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Articulation |
Table of Contents
- History
- Current Situation
- How to Use This Guide
- Policy, Procedure and Record-Keeping
- Assessing Transfer and Articulation Requests
- Formal Articulation Versus Case-by-Case Assessment
- Functionality of the TCES
- Technology and Transfer Credit
- Training Needs within Institutions
- Effective Date Ranges
- Consistency of Process
- Volume of Articulation Requests
- Timeliness
- Cost of Articulating
- Some Principles to Live By
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- Acknowledgement
In this Section
- 4. Policy Procedure and Record-Keeping
- 4.1 Transfer Credit and Advanced Standing
- 4.2 Appeal Process
- 4.3 The Student Record
- 4.4 Applicability of Transfer Credit
- Best Practices
4. Policy, Procedure and Record-Keeping
Many institutions have already developed their own policies governing transfer credit, but these could require adjustments for their new roles as receiving institutions.It is standard but not universal practice to deny transfer credit in some cases. For example:
- to certain categories of students e.g.
- those not seeking a credential (visiting, casual)
- for certain types of study e.g.
- course work considered to be not at the undergraduate level
- course work outside a defined curriculum range (e.g. biblical studies)
- practicum courses
- duplicate courses
- based on the sending institution e.g.
- course work taken at an unrecognized institution
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Best practice is to award all transfer credit earned. |
- if a credential has already been awarded e.g.
- course work was part of a completed degree
- for course for which the credit cannot be applied to fulfilling degree or graduation requirements e.g.
- transfer credit towards a science credential may not count towards a social work credential
In addition, many institutions deny transfer credit based on the degree or graduation requirement for the student's faculty or program e.g.
- in excess of x units overall
- in excess of y upper level units
- in excess of z units of unassigned credit in a discipline
For institutions with functioning audit systems best practice is to award all transfer credit earned, and to use residency and credential requirements to establish which credits can apply to a student's program.
Institutions should be aware of several protocols on transfer credit adopted to address barriers to student mobility within Canada. Transfer credit policies should reflect the receiving institution's stance with respect to these agreements.
| An institution must decide if there is any need to place restrictions on its students who choose to take courses externally, intending to transfer them back to the home institution. The Letter of Permission procedure is standard practice at many institutions, for a variety of reasons. Even institutions that have a history of fostering student access and program flexibility might consider imposing some limits, if there is a potential for their key courses to have their enrolments impacted by readily-available equivalent courses offered by sister institutions or even different branches of the same institution. | The institution's residency requirement is the preferred tool for upholding the credibility and integrity of the institution's credential. |
However, best practice is to refuse Letters of Permission only where there are solid and justifiable reasons to do so, and based on the best interests of the student rather than the institution.
There are long-standing notions of double counting which constrain whether work already used to earn a credential may be used a second or subsequent time. There are many students in BC institutions who already hold bachelor's degrees and are seeking further bachelor's degrees or lesser credentials. Concern over double counting has diminished in recent years and it is now more common for institutions to grant transfer credit for applicable course work, regardless of whether it was already used to earn another credential. The institution's residency requirement (minimum credit to be completed at the home institution) is the preferred tool for upholding the credibility and integrity of the institution's credential.
If it is commonplace for students to change programs after admission, greatest flexibility seems to be gained when an institution's policy is to evaluate for possible transfer credit the full record of each incoming academic student at the time of admission, regardless of the student's intended program. This should require no specific request on the student's part, but instead should be a routine procedure as a student is admitted. The admission offer sent to the applicant should ideally include the transfer credit details, enabling a better-informed decision about whether or not to attend. A transfer student might apply to more than one receiving institution. Workloads at receiving institutions could be reduced if full transfer credit evaluations were postponed until the new student is about to enroll and has paid a tuition deposit or fee, but it is not in the student's interest to commit to an institution without knowing what transfer credit is to be awarded.
4.1 Transfer Credit and Advanced Standing
Transfer credit helps students achieve educational goals in the following ways:
- it may satisfy specific requirements for a credential
- it may satisfy requirements for promotion by year class or enrollment priority
- it may satisfy course prerequisites
However, as can be seen above, there are many situations in which an institution might choose not to grant transfer credit to certain categories of student. If an institution has an enrollment process that uses prerequisites, an alternate way to record prior learning is needed. This could be in the form of advanced standing or course exemption. That is, recognition that a course has been completed elsewhere, but the course itself carries a zero credit value. The student is not required to re-take that course and its completion is recognized in the Student Information System (SIS) as a course pre-requisite, to enable the student to proceed in that subject. Depending on the SIS in use, another valuable tool might be an all-time prerequisite waiver for a student. In some SISs, this waiver is not self-sustaining and must be re-set each term, greatly reducing its effectiveness.
