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Understanding Advanced Standing

This section of the user manual provides an overview of the Advanced Standing Subsystem. It covers:

• What is Advanced Standing?
• Advanced Standing Reference Data
• Recording a Student's Advanced Standing
• Create Advanced Standing Details (ADVF4200 - ADVF2000) Overview
• 'Granting Statuses' of a Student's Advanced Standing Record
• Advanced Standing Unit/Unit Level Inquiry

Detailed explanations and instructions for the use of individual database forms can be accessed from the Subsystem's Table of Contents or via the numerous links provided here.

What is Advanced Standing?

Advanced Standing results from the recognition of a student's study or experience prior to (and relevant to) their current Course Attempt(s). Typically, the prior study or experience is deemed to be equivalent to components of the current Course Attempt. This can mean the student is exempt from the requirement to study certain units of the course. This exemption is the student's Advanced Standing in the course.

Callista supports the approval and granting of four forms of Advanced Standing:

• Unit Credit
  Granted when prior studies, expertise or experience satisfy the objectives of the specified unit. This form of Advanced Standing is frequently termed an exemption.
• Partial Credit
  Granted when prior studies, expertise or experience satisfy a proportion of the objectives of the specified unit. Partial credit is recorded as a percentage figure. The student does not receive recognition for partial credit and must still enrol in the unit and complete outstanding requirements before a grade is awarded and credit points are gained.
• Unit Level
  Where course rules permit, unit level Advanced Standing is granted for a number of credit points on the basis of prior completion of studies judged to be equally acceptable within the structure of the course. This form of Advanced Standing is frequently termed an unspecified exemption.
• Unit Preclusion
  Recorded when it is deemed inappropriate for a student to enrol in a unit within the course structure. A student precluded from enrolling in a unit is required to enrol in another unit or group of units with an equivalent credit point value to satisfy course requirements.
• Within a single Course Attempt, a student may be granted a combination of unit credit, partial credit and unit level Advanced Standing up to limits specified in course rules, and may be precluded from enrolling in specified units.

Advanced Standing Reference Data

A very small set of reference data is required for the operation of this Subsystem.

The Advanced Standing Configuration form is used to record 'control' and 'default' information used by the Subsystem. This information includes:

• Expiry Date Increment (Months).
  Advanced Standing applies to a particular student Course Attempt. Advanced Standing can initially be recorded with any Granting Status. However, ASSESSING and APPROVED are typically used. Approved Student Course Attempt Advanced Standing is automatically 'applied' (changed to status GRANTED) by job ADVJ4411 when the Course Attempt status changes to ENROLLED (most commonly when a student confirms their enrolment and enrolls in units in a Course Attempt). If a Course Attempt is not confirmed within a specified period the APPROVED Advanced Standing will be expired (changed to status of EXPIRED).
  'Expiry Date Increment' records the number of months which are added to the approved date of an Advanced Standing record, to create a default expiry date for the record. Recording a Student's Advanced Standing explains in greater detail the interaction between Advanced Standing and student course and unit attempts.
• Unit Deletion Cut-Off Date Alias.
  Students can apply for and be granted Student Course Attempt Advanced Standing credit in particular units. These units would normally be part of the student's program of study and as such may already be pre-enrolled or enrolled against the student's Course Attempt. The student is not required to study units for which 100% credit Advanced Standing or preclusion has been granted, so the system attempts to automatically delete these unit attempts from the student.
  A point in time may be reached after which it is inappropriate to automatically delete such units (a census date could be one of these). This field permits the recording of a date alias as the date after which deletion of units is not permitted. Units for which Student Course Attempt Advanced Standing has been granted after the deletion cut-off date can be manually discontinued in accordance with the current discontinuation date criteria.
• Default Basis Institution.
  This is an optional field designed to speed data entry when Advanced Standing Unit and Unit Level records are created. A default basis institution should be inserted if a majority of Advanced Standing records are granted on the basis of prior studies at a single institution. The default can be over-ridden where required.
• Default Major Exemption Institution.
  Advanced Standing may be based on prior study at more than one institution.The system derives the major exemption institution based on the amount of Advanced Standing credit contributed by each institution. If a student has received an equal amount of HE credit from more than one institution, and one of the institutions matches the Default Major Exemption Institution, then that institution is reported as the Major Exemption Institution. Where no Unit or Unit Level details are recorded for the Advanced Standing record, no value will be shown in the Major Exemption Institution field. (When a null value is reported to DIISRTE it is reported as the DIISRTE value for 'NO CREDIT OFFERED'.)
• Default Granting Status.
  The System Granting Status automatically inserted whenever an Advanced Standing Unit or Unit Level record is created. May be overridden by the user. The System Granting Status Description & Explanation can be modified in Maintain System Advanced Standing Granting Status (ADVF1180). See below for more information about System Granting Statuses.
  
