Handling Independent Studies as Transfer Grades

Richard Pan

We have courses called an independent studys where students create their own course for a semester. I discovered that handling this kind of course may be best handled as a transfer grade. It is a one off course that will never be used again and I don't want to litter my course lists with these one off independent study courses. What does everyone think about that? Can anyone foresee any drawbacks?

Brian Gray

Using a transfer course to record independent study grades has the advantage of allowing you to use the transfer course's name to include a fairly specific description of the work done (e.g., Independent Study - Fractals, Independent Study - Central American Economy, etc). It also allows you to tweak the way in which credits are applied (by specifying different values for credits attempted, credits earned, and GPA inclusion or exclusion.)

The flexibility allows for inconsistency (intentional or accidental).

We recently revamped our arrangement of independent study courses. We now have one course per department (Independent Study - English, Independent Study - Science, etc.). All of them have the same settings (half credit, pass/fail, no effect on GPA).

Which is better depends on how important it is for the transcript to describe the specific area of study. We decided that it's not that important to us. Your mileage may vary.