Transfer Course/Credit Evaluation Procedures
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Determining Course Equivalency
The admitting office (normally Office of Undergraduate Admissions) check CTS to see if the course equivalency has previously been determined.
If a course has been previously reviewed and resides in CTS, the award is based on prior determination. This assures nothing has changed with the course since it was initially evaluated. If something has changed, the course will be re-evaluated.
If a course has no equivalency listed in CTS, the course is forwarded to the Office of the Registrar (OTR) who enters it into the Transfer Evaluation System (TES) and routes it to the approved contact in each college. If the transfer course has no matching discipline (subject) at Marquette. the OTR sends the course to the most closely aligned Marquette academic department and afterward to the UCCS Director, it appropriate. If it is determined by the academic department that the subject is not appropriate for review, or the UCCS Director does not see the course as eligible to satisfy a UCCS requirement, then the course is recorded as transfer general elective credit. If a requirement in a college or major can be fulfilled by the content of the elective course, then the college may accept the course toward that requirement for the specific college or major; it is recorded as such in the transfer system and accepted for all future students in only that college or designated major.
the course evaluator is expected to evaluate the course and approved an equivalency within the assigned TES evaluation task. Once forwarded to OTR, the equivalency will be entered in TES. An email is generated by the OTR and sent to the evaluator if the equivalency has not been entered by the third day. Course equivalency must be entered within the next 2 business days (5 total business days from receipt of the course description).
If the evaluator believes the course should be evaluated by a different college, the course is forwarded to that college via TES. If the second college believes the course does not belong to that college, the course is returned to the OTR for reassessment and determination of the next appropriate department.
If the evaluator cannot make a determination because the information is the description is insufficient, the evaluator can request further information from the OTR or assign general credit to the course (e.g. PHIL 9290).
Criteria for Determining Equivalency
Evaluators determine whether the course content meets or exceeds a two-thirds match with an existing Marquette course, using the course description.
If the two-thirds threshold is met, the evaluator assigns the direct course equivalency consistent with the match.
In some cases, such as a math course, a higher degree of similarity (e.g., 90%) may be required to establish a match.
Should the course not meet the pre-determined thresholds to match a specific Marquette course, the evaluator is asked to determine if the course may fulfill the UCCS learning objectives with a particular knowledge area. If the evaluator is unsure, the course may be forwarded to the UCCS Director for a determination.
If a course is determined to meet the learning outcomes for the knowledge area (though not a specific MU course), the course is assigned an equivalency that fulfills the Core requirement, but not assigned a direct Marquette course equivalency.
If a course does not meet the learning outcomes for the knowledge area, the course is assigned an equivalency such as general credit without fulfilling Core requirements.
Approved: May 2015
Office of the Registrar and Colleges Transfer Evaluation Process
When the Office of the Registrar (OTR) receives an official transcript for a current student:
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OTR checks ImageNow for an External Transfer Course Request form and if not in ImageNow, the course/credits will be reviewed and awarded by the established equivalent in CTS or TES.
Students will be sent an email informing them of the policy and decision. If no equivalent is in CTS/TES the course will be reviewed, as described below.
If an External Transfer Course Request is in ImageNow the Academic Records Specialist (ARS) will:
- Enter the courses listed on the External Transfer Course Request into the student's CheckMarq record on the External Education Page>Courses and Degrees Tab.
- If a course doesn't exist in CheckMarq, the ARS will add the course under School Course Classification.
- If a course has never been evaluated or a course number and/or title has changed, add an equivalent in Transfer Subject Area>Subject Area Elements Tab.
- Enter NONE 9210-OTR Transfer. This will be a placeholder course and will direct PMAIL to the OTR. This course will remain in place until the evaluation is received in OTR.
- Return to the External Education Page>Courses and Degrees Tab and enter any courses that were manually added to CheckMarq.
- Do not continue to Course Credits Automated.
- Go back to the External Education Page>Courses and Degrees tab and enter the new courses.
- Attach an ImageNow sticky note to the transcript indicating that the course needs to be evaluated, then route the transcript to the TES Registrar's workflow.
- Send a TES evaluation task for all courses that need to be evaluated.
- Once the evaluation task is returned, update the ImageNow sticky note with the Marquette Course ID of the course to be substituted for the college place holder course. Forward the transcript back to the ARS.
- Delete the placeholder course ID and enter the appropriate Marquette Course ID under Transfer Subject Area.
- Navigate to Course Credits Automated and fetch the courses then save. All equivalent courses should be listed. The colleges will not receive a PMAIL notification.
- Post the credit to the student's record.
After credit has been posted to a student's record, the student will be listed on the OTR query; MU_CTS_POSTED_CREDITS. This query lists the names of students who have transfer credit posted to their records. The query can be run as often as the college offices deem necessary, best practice would be to run the query a minimum of once a week and use it to adjust awards as needed (e.g., 2 for 1 course evaluations).
