Continuing the move into the digital age
Katie Paar worked closely with Diana Maki, the Council on Academic Advising, and undergraduate academic dean’s offices to create a simple Qualtrics survey to replace a long-standing paper/pdf form.
The paper form was used by advisors to communicate department-level approval for an additional major to the student’s “home” academic dean’s office. Both advisors and academic dean’s offices reached out to the Office of the Registrar in recent years to request help with the pre-SIS part of the process. The paper form resulted in inconsistencies among departmental staff who sometimes didn’t know it existed and was burdensome for students who had to carry the form from one office to another. In some cases, the forms never made it to the academic dean’s office or arrived crumpled up several months later! The pandemic exacerbated this burden.
The Office of the Registrar accepted the feedback and felt it was uniquely positioned to create an alternative process that could meet the needs of our campus partners. Because the processes related to use of the form belonged to the advising community and the academic dean’s offices, collaboration and feedback from key campus partners was crucial along the way to developing a better and more streamlined solution. Since this involves a workflow that happens outside of SIS, it was decided that a Qualtrics survey could meet the needs and would provide several exciting advancements and opportunities.
Advantages of the Qualtrics form
- Includes an electronic workflow from the departmental advisor to the academic dean’s office.
- Eliminating the need for the student to carry a form from one office to the next ensures more timely declaration of the additional major in SIS, once approved by the academic dean’s office.
- Allows for tailored notes from each school/college related to their additional major approval policies.
- Provides consistency and clarity across schools and colleges for additional major approval and notification.