We are requesting a feature to automate course equivalencies between different programs (specifically Undergraduate to Graduate) to meet accreditation (DEAC) compliance standards.
Based on your response from support ticket #215033, the most likely way to achieve this would be if you created a way to automate the Course Waiver process. See details below.
Context:
Currently, Populi’s "Course Equivalency" feature does not bridge the gap between programs. We are required to manually enter Course Waivers for every student who moves from our Undergrad to Grad program to prevent them from retaking content. This does not scale and error-prone.
Goal:
When a course in the Catalog is set to be Equivalent across programs (Undergrad to Grad), Populi should perform two actions automatically for students as needed:
1) Automated Waiver on Degree Audit: If a student has passed the Undergraduate equivalent, the system should automatically mark the Graduate requirement as "Waived" without adding credits to the completed hours for the Graduate degree total. KEY: If it added to the total credits, that would create an accreditation compliance violation, by reducing the number of credits students needed to earn to complete the degree.
2) Registration Blocking: If a student has passed the Undergraduate equivalent, they should be automatically blocked from self-registering for the Graduate version of the course.
Business Case for Feature:
1) Compliance: Our accreditor requires that students do not retake content and that credits are not double-counted. Relying on manual data entry puts us at risk of compliance failure.
2) Efficiency: As our program grows, manually cross-referencing transcripts and entering waivers for every internal graduate will not be administratively sustainable.
Potential Implementation:
Add a toggle in Course Equivalency settings: "Apply equivalency across programs as a Waiver." If checked, the system treats the UG completion as a waiver for the Grad requirement.