Notes:
University Core of Common Studies course decisions cannot be adjusted.
No adjustments can be made to courses that were not pre-approved with the External Transfer Course Request form.
If a change is made to the award, the college will notify the student.
Office of the Registrar and Undergraduate Admissions Transfer Evaluation Process
Undergraduate (UG) Admissions is responsible for the accurate routing and posting of courses/credits to the records of new students.
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Enter courses into students record:
If the course has to be added into CheckMarq, continue with normal process:
>School Course Classification
If there is no equivalent for a course, continue with normal process for adding an equivalent in Transfer Subject Area.
Enter NONE 9210-OTR Transfer course as a placeholder. The PMAIL will still be sent to the colleges every day, but they will not see any courses to evaluate for their specific college. This will be a placeholder course for the time being.
After you've reached this step, continue on to Course Credits Automated.
- Office of the Registrar (OTR) will monitor the PMAIL and TES queue every day for courses that have been or need to be sent out for evaluation.
- There may be instances where OTR needs to see a transcript and can't find the information on the I-EMIL pdf. OTR will reach out to UG Admissions and ask for student ID number so the transcript can be viewed.
- OTR will then review the courses and if needed, send courses out to colleges for evaluation in TES.
- Once the evaluation task is returned, the OTR will replace the placeholder course (NONE9210) with the equivalent MU Course ID number in Transfer Subject Area.
UG Admissions will continue to fetch until all courses have been evaluated in Course Credit Automated and save.
- PMAIL to the colleges will be eliminated.
- UG Admissions can post the credit to the student's record.
UG Admissions will continue to generate an admissions report every 3 days to check for new students who have credit to post to their records.
Once a student has credit posted to their records, they will appear in Slate and any transcripts will be held until further notice.
Transfer student records will be entered in PeopleSoft (PS).
The OTR query (MU_CTS_POSTED_CREDITS) can be run as often as the college offices deem necessary, best practice would be to run the query once a week and use it to adjust awards as needed (e.g., 2 for 1 course evaluations).
University Core of Common Studies course decisions cannot be adjusted.
TES Evaluation Workflow Guide
The following is a guide to help you understand the work flowing within the Transfer Evaluation System (TES). You will see instructions on how the work flow ill function, as well as gain an understanding on the full process from start to finish.
General Work Flow
- Faculty/Staff will need Evaluation Tracker rights in order to review evaluation tasks. Please check your access and if you have issues with your username/password, contact the Office of the Registrar (OTR).
- Search for courses using COURSE FINDER.
Search
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Type in the name, partial name, or an abbreviation of the institution from which you would like to find courses in COURSE FINDER
Once you've selected an institution, search for the course by entering in the Course Code or the Course Title.
If the course has an equivalency already created, the PUZZLE piece icon will be the color gray.
If it is gold, no equivalent has been established yet.
PUZZLE piece icon: this puzzle piece icon is used to create an equivalency. Use for verifying if course already has been evaluated. Gray = equivalencies exist. Gold = no equivalents yet.
If the course needs to be evaluated for a new equivalency, click or tap the FOOTSTEPS.
Once the course is found, select the FOOTSTEPS tracker icon which will take you to the ADD EVALUATION TASK page.
FOOTSTEPS icon: this tracker icon will route out the course for evaluation.
Track
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If a course needs to be evaluated, an EVALUATION TASK must be created.
An evaluation task will send an email alert to the reviewer that there is a course to be reviewed.
All evaluations are housed under MY EVALUATIONS.
Here is where the evaluations task is assigned to appropriate college office/evaluator:
Note: only SINGLE MODE evaluation tasks will be utilized. BATCH MODE is only used for evaluations of 10+ courses at one time.
ASSIGN TO: choose the appropriate reviewer/college office to send evaluation task to.
COMMENTS: used to send any notes to the reviewer deemed important.
SUBMIT: click or tap to submit the evaluation task. It will be sent to the assigned reviewer's queue.
EQUIVALENCIES: here are the transfer institution & home institution courses.
You will always send an email alert to the reviewer so that they know to check their My Evaluations queue for an evaluation task - Found under TRACK>My Evaluations>Assigned to Me.
The email you receive notifying you of a pending evaluation will show up to your Outlook as On Behalf of {sender's name}
- Once you enter your My Evaluations Queue, click or tap the > icon to open up the task.
- Your next step is to select an action in the drop down menu:
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After you've selected an equivalent course, please approve and it will send the evaluation task back to the originator of the task.
Approve then re-assign
If someone has recommended an equivalency to you and you disagree that the 2 courses are equivalent, select Deny.
There are 5 sub-choices in the DENY category in order to establish a deeper understanding of why the course is denied.
