Smith Steigleder
Staff Writer
On March 3, 2014, Cameron University made Degree Works
available to students. Degree Works is an online tool that students can access
from their Aggie Access accounts to check on their progress toward degree
completion and plan ahead for future coursework.
Kelli
Peterson is the records manager at the Cameron University registrar office and
one of four Cameron employees who helped to create the program.
“Degree
Works is really cool in the sense that students will be able to look every day
at anytime of the day or night and see where they stand within their degree
program,” Peterson said. “I expect that within the next two years Degree Works
will be set up to where students that are coming into Cameron as freshman can
plan their whole four years before they even take a class.”
This
new tool will help ease some of the worry and stress for students close to
graduation.
“Sometimes
students will apply for graduation thinking that they have finished all of
their classes,” Peterson said. “They are angry and upset when they find out
that they are only one or two classes off. I think that this will cut down on a
lot of that because they can see for sure all the classes that they need to
take.”
 |
www.cameron.edu
To use Degree Works, log on to your AggieAccess account and click on
the "info" tab. Next, click the "Degree Works" link in the "Quick Links"
window on the left side of the screen. |
“I
really like Degree Works,” Buttram said. “I used it to plan the upcoming summer
and fall semesters. It has a look ahead feature that I used to pick my classes
and make sure that they will satisfy my degree requirements.”
The
look ahead feature in Degree Works allows a student to type in any course
number of a class that Cameron offers to see how a class fits into the progress
of the completion of a degree. It has a print button so students can choose to save
the classes that they looked ahead to and show their advisors when they enroll
for subsequent semesters.
 |
www.cameron.edu
This is a picture of what "Degree Works" will look like when students
pull it up. It shows the degree progress completion percentage.
|
“Degree
Works was frustrating at times though,” Buttram said. “It would continuously
freeze up on me and quit working while I was using it. Hopefully they will get
that fixed before it is time to enroll for the 2015 spring semester.”
Buttram
is not alone in experiencing problems with the new program.
“This
is the first semester to have it out to the students,” Peterson said. “There
are always things that happen when you build a new program; all the coursework
behind the scenes had to be individually scribed and coded. The backside users,
which consist of me and three others at Cameron, are the ones that had to do
all of this, so it isn’t surprising to me that there are a few bugs.
“Degree
Works has come a long way already, and it should not take long before
everything is running properly and all of the glitches are worked out.”
While
Peterson debugs the program, her team will also continue to get added features that
further help students. One of these planned features is something that students
have been wanting for a long time: self-enrollment.
“I
can’t say or know when it will happen,” Petersen said. “but a major goal of
Degree Works is to eventually have student self-enrollment. This would allow students
to use the program to enroll in the classes that they want to take without
meeting with an advisor.”
There
are many possibilities with Degree Works in the future and many features that
are already available now for student use.
“Every
student that is at Cameron regardless of class standing should check out Degree
Works,” Buttram said. “It is something that is meant to make our lives a little
bit less stressful, and it gives us better tools that provide information we
can use to ensure that we graduate on time.”
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