Process Improvements for Academic Systems and Student Support

View policy, process, and project updates below.

Completed

  • Identity Preferences – In an effort to ensure Charlotte feels like a home away from home, students, faculty, and staff can share their identity preferences with the campus community. This information can be added/updated/removed anytime using Banner Self-Service (accessible via MyCharlotte).
  • Academic Forgiveness Processing (post census) – Academic Forgiveness is an opportunity for students to start fresh after having been away from Charlotte for two or more years. The process of applying for academic forgiveness begins after registration add/drop and previously took several days to finish each term. A new automated solution has reduced this process time from days to minutes. New functionality went into effect in January 2025.

In Progress

  • Grade Replacement – The current automated grade replacement process has reached its end of life. A new automated grade replacement process is underway utilizing ProcessMaker. This change will ensure grade replacement automation continues and the baseline functionality that supports this process has a longer shelf life.
  • Grade Change – The current grade change process that receives faculty grade changes, records the rationale for the change, and updates Banner is reaching its end of life. A new process is being developed to ensure this functionality continues, can grow as our needs change, and extends into the future.
  • Grade Change – The current grade change process that receives faculty grade changes, records the rationale for the change, and updates Banner is reaching its end of life. A new process is being developed to ensure this functionality continues, can grow as our needs change, and extends into the future.
  • Student Program Change – We are redeveloping our process for students to request curricular changes and providing additional automation. The current process whereby an advisor requests on behalf of the student, submits the request via PDF, and the Office of the Registrar updates Banner is outdated. We are anticipating a redesign, allowing students to make requests that will reference curricular programs at Charlotte. Those requests will be vetted within the solution and, upon approval, updated in Banner.
  • Optimized Classroom Scheduling – Beginning in spring 2025, general-purpose classrooms were transitioned from departmentally owned spaces to the Office of the Registrar. Utilizing an optimization model, this new classroom scheduling is purported to increase utilization rates while meeting the needs of faculty and students. This remains in progress as we continue to monitor outcomes.
  • Transfer Credit Solution & Automation – This project purports to move Charlotte from manual data entry to automatically processing transcript data, regardless of the delivery medium. The current solution requires hours of data entry per student. The proposed solution will allow us to articulate a transcript in minutes. The solution scrapes transcript data and queues it for a quick review and articulation. Results will be pushed to Banner.

Proposed

  • System/Regional Campuses with the Same Courses (Cloning) – When institutions have multiple regional campuses with the same courses taught on all campuses, updating each institution is a resource-intensive effort. This project will focus on identifying a primary campus whereby transfer courses and their equivalents are maintained to receive updates and replicated across the related regional campuses. This will ensure transfer credit is consistent across all campuses and reduce the time required to update all campuses within that region or system. This proposed project will enable Charlotte to comply with impending state policies to streamline transfer processing.
  • Full and Partial Withdrawal Requests – The proposed solution would allow students to submit term withdrawal requests after drop/add ends and individual course withdrawals after the withdrawal deadline (60% of the term). There are many different scenarios and nuances that currently follow different pathways for resolution. The solution would provide guidance and considerations for the student before finalizing. The solution will provide for collecting, communicating, and updating between academic departments, students, and our student information system. 
  • Credit by Exam – The current routing of a paper request form used to capture the intent, confirm payment, and award credit by exam is resource-intensive. The current process creates anxiety among the student, academic department, and processing teams. The request would determine if credit has already been awarded, verify the payment, and automatically update Banner after completion. Credit by exam is offered in several academic departments; thus, multiple partners will need to be involved in the development of this solution.
  • Transfer Credit Advisor (TCA) – Update our transfer credit advisor, the public-facing transfer equivalency lookup resource, to provide additional information.
    • Display many-to-many and many-to-one equivalencies. These do not currently appear in the TCA
    • Create a means to display researched non-equivalencies. This is not currently displayed, leaving end-users not knowing if it has been reviewed
    • Create a parameter search for ‘credit for prior learning’
    • Create a parameter search by country and U.S. province
    • Display institutional credit hours at the time the student took the course. Currently, we only display Charlotte’s equivalent credit hours
    • Display only the latest course equivalency. Currently, we display all variations of credit over time 
  • Ellucian Repeat Course Limit – The UNC System Office has developed this limit in conjunction with Ellucian. This enforcement happens when students register. These restrictions can be enforced by effective term, level, subject, or subject and course number. Overrides are still recognized should a department wish to make an exception. This Banner modification allows departments to restrict course repeats for the following proactively:
    • Not allow a repeat of a course the student has already passed
    • Not allow a student to register for a course in which the student has an incomplete grade
    • Not allow a repeat of a course the student has already repeated the maximum allowable times
    • Not allow a repeat of a course if the student has already failed the maximum allowable times
    • Not allow a student to register for a course they are currently enrolled in
    • Not allow registration for a repeated course if the student has already met the repeat limit
  • Multi-System Approver Management – The University needs a more automated and secure solution for the maintenance of approver roles across various systems. The current manual process is inefficient and prone to error, as it relies on individual departments to submit requests in a timely manner and the Office of the Registrar to interpret these requests, performing manual updates in multiple systems. Many of the academic decisions that need timely adjudication by the appropriate approvers within these systems directly impact business offices, academic departments, and the educational outcomes of students. A more efficient, effective, and secure role-based approver management solution is requested.
  • Automated Prerequisite/Registration Error Drop – This project will allow the university to identify students who have not successfully completed their in-progress course(s), thus obtaining the skills and college support necessary to be successful in future courses. In addition to identifying this group of students, Banner can automatically drop the students identified with registration error messages. Currently, the drop process is 100% manual, which can lead to human error, delayed communication to students, advisors, and partner offices, and extensive use of time and labor to complete the task. This project would automate and streamline the process, making it an efficient and organized solution for effective progression toward degree completion.
  • Curriculog to Banner – The reconciliation of Curriculog course proposals in Banner is currently 100% manual. There have been discussions about automating the process for close to a decade to no avail. As the University expands and new Federal/State policies are implemented, the need for a technology solution to streamline the process becomes even more imperative. The volume of approved course proposals has increased; however, the time and (wo)manpower has not. Integrating Banner and Curriculog will help to efficiently process proposals and alleviate the bottleneck that slows the catalog editor’s process down. Academic departments that rely on accelerated processing that enables them to build course sections for the upcoming term also benefit from this integration.

Definitions

  • Banner – Charlotte’s student information system or record source for all things Charlotte
  • Banner Self-Service – The end-user-facing portal that allows interaction with Banner