Pathway Tagging

Overview

Understanding how requirements on a pathway fit into the curricular vision of an institution can provide key data on translating to effective scheduling. Institutions often want to be able to report on the efficacy of general education requirements, major requirements, and electives. Having these “tags” available for pathway requirements provides the opportunity to highlight interesting data to inform decision-making through reporting.

For example, if a course is a major requirement on a single pathway only, and the pathway has just 8 students, it is hard for that course to be sustainable. But, if visibility is provided into these numbers, institutions can consider other pathways that may be able to use that course as an elective. If all requirements seem the same, it is much harder to identify these opportunities for improvement. To support this idea, Ad Astra’s Pathways app allows institutions to enter tags for any given pathway requirement to indicate the type of requirement it fulfills. 

Pathway Requirement Tags

Available pathway requirement tags include three options that can be considered mutually exclusive types within a pathway. 

General Education

General Education could cover foundational courses (like Intro to Psychology) and courses that fulfill general education obligations like English 101 and Intro to Philosophy.

Major Requirement

Major Requirements are all classes that are listed as part of the degree plan and related obligations that do not fulfill elective requirements like Abnormal Psychology and Personality.

Elective

Elective courses are courses that fulfill elective requirements of the degree plan.

Adding Tags to Pathway Requirements

1. To get started, open the Pathways app.
2. Click on a pathway.
3. Click on the pathway version you want to edit.
4. In the Tags column, use the drop-down menu to choose the appropriate tag for the requirement.