The characteristics of an effective and modern degree audit system have evolved. Where the audit was once an administrative tool for checking completed requirements prior to commencement, today many institutions view the degree audit as a strategic solution – one that can bolster student engagement and self-service, create transparency between stakeholders, and improve operational efficiency. 

Finding a tool that can accomplish these goals is one piece of the puzzle. The system’s potential also relies on a successful implementation process. In this article, we outline seven characteristics that we believe constitute a modern degree audit, and offer three key components that can help orchestrate an optimal implementation.

Attributes of a
Modern Degree Audit

Trustworthiness

It almost goes without saying. Anyone looking at a degree audit needs to be confident that it’s accurate – with correct program requirements and consistency between a student’s displayed degree progress and their actual progress. It’s important that everything built into the audit (rules, exceptions, and so forth) keeps students, advisors, and staff on the same page. Without trustworthiness, engagement with the tool is inevitably undermined (and with good reason). 

One example of this: a course catalog indicates that a student can place out of the requirement for MATH 102 with a 4 or above on an AP exam. If Sharon earned a 4, but her audit tells her she still needs to take MATH 102, her faith in the audit has been undermined. She may be less likely to use the tool moving forward.

Proactive and forward-looking

Today’s degree audit tools go much deeper than a static report that’s processed before commencement. They should be a dynamic resource that gives students real-time information about what they’ve completed, and what’s to come from their journey. Students should be able to easily take action and plan the path forward from their requirements. A modern audit will facilitate this, perhaps by highlighting prerequisites or allowing students to see the courses that count toward electives without having to toggle between the catalog. 

Holistic

Course requirements are only half the picture of a student’s overall journey to their degree. Activities like research or program declaration as well as athletic or financial aid requirements are major players along the journey too. This information should live in the same place to give students a holistic picture of their progress toward completion. 

And the student journey doesn’t live in isolation. Their degree is very often associated with goals in post-grad life. Maybe they’re seeking skills (e.g. JavaScript, editorial writing), or their career path has milestones like a summer internship. As such, they should be aware of the requirements that advance those goals.

Why is this important in an audit? Because when a student understands the full picture of what’s necessary for a degree or career path, they can make the most informed decisions possible. They will go about their studies more intentionally, having a richer sense of what they need to do.

Easy to understand (read: student-first)

Many of today’s students are accustomed to modern platforms for streaming video or social media. By having a degree audit tool that reflects this experience, students can better understand and engage with the information in a way that resonates with them. A clean and modern layout will also bolster advisors and staff to adopt the tool and encourage students to use it as a resource.

Easy to build and maintain

A modern audit system will be all-around intuitive and simple to adjust on the backend. An intuitive and flexible experience, as well as accessible language, will prevent bottlenecks and miscommunication that arise if only a handful of staff know how to interpret and program the degree audit.

Actionable insights

Just like for students, a modern audit will help institutions make informed decisions too. For example, administrators might deduce which courses need additional sections or understand which electives in a program are consistently under-enrolled. If the system has audit and course data, stakeholders should be able to leverage this to best meet the needs of students.

Integrated into the student success ecosystem

Degree audits are just one (important) piece of the greater student success ecosystem. If the audit is just another tab that lives in its own silo, then even a beautifully designed audit will be less engaged with.

When a modern audit integrates with other student success tools (such as an advising tool,  course catalog, or LMS), people are more likely to adopt the tool, which makes it easier for the broader campus to realize the full impact. A few potential avenues to achieve this: the system can integrate with other tools via APIs, the audit can link to different tools at deliberate locations, or some of those functionalities can reside in the audit tool itself. 

3 Key Components of a Smooth and Successful Launch

Now that we've defined a modern degree audit, let’s talk about implementing one. Below are components of a successful launch that we’ve learned through many implementations across a diverse set of institutions. While there’s no perfect formula for this process, we hope these guidelines can serve as a starting point for your implementation approach. 

1. Setting the Stage

Ask "the why"

We have found it crucial to solidly affirm “the why” behind the project as your first step. If you’re a project leader, take the time to ask what goals a new degree audit will accomplish and make sure you’re aligned with the other project leaders. Are you looking to boost student engagement? Improve transparency across departments? Maybe you’re concerned with reducing the dependency on academic advisors, or a combination thereof. 

We’ve seen that when project leaders explicitly identify the measure of a successful implementation, it serves as the backbone for big decisions along the implementation process. Moreover, it helps the different offices and stakeholders see the “big picture” which can build buy-in and cooperation toward the shared goal(s).  

Candidly share “the why” with your technology partner and any other campus stakeholders involved in the implementation. Communicate the measure of a successful project in as many specifics as possible. 

Skipping this exercise or doing it haphazardly means that you may implement software, but not necessarily a long-term solution that achieves the impact.

Never skip discovery

Discovery is the process of bringing your institution’s nuances to light: how the advising process works, the use of catalog terms versus entry terms, which offices may be change-reluctant, and so on.  

While these nuances are second nature to you, your vendor needs to understand them just as well. One suggestion: consider describing the best and worst implementations you’ve had to help you and your technology partner avoid past pitfalls.

Get buy-in

The degree audit is one of the most cross-functional systems at an institution. For both short-term efficiency and long-term value, you’ll need more than everyone’s sign-off. You’ll want to ensure their buy-in.

