Office of the University Registrar

The Transcript window at 225 Schmitz will be closed on 12/16/11 from 3 – 5 p.m.

Have grading questions? Need a little help? Check out the Autumn 2011 edition of the quarterly Online Grade Submission newsletter here.

The Office of the Registrar has published the latest Grade Submission newsletter for UW staff and faculty, designed to assist you with the grading process. Access the Summer 2011 newsletter here.

The Summer newsletter documents how to use the new online grade submission tool known as GradePage. Gradepage is a fast and simple-to-use tool that allows you submit online grades.

Have feedback? Use our contact page to let us know your thoughts.

The latest Grade Submission newsletter for UW staff and faculty, designed to assist you with the grading process, has just been published by The Office of the Registrar.

Access the Spring 2011 newsletter here. Have feedback? Use our contact page to let us know your thoughts!

What topics are covered in PSYCH 101? Are differential equations covered in MATH 307 or MATH 308? Can I get into ACCT 225 before I’ve taken ECON 200? Who’s teaching LING 450 the next time it’s offered?

These and similar questions about program offerings at the UW are commonly asked by current and prospective students, as well as advisers and faculty. Starting today, finding answers to those questions just got a lot easier. The Office of the University Registrar just updated its listing of the UW’s Undergraduate, Graduate, and Professional Degree Programs in the General Catalog. It’s now possible to learn the answers to the questions above with just a click or two. (And if you were curious, the answers are: personality, learning, memory, etc.; MATH 307; No, ECON 200 is a pre-req for ACCT 225; and Richard A. Wright is teaching LING 450 in AUT2010).

All course references within these program descriptions are now clickable; doing so brings up an in-page window (clicking anywhere other than the in-page window will dismiss it). Displayed within is a lot of useful information about the course:

1. Full name, credits, and Area(s) of Knowledge it satisfies;
2. Catalog description; and
3. Links to its curriculum prefix in both the UW Course Catalog and Time Schedule for the upcoming registration quarter.

This unobtrusive way of displaying additional course information will help everyone better understand a program’s admission and degree requirements. No longer will you have to open a second web browser to look up information about the courses listed as requirements.

A quick technical note: this functionality is possible through the use of UW Information Technology’s Student Web Services initiative, which also powers the Course Catalog search, web grading, the m.UW iPhone app, photo class lists, and other web applications appearing across the campus.

Ever wonder what day registration begins for Autumn quarter? Or when applications are due for in-state residency? Perhaps you need to know the quarter’s withdrawal deadline? Until recently, the only place to find that information was on the Registrar’s Academic Calendar page. And while that page certainly answers those questions, those dates can’t easily be added to phones or calendar software.

The Office of the University Registrar is pleased to announce that the UW’s academic calendar is now available through MyUW’s calendar service. And like the other calendars available through MyUW, dates can be easily added to your iPhone, Blackberry, Google Calendar, or any device or service that can read iCal, RSS, XML, or other formats.

The academic calendar on MyUW is organized into sub-calendars to allow students the freedom to view just the information that’s important to them. As with the Academic Calendar page on the Registrar’s site, the MyUW Academic Calendar contains the following sub-calendars:

• Adding/Dropping Courses
• Application Deadlines
• Dates of Instruction
• Grade Deadlines
• Registration Deadlines
• Religious Calendar
• Tuition and Fee Assessment Deadlines

Adding these dates to your device or service is pretty easy:

1. Visit the MyUW calendar export page
2. Choose “Academic Calendar” to subscribe to all dates, or choose a specific sub-calendar if you only want that information
3. Choose the date range you want (probably from Sept. of one year through Aug. of the next)
4. Choose the format for the output (refer to your device or service’s instructions on subscribing to feeds for the format that works best for you)
5. Check the “Subscription URL” box
6. Click “Retrieve Data”
7. Enter the subscription URL that appears into your device or service

That’s it! You’re now subscribed to that calendar and your device or service will reflect any additions or changes to the calendar.

The only problem is you no longer have an excuse if you miss a registration date or other academic deadline!

This post is an update to a previous entry, available here: Saving you time, one (less) login at a time.

The “single sign-on” feature of the student self-service enrollment verification has saved UW students time. A lot of time.

