Converting from one type of academic term to another is a major undertaking. Make sure all stakeholders participate in the planning and execution.
This window allows you to create a conversion term record in the Student Course History table for the specified year and term.
This process needs to be performed if a school is changing from semester to trimesters or a similar situation.
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Converting from one type of academic term to another is a major undertaking. Make sure all stakeholders participate in the planning and execution. |
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Before you run this process, you must have defined a conversion term in the Term Definition window. |
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Running this process will not create a conversion record for the specified term if one already exists for this student in any other year.
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An organization bases its graduation requirements on the subject material covered (credit hours) for each course. For example, a course with four credit hours is assumed to cover more material than a course with three credit hours. Graduation is typically dependent on the number of credit hours a student has completed. This concept is important when considering the special situation of an organization that converts to a new type of term (in Registration, quarters and semesters are known as term types) because if an organization switches from quarters to semesters, the value of a credit hour may change.
For those students who take both quarter and semester courses, there must be a way to evaluate their credit hours to determine if they have fulfilled graduation requirements.
Using a term type of quarters, assume that a student is required to take three quarters per year at 16 credit hours per quarter (48 credit hours per year) in order to reach their graduation requirements. Therefore, the student must complete 192 credit hours in four years in order to graduate. In addition, any course that spans an entire year will span three quarters (for example, the first year requirement for accounting includes ACT-101, ACT-102, and ACT-103 with each course consisting of three credit hours).
In the fall of the next academic year, the organization switches to semesters. The average student will take 16 credit hours per semester and 2 semesters per year. Therefore, the new graduate requirement is 128 credit hours in four years. Since the student is expected to take fewer terms, they are also expected to complete fewer credit hours in the semester system than in the quarter system. In addition, the new semester system changes the first-year requirement for accounting, which is ACT-111 and ACT-112 consisting of 3 credit hours for each course. While the course material is the same, the student receives 6 credit hours instead of 9.
Graduation Requirement
|
Avg. Credit Hrs / Term |
Multiplied By |
Average Terms / Year |
Multiplied By |
Average Years |
Equals |
Credit Hours Required to Graduate |
Quarters |
16 |
X |
3 |
X |
4 |
= |
192 |
Semesters |
16 |
X |
2 |
X |
4 |
= |
128 |
First Year Accounting Requirement
|
Accounting Terms |
Multiplied By |
Credit Hours / Term |
Equals |
Credit Hours Required to Graduate |
Quarters |
16 |
X |
3 |
= |
192 |
Semesters |
16 |
X |
2 |
= |
128 |
The Term Conversion process assumes the following:
· There will be only one term conversion at your organization. You cannot convert from quarters to semesters and then back to quarters.
· A percentage can be used to convert credit hours from one term type to the other. For example, multiply credit hours from quarters by 67% to derive the student's completed semester hours.
The design of the Term Conversion process assumes that there is a definite time when the old term type ends and the new one begins. The conversion term (the time between the end of the old term and the beginning of the new term) takes the cumulative GPA totals from the old term type and multiplies them by the conversion percentage. The new cumulative GPA totals serve as the beginning point for the second term type.
Using the illustration below,assume the following terms have been defined. The Term Type column identifies the codes Q for quarters, S for semesters, and X for transfer.
Code |
Description |
Term Type |
Conversion % |
Q1 |
Fall quarter |
Q |
|
Q2 |
Winter quarter |
Q |
|
Q3 |
Spring quarter |
Q |
|
Q4 |
Summer quarter |
Q |
|
X |
Convert quarter to semester |
X |
66.67 |
10 |
Fall Semester |
S |
|
20 |
Spring Semester |
S |
|
30 |
Summer 1 |
S |
|
40 |
Summer 2 |
S |
|
Then assume that a first-year student takes courses in the 2010-2011 academic year and receives grades that produce the following GPA information:
Year |
Term |
Term Career |
Hours attempt |
Hours Earn |
GPA Hours |
Quality Points |
GPA |
2010 |
Q1 Fall Qtr |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
48.00 |
3.000 |
|
|
Career |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
48.00 |
3.000 |
2010 |
Q2 Winter Qtr |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
44.00 |
2.750 |
|
|
Career |
32.00 |
32.00 |
32.00 |
92.00 |
2.875 |
2010 |
Q3 Spring Qtr |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
56.00 |
3.500 |
|
|
Career |
48.00 |
48.00 |
48.00 |
148.00 |
3.083 |
At the end of the 2010 academic year, the registrar runs the Academic Term Conversion process to create a 2010 conversion term record in the Student Course History table for each student. The academic record for the conversion term is updated. Using the conversion percentage from the Term Definition table (66.67%), the program recalculates the student's career GPA information (see table below).
Year |
Term |
Term Career |
Hours attempt |
Hours Earn |
GPA Hours |
Quality Points |
GPA |
2010 |
Q1 Fall Qtr |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
48.00 |
3.000 |
|
|
Career |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
48.00 |
3.000 |
2010 |
Q2 Winter Qtr |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
44.00 |
2.750 |
|
|
Career |
32.00 |
32.00 |
32.00 |
92.00 |
2.875 |
2010 |
Q3 Spring Qtr |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
56.00 |
3.500 |
|
|
Career |
48.00 |
48.00 |
48.00 |
148.00 |
3.083 |
2010 |
X Convert Qtr |
Term |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.000 |
|
to Semester |
Career |
32.00 |
32.00 |
32.00 |
98.67 |
3.083 |
The academic update multiplied the student's career GPA information from the quarter system by 66.67% (the conversion percentage for term X) to arrive at the adjusted GPA information. Although the student's hours and quality points changed, their GPA remained the same. There may be very slight differences in GPA information because of rounding differences. After the conversion term is created, the student is able to register for semester courses. Starting in the fall semester of 2011, the student's GPA is based on the new totals created by the conversion.
Year |
Term |
Term Career |
Hours attempt |
Hours Earn |
GPA Hours |
Quality Points |
GPA |
2010 |
Q1 Fall Qtr |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
48.00 |
3.000 |
|
|
Career |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
48.00 |
3.000 |
2010 |
Q2 Winter Qtr |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
44.00 |
2.750 |
|
|
Career |
32.00 |
32.00 |
32.00 |
92.00 |
2.875 |
1999 |
Q3 Spring Qtr |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
56.00 |
3.500 |
|
|
Career |
48.00 |
48.00 |
48.00 |
148.00 |
3.083 |
2010 |
X Convert Qtr |
Term |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.000 |
|
to semester |
Career |
32.00 |
32.00 |
32.00 |
98.67 |
3.083 |
2011 |
10 Fall semester |
Term |
16.00 |
16.00 |
16.00 |
60.80 |
3.800 |
|
|
Career |
48.00 |
48.00 |
48.00 |
159.47 |
3.322 |
The following tasks must be performed in order to implement conversion terms:
· Define a conversion term
· Create a term conversion record in the Student Course History table
· Determine which students should receive a term conversion
· Create a grade table entry to place on selected student's term conversion rows
· Update the academic record for the conversion term
Run the Academic Term Conversion Process
