Archives: Service News

Based on user feedback, the Report Prioritization Group released several updates to the BI Portal report, All Applications.

Please note: The All Applications report displays data for active applications for admission to UW. Communications to undergraduate applicants should NOT be undertaken without first consulting with the respective admissions office(s).

Change Summary:

The first version of the All Applications report was released in 2015. Since then, we’ve gained lots of institutional knowledge about application data, and how it is used by the UW data user community. These updates are really about incorporating that new information, and consistent reporting standards into the report:

Report Population Update:

• The report previously enforced a rule where, in the case when an applicant’s requested major and their (actual) assigned major are different, the applicants were excluded from the report population.There was no documented justification for this rule and we heard many requests to remove this rule.
• We updated the report so that an applicant is included in the report based on the applicant’s first, second, or third Requested Major or their first, second, or third Assigned Major based on the user’s selection of the new filter, Major Cohort Type.

Filter Updates:

• Major Cohort Type:
  • The report now includes a filter called Major Cohort Type, that allows the user to select the relationship between the applicant and the major:
    • Did they choose the major as one of their Requested Major(s)?
    • Was the major their Assigned Major?
    • Is the major either their Requested Major or their Assigned Major?

• Class Filter:
  • The logic for grouping class levels in the class filter was out of date, and was inconsistent with other academic reports.
  • We updated the filter selections so that they are consistent with the user community’s expectations, and other academic reports.

• New Filters: Consistent with other academic reports, All Applications now allows users to filter on the following attributes:
  • New, Continuing, Returning Status
  • Residency
  • Ethnicity
  • Underrepresented
  • Gender

Column Updates:

• Race/Ethnicity:
  • This column was updated to display student race-ethnicity data based on IPEDS race-ethnicity categories
  • For more information on the IPEDS race-ethnicity categories, please see Knowledge Navigator: Student Race-Ethnicity
• Ethnic Long Description:
  • The “Race” column was re-labeled to “Ethnic Long Description” and now displays a comma-separated list of all of the applicant-provided ethnicity values.

New Columns:

• Consistent with other academic reports, All Applications now allows users to display the following columns (using the “Columns to Display” filter):
  • Application Number
  • NCR
  • Underrepresented
  • First Gen
  • First Gen 4 Year
  • Honors Program
  • Special Program
  • Veteran Status
  • Veteran Benefits

Known Issue:

For active applications, the report truly shows “All Applications” regardless of application status type. However, for applications for a quarter that is over 1 year in the past, the report only shows a subset of applications.

If you are looking at quarters older than 1 year, the report currently only considers students that applied and enrolled at UW. This is a known issue and we are currently working on a resolution so that the report truly shows “All Applications” for all quarters.

Questions and Feedback:

This report references many concepts like Requested Major, Student Class, and many others. To get detailed definitions for these and other terms, please check out Knowledge Navigator!

As always, if you have any questions, please write help@uw.edu and put “RPG: All Applications report” in the subject line.

Based on user feedback, the Report Prioritization Group released updates to the BI Portal report, Time Schedule Information.

Change Summary:

Based on user requests, The Time Schedule Information report now includes Section Comments:

• In the Columns to Display filter, select “Section Comments”, and the section comments will display in the report.
• The column displays the section comments from the Time Schedule construction tool.
• You can now review section comments in bulk for accuracy and detail using the report.

Other Important Updates:

RPG has invested a lot of effort into updates to the Time Schedule Information Report. Here’s a Recap:

• RPG Release: Updated Instructor Title on Time Schedule Information
• RPG Release: New Fields Added to Time Schedule Information Report
• RPG Release: Updates to Time Schedule Information report

Also, in case you missed it, we recently introduced a new visualization to the BI Portal that allows you to visualize Time Schedule Enrollment data by day and time:

• RPG Release: Time Schedule Enrollment by Day and Time Visualization in BI Portal

Questions and Feedback:

This report references many concepts like Time Schedule and Online Learning. To get detailed definitions for these and other terms, please check out Knowledge Navigator!

As always, if you have any questions, please write help@uw.edu and put “RPG: Time Schedule Information report” in the subject line.

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.

Based on this user feedback, the Report Prioritization Group released several important and timely updates to the BI Portal report Current Student Information.

