Summer 2018:  Technology Institute

Fall 2019 & Spring 2019:  Facilitated requirements gathering sessions that followed a common process workshop approach occurred in the fall of 2019 and spring of 2019 to determine the most effective implementation approach of Guided Pathways as well as meta-majors in the PeopleSoft ctcLink application. The workshops resulted in identifying the necessary functions in ctcLink for Guided Pathways implementation.

• Student Role - Guided Pathways Functional Requirements
• Guided Pathways Workshop #2 College Decisions on Requirements from Reviewing ctcLink Functionality

2020: Guided Pathways Initiatives Lessons Learned published by Independent Evaluators for College Spark Washington

2022: ITC Guided Pathways Survey Results

Guided Pathways Requirements Outcomes.FINAL

Content Below was Communicated to the College Community on 10/15/2020

Background: When the Washington community and technical college system developed system-wide functional requirements for a new administrative software solution in 2011, Guided Pathways Meta Majors were not part of the requirements. Meta Majors scope was also not added during the ctcLink Project timeline and budget re-plan efforts in 2017.

In the intervening years, as Guided Pathways work was launched  and long after the ctcLink Academic Structure configuration in PeopleSoft Campus Solutions was put into place  colleges and commissions began to express a desire to add Guided Pathways technical requirements to the ctcLink scope of work. As part of that work, colleges were engaged in a 2019 series of Business Process Requirements gathering workshops to define what technical needs existed.

Challenges, Opportunities and the Work Ahead: The ideal solution for Guided Pathways Meta Majors would be to reconfigure the ctcLink Academic Structure to include Meta Majors, while implementing the remaining colleges.However, this work would will take additional funding and time to implement that is not part of the ctcLink budget and timeline.

Were we to reconfigure the ctcLink Academic Structure to include Meta-Majors while still implementing the remaining colleges in Deployment Groups 4, 5 and 6, it would present a critical risk not only to the SBCTC ctcLink Support and ctcLink Project teams, but also to the colleges; putting a halt to the ctcLink project work and delaying the schedule for an indeterminate amount of time. (Each year of delay costs the colleges roughly $10 million.)

The Academic Structure re-design to incorporate Meta-Majors is not a simple task colleges can outsource, as it requires significant effort and active engagement by skilled college subject matter experts (SMEs)  especially, but not limited to, staff who configure Academic Advisement and Enrollment Requirements  making local college decisions and collaborating with campus instructional colleagues and SBCTC.

Academic Structure re-design steps include:

• Re-Configure and test new Academic Program, Plan, and Sub-Plan values
• Build new Academic Advisement Reports based on the new structure
• Edit Enrollment Requirements that use Academic Program and/or Plan
• Update and test Financial Aid Mass Packaging Equations (hard-coded based on the current Academic Programs)
• Create and update conversion programs
• Update and test Student Financials Equations (also hard-coded)
• Analyze queries, reports, and data warehouse links

Colleges currently on ctcLink PeopleSoft (DG2 and DG3)  Cascadia College, Clark College, Lower Columbia College, Olympic College, Peninsula College, Pierce College Fort Steilacoom, Pierce College Puyallup, Spokane Community College, Spokane Falls Community College, Tacoma Community College cannot move forward until all of these steps are taken. DG2 and DG3 colleges recently completed a tremendous body of work to develop, test and implement their Guided Pathways Sub-Plans into ctcLink. Moving forward, all deployment groups are implementing their Sub-Plans as they prepare to go live.

At this time, college SMEs are already challenged to meet the heavy-lift of ctcLink due to the stay-at-home order, remote work, staff reductions and furloughs. The SBCTC ctcLink Support Organization is in a building phase and has neither the capacity nor the specific technical skills on staff to successfully implement this change. The ctcLink project team is staffed to complete the current defined and approved scope, additional scope or changes will have a direct impact on the deployment timeline for remaining colleges.

In addition, the ctcLink Project’s external quality assurance oversight agency has cautioned the Project to carefully manage its planned scope, so as not to derail the tight schedule and limited budget.

