Students transferring between institutions tend to have unused courses in their new programs. This results in additional time and costs spent at the new institution. There is an articulation agreement for courses in the core curriculum between the University System of Georgia (USG) institutions, but no such agreement exists for private or out of state institutions. The goal of this project is to allow students to transfer to KSU more easily by accepting more relevant coursework into their programs. KSU is re-evaluating all the general education courses from our top feeder universities/colleges. Rather than evaluating for course equivalency, we will review each course for a match in learning outcomes in each of our general education areas. Additionally, new and renewed articulation agreements focus on how to maximize credits being transferred between institutions.
KPIs:
- Number of feeder schools
- Number of courses being added to student records
Baseline measure (for each KPI):
- Spring 2023: 18
- Spring 2023: 16,056 transfer courses
Goal or targets (for each KPI):
The goal is to expand this initiative to apply to as many feeder schools as possible.
January 1, 2025 to date, the project has positively impacted 3,118 students by accepting 53,366 transfer credit hours without having to go through a course substitution process. We estimate this updated substitution process will decrease the time to graduation for each of these students by at least one full semester of coursework (an average of 17 credit hours per transfer student). The transfer attributes have been updated to accommodate the core IMPACTS curriculum, and the IMPACTS course substitution process for courses not automatically accepted by the attribute project has been streamlined in the decisions course substitution portal. The course attribute project provides increased transferability within core IMPACTS. During this review period, 2,336 students have transferred 8,631 credit hours into core IMPACTS without having to go through the course substitution process. Additionally, the campus community has the opportunity to request additional review if coursework is not automatically mapped to KSU curriculum using the transfer attribute project. From January 1, 2025 to present, 1,386 such courses from 64 institutions have been reviewed substitution by coverage of IMPACTS learning outcomes. 1,053 (76%) were approved, 250 (18%) were canceled or denied and the remaining 83 (6%) are pending review. The most common reasons for substitution request to be canceled or denied fall in two categories: 1) administrative decisions including the requested course earned an unsatisfactory grade, the requested course would move to an area already satisfied in DegreeWorks, or the requested course is at a level inappropriate for graduation requirements and 2) department or subject matter expert decision where the requested course is not an appropriate match for required course content coverage.
We continuously evaluate transfer credits and institutions that frequently appear on the course substitution portal and investigate modifications to the attribute list and work with the transfer evaluation specialists and advising directors to expand opportunities for substitutions based on course to learning outcome overlap when a direct course to course match is not available within the institutional catalog.
Currently the decisions workflow requires advisors to submit course to course substitution requests rather than course to IMPACTS domain. In cases where an appropriate course to course match is not available in the instructional catalog, this can cause confusion and initial rejection at the department review. A project request to modify the course substitution portal is in process and will reduce barriers to course to IMPACTS domain substitution approvals. The workflow will close the loop by adding new attributes to approved course to domain substitutions such that the total number of future substitution requests should decrease. The revised workflow in the decisions course substitution portal is scheduled to go live near the end of the fall 2025 semester.
