Approving Plans

When adding plans to OAT, we need them to be accurate and never allow for false positives. That is, never say a student has met the peoper requirements when in reality, they have not.

How to Access oat-stage

You will be notified when a plan that you are in charge of is ready to be vetted and you will be directed to oat-stage.uwaterloo.ca. This is where you will have access to the drafts of the plans that have been created.

oat-stage is the same as the regular oat site except for a few key changes:

  1. As mentioned above, the definitons for plans that have not yet been approved by advisors will be available.
  2. Student data is not fully up to date as this site is not updated as often as the regular OAT site.
  3. ANYTHING ELSE?

What to Look For

When going through the process if approving a plan, here are the steps to take:

  1. Find a few sample students in the program you are checking. We reccomend checking a few students who have just graduated as well as a few who are close to graduating.
  2. Check out the degree audit tab.
  3. If there is anything out of the ordinary, check to see if the student had an exemption by looking at transcript notes and other resourses.
  4. Also, check out the “Requirements” tab got more details (see Plan Definitions).
  5. If something is actually incorrect, record the error and go on to the next student.
  6. Once you have looked at all the students you selected, contact rrdirks@uwaterloo.ca with your feedback (see below for more information).

General Conventions

There are a few important aspects to keep in mind when going through these plans. First, we want NO FALSE POSITIVES. Another convention we follow is that of documented rules. We only encode what is in the calendar or changes that have gone through the senate. This means that if there is a change to your plan that was included in senate documentation, we are happy to make those changes, but if it is something that has no documentation, we are not able to accommodate those changes.

Who to Contact

When you have checked over your plans, please email rrdirks@uwaterloo.ca to let her know if the plan is ready to be put onto the actual OAT site or if there are changes that need to be made.

You can chose to follow the following template if you wish:

Hello Ramona,

The following plans have been reviewed and (are all good to go) (here are some comments on what I noticed).

<List the plans>

<List any comments on what needs work INCLUDING STUDENT IDs of the student checked>

Thank you,

<name>