DegreeWorks a useful new tool for Rice community

3/20/13 7:00pm

 

The new DegreeWorks tool, a degree audit program to be interfaced with ESTHER that will go live in November 2013 (see story, p. 5), is one the Thresher strongly supports. We believe it will be immensely helpful for both students and academic advisers. Navigating numerous graduation and major requirements, deciding on a major and changing majors are undoubtedly all daunting processes. The options are often overwhelming for students on all levels, but especially for underclassmen. The Thresher believes DegreeWorks' ability to track past coursework and remaining requirements, as well as the "what-if" audit allowing students to explore switching or adding majors and minors, would allow students to better plan future semesters and fully utilize their time at Rice. The access that academic and major advisers would have to a student's DegreeWorks audit would also ideally enable more informed and specialized advising for each student. 

The addition of the DegreeWorks program also opens up a larger conversation to be had on improving academic advising at Rice. The DegreeWorks tool establishes a promising quantitative and algorithmic approach to academic advising that we hope will prove helpful for students and advisers alike. However, we also believe the tool should be supplemented by a strong qualitative approach in the form of greater interpersonal and specialized support from faculty and academic advisers. 

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We believe Rice has a robust advising system that emphasizes peer academic advisers, masters and the Office of Academic Advising staff. Yet it can be difficult for students to meet and discuss future coursework with an adviser who can adequately accommodate a student's unique interests, prospective majors, past coursework, career goals and changes in interests. Many students enter Rice undecided, change majors or minors, seriously consider adding additional majors or minors, or have interests in a pre-professional track. Most advisers frankly do not have the individualized knowledge to effectively advise a student with regard to all these areas. Furthermore, there is no documentation reporting the results of past sessions with other advisers. Because of this, we are concerned that there is little dialogue or exchange of information across departmental advisers or between, for example, a divisional and a pre-professional track adviser about specific student cases. 

We believe matching each student to a faculty adviser who would follow the student's academic path throughout his or her undergraduate career would allow for more individualized advising and more consistent adviser-student relationships. Under this suggested system, students could meet with their matched adviser frequently throughout their career at Rice and could be helped through changing majors and goals. This system could also facilitate the creation of an advising file for each student. This way, when students inevitably explore subject areas and speak to advisers of different departments, these files could be used to immediately access reports from the student's past advising sessions. This advising file system would enable the various advisers catering to each student's individual needs - pre-professional, major, divisional, minor - to reconcile with one another's advice and would allow for more effective and meaningful advising. 

Despite our adequate advising support system, the impetus to seek out advising lies largely with the student. For underclassmen especially, it may be necessary to match students with advisers they must meet with regularly to ensure they receive the support they need. While the DegreeWorks tool will allow students to self-identify tracks of study, the Thresher believes nothing can take the place of a one-on-one, long-term adviser-student relationship, which would be an invaluable supplement to the promising DegreeWorks program. 

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