Change Summary:

This release includes 3 important changes to the Current Student Information Report:

1. “Current Student” Population:
   • The report population in the previous version of the report included registered students as well as new confirmed applicants. Based on feedback from users we determined that these new confirmed applicants did not meet the criteria for “Current Students”.
   • We updated the report population to only include students with registration records for the user-selected quarter. The only students with registrations that are excluded are those with “Unknown Enrollment Status” (i.e. Enroll status = 0)
2. New Filters:
   1. Quarter:
      • In the previous version of the report, the report population advanced to the next quarter during academic breaks.
      • In the new version, the Quarter filter allows users to choose the current quarter, or upcoming quarters.
      • For instance, during Spring 2020, users can select Spring, Summer, or Autumn 2020 . During a break period, you can choose from the current quarter, or the upcoming quarter.
   2. Enrollment Status:
      • In researching this update, we heard disagreement about whether to include or exclude students with enrollment statuses other than Registered (e.g. students that withdrew at some point before or during the quarter).
      • Rather than enforce a rule that people didn’t agree on, we decided to allow users the flexibility to decide if they need to see Withdrawn students.
3. New Columns:
   1. ASUW:
      • By request, we added a field to the report to identify if a student is a member of ASUW and is eligible to vote in student elections.
      • The field displays a Y or N based on the student’s student_1 record.
   2. Minor Dates:
      • We added the Minor Date 1, 2, and 3 fields to the reports. These fields represent the date the student “declared” the Minor. These fields are included in the “Default” selection in the Columns to Display filter.
      • These fields were a part of the the previous Current Students Information by Minor report, but were not available on the new report, so we added them by user request.

A Reminder:

• Consolidation: You no longer have to access two separate reports to get information on current students by major and minor. The report now features a single filter that allows you to filter by the Major or Minor of interest in a single report!
  • In the coming weeks we will archive the existing Current Student by Major and Minor Reports. Please update your bookmarks!

Questions and Feedback:

This report references important institutional concepts like “Current Student”, “URM“, and many others. If you have questions about the meaning of these or any other term, 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: Current Student Information” in the subject line.

In collaboration with the Office of Planning and Budgeting (OPB), Enterprise Reporting and Analytics just introduced the newest Peer Comparison Dashboard to the UW Profiles:

• Cost of Attendance Story

Dashboard Summary:

The Cost of Attendance Story is the latest Peer Comparison Dashboard. Like the other Peer Dashboards, Cost of Attendance sources data from IPEDS. Also like the other Peer Dashboards, the Cost of Attendance Story allows you to compare UW’s Cost of Attendance to a variety of Peers. The Peer Group dropdown gives you the flexibility to choose the peer group you want to see:

As a Tableau Story, the tool allows users to explore peer cost data in three different views. You can tab through the story to view the following:

• Total Cost of Attendance
• Tuition and Fees
• Detailed Cost of Attendance

Questions and Feedback:

This dashboard references many IPEDS concepts and definitions like Tuition and In-state Student . To get detailed definitions for these and other terms, please check out Knowledge Navigator!

As always, if you have any questions, please write help@uw.edu and put “UW Profiles: Cost of Attendance Story” in the subject line.

In response to user feedback, the Report Prioritization Group just released an update to resolve a bug in the Student Grade Report by Major in the BI Portal.

Change Summary:

A user reported that the Course Grade Filter was incorrectly filtering out students. We identified and resolved the problem in the report’s query.

Now when you use the Course Grade Filter, the report filters down to only the grades of students that meet the filter criteria.

Consider the following scenario:

• The student Potter, Harry completed three courses, and received three grades: 3.8, 3.9, 0.9
• Harry’s adviser runs the report to see only the students who had grades below 2.0
• The report returns Harry’s 0.9 grade.

Requesting Feedback:

While making this update, we heard two additional requests. Before we make these changes, we want to hear your feedback to understand if they will help or hurt you. Please write us at help@uw.edu with “RPG: Student Grade Report by Major” in the subject line.

• Remove the Filter “Current Student as of”:
  • We heard that this filter is confusing and is often ignored, so we are proposing to remove the filter to reduce confusion.
  • We will not change the “Look up Transcript Year/Qtr” filter, and now it will be the primary “time” filter for the report.

• Add a Filter “See All Grades”:
  • Consider the hypothetical Harry Potter case again. When the adviser applies the Course Grade filter, the report currently only returns the 0.9 grade. But the adviser may want to see the student’s other grades to see if the low grade is part of a pattern.
  • We are proposing to add a filter that would allow you to see all of the student’s grades for the quarter, if any of the student’s grades meet the filter criteria.
  • For instance, since Harry has one grade in the range 0-1.9, the report would return all three grades 3.8, 3.9, 0.9.

Questions and Feedback:

This report references many UW institutional concepts, including Cumulative GPA and Quarterly Grade Point Average. To get detailed definitions for this 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 Report by Major” in the subject line.