News & Events

GoSOLAR Team Recommends the Continuation of PACE as the Best Degree Audit System

The Degree Audit/Advising Focus Team has reviewed several options for implementing a new degree auditing system, including CAPP, DARS, DegreeWorks, and PACE. The team concludes that an attempt at rewriting PACE
as necessary to interface with GoSOLARis in the university's best interests at this time. PACE currently meets most of Georgia State's auditing needs, and it is a reliable, concise and user-friendly advising tool used by staff and faculty advisers across the university. In addition, time and effort will be saved because a successful interface should prevent the need for recoding all curricula as well as retain individual requirement information already entered for current students.

The GoSOLAR Implementation team will work to interface PACE with GoSOLAR and will also make PACE accessible to students via the web.

The focus team was impressed overall by a software enrollment management package called DegreeWorks but is concerned about technical support and the interface required. The GoSOLARteam recommends that the option be kept open for purchasing and implementing it at a later time should the vendor gain experience with a GoSOLARinterface and DegreeWorks appear to be a step forward from what we are able to accomplish with PACE.

GoSOLARTeam Plans for Gradual Phase in of Prerequisite checking

The use of GoSOLARto check for prerequisites and to enforce other registration restrictions during registration has been problematic at other large universities. The software appears to have no mechanism to allow a gradual phase in or a differential enforcement for each college, department, or level of course.

The GoSOLARteam believes that it has found a solution to this problem:

• Complete catalog descriptions including prerequisites will be entered into the GoSOLARcourse description field. Prerequisites listed here will not be enforced but will send a message to the student as to the requirements needed to take the course.
• Prerequisite fields in GoSOLARwill be left blank (except as described below). This means that we can activate prerequisite checking during the first registration cycle. As we gain experience with the new system we can gradually start moving prerequisites from the course description field where they are not enforced to the rerequisite field where they will be enforced.
• It is anticipated that complete phase in will take several years after the first registration cycle of Fall 2002. Phase in will be done proportionately to the number of courses offered by each college.
• The GoSOLARteam urges that faculty start reviewing the prerequisites listed for their course to be sure that they are the ones that they want enforced. Problems have developed at other universities when the GoSOLARsoftware attempted to enforce outdated or "nonsensical" prerequisites. For example, if a course that no longer exists is listed GoSOLARmight block all students from registering for the course because no one would have the course.
• During the first registration cycle (Fall 2002) every attempt will be made to have GoSOLARenforce all prerequisites and registration restrictions that are currently enforced with OASIS. However, no new prerequisites or registration restrictions will be added for this first cycle; these will be phased in during subsequent cycles. This method allows for each college and department to eventually enforce prerequisites (or not enforce them) as they deem best for program needs.