Background for Academic Records for Campuses

Before you begin to configure Academic Records for campuses, you should be familiar with the following:

Student Status Reporting and Default Withdrawal Date Settings

The settings in the section allows campuses to define configurations that are applicable to National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) reporting, particularly in relation to reporting withdrawal dates. Student status data is reported to the NSLDS via the SSCR or Clearinghouse reports. The Department of Education sets guidelines for how withdrawal dates should be determined. The Attendance Required by Outside Entity and Status Date for Withdrawals settings are critical to ensuring accurate withdrawal dates in Anthology Student. These two fields drive the logic for calculating the NSLDS Withdrawal Date on students who are withdrawn from school.

Although it is not as common for an institution to be mandated to take attendance, the Attendance Required by Outside Entity option is available for configuration at the campus level. This setting can also be configured for individual program versions and/or fund sources. Regardless of the location of this setting, the option allows institutions to report the Last Date of Attendance (LDA) as the NSLDS Withdrawal Date on all withdrawing students regardless of the Official or Unofficial withdrawal designation. This also applies to students who do not return from an LOA and are subsequently dropped (instead of the date that a student began the LOA, if a student attending one of these institutions fails to return from that LOA, the LDA is reported as the NSLDS Withdrawal Date). It is important to consider that if an institution has an internal policy requiring to take attendance, this does not meet the definition as applied to the regulation. An institution is considered to be required to take attendance only if an outside entity such as an accrediting agency requires them to do so. Only institutions that meet this criteria should use the Attendance Required by Outside Entity check box configuration.

The Department of Education mandates that a student’s withdrawal date be treated differently in scenarios where attendance is NOT required to be taken. In this scenario, institutions can still opt to use an LDA as the NSLDS Withdrawal Date if they can document attendance was related to an academic activity. In many cases, institutions do take attendance (despite not being mandated to do so) and have published attendance and withdrawal policies within their school catalog. Institutions that do not take attendance, or only do so based on an internal policy, should rely on the Status Date for Withdrawals setting to dictate the NSLDS Withdrawal Date logic.

If a campus is not required, but opts to take attendance per a published attendance and withdrawal policy, the recommended Status Date for Withdrawals setting is L-LDA. This ensures that the default NSLDS Withdrawal Date calculation on Unofficial withdrawals are in relation to the LDA. Campuses with this configuration can use an additional field to define the number of days that should be added to the LDA to comply with their policy.

If a campus is a non-attendance taking Institution (may take attendance periodically, but not regularly and has no established attendance withdrawal policies), the Status Date for Withdrawals setting should be U-Use Drop Type to Determine. With this configuration, the NSLDS Withdrawal Date for Unofficial withdrawals is calculated using Financial Aid Academic Calendar and Return of Title IV period definition settings.

For students who fail to return from an LOA at an institution that is not required by an outside entity to take attendance, the NSLDS Withdrawal Date continues to calculate the LOA Begin Date as the NSLDS Withdrawal Date.

Enforce Last Day to Withdraw

You can select this check box to enforce last day to withdraw dates. If you select this check box, a last day to withdraw date is calculated for each course section offered at this campus. This does not mean last day to withdraw and receive a non-punitive drop grade. This last day to withdraw date, once it has passed, will restrict staff users (who do not have override permission) and students from withdrawing from a course (moving a course from scheduled or current status to dropped). By default, this option is not selected.

Before this feature can be turned on, you must ensure all Grade Scales associated with the campus have at least one general grade configured as a default After LDW Grade and one Pass/Fail grade with a default After LDW Grade. These grade settings are required to ensure that when school status changes to a dropped system status occur (if a course’s LDW date is in the past), an appropriate non-drop grade will be posted to the course. If Anthology Student finds at least one grade scale without these two grades, then Anthology Student displays message to enable this setting, all grade scales associated with this campus must be configured with an After LDW Grade. There must be at least one After LDW Grade for standard courses and one for pass/fail courses configured. This ensures that the student who has withdrawn from school after the LDW, receives the appropriate grades.

