Academic Term Conversion
Important
Information and features vary according to the roles to which you belong and the permissions associated with those roles. For more information, contact your module manager or your campus support team.
Danger
This page converts student records, so proceed with caution. Use it only if your school is converting from one credit basis to another, such as changing from trimesters to semesters.
Converting from one type of academic term to another is a major undertaking. Make sure all stakeholders participate in the planning and execution. We recommend working with your campus support team.
We recommend running your conversion at the end of an academic year rather than between terms during an academic year.
Why You Might Need Academic Term Conversion
If your school changes credit bases, that also changes requirements for programs and graduation. For example, in a change from trimesters to semesters, the old trimester credit basis may have required 180 hours for graduation, while the new semester credit basis requires only 120.
For students who have hours in both credit bases, you need a way to convert their trimester hours to semester hours so you can accurately track when they meet credit-hour requirements. The converted hours conform to your new requirements for programs and graduation.
What Academic Term Conversion Does
The conversion takes students' old-credit-basis hours, converts them to the new credit basis, and places them in a conversion term. From then on, when the system calculates hours and GPA, it ignores old-credit-basis hours, and instead uses only the conversion term and new-credit-basis hours.
For example, if you convert from trimesters to semesters, you could convert trimester hours at 66.67% to semester hours. So a student who earned 45 trimester hours in each of two years before conversion would now show 30 semester hours in the conversion term for each of those two years.
All the hours earned for each year a student was in the old credit basis are converted in one conversion term. In other words, there aren't multiple conversion terms. There is only one, and it receives the total hours from a student's preconversion terms and converts them to the new credit basis.
The conversion term itself will have 0 attempted hours, 0 earned hours, 0 GPA hours, 0 quality points, and 0 GPA. But it will convert the career hours and quality points, and it will preserve the career GPA. The conversion term exists only to convert career hours and quality points.
You'll use the Term Definitions page, the Grade Table Definitions page, and the Academic Term Conversion page.
Term Definitions
The process begins on the Term Definitions page where you create a conversion term. The conversion term must have Type set to X. And the Conversion % must be set to accurately convert students' hours from your old credit basis to the new. For example, if you're changing from trimesters to semesters, you can set Conversion % to 66.67.
Grade Table Definitions
Next, on the Grade Table Definitions page, you create a grade to assign to students for the conversion. Don't worry; it doesn't change students' grades for the courses they took. Instead, the process creates a dummy course and assigns this grade to it in order to trigger calculations such as Academic Recalc.
For example, you might create an "X" grade like this:
Grade Scale: GS - Grade Scale Default
Credit Type: CR- Credit
Grade: X
The X reminds you that it's for the conversion term, whose Type is X.
Academic Term Conversion
On this page you build your list of students to convert, select your conversion term, and select the conversion grade. Then you run the process.
Building the List
Build the list of students to convert by selecting a data set. You want to convert students who have hours in the old credit basis and will also have hours in the new credit basis.
Note
Data sets use InfoMaker to query the database and determine which students are included. Queries are managed in InfoMaker, and updates made there are reflected in J1 Web.
The Original data set is provided by Jenzabar. Your school can define others.
Data sets are called queries in Desktop.
The Original data set provided by Jenzabar includes all students in the Student Master table.
Options
Although they're under the Options heading, these fields are required. Here you'll make these selections:
The academic year that's the final year of your old credit basis—the year that has just completed
The conversion term you defined on the Term Definitions page
The conversion grade you defined on the Grade Table Definitions page
Now that you have converted students to the new credit basis, create terms and subterms as needed for your new credit basis. For example, if you converted from trimesters to semesters, you could create Fall and Spring semesters to replace Fall, Winter, and Spring trimesters. Or you may be able to reuse some of your existing terms, depending on your setup. Create your new year/terms in Desktop on the Year Term Subterm window. (Year Term Subterm is planned for J1 Web in a future release.)
In our example of trimesters converted to semesters, course and section hours don't need adjusting. A 3-hour trimester course would still be a 3-hour semester course. But if your conversion involves changing how many hours and quality points a course earns, make those changes from the Manage Catalog Courses and Manage Sections pages.
This process is available in Desktop, too, on the Academic Term Conversion window.
Permission to run the academic term conversion process is in the Processes section of the default Registration Process Manager role. The permission required is "Can run academic term conversion process".
Read the warning at the top of this topic. Make sure all stakeholders are agreed on the process before you begin.
Open the Term Definitions page to create a conversion term:
Click Create definitions. The Create Term Definitions pop-up opens.
Enter a Code (up to 2 characters). We recommend two characters (because it makes it easier to find on the Academic Term Conversion page), such as XX. Or if you need to do a separate term conversion for graduate students and undergraduate students (for example, because one was on trimesters and the other on quarters), you could use XU and XG. The X reminds you that it's a conversion term.