Computer logs show that since the time-saving feature was rolled out in August 2009, the National Student Clearinghouse  (NSC) has been accessed by UW students just under 1,000 times. And over the past month the NSC has been accessed an average of 20 times a day

What do these number mean? Using the single sign-on feature eliminates the need to log in twice to access NSC enrollment verification. Assuming that entering their full name, date of birth, and social security number takes a student at least a minute, this feature has saved over 16 hours of redundant data entry! (Not to mention the groans at having to fill out another verification web form.)

Be sure to read the original blog post for full details on the use of federated log-ins to the NSC.

Winter quarter 2010 boasted not one but two records for grade submissions, according to analysis performed after the grade submission period closed Monday afternoon:

1. An amazing 91% of all courses had grades submitted on time. That’s the highest percentage ever and represents a large jump over previous quarters.
2. Additionally, just over 81% of all grades came in on time and that’s also a record-setting percentage for this metric.

These numbers mean more students than ever are receiving their grades in a timely manner and University processes that rely on a quarter’s grades can run more smoothly. The Office of the University Registrar sincerely thanks the faculty  for this significant improvement in on-time grade submissions.

Use of Catalyst Web GradeBook (WGB) for grade submission (instead of by paper-based Faculty Grade Reports) also nudged up in winter 2010. Autumn 2009 had 65% of all grades submitted online via WGB; winter 2010 came in at 66%. Even though it was only up by a percentage point, this shows that online grade submission is still gaining acceptance on campus.

Early this month, the Office of Information Management (OIM) released to the University community a new component to its Student Web Services (SWS): the Enrollment resource. This new data set allows campus developers—following a strict security policy—access students’ transcript data for improved tools for faculty and staff.

The College of Education had been an early tester of the service and therefore has already updated one of its web applications to leverage the Enrollment resource. Student Tracking of Educational Progress (STEP) is an advising application that combines University-level data (including the new Enrollment resource) with College-level data into one unified tool.

“The Student Web Service provides an ideal resource to bring in university data. It simplifies the process by allowing our web application to connect directly to the data source, eliminating an ETL process [Extract, transform, and load].  The direct connection means we can provide more up-to-date information in our local web application.”

~ Paul Hanisko, College of Education

Both the Grad School and Computer Science and Engineering have committed to building applications the rely on the resource.

Getting access to this FERPA-protected student data requires signing the SWS Access Agreement and obtaining and installing an X509 browser certificate. Any web application using the Enrollment resource must also undergo a code-security review prior to launch.

The Enrollment resource builds upon a foundation of the existing SWS resources, such as curriculum, course, and section data. For this reason, developers who obtain access to the Enrollment resource should find its structure familiar and be able to easily use the data it provides.

The availability of this enrollment data, long requested by members of the University developer community, is a result of the hard work by many people. The Office of the University Registrar would like to thank those who worked with them to make it possible, including everyone on the SWS and Student Database teams at OIM, the College of Education, the Graduate School, and Computer Science and Engineering.

Information is the lifeblood of a university, both in terms of teaching students and in learning about its operations. With information systems as sophisticated as the UW’s, that learning process is multi-faceted and increasingly important. The University’s Office of the Information Officer for Student Life (IOSL) understands this and is looking for the right person to step into the role of Learning Manager:

The Learning Manager will help build and maintain the learning infrastructure within University learning systems and IOSL web sites.  This will enable the IOSL to deliver an ongoing and diverse curriculum of classes as well as provide a range of additional learning services that support users as they develop the core skills required to use complex systems more effectively and securely.

The IOSL believes the best way to invest in the security of information systems is to invest in the growth and learning of the people who use them. At the UW, these information systems include the Student Database (SDB), the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), and Kuali (a possible successor to SDB). Thousands of UW students, faculty and staff rely on these systems every quarter, so ensuring their efficient and proper use of the utmost importance.

The Learning Manager will serve many functions in support of the mission of the Division of Student Life. Some of these are to:

• Design, create and edit instructional materials and supporting documentation.
• Plan, coordinate and deliver instructor-led classes to clients on campus and in other business units.
• Manage all elearning usability testing programs.
• Maintain the learning web site and related databases systems.

While the position has a strong technology focus, other factors are equally important. The IOSL views learning as a process of active inquiry rather than passive reception; the Learning Manager will use a variety of learning options and technological innovations in order to accommodate a variety of learning styles and needs.

Get more information about the postion, including detailed responsibilities and benefits, at the job’s posting on the UW Hires website. It’s an exciting opportunity for the right person to positively impact the learning across one of the nation’s premier educational and research institutions. Are you that right person? We hope so!