This option will be used seldom, if at all as equivalent courses will not be recommended in the original evaluation task.
If you receive an evaluation task but need more information in order to make a decision, click or tap this option.
There will be a required field for you to enter in the information you require in order to select an equivalent course.
First option - if you receive an evaluation task in error, you can re-assign the task to the appropriate person. They will ten receive the task to complete in their queue.
Second option - if a transfer course has more than one equivalent course, the original evaluator can choose an equivalent course and then re-assign the task to another person/department. The log that is attached to each evaluation task will keep a record of all courses that were chosen as equivalents. Final review will be done by OTR to ensure TES and CTS are undated correctly.
Reassign will only be used once you've chosen the SELECT/CHANGE EQUIVALENT course function. This will record the course you want in the activity log so that OTR can adjust the equivalency once the task is back in OTR's queue.
Select/Change Equivalent Course
This is the option you will use EVERY time an evaluation task is received.
You will be prompted to select what catalog version to choose from. Use the most current version.
On the bottom right of your screen, you will see that a drop down list has populated. The courses are listed by department.
You will always have the option to decline credit: Under the NO MARQUETTE EQUIVALENCY/AWARD-(NONE) option is where you can find NONE 9201 as an option.
This function allows you to add course syllabi or any other PDF that you deem necessary to attach to the course for review.
This function simply closes out the evaluation task. This option won't be used often since you'll want to create the equivalency and then approve, re-assign the task, or request more information.
Closed tasks will live under CLOSED EVALUATIONS.
OTR will be primarily responsible for closing out tasks.
- Since courses will not be suggested as equivalents from the sender to the reviewer, the most common and frequently used ACTIONS will be:
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Reviewer must submit notes as to what they need from the sender in order to evaluate the course. This will then send the task back to the original sender.
The reviewer can send the task to someone else, whether that is another department or another reviewer. Send an email alert so the person knows the task has been given to them.
This option can be used if more than one course is deemed equivalent. You can select an equivalency, then re-assign as many times as you'd like. Once the final course has been chosen, re-assign the evaluation task to the OTR. This will ensure that OTR has the ability to manipulate TES behind the scenes to reflect the multiple equivalents correctly.
Select/Change Equivalent Course (USED MOST FREQUENTLY)
Used to select a course that is deemed equivalent. Once you're established the course, scroll to the bottom and hit submit.
The next action needs to be selected, which will primarily be APPROVED so that the proposed equivalent task is re-routed back to OTR to create the equivalency in TES.
NEXT ACTION REQUIRED: you will receive a warning telling you to choose your next action, should almost always be APPROVED.
SELECT/CHANGE EQUIVALENT: the activity log shows what action was taken and what course was selected.
INSTITUTIONAL PROFILE ICON: will provide more detailed information that TES has collected regarding the institution.
GLOBE ICON: opens up the institutions webpage so that you can access department webpages or catalogs, bulletins, etc.
DEPARTMENT LINK: can view all other courses within that specific department.
VERSION HISTORY: allows you to see all past versions of the course and their descriptions.
Once a task is approved, the task will flow back into the original sender's queue, which in all cases should be OTR.
Close: clear it out the queue.
Close/Create Equivalency: only uses with equivalency manager user rights can create equivalency. Users without those rights will not see this option under Select an Action. (if you see this option, please contact the OTR know, as your right for TES need to be adjusted).
- Batch Mode.
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Can be used when you have multiple courses from the same college to go out to be reviewed by the same person.
10 or more courses automatically go to BATCH mode and will notify you with a red note at the top of the page.
If you are searching for all 10 courses, you must select the date set to choose the course, not look up individual courses.
Choose this option to search for courses if you plan on sending 10+ courses for review.
Example: if you have 10 courses that need to be evaluated from UW Milwaukee, you will select all courses, begin an evaluation task and then 10 individual evaluation tasks will be waiting in the evaluators queue.
Watch for the Gray Colored Puzzle Piece
If an equivalent course has already been determined, the puzzle piece icon in the bottom right of the course description will be the color gray. Click or tap this icon to see what courses you have been deemed equivalent.
Puzzle Piece: this puzzle piece icon is used to create an equivalency. Use this ONLY for verifying if course already has been evaluated. Gray = equivalencies exist. Gold = no equivalencies yet.
Reminders emails can be sent to outstanding evaluation tasks that have been sitting for longer than they should.
You can filter the tasks by institutions and age of the evaluation task.
Final Equivalent Established
Once an evaluation task has been created, routed to the appropriate person and sent back approved to OTR, the equivalency will be created in TES.
Catalogs that are not up to date in TES
If you are trying to review a course and find that the institution does not have their most current catalog in TES, use their website to find the most current catalog.
In the evaluation task, enter notes stating that you used the website for the current catalog so that it can be tracked and edited once TES has been updated with the current catalog.
