Check Transfer Rules

This article overviews the Check Transfer Rules page within Transferology Lab®. This area provides institutions a means to review the alignment of department names used in transfer rules with those in the Source School's TES® catalogs.

Articles in this series:

Check Transfer Rules
Create a Source Department Alias within Check Transfer Rules
Delete a Source Department Alias within Check Transfer Rules

Overview

Transferology® provides students with catalogs from which to select the Courses, Standardized Exams, and Military Credits they have taken or plan to take. These catalogs originate from TES® and are also the data source used in Transferology® Lab Course Bundles and Replacement Courses.

When searching for Matches, Transferology looks through each institution's source of equivalencies and attempts to locate rules containing the transfer courses as formatted in TES. If the transfer rules have different formatting, Transferology will be unable to find the equivalencies and thus not produce Matches.

Check Transfer Rules provides Transfer Specialists a means to review the alignment of the departments used in equivalencies with the department structures in TES. A Match % of less than 100% means that at least one department within the institution's equivalencies does not align with those in TES.

Data should be reviewed carefully. There are multiple reasons that equivalency data may not align with Department structures within TES.

Changes to an institution's transfer rules are at the discretion of the Transfer Specialist. It is essential to understand and thoroughly weigh the consequences of adjustments to data before making changes. Institutions must beware of changing transfer rules solely for Transferology, as these changes will significantly impact transfer credit processing at the college.

To view Check Transfer Rules:

Select Rule Management.
Select Check Transfer Rules.

The table of Source School matches is presented. Statistics are summarized at the top; filter/sort options are available to the right.

Source School Table

Column	Screenshot	Description
Match %		Black hyperlinks indicate the Match percentage between the transfer departments at the institution and those at the Source School NOTE: A Match % of "0" indicates that no transfer rules align. Students will be unable to find equivalencies the institution has established in Transferology.
Source School		Black hyperlinks indicate the institutions transfer credit is accepted from
State		State in which a Source School resides (SE is used to indicate Standardized Exam)
Misses Matches Total depts		Misses: Number of transfer rules between the institution and the specific Source School in which the department does not match Matches: Number of transfer rules between the institution and the specific Source School in which the department does match Total depts: The total number of departments included in the transfer rules comparison between the institution and the specific Source School Misses + Matches = Total depts

Select the Revalidate button to update all transfer rules on the listed Source Schools and re-run stats:

Select the Source School hyperlink (or its Match % hyperlink) to view details on the school page:

The detailed school page contains up to four tabs:

Misses (appears by default; will not appear if Match % is "100")
Matches (will not appear if Match % is "0")
Catalog Departments
Aliases

These are reference-only tabs except for the Misses tab, which contains:

a Status Filter that can be used to filter in/out departments with rules that need or have already undergone manual review
a Status column wherein to view and change the status of a department review
an Export button for exporting data to a CSV file, which can be opened in Microsoft® Excel
the Edit Source Departments button, which is used to create Source Department Aliases.

All tabs have a Return to School List button for navigating back to the previous rule validation page.

Why Are There Misses?

Under ideal circumstances, all of the institution's transfer rules would match the Source School's departments. However, this does not always happen. What can be done to troubleshoot low match percentages? Or no matches? (captured in the screenshot below):

The following are some considerations for the Transfer Specialist in troubleshooting low (or no) matches:

TES® may not have the data for all of the catalog years, or the most updated catalog, for the Source School.
TES may not have the transcript department for the Source School.
- In this instance, a Source Department Alias can be created.
uAchieve institutions' Source School Department/Course Begin/End may not be aligned with the course formatting in TES. Institutions may need to check these fields within the Source School Institutional Reference (IREF) Table. See uAchieve Transfer Articulation Best Practices Guide, Section 2-3 Identifying Courses, for more information.
- According to best practice, the Department Begin/End positioning should account for the longest department length at the Source School.
  - If the Source college's courses vary between two-and-four character departments, the Department Begin should be 1 and the Department End should be 4.
    - When encoding Source rules into the Transfer Articulation (TA) Table, any two-character departments would need two spaces between the end of the department and the beginning of the course number/code. Example: PE_ _1000.
      - The department should be filled out (even if it means blank spaces) so that the course number begins in the same position within each rule.

