[Factc] Fw: Guided Pathways Meta Majors coding in ctcLink

Wed Oct 21 13:41:48 PDT 2020

Hey, everyone! I'm looking forward to "seeing" many of on Friday for the guided pathways presentation. Here's an update that I hope you find useful regarding GP and CTCLink.

[Title: SBCTC logo - Description: Compass]

Jennifer Whetham (pronouns: she/her/hers)

Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC)

jwhetham at sbctc.edu<mailto:jwhetham at sbctc.edu> • o: 360-704-4354 • c: 206-310-1291

Join a STEM Community of Practice<https://bit.ly/2PHRW7z>

Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecology Grant: Read More<https://bit.ly/2CcZoo0>

SBCTC Vision: “Leading with racial equity, our colleges maximize student potential and transform lives within a culture of belonging that advances racial, social, and economic justice in service to our diverse communities.”

________________________________
From: GuidedPathways <guidedpathways-bounces at lists.ctc.edu> on behalf of Kristi Wellington Baker via GuidedPathways <guidedpathways at lists.ctc.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2020 8:34 AM
To: guidedpathways at lists.ctc.edu <guidedpathways at lists.ctc.edu>
Subject: [GuidedPathways] FW: Guided Pathways Meta Majors coding in ctcLink

FYI

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
― Maya Angelou

Kristi Wellington-Baker | Student Success Center Director

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges

1300 Quince St SE | PO Box 42495

Olympia, WA 98504-2495

p: 360.704.1022 | c: 509.301.8466 | kwellingtonbaker at sbctc.edu<mailto:kwellingtonbaker at sbctc.edu>

sbctc.edu<https://www.sbctc.edu/> • Twitter: @SBCTCWashington<https://twitter.com/SBCTCWashington> • Facebook: @WASBCTC

Click here to learn why I put my pronouns in my email signature and you might consider doing so<https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/sharing-gender-pronouns-at-work/>.

Link to: COVID-19 REMOTE LEARNING RESOURCES<https://www.sbctc.edu/colleges-staff/programs-services/student-success-center/remote-learning-resources.aspx>

_________________________________________________________________________________

                                                        SBCTC Vision

“Leading with racial equity, our colleges maximize student potential and transform lives

within a culture of belonging that advances racial, social, and economic justice

in service to our diverse communities.”

From: Linda Anderson <Linda.Anderson at sbctc.edu> On Behalf Of Carli Schiffner
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2020 8:34 AM
To: INSTCOMM at LISTSERV.CENTRALIA.EDU; Ana Ybarra <aybarra at sbctc.edu>; Bill Moore <bmoore at sbctc.edu>; Darby Kaikkonen <dkaikkonen at sbctc.edu>; Jamilyn Penn <jpenn at sbctc.edu>; Joe Holliday <jholliday at sbctc.edu>; Jon Kerr <jkerr at sbctc.edu>; Karl Ludeman <kludeman at sbctc.edu>; Kristi Wellington Baker <kwellingtonbaker at sbctc.edu>; Mark Jenkins <mjenkins at sbctc.edu>; Scott Copeland <scopeland at sbctc.edu>; William Durden <wdurden at sbctc.edu>
Subject: Guided Pathways Meta Majors coding in ctcLink

Sent on behalf of Carli Schiffner

----------------

From: Grant Rodeheaver and Carli Schiffner:

Good morning colleagues,

You may recall that testing and training of Guided Pathways Subplans in ctcLink took place this summer and several ctcLink colleges subsequently went live with Subplans at the end of August. The remaining DG3 colleges will launch Subplans when they are ready. Moving forward, Deployment Groups 4, 5 and 6 will implement Subplans as they get ready to go live on ctcLink.

Today, we would like to give you an update on another technical aspect of our Guided Pathways work: Meta Majors in ctcLink.

Background

When the Washington community and technical college system developed system-wide functional requirements for a new administrative software solution in 2011, Guided Pathways Meta Majors were not part of the requirements. Meta Majors scope was also not added during the ctcLink Project timeline and budget re-plan efforts in 2017.

In the intervening years, as Guided Pathways work was launched – and long after the ctcLink Academic Structure configuration in PeopleSoft Campus Solutions was put into place – colleges and commissions began to express a desire to add Guided Pathways technical requirements to the ctcLink scope of work. As part of that work, colleges were engaged in a 2019 series of Business Process Requirements gathering workshops to define what technical needs existed.

Challenges, Opportunities and the Work Ahead

The ideal solution for Guided Pathways Meta Majors would be to reconfigure the ctcLink Academic Structure to include Meta Majors, while implementing the remaining colleges. However, this work would will take additional funding and time to implement that is not part of the ctcLink budget and timeline.