Next Steps: While Guided Pathways is a key element of our college system, the SBCTC ctcLink Change Management Board  in concurrence with agency leaders, IT leadership, and ctcLink Project governance  has determined this re-design effort is best suited to take place after all colleges are live in ctcLink (Feb/March 2022). It is recommended that a separate optimization project is planned, with scope to include the Meta-Major implementation.This future optimization project will need to be planned, approved and funded by WACTC (Presidents).

SBCTC research and data services will continue to investigate possible solutions for reporting requirements that come up, and will communicate about those efforts with the colleges in the next few months.

• 12/18/2018 Steering Committee handouts: Guided Pathways requirements gathering: update from Carli Schiffner
• 10/23/2018 Steering Committee handouts: Common Process Workshop Proposal: Guided Pathways
• 10/6/2020 Steering Committee handouts: Oct. 6, 2020 Steering Committee Meeting Minutes: update from Grant Rodeheaver  - he will send the communication about Meta Majors to the system and colleges soon. In a nutshell, if we were to try to reconfigure the ctcLink Academic Structure to include Meta-Majors while still implementing the remaining colleges in Deployment Groups 4, 5 and 6, it would present a critical risk not only to the SBCTC ctcLink Support and ctcLink Project teams, but also to the colleges. The work requires significant effort and active engagement by skilled college subject matter experts (SMEs). SBCTC research and data services will continue to investigate possible solutions for reporting requirements that come up, and will communicate about those efforts with the colleges in the next few months.

Considerations authored by Monica Olsson.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and the 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 are federal laws that protect students with disabilities against discrimination. These laws ensure that students with disabilities have equal and effective access to programs and services offered at Washington State’s community and technical colleges and at SBCTC. Students with disabilities cannot be denied access on the basis of disability and have the right to pursue and use reasonable accommodation services.

Programs and services include digital and web-based activities such as searching for and registering for classes online using ctcLink, receiving alert messages, and other tasks.

Washington state’s Policy 188 from the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) requires state agencies, including higher education institutions to meet minimum IT accessibility standards, which are Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, or WCAG 2.1AA. These standards are developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C.

Policy 188 covers things such as college websites, learning management systems and tools, digital instructional materials, and communication technologies. This includes ctcLink, which is the CTC system branded name for a product called PeopleSoft developed by Oracle.

The following is a list of the ongoing efforts at SBCTC to improve the accessibility of ctcLink in accordance with state and federal requirements.

1. SBCTC provides updates and information on the ctcLink Accessibility web page.
2. Monthly ctcLink Accessibility Forums hosted by Policy Associate Monica Olsson and Chris Soran, App Services Manager.
3. SBCTC technical staff attend regular meetings with Oracle to discuss accessibility issues and advocate for fixes.
4. SBCTC hired a new Web Accessibility Specialist and Tester starting in October 2022.
5. When capacity allows, CATO members perform accessibility testing and spot checks on ctcLink pages and report issues to SCTC. CATO stands for the Committee for Accessible Technology Oversight.
6. Learn how to submit an accessibility-related ticket via Solar Winds or email.

Students with Disabilities and Guided Pathways

Monica Wilson and Monica Olsson will meet with DSSC in fall for a conversation about Guided Pathways work, its convergence with ctcLink, and how students with disabilities are served by GP initiatives. Stay tuned for more information!

Spring Quarter of academic year 2018-19 will be the initial implementation quarter. Colleges will be given access to the new meta-major field on screen SM5006 by May 2019 to begin data entry. Screens with view only meta-major code additions will be available shortly thereafter. The data will be added to a new Data Warehouse table in early July 2019 for the SBCTC Research team to begin data validation.

No official reporting will occur on meta-major coding in the SBCTC Data Warehouse during the 2018-19 academic year. Summer quarter of the 2019-20 academic year will be the first year and quarter for official reporting of meta-majors.

During the OAAP implementation there was discussion on leveraging the STUDY_FIELD field in the ACAD_PLAN_TBL. It’s an existing field that we are not currently using, and the name basically reflects what we would be using it for. We did not choose this route because this field is not visible to the student, and we want the meta-major visible to the student.