RPG New Report Release: Undergraduate Transcript Course Search by Major

May 28, 2020

The Report Prioritization Group just released the newest addition to the BI Portal: Undergraduate Transcript Course Search by Major

In this news story we explain the purpose and benefits of the new report. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to write help@uw.edu and put “BI Portal Report Question: UG Transcript Course Search by Major” in the subject line.

What’s In a Name?

We admit, the report has a long name, Undergraduate Transcript Course Search by Major. But each word explains something about the report’s function.

  • Undergraduate: This report is based on the same underlying population and data in the Undergraduates Eligible to Register report. As a result, this report currently only lets you look at Undergraduate student populations. For more on who is considered “Eligible to Register” in this report, please see the Definitions tab and Knowledge Navigator.
  • Transcript Course Search: This report queries the student’s transcript information to see if a student has taken, has not taken, or has registered for the user-selected course.
  • by Major: The report allows users to filter the population to specific majors. Please note, the report excludes Pending Majors for the chosen quarter, and only includes students “in the major”.

How To:

Use the first set of filters to choose the population of students you want to see:

Use the second set of filters to identify the course(s) you want to search:

Users and Use Cases:

The primary audience for this report is the academic advising community, and several UW advisers provided significant input on the report’s design! The following are real use cases from our data user community:

  • An adviser would like to look at “their majors” (students who are eligible to register for a given major) and see a list of students that have not taken a program-required course by the end of their Sophomore year.
    • The adviser runs the report for her Major(s), filters down to exclude Freshmen and Sophomores, and selects “No” on the “Course Taken Indicator” filter. The report returns a list of all Juniors and Seniors in the chosen major who have not taken and completed the course. The adviser can email the students to with an action plan.
  • An adviser would like to look at “their majors” and generate a list of students that have taken 2 particular courses. The adviser will use this information to identify if a student has taken a required course or that course’s pre-requisite. They will then use this information for outreach to students.
    • The adviser runs the report for her Major, does not apply a “Class” filter, and selects “All” on the “Course Taken Indicator” filter. The report returns a list of all students in the chosen major, and one record for each student-course combination. If a student took a course multiple times, there will be a row for each time the student registered for the course. This is an intentional duplication!

What About Transfer Students?

You may be thinking:

“this report is helpful if a student took a class at UW, but what about Transfer Students who got credit for a course taken at a different institution?”

If a student got UW Credit for a transfer course, the report will display a “Y” in the Course Taken Indicator column. Because transfer grade data comes from many different institutions with different grading schemes, the transfer grade data is not standardized, so a ‘Y’ displays if the following rules are satisfied:

  • There is a valid 2 character grade in the column (e.g. 10, 20, 40)
  • There is a grade on the 00-40 or 0.0-4.0 scale (e.g. 32 or 3.2)
  • The UW assigned grade or the transfer credit grade has any valid number in the column
  • The course number is a 3 digit number (e.g. 101)

Questions?

This report references important institutional concepts like “Eligible to Register“, “Student Hold” and many others. If you have questions about the meaning of these or any other terms, please explore the links or find more detail in the Knowledge Navigator.

As always, if you have any questions, please write help@uw.edu and put “BI Portal Report Question: UG Transcript Course Search by Major” in the subject line.