DegreeData and Standards

DegreeData is proud to support the standards community through our sponsorship and participation in the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Coucil (PESC). At the 2019 Fall summit in Montreal, our CEO, Anne Valentine, participated in the panel for the ARUCC/GDC Student Mobility Project. This important work is being undertaken by Canadian institutions and the Gronigen Declaration to ensure that student credits and academic achievements are measurable and portable. We can’t think of anything more important in driving better educational outcomes.

DegreeData joins the PESC EdPlan Workgroup

DegreeData has joined the EdPlan workgroup to create a standard for educational plans between institutions. The benefit of a plan standard is that it allows institutions to evaluate where a student is in their academic progression against a consistent structure. This in turn, supports student mobility and ease of transfer. For more information, please see the description on the PESC website: https://www.pesc.org/edplan-workgroup.html

Overcoming PDF Tomes

DegreeData makes navigating curriculum faster in California and New York

Eightly percent of academic catalogs are published in PDF. The technology is easy to use and affordable. Best of all, PDF documents are the backbone of a stable archive. We foresee PDF archives on sites long into the future, even after curriculum management systems have been implemented. They are reliable and incorruptable.

The problem for researchers is that navigating huge PDF documents can be inefficient, especially when you just need to see courses or programs. To overcome that, DegreeData has selected Calfironia Community Colleges and New York institutions to prove that PDF catalogs can be parsed into smaller sections.

By parsing catalogs into digestible sections for courses, programs and general education, you can jump to the information you need faster and employ our search tools with greater specificity. In addition, DegreeData will always present the catalog as a single document for sections not pre-parsed.

See for yourself:
Link to CCCS and New York. (Neil, Dave still has to create this.)

What’s next? Program parsing and meta-tagging. DegreeData is parsing individual programs and adding meta data for total credits, award, CIP codes and more. Stay tuned…

DegreeData Launches New Website

Welcome to the new DegreeData website. We hope you enjoy the updated design but this upgrade isn’t just aesthetic. DegreeData has added functions to make curriculum and transfer credit research more efficient. For one thing, we increased the the speed on catalog downloads so you can find what you’re looking for more quickly. We also enhanced the program and course search capability.

Better Course Search

Our users have told us that they want to see a course in context, not simply the description. DegreeData search delivers not only the description, but an overview of how the course is actually used. Search results return every reference to a course including it’s use in pre- and co-requisites, as program requirements, electives and general education. Full page catalog presentation gives researchers the ability to see what courses are around the course in question and how it relates to over-all offerings.

A responsive site for viewing on multiple devices

The new site looks great (we think) but it also works well on phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. Not that you’ll ever do deep research on your phone, but it’s nice to know that if you have to find something fast and you’re not at your computer, you can get there with DegreeData.com.