Calculated Weeks Usage

You can select the option to configure how your institution defines weeks, and more specifically, how your institution wants Anthology Student to calculate the total number of weeks in the course.

  • If Start Day is selected, the second week of the course starts on the 7th day after the course section’s start date. Using the example course section noted above, if the course section’s start date is Wednesday, 4/1/09, and Start Day is selected, then week 2 starts on Wednesday, 4/8/09. This also means that the last day of week 1 is Tuesday, 4/7/09. With this information, Anthology Student can then calculate the total course length as exactly 20 weeks.

  • If Standard Weeks is selected, the next week starts the day after the selected Last Day of Week. So in this case, if the course section's start date is Wednesday, 4/1/09, and Last Day of Week is selected as Sunday, then week 1 ends on Sunday, 4/5/09 and week 2 starts on Monday, 4/6/09. With this information, Anthology Student can then calculate the total course length as 20 weeks and 2 days, which is rounded to 21 weeks.

Set LDW

You can select the option to select how Anthology Student sets the LDW date.

  • If Calculated Day is selected, Anthology Student sets the course section’s LDW date to the exact date calculated based on the LDW Course Length Percentage (in weeks) and Calculate Weeks Usage on settings. Again, using the example course, this would translate to an LDW date of Tuesday, 7/21/09 (80% of the weeks based on start day = 16 weeks which equates to an exact LDW date based on the end of the 15th week), or Saturday, 7/25/09 (80% of the standard weeks = 16.8 weeks which equates to an exact LDW date on the 6th day after the 16th week).

  • If Last Day of Week is selected, Anthology Student sets the course section’s LDW date to the last day of the week (selected by the user in the next configuration option) following the exact calculated LDW date. So, if the exact calculated LDW date is Tuesday, 7/21/09, and the Set LDW to setting is Last Day of Week and the Last Day of the Week setting is Sunday, then the LDW date set on the course section will be Sunday, 7/26/09. Or, if the exact calculated LDW date is Saturday, 7/25/09, and the Last Day of the Week setting is Sunday, then the LDW date set on the course section will also be Sunday, 7/26/09.

Grade Level Promotion

If Anthology Student determines that a student is expected to move to the next grade level, any additional eligibility loans for which the student qualifies, are added to the student's package (in the current academic year) at an estimated status. A grade level is associated with each student enrollment record.

When the Grade Level Promotion feature is enabled at the campus level, an SQL job runs periodically, that executes a stored procedure to evaluate enrollments. Within this stored procedure, the add/drop date configuration is determined as part of the logic to include the Academic Records system level setting for add/drop campus and uses the add/drop date configured at the course section level when the Add/Drop Flag is set to Course Section Enforced.

If the Add/Drop Flag is set to:

  • Campus Enforced or Term Enforced, once a term is evaluated for anticipated grade level promotion, it is not evaluated again

  • Not Enforced, the term can be evaluated more than once as long as all other criteria have been met

  • Course Section Enforced, Anthology Student evaluates the anticipated grade level promotion the same as Not Enforced. This is because a student may add or drop a course throughout the term until it ends, which may end up changing the student's situation as far as grade level promotion. As a result, students can be evaluated more than once per term

Enable Catalogs

Catalog configuration is required to use any feature that relies on catalogs (such as Degree Progress Audit (DPA) and Degree Pathway). It is also required to use some of the advanced features for Academic Records that are available only in the Student Web App. You must:

  • Select the Enable CatalogsClosed Enables catalogs for the campus. Your institution must select the check box to enable catalogs for all campuses. check box for all campuses.

  • Configure catalog years and then use the configured catalogs throughout Anthology Student. For example, you must select a catalog when you configure program versions and areas of study and enroll students.

The Default - None catalog should not be used because it is included only for backward compatibility with the legacy interface.

Set Start Date to Term Start Date

You can select this check box to set the start date for the enrollment to the Term Start date for the first class the student attends. This option compares the version start date to the term start date to ensure that start dates are accurate and meaningful in term-based schools. The value is stored in SyCampus.SetTermStart.

