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Progress Towards Degree Setup Outline
Progress Towards Degree Setup Outline

This document outlines the PTD setup process in ARMS

Andy Campbell avatar
Written by Andy Campbell
Updated over 2 weeks ago

ARMS Software provides Athletic Departments with the ability to store and track academic data for each Student- Athlete throughout their entire career at their University. We have the ability to track each University’s specific degree credit requirements, Student-Athlete’s attempted & earned hours, and maintain individual athlete course schedules. ARMS gives a real-time view of the hours earned by term, and percentage of degree complete where applicable

Setup Process – What ARMS Needs from the Athletic Department

Required Data Files

ARMS Needs the following data files from your Athletic Department in order to accurately track PTD

1.) A list of all of your institution’s degrees with credit requirements:

  • Please List the Degree Name and Credits required

    • Degrees and credit requirements can be provided for each Academic Year if credit requirements are different from one year to the next.

2.) A list of all athlete’s declared major (i.e. degree):

  • Please List Student-Athlete name, student ID, and matching degree (from list above)

3.) A list of all athlete’s earned hours by term:

Required ARMS Configuration

ARMS requires that the following Academic Year/Term information be configured prior to data import.

1.) All historical Terms (Academic Year + corresponding Terms, e.g. Fall/Spring) are configured in ARMS to match to imported hours earned.

2.) Terms where data is being imported are not “Locked”.

  • Locked terms will be skipped for calculation in PTD

3.) First Term Enrolled (Anywhere) has been set for all Student-Athletes.

Import Process

The ARMS data team requires a minimum of 24 business hours notice to import all of the academic data and map it to each Student-Athlete’s profile. Our team will import information provided from the 3 data files required: Degree List, Student-Athlete Declared Degrees, Course/Earned Hours Report

ARMS can work with your IT staff to set up a secure ftp site to transfer this information to ARMS from your campus system of record.

File Import Frequency

1.) Option 1: Ad Hoc File Imports

2.) Option 2: Recurring/Automated Imports

  • The University’s IT Department will work with ARMS to access a secure SFTP site

  • Course/Earned Hours will be loaded for automatic import nightly.

    • Recommendation: If providing Individual Course information, Provide 1 Term Back + Current Term + 1 Term Forward in order to ensure all individual course details are up-to- date.

File Import Assumptions/Additional Requirements

1.) ARMS will import Student-Athlete Aid declared degrees, matching on Student ID number and matching degree from Degrees file. If no match is found, the degree will be skipped.

2.) ARMS will update Student-Athlete’s declared degree if it is not an exact match to existing and recalculate based on degree credit requirements.

3.) All earned hours will be included in Counts Towards Major unless otherwise noted in file for import.

  • Individual Course Earned Hours can be manually updated to include/exclude from Counts Towards Major directly in ARMS.

4.) Configuration outlined above in Required ARMS Configuration has been set

Viewing the PTD Information within ARMS

Student-Athlete Profile View

On each Student-Athlete’s profile there is a Progress Towards Degree Widget (if it is not visible to you now, go into the customize view option from the action menu, scroll to the widgets area and drag it to the “selected” box). This widget breaks down the credits attempted and earned information for each year the Student-Athlete has attended the University so department users can get a full career view of the Student-Athlete.

Once you are within the PTD widget you can click “details” to see the full details, including all courses if provided, for that academic year. This will also allow you to manually update the “In Major” status for each course as it applies to PTD.

Note: ARMS will determine pass/fail for each credit requirement “gate” using green for pass and red for fail. 6/9 hour gates are looking 1 academic term back, 18 hour gates are looking 2 academic terms back, 24 hour gates are looking at 1 Academic Year back (D1 in Sophomore Year only

Academics: Progress Towards Degree by Team

From the comprehensive Overview, Administrators can click into the individual sport to see a more granular view of each team. This will populate the full roster and show the same information broken down at the Student- Athlete level, allowing users to quickly see a snapshot for the entire team in one view by Academic Year.

By clicking “Details” for a specific Student-Athlete, adjustments can be made to their Course information without leaving the page.

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