4.2 Appeal Process
A procedure for students to formally appeal transfer credit decisions seems to be desirable and exists at some institutions (SFU Senate, 2007). The decisions and reasons of the body that arbitrates the appeal should be communicated internally and need to be well-documented so that the volume of future appeals is minimized.
Students cannot wait indefinitely for decisions. A valid ground for appeal should be that a full assessment of a student's transfer credit has not been made after a lengthy period, perhaps four months.
4.3 The Student Record
Transfer credit is very important to students, who need to verify the transfer credit they received as soon as possible after admission and whenever they have completed a course outside the institution for which they are expecting transfer credit.
| Transfer credit becomes part of a student's record, frequently used for advising, checking course prerequisite and assessing progress made towards a credential (ARUCC 2003). Most institutions are capable of producing an unofficial student record, often referred to as an internal or advising transcript. These should be available online to the student and to advisers. Details of transfer credit awarded should appear prominently. Credit totals should include transfer credit as appropriate to the record system. | An unofficial student record shoud be available to the student and to advisers |
Some institutions use an additional feature of their SIS, a transfer evaluation summary, that gives a student or adviser the clearest indication of where each part of their transfer credit came from, by listing in one column the external course, its institution, course number, course title and grade achieved and in another column the internal equivalent course, amount of credit awarded, any characteristics of that credit and the internal grade recognized. This online PDF document can be sent by email to a student on admission. If transfer credit for any external course is uncertain at the time of admission, the institution should indicate that the credit is "currently being evaluated" or "to be determined". If no credit is to be awarded for a course, the summary should state that explicitly and should not give the impression that credit might be awarded at a later date.
The official record, released at the student's request to prospective employers and to other educational institutions, need not contain full details of transfer credit, but most institutions will summarize the discipline, quantity and source. SFU takes the summary principle further by eliminating almost all detail and indicating only that "n units of transfer credit have been applied" without indicating their source or nature. This avoids issues relating to the endorsement or validation of another institution's record, but seems to be unreasonably sparse in conveying valuable information about the student.
4.4 Applicability of Transfer Credit
If transfer credit is awarded to students entering diverse programs, each of which has its own requirements, it is likely that some of the transfer credit will not apply to the student's current program. Transfer credit could be restricted to a specified program and this is the way that some institutions tackle the issue of applicability. Program requirements can be very complex and students often make choices that seem minor yet might have negative transfer credit consequences.
e.g. At one institution, a higher maximum amount of transfer credit is permitted for an Honors degree compared with a general degree. In the student's last term s/he might receive an attractive job offer and decide to opt out of the Honors degree to take the job. This could affect the amount of transfer credit applicable to the degree.
The best solution for both students and advisers is to use the functionality of a degree audit system, often part of the SIS. An online product in use at UBC allows students in some faculties to view a dynamic spatial representation of the degree requirements already completed and those yet to be met. Students can follow realistic "what if" scenarios by changing key parameters, such as "what if I were to move to another program or faculty - would I be closer to or further from graduating?" Degree audit systems require meticulous setup, rigorous testing and ongoing maintenance. Their nemesis is any rule that is ambiguous, subjective or ill-defined. The alternative to this is to have a procedure that requires a review of credit whenever a student changes goal, perhaps triggered only when a negative impact is possible. This could involve both credit earned at the institution and transfer credit.
| Accuracy is paramount. An audit of a student's transfer credit by a well-trained adviser is necessary early in the student's program. It is advisable to place part of this onus on each new student, requiring that s/he actively seeks advising and clarification of any transfer credit awarded and how it applies towards the academic goal. | Accuracy is paramount. |
e.g. At a major university, errors in transfer credit would sometimes go unnoticed for years, until the student applied to graduate, when the entire record was checked to ensure that all graduation requirements had been met. This has the potential to leave the student in an impossible situation.
Whatever process is used, students and advisers need to be clear about how the transfer credit can be applied towards the credential and what requirements remain outstanding.
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