Archives: Service News

In response to user feedback, the Report Prioritization Group just released enhancements to two BI Portal reports:

• Student Grade Report by Major
• Student Grade Report by Curriculum, Course and Section

This release is timed to help advisers and faculty support Autumn 2020 grading.

Change Summary:

This release is intended to help users identify or filter in/out students who either took a course as an auditor or were granted an RD (registrar drop). We made the following changes:

• Added “RD” to the course grade filter and grade column
• Added “AUD” as a course grade filter and grade column

In the previous report versions, students who audited were not identified in the report’s grade column. Instead, since they didn’t receive a grade, the course grade column displayed blank. To report users, this looked a lot like a missing grade, so we updated the report to display “AUD” instead of blank to distinguish “audit blanks” from “missing grade blanks”.

In Spring 2020, the Office of the University Registrar introduced “Registrar Drop” to replace “HW”, “W” and “W3-W7”. The RD notation began in Spring 2020 for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. We updated the report so that you can now identify students that receive an RD grade. You can filter on RD in the course grade filter, and view RD in the course grade column. Please note, RD only applies to data beginning Spring 2020. If you filter on RD for older quarters, the report will return no data.

Questions and Feedback:

This report references many UW institutional concepts, including Registrar Drop  and Course Grade. To get detailed definitions for these and other terms, please check out Knowledge Navigator!

As always, if you have any questions or if you would like to provide feedback, please write help@uw.edu and put “RPG: Student Grade Reports” in the subject line.

The Report Prioritization Group just released a bug fix on the BI Portal report Undergraduate Transcript Course Search by Major

In this news story we provide a summary of the change. 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.

Change Summary:

Based on user feedback, we resolved an issue in the report logic that was causing students that are registered for a selected course to display as “N” or not registered:

• For a selected course, show me my majors that are Registered, or have not taken the course:

  • This is one of the primary use cases for this report. As an adviser I want to see the following:
    • Among my majors
    • For a given course (or courses)
    • Who has not taken the course and who is currently registered for the course
  • Previously the report incorrectly displayed students that are registered for a course as “N” indicating that they have not taken it. This was incorrect and we fixed it.
  • The report now correctly displays “Reg” if a student is registered for the chosen course.

Questions?

For more details on the release of this new report, please read this news story in IT Connect: RPG New Report Release: Undergraduate Transcript Course Search by Major

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.

The Report Prioritization Group just released two enhancements to the BI Portal report Major Codes.

This report helps advisers complete the change of major process, and these updates were designed to make it easier to find the info you need to complete the new Docusign web form: Change of Major Forms

This update was requested by a UW adviser and several advisers contributed feedback to the update. Thank you for your help!

Change Summary:

Based on user feedback, we updated the Major Codes filters and columns in the following ways:

Filter Updates

Here’s the filter before:

In the old version of the report, the “Include only Current Codes” filter was causing confusion. We heard things like:

• What is a current code?
• What if a code is active for 2 more quarters? Why is it being excluded?

We updated the filter to allow you to choose from three specific statuses for Major Codes:

• Active
• No longer active
• Not yet active

A Major Code is considered “No longer active” if it has an end date in the past. A Major Code is considered “Not yet active” if it has a start date in the future. All other Major codes are considered Active, whether they have no end date, or whether their end date is in a future quarter.

New Columns

We also updated the column order to improve the usability and added several new columns:

• Major:
  • We added a column “Major” with the full Major label as a reference to help you quickly identify the major you’re interested in.
  • We moved the Major Name to the 2nd column, also as a quick reference.
• College:
  • We added the College name to the College column as a reference.
• Degree Level and Type:
  • We added these fields because the form requires it.
• Start and End Quarter:
  • We broke these out as separate columns so they’d be more readable.
• Department Name and FAS Org Number:
  • We added these fields for departments that need to cross-reference department info in the FAS financial system.

Questions?

This report references important institutional concepts like Change of Major, Student Major 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: Major Codes Report” in the subject line.

The Report Prioritization Group just released the newest addition to the BI Portal: Undergraduate Major Comparison by Quarter

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

It’s All in the Name!

We admit, the visualization has a long name, Undergraduate Major Comparisons by Quarter. But each word explains something about the tool’s function.

• Undergraduate Major: This report allows you to see a population of Undergraduates associated with a major in a  given quarter. This dashboard only looks at Undergraduates because an undergraduate can change majors throughout their academic career. They may start as “Pre-Major” then declare a major later, or once they’re “in a major” they may move to another one from quarter to quarter.
• Comparison by Quarter: This visualization allows you to compare a cohort of students across two “reference quarters” like Autumn 2019 and Autumn 2020. The bar on the left shows you the students “in the major” in the first quarter, then shows “where those students were” in the second reference quarter.

How-To:

First, use the quarter filters to choose the two reference quarters that you want to see:

Use the second set of filters to identify the major(s) you want to visualize:

The bar on the left shows you students associated with the  major in the “cohort quarter”, the bar on the right shows you the same cohort of students in the future “target” quarter.

You can click a comparison category to filter the detailed table below the bars!

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:

The visualization has three primary use cases:

1. Advisers in Pre-Major Programs need to:
   • Observe if a student leaves a program at a given campus and joins a program at another campus.
   • Observe if a student stays at at a given campus, and declares a major. In that case, they want to know the major they joined, and the department that manages it. This helps them to allocate time partnering with those departments so that they can better represent students.
2. Departmental Advisers (those who are responsible for students after they ‘declare a major’ e.g. Geography, Computer Science…)
   • Observe changes to the population of students they are responsible for. Here, they want to see the ‘flow of students in and out of the major’.
3. Advisers can track students in given majors who are not registered for both incoming quarter (Cohort Quarter ) and/or outgoing quarter (Target Quarter)

Questions?

This report references important institutional concepts like  Change of Major,  Underrepresented Minority Status, and many others. If you have questions about the meaning of these or any other terms, please explore these 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 Question: UG Major Comparison by Quarter” in the subject line.