Audits apply to students based on the scope that is entered when you create the audit. Here we define a program as a major, minor, degree, etc. that a student declares in your student information system (SIS) and is fed to Stellic through the data feed. In other words, any programs that are not shared or universal requirements are the types of programs that we are defining in this article.
The program will automatically attach to the student since they are declaring this within the SIS - for example, a student with a Biology major will automatically be attached to this program since it's a part of their information being sent to Stellic. When creating the program audit, you just need to specify which Biology major audit will be attached to the student, by selecting one of the two options for the initial scope - entry year, or student entry term. (Note: Catalog term can also be used instead of these other options listed in Stellic.)
- Entry year is defined by what your institution is sending as the student's entry year. This is typically the year that the student entered the institution, but can vary by institution depending on how your data is structured. We sometimes see this as the year that the student entered the program, which means it is a variable value. The entry year is defined as the academic year, so a value of "2022" would mean students that entered in academic year 2022 - for many institutions, this means a start date of the fall semester, for example.
- Student entry term is similar to entry year - the data depends on how your institution defines this value - but this is term specific. For example, instead of just an entry year of "2022", you could indicate "summer 2022".
- Catalog term is specific to a student's program, and must be sent to Stellic for the purpose of correct audit assignments.
Program audits are automatically applied to students based on the audit scope criteria entered at creation, and will be effective from the term/year specified forward until a new program audit is created. If one program has an audit with entry year 2015 (EY2015) and another audit with entry year 2017 (EY2017) then the EY2015 audit will only apply to EY2015-EY2016 students. The EY2017 audit will apply to all students who enroll in 2017 and later.
There are three optional (advanced) fields for a program audit scope:
- Campus should only be specified if this audit is specific to students within a particular campus, and there can be variance between campuses for the program. We recommend you leave this value as "all campuses" unless your student population within the program spans multiple departments.
- Departments should only be specified if this audit is specific to students within a particular department, and there can be variance between departments for the program. This is a rare circumstance, and we recommend you leave this value blank unless you have a student population within the program that spans multiple departments.
- Student tag should only be specified if this audit is specific to students with a particular characteristic being marked by a tag by your institution. Students without the tag will not have this audit applied. If there are two audits with otherwise identical criteria, specifying a tag will cause the students with the tag to have that particular audit version applied.
Admins also have the option to manually apply an audit to a student or set of students by using the scope of Specific Students. This allows you to enter a list of student usernames that will use that version of the audit.
Audit criteria are unique within a program, meaning that you cannot create 2 audits with the exact same criteria.
Application logic
Stellic applies program audits to students based on the following logic in the given order. The program audit application logic begins by looking for narrowest possible scope and moves to a broader scope - once it finds an audit to apply, it stops at that step and does not continue further.
- Is there an audit for the specific student?
- Is there an audit for the catalog term for the student's program?
- If a catalog term is not present, look for an audit that exactly matches the student's entry term.
- Is there an audit that matches the catalog year of the student's program?
- If a catalog year is not present, look for an audit that matches the student’s entry year.
- If none of the above apply, Stellic will look for the closest audit for which a start term/year is set prior to the student’s entry/catalog year. In other words, If the student has an entry year of 2022 and there is no audit, it will look for any audit with an entry year prior to 2022. If there is a 2023 audit available, it will not apply automatically since the entry year occurs later than the student's entry year (but can be manually applied to a student by anyone with permission to change the student's audit).
- If no audit exists that meets the above criteria, no audit is applied and the student will see (No matching program) alongside their program.
Audits will "attach" to, or match with students based on their scope. For example, if you set the audit criteria to match students with an entry year of 2018, the audit will apply to students with an entry year of 2018 or later (that are declared within that program). The audit will continue to apply to students with EY 2018 or later until you create an audit with a later entry year scope criteria. If you create an audit for this same program that applies to students with an entry year of 2020, the previous audit would then apply for students with EY 2018-2019, and the new audit would apply to students with EY 2020-later.