Like many softwares, implementing a degree audit will involve letting go of some past practices. Expectation setting with project stakeholders can be important here. To give an example: the implementation won’t require your institution to change the whole curriculum, but it may require you to consider different ways of writing the curriculum, or even let go of some language inherent to the previous tool or process. 

Ultimately, when stakeholders are willing to compromise and remove blockers, the project gets across the finish line that much smoother. An effective strategy we’ve seen: start by creating buy-in with a handful of campus leaders to the point where they become champions. Over time, these leaders can communicate the change to more and more campus constituents. They are empowered to articulate, in a more contextualized way, exactly why and how a new degree audit is beneficial.  

Setting the right timelines

Consulting with your vendor and work backward from a desired launch date. It’s best practice to set reasonable milestones and inform stakeholders and staff when their participation will be needed far enough in advance, making sure it doesn't conflict with important points in their calendar. For instance, if faculty will be involved in testing, then it's best to take into account events like midterm examinations or grading deadlines.

Minimize time to value & celebrate short-term wins

Excitement for a project can wane as implementation goes on (think marathon, not sprint). To maintain the excitement and momentum as staff are working toward launch, it can be very impactful to show wins in the short run. 

One idea is to narrow the scope of your implementation to a group on campus that needs the tool the most (call this your alpha-launch population). Record testimonials during testing and alpha-launch – especially from students – and then share the sentiments with other constituents to demonstrate the tool’s impact. It’s much more powerful to generate enthusiasm through user testimony than through a sustained promise from a vendor. 

2. Technical Success

Technology partners can’t design an optimal implementation plan without understanding your resource constraints, unique requirements, and current processes. Reviewing these attributes and limitations early on can remove unnecessary blockers and significantly accelerate the time to value. 

Embrace and communicate constraints

Constraints don’t have to be lethal or taboo. Candid conversations about the “good-to-know” information will build trust and minimize the risk of future problems. Does IT only have 2 hours a week to dedicate to this project? Is the project manager new to your institution? Whatever they are, share the constraints with your vendor. They have probably seen similar scenarios and can find workarounds with you. 

Leverage existing work

Other campus projects may have recently required data pulls that you can reuse in this implementation. Informing your technology partner about those data pulls and collaborating with them can save you some time and reduce the project’s dependency on the IT department. 

Test with fresh eyes across campus

Recruit folks for testing who have never seen the platform during implementation. We’ve found that very quickly they can identify problems that the project team has missed. Typically, they ask questions that you may have thought were very self-explanatory as well. Involve advisors and administrators yes, but we really recommend involving some students in the testing process too. 

3. Readiness & Change Management

So your integrations are all set and testing is looking solid. As you shift towards launch, here are a few strategies that can help prepare your campus.

Use the “train the trainer” model

Administrators and staff tend to respond better to training when they come from someone they trust (from the institution). When issues, questions, and user errors come up, advisors and staff are much more likely to reach out to someone who shares their email domain rather than a vendor. 

Inspire, not train

We say “train” but we really mean “inspire”. And that framing can really make a difference because tech fatigue has become real for advisors and faculty, especially after the pandemic.

Alternatively, we suggest you identify common pain points that your constituents face in their current work. Then you can position the training sessions as learning new ways to solve those problems and do their jobs more effectively – the degree audit technology is the means to bridge that gap. 

Establish a strong communication plan to students

This process starts with aligning the overarching message to students. We recommend thinking beyond features and choosing 3-4 compelling value adds the audit will bring students. Why should they engage with this tool? When students clearly understand what’s in it for them, they’re more likely to get started more quickly and independently. 

After nailing down the positioning for your student population(s), you can think more about the right channels to spread the word. We’ve seen it’s important to contextualize the approach based on the campus culture of how students absorb information. Perhaps it makes the most sense to introduce the tool in a student’s advising session, or maybe students prefer to watch an overview video on their own. In many cases, emails are still tried and true. Whatever they are, we’ve seen that multiple touch-points rarely hurt.

If you’re unsure, you might want to ask around with other factions on campus, such as advisors or department heads, and especially those who have just communicated information to students. Ask your technology to collaborate with you as well – they can likely share strategies and resources that you can leverage during your launch. 

Measure success

Stakeholders want to know that the time and effort they poured into preparation and testing made a difference. Share key results in the context of “the why” that you described at the beginning of the project. It’s often rewarding to highlight student-based metrics, like adoption or active time in the platform. Weaving in qualitative stories or quotes from students can bring those numbers to life.

Get vendors to commit to fixes and enhancements

Technology partners weigh your enhancement requests against other product priorities. And without context, your enhancement may not be deemed as crucial as others in the queue. Consider using this framework to give developers the background they need to prioritize it in a future release: “If [insert request here] isn’t fixed, [insert negative result], and it creates [insert problem] for us downstream.”

Picking the Right Platform for You

The complexity of today’s higher ed space has made traditional degree audit processes and systems in need of a refresh. Still, that transition comes with a host of factors to consider. 

Maintaining stakeholder alignment, setting expectations, and executing a robust testing strategy go a long way. Ultimately, a key component of a seamless transition and long-term success involves choosing the right provider with whom to partner. Stellic takes a modern and student-first approach to the degree audit in order to help campuses realize the best possible experiences and outcomes. Our team of implementation experts offers strategic guidance to get students, advisors, faculty, and staff up and running – minimizing the time on the path toward your strategic goals. 

Click here to learn more about our approach and see how we could help transform the student and advisor experience, facilitate optimal processes, and more.