Diploma Requirements and Classes that can be taken Multiple Years

Karen McCue

We are setting up our Diploma Requirements and found that on for our Courses that students are allowed to take multiple years for credit such as Yearbook, PE and Journalism only one instance of the course is appearing and counting toward their requirements. Anyone else had an issue like this and found a solution?

Chris Felinski

@Karen McCue Unfortunately, Blackbaud told me that this is the way the Graduation Requirements is designed. We ran into the same issue with Choir, Band, Dance, etc. The module is checking Course ID’s and credit can only be earned with each course ID once. They gave me 2 workarounds

1) Create a Band 101 for Freshman, Band 201 for sophomores, Band 301 for juniors, and Band 401 for seniors that all meet at the same time. The issue with this is the teacher is maintaining 4 different gradebooks.

2) Create Band 2022-23 for this year, Band 2023-24 next year, Band 2024-25 for the following year, etc. That way every year the course ID is different. The negative here is remembering to go back and make sure each course is added to the proper diploma to receive credit.

This isn’t ideal, and it is good to hear that I am not the only one running into this issue!

Kris Deardorff

@Karen McCue
I have the same issue. Not very happy with the solution since it means the tool is not very useful. At this point I'd have to go back and double check each student to make it work.

I got similar work arounds and also the following:

Exemption: Enter a number of credits to exempt for this Requirement. Optionally, enter a Comment explaining the exemption. Select Save when you are finished.

The difference between an Exemption and a Waiver is that an Exemption increases the number of credits needed for the student's General Elective requirement. For example, if a Diploma manager exempts 3 credits from a student's Math requirement, then the number of Math credits completed will increase by 3 while the number of General Elective Credits needed will increase by 3.

Substitution: Students who transfer from one institution to another will often have transfer courses that count toward their selected degree. Diploma managers can substitute transfer courses for courses that need to be completed in order for the student to complete their diploma.

Swap in a course that would not ordinarily fulfill the Requirement. Under Substitute with, enter the name of a course the student has completed. Under For, select the course that is being replaced. Optionally, enter a Comment. Select Save when you are finished.

Denise Karlsen

@Karen McCue
There are many parts of the Diploma Requirements that do not seem to meet our requirements. The biggest drawback for me, is that you can add a Diploma to an entire group of students but you have to manually “Process" any changes to each individual student. I do not have time to do this at the end of each semester for all of our almost 500 students. All changes to credits need to be automatic and should not require a manual update. While there are many wonderful things about this feature, the lack of an automatic update makes it unusable for our school.

Kris Deardorff

@Karen McCue
Here is an enhancement request for this. Please vote!!!

Karen McCue

@Kris Deardorff
Thank you for the link, I added my vote!

Karen McCue

@Chris Felinski Thanks for the suggestions! We have already eliminated option 1 as too much for the teachers to contend with, but I'll definitely look at option 2.

John Ronan

@Chris Felinski
“This isn’t ideal, and it is good to hear that I am not the only one running into this issue!”

….Misery loves Company?

Jacqueline Koca

Hi all!

While not immediate relief, this is something we are planning to tackle in 2023 as part a project called “Course Retake”. We'll be reviewing multiple areas in the system, including diploma requirements, to make sure we are providing the right options and support for taking the same course multiple times. Definitely add your vote to the idea Kris posted as I'll be both updating that as well as reaching out to voters on it to confirm the direction we build.

Thank you!
Jacqueline
Senior Product Manager, Student Information System