I didn't see anything regarding degree minors, only majors. Because this is such a common part of college degrees, I thought maybe I'm just missing something? Does FlightPath support the listing of minors alongside of majors?
Can you explain how they appear to students? How do admins set up minors compared to majors?
If it's not a capability already, is it something that could be added somewhat easily? Thanks!
Sure thing.
The short answer is: "mostly." At the moment, FlightPath doesn't automatically calculate in minor requirements. But, it can handle "concentrations" and "degree tracks". Each one is considered like a separate major code, with a separate degree entry.
For example, Business might be:
BUSN
Business with a concentration in, say, Accounting, might be:
BUSN|ACCT
Biology with a "microbiology track" might be:
BIOL|_123
The tracks are just codes you make up, whereas the concentration should be the "real" code that comes from your data source, for example, Banner.
So, if Computer Science with a minor in Math is a really common combination, you could create a track called "CSCI|_MATH" or something similar.
As far as data entry goes, FlightPath considers "BUSN" and "BUSN|ACCT" to be two separate majors, so data would need to be entered for both.
At ULM, those students working on a minor usually simply have their advised courses added to their requirements by their advisors, as its usually not that many courses for a minor. There's a little box near the bottom of the advising screen where advisors can just add any course in the catalog to the degree plan for advising. The advisor also just leaves a comment on their profile that says they are working towards XYZ minor, just to document it for others and the student.
This isn't as tight a solution as I would like, but so far it's never caused a problem for us at ULM. (going on 7 years ;). Having separate functionality specifically for minors isn't something I'm planning right now, since the other functionality is available as a workaround that handles 99% of the cases.
Please let me know if you have any other questions!
Richard
"Business with a concentration in, say, Accounting, might be:
BUSN|ACCT"
So I'm gathering that BUSN|ACCT is just a label, with no special functionality related to it. So we'd clone the BUSN major and name the new clone BUSN|ACCT for a double major. Then manually fill in the accounting courses. Then we could give it a Degree Title of "Business / Accounting - Double Major", which is what students and advisors would see. Does this sound correct?
"Biology with a "microbiology track" might be:
BIOL|_123"
And when a new degree track is created, it doesn't appear to carry in any of the major course requirements either. So what's the advantage of tracks? It this just another way to label them separately? Are tracks somehow re-usable within other majors without cloning an existing major? I see that the degree tracks do not show in the 'What If?' page 'Major' drop-down menu, is this for a particular reason?
The one advantage of both concentrations and tracks that I'm seeing is that the concentrations(double majors) and tracks(minors) optionally carry-over if you clone a major, then you can rename them.
Yes, you've got the right idea. Both concentrations and "tracks" are both thought of, internally, like 2 separate degree plans for FlightPath to display.
The main difference between tracks and concentrations is that an advisor can change a students track on the fly. A concentration is changed at the database level, for example, like a student submitting they wish to change majors.
See my attached screenshot to this post. I am demonstrating what an advisor sees for a BIOL degree, which has more than one track. The advisor can click that little icon (1) and they get a popup (2) which shows the available tracks.
And yes, you are right, any "degree plan", whether by concentrations or tracks, is cloneable.
Richard
Thanks, that makes sense. The screenshot really helps. I had completely missed that before.