Custom Form to Allow Students to Request an Evaluation Task

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Does your institution require students to fill out a form to have transfer credit evaluated? Wouldn't it be nice if the student could create an Evaluation Task to kick off the Evaluation Workflow for you? Well both are possible when utilizing the TES Web Service API Package.

Getting Started:

The Evaluation Tracker Workflow can be incredibly important for getting courses evaluated across many campuses. Most of the time, a staff member creates these requests and routes them out to faculty evaluators. These request can come at the time of admission, when students are looking for replacement courses, or even from potential transfer students. While Transferology can help get potential students' credits into the evaluation workflow (TES Mode) or can help them find a replacement course (Find a Replacement Course), creating a self-service portal for students to request an evaluation task is an option with TES's API's.

*CollegeSource would prefer this portal be located behind a secure log-in at your institution.

Picking an Institution:

When designing your form you may want to consider what institutions you have available for students to utilize in requests. You can limit the number of institutions you display just to institutions you accept transfer credit from or open it up to all institutions. Once you have picked your list of institutions you will to include one of the three methods of obtaining an InstitutionID.

InstitutionID by OPEID

InstitutionID by CEEB

InstitutionID by Location

Picking a Course:

Once a student has picked an institution, the next step should be entering in the information regarding the course they want to have evaluated. To look these courses up in TES, you will want the student to report the Course Code (Prefix and number), Month and Year taken since you already have the InstitutionID.

Using the GetCourseByInstitutionIDCourseCodeMonthYear call provide your access key ID (AccessKeyID), Institution ID (InstitutionID), Course Code (CourseCode), Month (1-12) and Year (4-digits).

Parameter Guide

Results

If the search is successful in finding that specific course it will return the unique CourseID, CourseCode and Course Title (CourseTitle). In some case multiple results maybe returned. This is do to the date range associated with the catalog at the institution, where the date you are searching overlaps 2 catalog date ranges.

If the search is unsuccessful, an error of "No Course Found" will be returned.

Check For for an existing Evaluation Task and/or Equivalency

To prevent duplicates always check for an existing Evaluation Task and/or an Equivalency. Using the following calls you can help prevent any data issues an also provide any answers to students that already exists.

Checking for duplicate evaluation task.

If an EvaluationID is returned then you can let the student know the course is currently under way. You could also provide more details if you were to look at the Evaluation Task Details, but you might not want to show that to a student.

Checking for a Duplicate Equivalency

Using the GetEquivalency web call users can provide the following information to check for an exact mathcing equivalency:

AccessKeyID, SendInstitutionID, SendCourseCode1, SendCourseCode2*, SendCourseCode3*, SendCourseCode4*, SendCourseCode5*, SendCourseCode6*,
SendCourseCode7*, SendCourseCode8*, SendCourseCode9*, SendCourseCode10*, ReceiveCourseCode1, ReceiveCourseCode2*, ReceiveCourseCode3*,
ReceiveCourseCode4*, ReceiveCourseCode5*, ReceiveCourseCode6*, ReceiveCourseCode7*, ReceiveCourseCode8*, ReceiveCourseCode9*, ReceiveCourseCode10*.

*indicates a value that may be left null.

If an existing equivalency exists, then an EquivalencyID will be returned.

Parameter Guide

If an EquivalencyID is returned you can display the equivalency information to the student.

To get the details of an existing equivalency you can use the GetEquivalencyDetailByEquivalencyID and provide the following to view the details: AccessKeyID and EquivalencyID.

If found, the call will return the following information:
EffectiveDateBegin, EffectiveDateEnd, CreateUser, CreateDateTime, HideFlag, PublicNote, PrivateNote, SendInstitution (Name), SendInstitutionCity, SendInstitutionState, SendCourseCode1, SendCourseCode2*, SendCourseCode3*, SendCourseCode4*, SendCourseCode5*, SendCourseCode6*, SendCourseCode7*, SendCourseCode8*, SendCourseCode9*, SendCourseCode10*, ReceiveInstitution (Name), ReceiveInstitutionCity, ReceiveInstitutionState,ReceiveCourseCode1, ReceiveCourseCode2*, ReceiveCourseCode3*,
ReceiveCourseCode4*, ReceiveCourseCode5*, ReceiveCourseCode6*, ReceiveCourseCode7*, ReceiveCourseCode8*, ReceiveCourseCode9*, ReceiveCourseCode10*.

*indicates a value that may be left null.

Parameter Guide

Create Evaluation Task

If no duplicates are found then it is time to create a task. You will want to pick a user or service account to assign tasks that will be submitted by students. This is because the Evaluation Workflow will always route the task back to the creator of the task. Unless you want to add a drop down menu of assignees to this form, it may be best to have the initial assignee and creator be the same person. One thing you can also do is use the comment field as a place where the student can provide contact information. That way you can reach back out to the student once the evaluation is compete.