In order to graduate and be awarded a diploma/certificate, students must meet certain criteria, including earned credits (High school). STUREC© can help you identify those students close to graduation, but you must first tell STUREC© what the credit requirements are. The following discussion outlines the basic concepts and procedures for creating graduation requirements (Grad-Sets) that STUREC© can use to accurately analyze a student's progress toward graduation.

First, some terms and definitions:

Grad-Set

Short for Graduation requirement Setup, this refers to a named collection of academic curriculum/credit requirements students must meet in order to qualify for graduation.

Curriculum (Course)

Term used to describe a named body of knowledge approved for delivery by a qualified instructor in an approved instructional setting.

Credit Analysis

This is the process of checking a student's transcript against a Grad-Set to determine where the student stands.

In theory, performing a Credit Analysis is a simple, straight-forward task; one simply marches thru each requirement, checking the transcript for qualifying entries. For example, if one requirement was 3 credits of English courses, then you would simply tally up the appropriate credits on the student's transcript, and compare the "earned English credits" against the "Required English credits". In actual practice, however, this task can easily fall prey to a variety of human frailties from simple clerical errors (i.e. typos, incomplete paper records), to procedural problems (i.e. inconsistent interpretation and application of requirements). With STUREC©, on the other hand, the automatic credit analysis feature will quickly, tirelessly, consistently, and accurately[1] apply the Grad-Set to all students.

To perform the automatic credit analysis, STUREC© uses a unique pattern-matching algorithm that makes a few assumptions:

• Courses are properly ordered into a numerical hierarchy.  [2]
• Credits exceeding a requirement are to be counted as "Electives"
• Credits earned in courses that are not specifically addressed in the Grad-Set are to be counted as "Electives"

When constructing Grad-Sets, what you are really doing is defining the Course-Number patterns that best represent your School Board approved graduation requirements. For example, say that one requirement is that students must have at least 3.5 credits in English courses. If your Master Course Catalog has the English department listed as 2000, then the Grad-Set entry would simply read: 2000 English 3.5. STUREC© would then search the student's transcript for all entries with course numbers that start with 2, and tally the credits. For broad departments like "Social Studies", the requirements are often more specific -- like " 0.5 Credits of Government", and "1 full credit of US History". This situation is easily accomodated by merely adding a significant digit to the patterns which would give us: 5100 Government 0.5, and 5300 U.S. History 1.0.

To create your own Grad-Sets in STUREC©, go to menu:5.8.1. Edit Requirements. STUREC© will ask for the one-character Grad-Set code that uniquely identifies this Grad-Set, then you may enter a short description. Many schools put the applicable academic year in the Grad-Set's description. Now it's time to add the pattern rules. If this is a new Grad-Set, STUREC© will automatically prompt you for the first requirement. After all four digits are entered (REMEMBER: use zeros as wildcards/placeholders), STUREC© will attempt to find a matchng entry in your Master Course Catalog and fill in the requirement description -- which you may edit as needed. Then, you must specify the minimum total required credits for this pattern. Repeat the process to input all requirements.

When your new Grad-Set is complete, press [Esc] to close the Grad-Set editor and return to the GRAD REQUIREMENTS sub-menu. Now is a good time to select option 3. Set Default to tell STUREC© what Grad-Set to use when performing a Credit Analysis on a student that does not have a specific Grad-Set assigned.

[1] - Credit Analysis is only as accurate as the transcripts and Grad-Set definition(s). Back
[2] - Credit Analysis is virtually useless if like Courses are not grouped numerically. Back