Audience
This article is intended for Students.
Transcript
Welcome Ithaca College student to your tutorial for Degree Works! You may be asking yourself “How is Degree Works different from HomerConnect?” Homerconnect is very transactional and term based where Degree Works will give you an overall picture of all the academics that are required from now until graduation. We’re going to get started by taking a look at your Student Header. There’s a lot of information here right now that is saying no recorded or no data. This data is going to start to fill in throughout the summer as you engage in the orientation Sakai modules and then as you attend the orientation. An example of that is your ICC theme declaration which you will complete in IC Workflow. We’re going to go ahead and move down a little bit to our “Bachelor of Arts” block. This is a block that is telling us all of the academic requirements you’re going to need to fulfill from now to commencement. Please don’t be overwhelmed by this because this is something you will complete over the next 4-5 years based on your degree type. “Themes and Perspectives”, once you make that declaration on IC Workflow, some additional information will start to populate into this box and you’ll be able to look for courses. Next, we have our “Competencies” area, our “Liberal Arts” which will defer by major, our “Psychology Major”. Now as you can see there is a legend that explains what these boxes mean. Right now, these red boxes just mean there are courses you’re going to take in the future and here is what you still need and this is going to hyperlink a browsed courses which we’re going to talk about in a different tutorial. I’m going to scroll down and turns out this student has a Music Minor so we can see those courses too. This student is registered for a course that is applicable to this screen’s elective area and here are the courses that are in progress for the fall term. Other features of Degree Works are the GPA calculator. Once you’re enrolled in courses, this is a GPA by credits earned but if you come to the term calculator, those courses will actually list here and you could input the grades by using this dropdown. We always recommend for students when their midterm grades are posted, this is a great way to enter them, find out what your GPA will be by hitting “Calculate” and that gives you a good opportunity to think about the projection of what your final grades are going to be. I’m going to go ahead and go back to this worksheet. Another fantastic feature of Degree Works is something we call “What If”. A “What If” analysis is a fantastic tool for our Exploratory students who are interested in exploring different majors or even for people who are interested in double majoring, adding a minor or changing majors. So the first thing I want to do is point out that you should immediately start by changing your catalog to 18-19. Now let’s say instead of being a Psychology major, I’m interested in Sociology and I’m interested in a minor in Psychology instead of a major. So I can go ahead and once I find Psychology, click on it, and I’m going to go ahead and process What If. What this is going to do is show me what courses I will need to take if I had this major and minor combination and how courses I have previously taken will actually apply to this combination. So this is a great tool for students who are interested in exploring or just trying to see how things could look different based on your academic choices. So you can see here now I’m a Sociology major and a Psychology minor. Degree Works is to support the conversations that you’re going to have with your academic advisor once you’re here on campus. Really look forward to meeting you at orientation!