After about a year of testing and training, a more “user-friendly” advising system will soon be available for Texas A&M University-Commerce students.
University Registrar Paige Bussell said they plan to have Degreeworks up and ready for students to access by Feb. 20. A link for the new program will be replacing the link for Degree Evaluation on MyLeo.
“We had hoped to go live in the beginning of spring,” Bussell said, “but we were limited by the company who actually does the technology part of it.”
Bussell said the limitations, however, are coming to an end as they are striving towards completion.
“Feb. 6 is the install of the production part,” she said. “It’s all been tested and all been built. We’ve been training advisors. It’s just taking a little bit longer because we want it to be right.”
A crucial part of the yearlong process has been training student advisors with the new system.
“We want to get everybody trained so that by the time it goes up for the students, the advisors will already have been trained,” Bussell said. “We’ve been training them since October.”
A&M-Commerce alumna Brittany Thomas said she rarely even looked at the current system.
“I didn’t understand it,” she said. “I just always went to my advisor.”
The current program that A&M-Commerce uses is called Curriculum, Advising, and Program Planning (CAPP). Bussell said there is major improvement between CAPP and Degreeworks.
“[CAPP] was very complicated,” she said. “If we had system upgrades to our actual student information systems, it would break constantly. [Degreeworks] is more user friendly, it’s more student friendly, it has more tools, and it’ll have a GPA calculator.”
Bussell gave insight on some more of the special features it will offer.
“It gives your unmet conditions, it’ll tell you information about how to go apply [for graduation],” she said. “It’ll tell you what you need, what you’ve met, and it’ll tell you the school that you met it at.”
Junior photography major Brittany Gryder said she has only tried the current advising system once.
“Either I didn’t figure it out, or I gave up on it. I haven’t tried it since,” she said.
This past Fall semester, Gryder transferred from Kilgore College which uses a different advising system.
“The last college I was at made it simple,” she said, “so I checked it out more often. If it was available like that, I would probably do that here too.”
Bussell is confident about user response to the system.
“Everybody that I’ve talked to and that’s been through the training really likes this tool,” she said. “They think it’s going to be a much better, easier to use, friendly tool for the students.”
Many other schools are either using or switching to Degreeworks, according to Bussel, including Texas A&M University-Kingsville and Tarleton State University.