Newsgroups: bit.listserv.cumrec-l
Date:         Mon, 14 Sep 1992 18:18:06 EDT
From:         Jack Southard <SOUTHARD@MIAMIU.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Degree Audit Software
              14 Sep 1992 12:10:00 PDT from <SRKBG@AIS.UCLA.EDU>

Ken and others -

I can see we off and running in the great degree audit race - GREAT!

Please note my comments below - Jack Southard

On Mon, 14 Sep 1992 12:10:00 PDT Ken Gross said:
>In our in-house system at UCLA, the coding of the described requirements
>would be much more straightforward than the DARS code described in this
>note.
>
>ONE COURSE FROM TWO OF THE FOLLOWING LISTS" is one line in a the defini
>tion of a single requirement. "TWO COURSES FROM ONE OF THE FOLLOWING
>LISTS" is also a single requirement line.  Nothing here need be coded
>as a subrequirement here.
>
DARS Comment--> I like your straightforward statements which seem to correspond
                to what we need at the "requirement" level in DARS.  When we
                built DARS we decided to use a more "fill in the field values"
                approach - where there is a one-to-one correspondence with all
                possible control field values - rather than a more "English-
                like" convert-to-control code approach than what would appear
                to be the case with your statements.  Each approach has its
                merits - but I'm trying to imagine what might be the statement
                that would be necessary to evaluate a requirement which goes
                something like this:

                "If you have passed the mathematics competency test at the
                 intermediate level then you must complete a total of 20 hours
                 with a minimum GPA of 2.35 by taking 1 of these three courses
                 earning a "C or better" and two courses each from two of five
                 other lists each of which has one particular course which
                 must be taken so long as all the needed hours are taken from
                 no more than three of the five lists and so long as no more
                 than one course is taken on a pass/fail basis; otherwise ...
                 some other requirement should be used.  And also I want to
                 stop showing what the other two courses are once one of the
                 three were taken."

                 Now, of course, you have to fill in a few control values with
                 DARS to do this, but they are precise field values.  What
                 would the English-like equivalance look like?

>Consider the following requirement:
>
>  Student must take one course from one of lists X1, X2, X3, ...  AND
>  Student must take two more courses from the SAME list, OR two courses
>  from a single other one of these lists, BUT a course cannot be used
>  twice.
>
>  Can you do it in DARS ?
>          -->YES
DARS answer-->  I would probably restate the requirement to be something like
        take three courses from one list OR two courses from one list and one
        course from another.  DARS would then use an "OR'd" requirement pair
        where the first requirement would want 1 sub-requirement (REQSRQ=1)
        and the one-subrequirment would want 3 courses (REQCT=3), be a
        grouping-type subrequirement would would order the course taken
        from each list from high to low count (rather than the by-credit
        option) (GRP=C) and would only accept the highest count group
        (GRPMAX=1).  The acceptable course strings could either be embedded
        list of courses (each course could be in one or more groups) or
        as a "look-up" reference list.

        The other requirement of the OR'd set would want two subrequirements
        (REQSRQ=2); the first sub-requiremnt would be like the above except
        that it would only want 2 courses (REQCT=2) and it would assign
        a logical element (we call them condition codes - up to 96 possible) to
        the courses chosen from the high count list.  The second
        sub-requirement would be like the first except that it would only
        want one course (REQCT=1) and it would reject any course from the
        high count list (RC=x, where x is the character value of the assigned
        condition code.

        Now note that in the text above I'm attempting to describe something
        about DARS and not just providing the "field values" necessary to do
        it.
              Hope this has been somewhat entertaining to the rest of you on
              CUMREC-L.   Jack

>  We can do it in three straightforward lines in the same requirement
>  at UCLA because our audit system can recall which list a student
>  selected in another requirement.
>
DARS Comment - This is a useful feature.  DARS can "mark" the courses from
               a chosen list (as referenced above) and can include or exclude
               courses in another requirement, but I bet you might have a
               "neater" way to do it.  Would you mind sharing the three
               straightforward statements?    J


>******************************************
>Ken Gross
>Administrative Information Systems
>University of California, Los Angeles
>EMAIL: SRKBG@AIS.UCLA.EDU
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU