AU, then the Z problem is solved.  Both of these need to be forwarded to the Registration User Group.

·         Security forms: Current ISRS security form has proved to be confusing to the general user.  Although the form attempts to follow the format of ISRS forms, it is based on a security rights that differ from ISRS.  The DARS security is assigned with total security rights, and modified by taking away rights. 

Daryl has revised the form with user functions in mind:
Encoding (Programs and Requirement icons)
Transfer articulation (Master Reference Tables and Transfer rules icons)
Support tables (Globe icon)
Student record (Joe Cool icon)

The group requested a line stating: If you only want audit printing authority, use the MnSCU DARwin (DARS) Security Authorization Form.

·         Request to change DA0001CP audit request to accept periods as well as commas between tech id numbers.  The ability replicates transcript request capabilities.

·         Survey Results:  The Fall 2002 MnSCU DARS Campus Progress Survey http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/progresssept_02.pdf  and Training Support Needs Survey http://www.dars.mntransfer.org/needssept_02.pdf are on the web. Needs raised by the survey include NCAA reporting as a topic session, and a possible summer training session. There was near unanimous support for 3^rd Thursday training sessions.  The ETC lab is also reserved for the 3^rd Friday as an open work day. 

·         Formatting audits for e-mails, needed for sending to students and institutions (the MnTC audit) is progressing.  The audits look ok, but we need a VMS system to be able to format audit in e-mail.  

·         The MnTC audit is currently being discussed in a MN Transfer Curriculum Task Force.  ISRS transcripts do not identify MnTC courses or goal completion.  Ideally, the task force would support sending MnSCU and U of M institutions a SPEEDE transcript and e-mail a MnTC audit indicating goal courses and goal area completion.  A prototype MnTC audit has been sent to the User group. 

·         DARwin 3.0.3:  MnSCU received a copy of DARwin 3.0.3 before other institutions in order to identify bugs and have them fixed before full release.  Full release was made on Wednesday, October 23^rd.  The day prior to this User Meeting.  Daryl Johnson will check to see if the full release version of 3.0.3 has changes that were not in the version previously released to MnSCU.

·         Exploring the option of Analysis Tables was strongly indorsed by the Group.  Analysis capabilities include: identifying students graduating; graduating by specific programs; course prediction for program completion; students not graduating.  Using the analysis Tables requires knowledge and application of DARS encoding and Microsoft Access understanding.  The campus user must use an alternate id with view only rights to run the analysis, otherwise live DARS data could be changed from these tables.  Pat Carmody has offered to pilot the Analysis Tables with a graduate student.  A second pilot would include setting up a generic report to show graduates, degrees, address.  The report would be run through a Run Analysis Y/N DA0001CP function.

·         Fred has indicated that he will replicate all Run bar functions on DA0001CP.

·         The U of M conversion from DARS mainframe to DARwin is complete and includes the web audit application. The MnSCU pilot for web audits is Bemidji, scheduled for Oct. 25. 

·         MnSCU audits must be turned on through ISRS.  Since the audit defaults to program in ST1104UG, this data must be accurate.  The audits should have been thoroughly tested before being made available on the web. 

·         The web audits are one column, and currently only in black and white.  Encoding includes cloning the MnSCU COM to a WEB COM.  Incltop changes are needed for formatting the audit. Do not use Full demo2 in a WEB com.

·         Budget: DARS money for a second round of allocations has been approved.  The DARS team considered ways to award the monies to campuses.  Considerations include: encoding accomplishments, campus size, program complexity, student population.  The money might be tied to conditions or expectations.  Additional money might be available for grants. The group supported the concept of making grant money available.  Grant implementations would be shared with users.

·         MnSCU User Conference dates are being explored for Mar. 13-14 at Anoka Ramsey.  The User Conference previously announced for fall 2001 was cancelled.   The 2003 Conference would follow the original format of 1 ½ days and include sharing, best practices and break out sessions.

·         Export has another bump in the road.  Financial aid considerations require that transfer work sent in different terms be indicated by the receiving institution with separate year/term of acceptance.  Current Export functionality deletes first transcript information, sending an error report, and re-exports with the updated transcript and current year/term of acceptance.  [Solution will involve looking at the local year/term of acceptance: if the yr/term of the course in DARS is greater then or equal to the year/term of acceptance already in for that same institution in ISRS (ST1111UG), a new additional FICE record will be created in ST1111UG, and only the course/credits applicable to the new FICE will be posted with a new year/term of acceptance.]