Forum topic

Folks,

The UK schools have been chatting about Postgraduate (Taught) degrees, and we could use a new way of searching and sorting them. The situation is:

• We have our base degree: either the MA in Theology, Postgraduate Diploma in Theology, or Postgraduate Certificate in Theology. This lives on the Major Degree Track, which contains all the information we report to HESA, etc.
• However, we also classify PGT Students into Pathways. So, a student might be an MA in Theology: Mission Studies, or an MA in Theology: Biblical Studies. This is not a separate programme (quite important, since the university charges us for each programme!), isn't reported separately to HESA, etc - all students on all Pathways are just reported as MA in Theology. It's essentially a 'focus' of their studies within the overall qualification.
• This differs from at Undergraduate level, where BA in Theology, and BA in Theology: Youth & Community (for example) are entirely separate programmes, and so get their own Major Degree Track, are reported separately to HESA, etc.
• BUT: their Pathway does go on their certificate, transcript, etc, and each Pathway does have some specific class requirements, so we need a way of noting their Pathway on their student record, reporting it, etc.
• Cliff College tried creating separate Major Degree tracks for each one, however, because there are a LOT of them (and each one requires a Full-Time, Part-Time, Open Learning Option) this has quickly become unwieldy. NTC currently just keeps it in Student Transcript notes, but realistically we need somewhere to keep it where we can search it, report it out, have it appear on the Transcript, etc.

So! Thinking about what might work.

1. A new box on Student Major Degree Track called 'Pathway'. There could be a tickbox on the Major Degree track marked 'Has Pathways' or similar so that this only appeared on appropriate Student Major Degree Tracks, but that's not a deal-breaker. It would be searchable under Advanced Search, reportable, etc, and would appear on the Transcript where approriate.

-OR-

2. We retool Minor Degree Track slightly to fulfil this function. Looking at Minor Degree Track as it is currently, I think it would suffer some of the problems that Cliff have - each Minor Degree Track is actually its own Degree Track, and this could quickly get out of hand, whereas with option 1 it's simply a Pick List. However, I'm always keen to make use of functions that already exist that aren't being used, so if you think there's way this could work, I'm open to it!

Let me know what you think, and if you'd like to chat it over on video to think it through some more!

Thanks for your help.