Enter a Description. We recommend using the word "Conversion" in the description. Examples: "Conversion", "Conversion Undergraduate", "Conversion Only".
In Type, enter an uppercase X.
Warning
This is critical. The Type must be X.
You can leave Full-Time Teaching Load at 0.00. The conversion term doesn't affect teaching loads.
In Conversion, enter a percentage. The number must be nonnegative and can have up to 2 decimal places. It can be as high as 999.99. To convert from trimesters to semesters, you can use 66.67.
Tip
Experiment with spreadsheets first to make sure your conversion percentage works and that GPAs remain accurate after conversion.
Click Create and close.
Read the warning at the top of this topic. Make sure all stakeholders are agreed on the process before you begin.
After you create the conversion term, open the Grade Table Definitions page to create a conversion grade:
Click Create definitions. The Create Grade Table Definitions pop-up opens. There are many fields, and some of them don't matter in this instance because the grade you're creating doesn't have any points. Here are recommended values for each. Where it's especially important to enter the recommended value, we say so. If you have concerns about any of them, see your campus support team.
Grade Keys:
Grade Scale: We recommend your default grade scale.
Credit Type : We recommend your default for-credit credit type.
Grade: We recommend X to remind you that it's the conversion grade.
Details:
Quality Points: 0.00 (Important. Enter this 0.00 value.)
Grade Priority: Leave blank.
Show in Campus Portal: No (Important. You don't want instructors to assign this grade to students. It's only for the conversion.)
Grade to Print: X
Repeat Grade to Print: Leave blank.
Scholarship GPA Quality Points: 0.00 (Important)
Grade Disqualifies Student from Honors List: No (Important)
Grade Excludes Course from Repeat Process: No (Important)
For Repeat Process Use Credit Hours: No
Midterm Grade Editable in Grade Entry Feature on Campus Portal: No (Important)
Final Grade Editable in Grade Entry Feature on Campus Portal: No (Important)
Grade Allows Forgiveness: Yes
Add to Attempted Hours: Yes (for all fields)
Add to Earned Hours: Yes (for all fields)
Add to GPA Hours: Yes (for all fields)
Add to Other Hours: Yes (for all fields)
Transcript: Deselect the checkboxes. Leave PESC Course Academic Grade Scale Code blank.
Grade Distribution Report: Leave blank.
Grade Type:
Final Grade: Yes
Passing Grade for Financial Aid: Yes
All other fields: No
Satisfies: Leave both fields as Yes.
For State Report: Leave blank.
Click Create and close.
Read the warning at the top of this topic. Make sure all stakeholders are agreed on the process before you begin.
After you create the conversion term and the conversion grade, open the Academic Term Conversion page to build the list of students to convert, select the conversion term and grade, and run the process:
Select a Data Set to make a list of students to convert. The Original data set is provided by Jenzabar. It contains all students in the Student Master table. So the conversion will apply to all of them. If your school has created other data sets for academic term conversion, they'll appear in the drop-down.
Click the Add students button, which shows the number of students that the data set will add to the list. The students are added to the list.
Inspect the student list. Click the Remove icon
to remove any students who shouldn't be converted. You can add more students to the list by selecting another Data Set and clicking Add students again.In Year, select the academic year that's ending now, the last year of the old credit basis. (Begin typing the year to see a list of choices.)
In Term, select the conversion term you created on the Term Definitions page. (Begin typing the term code or description to see a list of choices.)
In Grade Scale / Credit Type / Grade, select the conversion grade you created on the Grade Table Definitions page. (Begin typing the grade's code to see a list of choices.)
Make sure your school is ready for the conversion.
Click Update. The conversion year/term is created. A conversion course is placed in each converted student's course history. Hours and quality points students earned in the old credit basis are converted to the appropriate numbers for the new credit basis. The GPA is preserved.
How many conversion terms must I create on the Term Definitions page?
One for each kind of conversion. So if your whole institution is switching from trimesters to semesters, for example, you would make one conversion term. But if one division of your school was on quarters, and another on trimesters, and you're converting both to semesters, you would make 2 conversion terms. The division with quarters would have a conversion term with a conversion percentage of 75, while the trimester division would have a conversion term with a conversion percentage of 66.67.
Which hours and quality points are converted in the conversion term?
The career hours and quality points at the moment of conversion for the selected students.
Does the conversion destroy or edit any records?
No. Student records from the old credit system are not destroyed or edited. But career totals from existing records are converted to the new credit basis in the conversion term. So after the conversion term, new hours and quality points are added to the career totals that are in the conversion term.
Why do I select a Grade Scale / Credit Type / Grade? Does it affect the student's GPA?
Select the conversion grade you created on the Grade Table Definitions page. The system needs a grade to process the conversion and future calculations. But it does not affect GPA.
Can I add individual students to the conversion list?
No. The only option is to select a data set to populate the list. But after adding the students from one data set, you can select another data set, and use it to add students to the list.