Some students are given a map to navigate the halls of campus upon their arrival at Sinclair Community College.
Now students can get a similar tool from their academic advisor to guide them toward their degree goals, but each student has to take the initiative.
“It is very convenient for the student. They can walk away with a hard copy, I can send it to their email and when they go to register it will pop up that these are the classes they are supposed to take,” said Sheila Magnuson, senior academic advisor at Sinclair.
The My Academic Plan (MAP) application was developed by Sinclair to guide students through the transition from quarters to semesters, but the application will continue to be used after the transition.
“It is true that the thought of doing it was for the transition, but it is a wonderful tool to use all the time,” said Magnuson.
The MAP program is viewed on one monitor while an academic advisor views a student’s degree audit on another monitor. When the advisor adjusts the MAP, the degree audit adjusts as well.
The MAP application contains boxes that represent each quarter or semester of a student’s time at Sinclair. The advisor can drag and drop courses from a course list into the boxes for the prospective quarters and semesters.
Part of the MAP application is a tool called the Crosswalk that lets the advisor see which quarter courses are equal to semester courses.
Students run the risk of having to repeat content if they do not complete a course sequence that they began under quarters.
“You want to finish up sequences this year before it goes to semesters,” said Magnuson.
A perhaps not obvious ramification of the transition is that Sinclair considers a quarter degree different from a semester degree.
“Of course, along with changing all the courses, we had to change degrees,” said Magnuson.
Getting a MAP simplifies this for the student as well, said Magnuson.
“We are now looking at deciding whether a student will be graduating under the quarter degree audit or the semester degree audit,” said Magnuson.
“If a student at this point has 60 or more credit hours they will graduate under the quarter degree pulling in the new courses,” said Magnuson. “If they have just been here for a few quarters, obviously they will have less than 60 credit hours and we will then look at those courses and pull them into the semester degree.”
Student response on the program has been very positive so far, according to Magnuson.
“They [students] love it. There is no reason not to love it,” she said. “They might just be pulling courses out of thin air, perhaps, if they don’t know how to plan this. It just kind of pulls it all together for them.”
With spring registration starting Feb. 20, time is getting short to get a MAP completed as insurance that a sequence will be completed before semesters begin.
“We only have two more quarters left of quarters, and summer is going to be a shortened term,” said Magnuson, “so many courses will not be offered during summer that normally would be.”