• Count Duplicate Units as Advanced Standing (check box)
  is an optional field enabling institutions to include units transferred via the Course Transfer Process (duplicate units) in Advanced Standing calculations used for display, data validation and DIISRTE reporting. The calculations include:
  • Total internal and external Advanced Standing approved or granted.
  • Total Advanced Standing approved or granted.
  • Proportion of course granted as Advanced Standing.
  • Total Advanced Standing granted for each source of academic credit (i.e. institutions where previous studies were undertaken.
• Not Transferable (check box).
  Is an optional field enabling institutions to prevent the transfer of Advanced Standing.

The System Advanced Standing Recognition Type form is used to assign attributes to the system-defined recognition types. A System Recognition Type describes the effect the approval of an Advanced Standing application has, in regard to a student's enrolment. They are defined in Maintain System Advanced Standing Recognition Type (ADVF1120). The System Recognition Types and their effects are:

• CREDIT
  Credit may be granted for particular units. This means that a student has been recognised as having satisfactorily undertaken prior study to an extent deemed equivalent to the requirements for the unit for which credit is granted. Recording this recognition type against an Advanced Standing, unit detail record will affect a student's enrolment as described in Recording a Student's Advanced Standing, below.
• PRECLUSION
  An Advanced Standing application may result in the recognition type PRECLUSION. This prevents a student from enrolling in the specified unit. Alternate units, in which the student may enrol, can be specified. Preclusion generally results where a student has prior studies which are deemed not to constitute equivalence (to the specified unit) to the degree necessary for credit, but they are sufficiently similar such that studying the specified unit would not require the expected level of academic endeavour.
  
  For example, a student may have studied music at secondary school. The student might be precluded from taking the unit 'Introduction to Music' due to it being at a similar level to the prior music studies. Alternate units, such as Music 1A or Music 1B could be recorded against the Advanced Standing record as options available to the student.

In the Create Advanced Standing Details form (ADVF4200), these values are used in the field 'Adv Stnd Type'. 

Recording a Student's Advanced Standing

There are two points at which Advanced Standing applications may be processed: at the admission application stage, or after pre-enrolment has a occurred and a Student Course Attempt exists. Advanced Standing processed at the admission stage uses ADVF2000, normally accessed from ADMF3000 in the context of an Admission Course Application Instance. Advanced Standing processed when a Student Course Attempt exists uses ADVF4200, normally accessed from ENRF3000. The two forms are similar.

Once Pre-Enrolment occurs, ADVF2000 information is rolled over into ADVF4200. Therefore, lamps will display in either form if details already exist in the other form for the same course. Because of the interaction between forms, navigation buttons to and from both forms exist.

Using ADVF4200 as an example, typical activities surrounding applications for Advanced Standing include:

• The student applies for Advanced Standing in a course of study to which they wish to gain admission and provides the required documentation to support the application.
• The relevant Advanced Standing Unit and Unit Level details are recorded, with a Granting Status of ASSESSING.
• The application is assessed (approved/disallowed) by a responsible officer (This is commonly a faculty representative).
• The appropriate Granting Status is applied to each Advanced Standing record (e.g. APPROVED, NOT-APPRVD or GRANTED).

Create Advanced Standing Details (ADVF4200 - ADVF2000) Overview

The diagram at the end of this section gives an overview of the central form to Advanced Standing (ADVF4200). The following diagram is similar in ACAI Advanced Standing Details (ADVF2000).

The breakdown shows the various other forms where information is configured and now appears in the fields of this form. For example, Maintain Basic Unit Details (CRSF2210) is where actual Credit Points a student is granted for a unit, is configured (where the information originates from). Another example is Maintain Advanced Standing Configuration Details (ADVF1110). Major Exemption Institution and Expiry information are configured in this form.

