Correction: The original version of this article contained multiple errors. Robert Kilgore is operations manager for Student Affairs Information Technology. Student Affairs Information Technology has worked to create a single unified degree auditing system to encompass the entire school, Kilgore said.
Clarification: The original version of this article was unclear. Students who entered the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture in the 2011-12 school year tested the new auditing system.
Unlike preceding classes, incoming students will not be greeted by a wall of text when they try to access their Degree Progress Reports.
They will instead see colorful graphs and a clickable interface.
The Degree Progress Report, which is used by current students, has been replaced with a new Degree Audit System for UCLA’s incoming freshmen and transfers.
The new system is intended to be dynamic and more user-friendly for students, said Robert Kilgore, operations manager for Student Affairs Information Technology.
Incoming students could begin accessing the new system as soon as they submitted their Statements of Intent to Register to the university. For existing students, there is no way for their information to be switched over to the new system, Kilgore said.
Created for students entering UCLA in fall of 1988, the old DPR was not equipped to handle many aspects of students’ academic planning, such as keeping track of overlapping classes between majors and minors.
Kilgore also said the DPR can be difficult for students to use because it contains pages of text.
“(The DPR) is really confusing and hard to read,” Kilgore said. “We needed a modern delivery application.”
The Degree Audit System avoids the heavy use of text, and instead displays a student’s academic progress with colorful graphics and charts, he said.
Angel Wu, a second-year psychobiology student, said she uses the current DPR at the end of the quarter to check what requirements she has left.
“It’s pretty messy and not visually appealing,” Wu said. “The current system is manageable, but it could be better.”
The new system uses drop-down menus, showing classes that fulfill a student’s requisites and directly linking to course descriptions. It can also model what students’ audits would look like if they added, dropped or changed majors or minors.
The system has other features such as alerting students about class restrictions they might face and informing them about other academic regulations like the senior residency requirement, which mandates that 35 of a student’s final 45 units must be taken at UCLA.
Kilgore began efforts to replace the DPR in 1999 after determining if UCLA should build a new system or buy an existing software.
Since then, Student Affairs Information Technology has worked to create a single unified system to encompass the entire school, Kilgore said.
Students who entered the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture in the 2011-12 school year tested the new auditing system.
Kevin Lin, a second-year Design | Media Arts student, first learned about the new system during his summer orientation session. Because his major falls within the School of the Arts and Architecture, Lin was able to try out the new system last year.
“I use it pretty often, at least every quarter when I have to choose classes,” Lin said. “It also has drop-down menus and graphs and other visual things you can see (that make) it much easier to navigate through it, too.”
He said the only aspect of the system that annoyed him was the need to create a new audit every time he wanted to see his current grades and standing. The links to the course catalog on it were very useful, he added.
While the new and improved system is already live, it will continue to be updated. The ability for the program to list all classes a student has taken that do not fulfill any requirements is one such feature that will be soon implemented, Kilgore said.