Were we to reconfigure the ctcLink Academic Structure to include Meta-Majors while still implementing the remaining colleges in Deployment Groups 4, 5 and 6, it would present a critical risk not only to the SBCTC ctcLink Support and ctcLink Project teams, but also to the colleges; putting a halt to the ctcLink project work and delaying the schedule for an indeterminant amount of time. (Each year of delay costs the colleges roughly $10 million.)

The Academic Structure re-design to incorporate Meta-Majors is not a simple task colleges can outsource, as it requires significant effort and active engagement by skilled college subject matter experts (SMEs) – especially, but not limited to, staff who configure Academic Advisement and Enrollment Requirements – making local college decisions and collaborating with campus instructional colleagues and SBCTC.

Academic Structure re-design steps include:

  *   Re-Configure and test new Academic Program, Plan, and Sub-Plan values
  *   Build new Academic Advisement Reports based on the new structure
  *   Edit Enrollment Requirements that use Academic Program and/or Plan
  *   Update and test Financial Aid Mass Packaging Equations (hard-coded based on the current Academic Programs)
  *   Create and update conversion programs
  *   Update and test Student Financials Equations (also hard-coded)
  *   Analyze queries, reports, and data warehouse links

Colleges currently on ctcLink PeopleSoft (DG2 and DG3) – Cascadia College, Clark College, Lower Columbia College, Olympic College, Peninsula College, Pierce College Fort Steilacoom, Pierce College Puyallup, Spokane Community College, Spokane Falls Community College, Tacoma Community College – cannot move forward until all of these steps are taken.  DG2 and DG3 colleges recently completed a tremendous body of work to develop, test and implement their Guided Pathways Sub-Plans into ctcLink. Moving forward, all deployment groups are implementing their Sub-Plans as they prepare to go live.

At this time, college SMEs are already challenged to meet the heavy-lift of ctcLink due to the stay-at-home order, remote work, staff reductions and furloughs. The SBCTC ctcLink Support Organization is in a building phase and has neither the capacity nor the specific technical skills on staff to successfully implement this change.  The ctcLink project team is staffed to complete the current defined and approved scope, additional scope or changes will have a direct impact on the deployment timeline for remaining colleges.

In addition, the ctcLink Project’s external quality assurance oversight agency has cautioned the Project to carefully manage its planned scope, so as not to derail the tight schedule and limited budget.

Next Steps

While Guided Pathways is a key element of our college system, the SBCTC ctcLink Change Management Board – in concurrence with agency leaders, IT leadership, and ctcLink Project governance – has determined this re-design effort is best suited to take place after all colleges are live in ctcLink (Feb/March 2022). It is recommended that a separate optimization project is planned, with scope to include the Meta-Major implementation. This future optimization project will need to be planned, approved and funded by WACTC (Presidents).

SBCTC research and data services will continue to investigate possible solutions for reporting requirements that come up, and will communicate about those efforts with the colleges in the next few months.

Please share with your stakeholder groups.

~ Grant Rodeheaver and Carli Schiffner

[Compass]Grant Rodeheaver

Deputy Executive Director / CIO, IT Division

Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges

grodeheaver at sbctc.edu<mailto:grodeheaver at sbctc.edu> • o: 360-704-3939  • c: 360-280-4733

sbctc.edu<https://www.sbctc.edu/> • Twitter: @SBCTCWashington<https://twitter.com/SBCTCWashington> • Facebook: @WASBCTC<https://www.facebook.com/wasbctc/>

[Compass]Carli Schiffner, Ph.D.

Deputy Executive Director of Education

Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges

cschiffner at sbctc.edu<mailto:jyoshiwara at sbctc.edu>  • o: 360-704-4353  • c: 509-683-2963

sbctc.edu<https://www.sbctc.edu/> • Twitter: @SBCTCWashington<https://twitter.com/SBCTCWashington> • Facebook: @WASBCTC<https://www.facebook.com/wasbctc/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ctc.edu/pipermail/factc_lists.ctc.edu/attachments/20201021/23b7ad23/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 2608 bytes
Desc: image002.jpg
URL: <http://lists.ctc.edu/pipermail/factc_lists.ctc.edu/attachments/20201021/23b7ad23/attachment-0002.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 2607 bytes
Desc: image003.jpg
URL: <http://lists.ctc.edu/pipermail/factc_lists.ctc.edu/attachments/20201021/23b7ad23/attachment-0003.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: ATT00001.txt
URL: <http://lists.ctc.edu/pipermail/factc_lists.ctc.edu/attachments/20201021/23b7ad23/attachment-0001.txt>