The two main buttons of the form - Unit Details and Unit Level Details generally contain similar information (the aqua coloured area in the centre of the diagram). Unit Details contains unit versions maintained in Maintain Basic Unit Details (CRSF2210 - the left purple colour), while Unit Level Details contains Maintain Unit Details (CRSF2140 - the right purple colour).

Actual course(s) are derived from what the student is enrolled in - Record Enrolments (ENRF3000), which in turn has information represented in Maintain Basic Course Details (CRSF1210). Units versions with a System Unit Status of 'ACTIVE', 'INACTIVE' (end-dated) or 'EXPIRED' can be added to Advanced Standing in ADVF2000.

Two tabs, Origin Course and Origin Unit are part of the tab structure within ADVF4200 and ADVF2000. It is the institution’s own business processes that determine the meaning of Advanced Standing Origin Unit Credit points and/or Contact Hours. They may represent the value the unit had at the Origin institution or the value to be attributed at the local institution. Internal Courses and Units are set up as Advanced Standing Origins, as defined in Maintain Advanced Standing Origin (ADVF1190).

The jobs in the green boxes at the bottom of the diagram are relevant to ADVF4200 but not ADVF2000.

For further details of information contained within the fields of ADVF4200, see Advanced Standing Glossary (ADVINTR2).

'Granting Statuses' of a Student's Advanced Standing Record

There are a number of System defined statuses which describe the current status of a student's Advanced Standing application. In alphabetical order, they are:

• APPROVED
  Advanced Standing is recorded on the system with any Granting Status other than EXPIRED. This signifies that the student's Advanced Standing application has been assessed by a responsible authority and approved for granting against the student's Course Attempt. An Expiry Date increment (used to derive the Expiry Date and set in ADVF1110), is decided on at the time of the APPROVED Advanced Standing. If the Advanced Standing Granting Status has not been changed by this time, the Advanced Standing is given an EXPIRED status.
• ASSESSING.
  An Advanced Standing request by a student has been received by an institution and is in the process of being assessed. No decision as yet has been made on whether or not the Advanced Standing will be APPROVED.
• CANCELLED
  The status CANCELLED is manually recorded against a student's Advanced Standing record when the student withdraws their request for Advanced Standing. (For instance, the student may wish to study a unit for which Advanced Standing has been approved, in order to improve their knowledge in that area, or improve their grade.)
• DECLINED.
  If, for whatever reason, a student has not accepted the APPROVED or GRANTED Advanced Standing request.
• EXPIRED
  This status is automatically applied to a student's APPROVED Student Course Attempt Advanced Standing record when the status has not been changed by a specified date. Each APPROVED Advanced Standing record has an expiry date (the default being the Approved Date plus the number of months specified by the Expiry Date Increment). The status change is applied by the batch process (ADVJ4412) which checks the expiry date of APPROVED Student Course Attempt Advanced Standing records, against the current date. If the expiry date is earlier than the current date, the Advanced Standing status changes to EXPIRED.
• GRANTED
  The Advanced Standing has been granted and will be effectively applied to a Student Course Attempt, once confirmed. This status can be applied manually for INACTIVE, INTERMIT or ENROLLED student Course Attempts (for instance, where an academic transcript containing this information is required immediately). However, it is usually applied by a batch process (ADVJ4411) that checks APPROVED Student Course Attempt Advanced Standing records against their related student Course Attempts to determine if the Course Attempt status has changed to ENROLLED. If this is the case, the Advanced Standing status changes to GRANTED (although it can be manually changed to GRANTED at any stage).
• NOT-APPRVD
  The institution has decided to not approve a request by a student for Advanced Standing.
• REVOKED
  The status REVOKED is manually recorded against a student's Advanced Standing record when the institution withdraws its approval of an application. (For example, this may happen where an Advanced Standing application was approved on the basis of false or misleading information).

Instructions and rules regarding the use of 'Granting Statuses' are available under Create Advanced Standing Details.

Advanced Standing Unit/Unit Level Inquiry

The following two forms provide information on a Student's Advanced Standing in context of a Unit Level or Unit Inquiry. As an Inquiry form, the display lists all relevant information on a student's Advanced Standing.

The forms are:

• Advanced Standing Unit Level Inquiry (INQF1241)
• Advanced Standing Unit Inquiry (INQF1242)

Last modified on 24 November, 2010 12:26 PM

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