Misses Tab

The Misses tab lists departments that are used in the institution's transfer rules but do not exist in the selected Source School's catalog:

Column	Screenshot	Description
Status Filter		By default, All is selected All departments that are used in the institution's transfer rules but do not exist in the college's catalog will display Select Reviewed to display only those departments which have been manually reviewed Select Not Reviewed to display only those departments that have not been manually reviewed
Status		Select Mark Reviewed to indicate that the department has been manually reviewed To undo, select the Undo Reviewed Status button:
Department (from your rule)		Lists the departments from the Source School's course catalog
Rule		Lists the institution's transfer rules in the following format: Source School course designation → the institution's course designation

Matches Tab

The Matches tab lists departments that are used in the institution's transfer rules that exactly match the departments used in the selected Source School's catalog:

Column	Screenshot	Description
Department		Lists the departments from the institution's transfer rules
Rule Count		Lists the number of times the specific department is found to match in the transfer rules

NOTE: Alphanumeric characters, spacing, and use of wildcard characters (*) must match exactly, otherwise a mismatch will report on the Misses tab.

For example:

ENG 221 ≠ ENG221

Catalog Departments Tab

The Catalog Departments tab lists all of the departments that exist in the selected Source School's catalog:

Column	Screenshot	Description
Department		Lists the departments from the Source School's course catalog
Title		Lists the department names from the Source School's course catalog
Date		Lists the Year/Term date ranges of the department catalog

Remember: Return to School List link button may be selected from any tab to navigate to the previous school list. Avoid using web browser navigation.

Statistics

Statistics are summarized at the top of the rule validation page to serve as a quick reference for the Transfer Specialist.

Stats

The Stats column summarizes statistics based upon the applied filter, if applicable (see the filter applied by state "Minnesota" in the example below).

Overall

The Overall column summarizes statistics based on overall school data and is, therefore, more generalized. When no filter is selected ("Any state"), the Overall column does not appear and all data is then summarized in the Stats column:

Sorting and Filtering

Sort and filter the Check Transfer Rules results in the box on the right side of the screen:

Select Apply to apply the specific sort or filter. Alternately, select Clear Filters to remove custom settings. Sort will revert to "Match % increasing." Filter settings will revert to "Any state," "0," and "100".

Sorting

Options available for sorting Matches and Misses rule validation data include the following:

Match % increasing (by default, this option lists transfer rules with the lowest rate of Match first)
Match % decreasing
Misses increasing
Misses decreasing
Matches increasing
Matches decreasing

Filtering

Filter Field

The filter field located directly above the rule validation table allows the Transfer Specialist to key in the school name of the Source School:

Filter Box

The filter box allows the Transfer Specialist to filter by three methods: 1. Distance from the institution

Several options are available for filtering:

Any distance (from the zip code of the institution)
less than 25 miles
less than 50 miles
less than 100 miles
less than 250 miles
less than 500 miles

Select Apply to apply the specific sort or filter. Alternately, select Clear Filters to remove custom settings. To change the institution's zip code, select the zip code hyperlink. Enter the new zip code into the Update Zip Code box or use the grey location button. Select the green checkmark to update.

2. State

The Filter drop-down menu contains the state that a source school resides in but also includes military parameters, US territories, international options, and Standardized Exams. Select an option from the drop-down menu arrow to make a different selection.

NOTE: By default, the state the Transfer Specialist is logged in from populates the Filter drop-down menu.

3. Match %

The Match % area contains two fields (from/to) to indicate a Match % range. For example, the Transfer Specialist may want to filter results between "50" and "99" (100 means complete, and so would not require work) to analyze Source Schools with higher percentages of matching, which means less work than, say, filtering between "0" and "50."