For example: If Term 0501 starts on 01/03/2008, and a new student registers for a Term 0501 class which meets on WED and FRI, when attendance is recorded for the class on Wednesday, 01/05/2008:

  • If this check box is selected, the Enrollment Start date is set to 01/03/2008.

  • If this check box is cleared, the Enrollment Start date is set to 01/05/2008.

If this option is not selected, the version start date is same as the day as when positive attendance gets posted.

For Re-entry with Active Units of Attendance Recorded configuration of program version, upon status change to active, a record must be inserted into enrollment status history and the begin date must be populated with the date when positive attendance gets posted and sum of positive attendance is equal to or more than the active unit configuration. The date of the positive attendance has to be on or after the reentry date. If it is before the re-entry date, the status will not be set to active.

Version Start Dates are updated only if enrollment record does not have it. If it is there, it won’t be updated. When version start date gets updated, Set Start date to term Start configuration is taken into consideration.

Course Registration Sharing Groups

Course Registration Sharing Groups (CRSG) provide the means for a campus to share a course with another campus, so that students have additional options for registering for course sections that may be filled or inconveniently scheduled at their regular campus.

The sponsoring campus (the campus that owns the course) settings for the course determine when students from other campuses can view shared course sections and when students can register into the shared course sections.

To enable Course Registration Sharing Group, your institution must have selected Yes & Use CRSG (Course Registration Sharing Groups) for Student RegistrationClosed Select the option that determines where students can register. The options are Yes: Only courses offered at the student's campus are displayed. No: The listing of all courses offered within the defined campus group is used.. and Yes & Use CRSG (Course Registration Sharing Groups). For the last option, course sections are shared with other campuses giving students additional options to register for course sections that may be filled at their home campus. For additional information about the student registration, refer to the background for academic records general settings. when it configured all the general settings for academic records. Course Registration Sharing and Course Section Add/Drop Date Enforcement.

Course registration can take place from multiple locations within Anthology Student and course sections can be shared between multiple campuses. Regardless of where course registration is initiated during the registration process, the Add/Drop flag for the student (in relation to the course being registered) depends on the Academic Records system level setting for Add/Drop enforcement (Select the Settings tile > locateSystem > Select Campuses.) Based on whether Add/Drop enforcement is configured as Student's enrollment campus or Course section's campus, the appropriate campus is checked to determine what type of add/drop validation needs to take place, if any. If an add/drop policy is configured, Anthology Student calculates the add/drop date.

The logic to determine the add/drop date is as follows:

  1. The Academic Records system level setting for add/drop is used to determine which campus to use when determining the add/drop policy: the Student's enrollment campus or the Course section's campus.

  2. The Add/Drop flag for the campus designated in the Academic Records system level setting is checked.

  3. If the Academic Records system level setting is configured to use the Student's enrollment campus and the Add/Drop Flag of the student's enrollment campus is set to Course Section Enforced, Anthology Student enforces the add/drop policy of the course section's campus.

  4. If the Add/Drop Flag for the student's enrollment campus is different than Course Section Enforced, the student's enrollment campus is used.

  5. If the Academic Records system level setting is configured to use the Course section's campus, the same campus's policy is used.

  6. When the appropriate campus and add/drop flag configurations have been determined, the add/drop date is calculated as follows:

    Add/Drop Flag Calculation for the add/drop date

    Not Enforced

    There is no add/drop date because one is not being enforced.

    Campus Enforced

    The add/drop date is being enforced by campus (the campus that was determined above).

    Calculate the add/drop date by adding the number of days after the start date configured at the campus level to the course section's term start date.

    Term Enforced

    The add/drop date is being enforced by term.

    Obtain the add/drop date configured at the term level for the course section's term.

    Course Section Enforced

    The add/drop date is being enforced by course section.

    Obtain the add/drop date configured at the course section level for the appropriate course section.

Retain LDA on Unregistered Courses

Select this check box to keep the course LDA when a course is unregistered, even though attendance is being removed. If this check box is cleared, the course LDA is lost and the LDA are reset to the last date the student was in attendance in courses other than the unregistered course. This setting is in effect for the entire campus, unless overridden by a Retain LDA on Unregistered Courses setting for a specific course reason code or term.