Update on Destiny One: non-credit system

The Destiny One Registration System (DORS) will be launching with five pilot units May 22nd. DORS will be the system of record for non-credit professional and personal growth learning opportunities at the University. This system helps manage entities such as courses, sections, certificates, applications, and conferences. It has a robust enrollment management component that focuses on learner self-service, and there are a number of financial tools, such as coupon discounting, revenue sharing, and group management that will be extremely beneficial to any unit that offers non-credit learning opportunities.

The initial implementation focuses on course registration, and includes integration with the University identity management system (Shibboleth) and with the Moodle course management system. The onboarding units are setting their own pace for adoption, but will be able to create courses and open them for registration in the production instance of this exciting new tool.
Over the coming months the DORS team will be onboarding fast follower units, and then looking to expand across the University. Duluth Continuing Education is the first system campus to come to the table with a need and we look forward to working with them. Contact dorshelp@umn.edu if you have questions!

Student Records update

The Student Records Functional Steering Committee with representatives from all campuses met in the Twin Cities on May 18-19. The group tackled several tasks, among them were;  review and prioritization of the SR post go live parking lot items, redefining the purpose of the SR FSC group beyond the Upgrade project, and collaborating on a SR systems operations calendar.  And finally, John Vollum facilitated an exercise on “Lessons Learned from the Upgrade” for the group.

Student Degree Progress

In March, ASR began a pilot outreach program to 150 students who haven’t graduated but left the University of Minnesota with more than 90% of their degree completed. These efforts have combined research, email, and mail pieces that emphasize how close the students are to completion. A survey is included to ask about the barriers that they face to receiving their degrees; this information will later be used to improve campus retention efforts. ASR staff work with the responding students to connect them with University staff (e.g., college advisers, professors, One Stop staff) to figure out next steps. So far the pilot project has yielded a positive response from students leading to 8 (5.3%) new degrees posted and 37 (24.6%) students in contact with either ASR or their adviser to find out more about what they can do to complete their degree.

Veterans Updates

All campuses of the University of Minnesota are compliant with Section 702 of Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 (Choice Act). In-state tuition will be extended to spouses and dependents of veterans and active duty servicemembers who are using transferred Veterans Administration education benefits and are attending school within three years of the servicemembers' last period of active duty service.

The Parent Program provided honor cords to graduating student veterans, current service members, and ROTC cadets for spring semester. University Veterans Services on the Twin Cities campus piloted distribution of the cords by asking students to complete an exit survey if they wanted to wear the honor cord during their commencement ceremony.

New service model for One Stop

One Stop is making some exciting additions to their service model in an effort to continue to meet the changing needs of students, parents, faculty, staff, and serving those internal and external to the University community to ensure student success. One Stop Counselors have developed the curriculum, advising standards, and learning outcomes for one-on-one financial wellness counseling sessions with students. These counseling sessions are designed to empower students to examine their financial lives, and realize the impact that financial education can have on student success measures, such as academic degree progress and timely graduation. All One Stop Counselors are now required to have their certification as a Personal Financial Manager. One Stop Counselors will also be working collaboratively with the Student Degree Progress Team, collegiate staff, and faculty to proactively work with current and former students on their degree progress goals by developing success plans that will assist the institution with increasing retention and graduation goals.

ASR-IT update

IT continues with upgrade clean-up. In the first four weeks of operations after go live, we have continued to be available for issues as they have arisen. Although there have been hundreds of ServiceNow incidents and up to a 60-70 coding changes, there has been little that was ultra critical. Most items were cleaned up within days of triage, analysis, and coding. There continues to be issues with file transfers and batch jobs, but we are extra vigilant in checking and running file transfers and batch jobs that were problematic. For the most part we are nearing our standard operating procedures (SOPs) for production and support.

Office of Classroom Management update

The Office of Classroom Management will host the Ad Astra North Central Regional Summit again this year. The 2015 Summit will have an expanded agenda and take place over 1.5 days in mid-July. There ​will ​be ​sessions ​geared ​to ​learning ​more ​about ​how ​to use ​Astra ​Schedule along ​with ​networking ​and ​training ​workshops on ​the ​second ​day. Campus super users should expect an invite from Sarah Kussow the week of May 18.