If you’ve ever been frustrated trying to understand your degree audit online, help is on the way, according to the Office of Enrollment Management.
The LOBO Trax degree audit is an upgraded version of the current E-Progress report, said Annette Torres, Enrollment Management senior degree audit analyst. She said E-Progress and Lobo Trax are made by the same company. Students have used E-Progress for 15 years to keep track of their classes.
The program, which costs the University $5,000, shows credits needed to graduate, credits already taken, and GPA, along with other information.
Torres said E-Progress should help students plan for graduation, but it’s too hard for students to understand – advisers usually have to interpret it.
“Probably the biggest complaint that we would have about E-Progress was that it’s really hard to read,” Torres said. “It’s black and white, it’s very static and it can be a very lengthy report.”
Junior Jesus “J” Valdez said he used the E-Progress report when he switched from University College to the College of Arts and Sciences. He said his adviser asked him to bring a copy of the report to plan for his future classes.
“My adviser kind of helped me with E-Progress — she showed me the page with the prerequisites and all the classes you need for that and she showed me how to read the report,” Valdez said.
Valdez said he used E-Progress to plan his classes for the next few years but would like to plan his schedule without making a special trip to advisement. He said E-Progress looks outdated and is hard to read. A clearer degree audit would help, he said.
“I’d definitely use an easier to read E-Progress report,” Valdez said. “The one that we have right now seems like it’s the way the old computers print things out. It looks like you’re reading a program on a command screen — it’s just all squished together.”
LOBO Trax will be available to students in March 2010.
Torres said the LOBO Trax degree audit will be a major improvement over the E-Progress report. She said it’s colorful, organized and easy to read.
“LOBO Trax actually is going to have graphs and charts at the top that you can click on,” Torres said. “If you just want to see requirements for your major, you click on it, open it up, and it’s all in color.”
LOBO Trax will help students plan classes and graduate on time, she said. The “Course Planner” is one new feature of LOBO Trax that lets students plan to take classes two years in advance. Torres said this feature will work well with newly implemented multi-term registration, which will be available in fall 2010.
“What this program is going to have that we’ve never had before with the degree audit is a course planner,” she said. “Students will have the ability to see what classes they need to take to complete their degree. Then they can click on it and add it into their course planner and it will show up in the audit as what they’re planning to take in the future.”
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Torres said the Office of Enrollment Management will use the LOBO Trax Course Planner to determine the popularity of future classes. This will help them ensure that these classes are available for students.
Henry Gonzalez, Title-V Educational Initiatives program specialist, said students need to be careful and recognize that using the course planner and registering for classes is not the same thing.
“The course planner is only for planning, not for registration,” Gonzalez said. “Students will have to realize that just because you planned classes in LOBO Trax, it doesn’t mean you registered for them. It’s just a tool to help students and administration.”
