• How to Articulate Handbook
• Articulation Committee Companion
• Best Practice Guide: A Resource for Receiving Institutions
  • Consistency of Process
  • Policy, Procedure and Record-Keeping
  • Assessing Transfer and Articulation Requests
  • Formal Articulation Versus Case-by-Case Assessment
  • Functionality of the Transfer Credit Evaluation System (TCES)
  • Technology and Transfer Credit
  • Training Needs Within Institutions
  • Effective Date Ranges
  • Volume of Articulation Requests
  • Timeliness
  • Cost of Articulating
  • Some Principles to Live By
  • Appendices
• Transfer-Friendly Course Outline Form

 

Training Needs Within Institutions

9. Training Needs Within Institutions

In most institutions, even those currently designated as sending only, there will already exist a considerable history of evaluating transfer credit on behalf of incoming students. Different levels of expertise will be found among faculty, student advisers, admission evaluators and administrative staff.

To be effective, employees need to work collaboratively and trust each other. In a collegial learning environment, they can also best train each other. Trainers from outside the institution could not achieve the same results, although regional articulation workshops and the use of outside process experts can also be valuable.

Where assessments are largely done by faculty, there might be rotation of roles within a department. Sometimes new faculty members are assigned such tasks, perhaps with no experience or knowledge of the Province's well-established transfer infrastructure. These faculty need to be introduced to pertinent sources of information such as the How to Articulate Handbook, the BC Transfer Guide, institutional transfer credit policies and how to read a student record.

Annual in-house transfer credit workshops have been very successful at some institutions.

Over and above this, advising and admission staff also need to know something about the nature of each discipline and how certain courses are likely to be treated, whether or not they themselves do the assessments. If they do make the transfer credit decisions, they will need considerable knowledge of the field, so it makes sense for each to specialize as far as possible in order that their depth of knowledge can develop. Institutions should encourage those staff members to attend courses and workshops, such as those offered by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO). Sometimes, these exchanges shed more light on international issues than on domestic transfer credit principles, but a broader, more professional evaluation perspective will always be beneficial.

Annual in-house transfer credit workshops have been very successful at some institutions. Typically a half-day workshop might be run for each faculty or division in the early part of the academic year. Orientation should be offered for any new assessor as soon as the appointment is known.

Frequent communication, such as a weekly meeting, is necessary for admission evaluators and student advisers to ensure that they are dealing consistently with ever-changing circumstances, processes, work priorities and policies. Whenever changes are abrupt rather than incremental, broader communication sessions are in order and repeated so that every person involved has an opportunity to attend.

BEST PRACTICES - RECEIVING INSTITUTION Collaboratively trains its coordinators, evaluators and administrators to ensure consistency and efficiency provides opportunities for ongoing training and for frequent communication among evaluators, advisors and admissions personnel

Next Section: Effective Date Ranges