ASSISTance: Summer 2022

Upcoming ASSIST Closures and Important Dates - Please note the following office closures for ASSIST Central Services (ACS) for the rest of the 2022 calendar year:

• Monday, September 5 - Labor Day
• Friday, November 11 - Veterans Day
• Thursday, November 24 and Friday, November 25 - Thanksgiving
• Friday, December 23 through Monday, December 26 - Winter Holiday
• Tuesday, December 27 through Thursday, December 29 - Winter Curtailment
• Friday, December 30 through Monday, January 2, 2023 - New Year Holiday

Also, ASSIST Office Hours for all Articulation Officers (AOs) will be held Sept. 13th & 15th. Please reach out to your Assigned Senior Articulation Analyst if you did not receive an invitation.

Articulation Modernization Project

• Project Update - Development work is around 80% complete for the tasks needed to allow Articulation Officers (AOs) to begin working in the new articulation management area. In July, ASSIST launched an Articulation Modernization Project update page on the ASSIST Resource Center to provide an overview, general timeline, development progress, and visuals related to the project. ASSIST website users or others with a general interest in the project can now monitor this page for project updates.
   
• Articulation Modernization Workgroup - In recent meetings, this group received updates and provided input on the continuing work in the build articulation and template management areas of the modernized system. This included a look at attributes, instructions/advisements, and agreement generation and publishing. Workgroup members are expected to begin testing the modernized system in the near future.

IGETC Area 7 Ethnic Studies - ASSIST is partnering with the California State University Office of the Chancellor (CSUCO) and the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) to support the submission, review, and display of CCC courses approved for IGETC Area 7 as early as Fall 2023. More information will be provided when it becomes available.

Data Sharing - All data extracted from the ASSIST system is in a format to be uploaded and interpreted by another computer system, such as a campus degree audit or transfer planning application. Since the initial release of ASSIST transferable course data extracts earlier this year, ASSIST has provided bimonthly updates to subscribers from California Community College (CCC), California State University (CSU), and University of California (UC) campuses and systems. We are committed to supporting CCC, CSU, and UC staff, students, and partners working to expand the technological tools, systems, and services used to streamline, automate, and validate student transfer processes. As we continue to evolve data sharing operations, we look forward to providing additional types of data to requesters via web services. If you are interested in accessing ASSIST shareable data using web services, where data can be shared online and on-demand from the ASSIST system to a campus system versus via flat data files that are sent by email and uploaded to a system, please contact us at help@assist.org. For more information regarding ASSIST data sharing, please visit the Data page of the ASSIST Resource Center.

Course Outline Integration & Specifications Document - ASSIST has published a Course Outline Integration & Specifications document. This document provides a list of the current methods by which course outline information can be updated in ASSIST, and any related technical information, to aid in campus planning, decision-making and procedures. Please direct questions concerning course outline integration options to the ASSIST Senior Articulation Analyst supporting your institution, or contact the ASSIST Central Services (ACS) Help Desk at help@assist.org.

ASSIST Advocacy Survey - In our last update, we shared that ACS would begin to survey various user groups to collect feedback on the ASSIST system and user experiences. The purpose of the survey is to gather information regarding how UC, CSU, and CCC counselors, advisors, evaluators/rule-builders, and admissions personnel use ASSIST, determine what is working well, elicit suggestions for future enhancements, and determine the best means of communication. We are still in the process of reviewing and synthesizing the response data but some initial highlights include:

• Over 69% of respondents thus far report using assist.org on a daily basis to perform their work, with another 23% indicating they use it weekly
• Over 90% of respondents noted that assist.org is helpful or very helpful to their achievement of work goals/tasks.
• Users have requested greater uniformity of published articulation information, noted the variability of published articulation agreements among institutions, and have expressed a desire to have access to the prior Explore Majors tool.

Users have also noted the following:

• “I am dependent on these resources to provide accurate information for students.”
   
• “I have been using ASSIST since its inception. I would not be able to do my job effectively, as an evaluator, without it. It provides critical information in a one-stop-shop location that would otherwise take hours, if not days, to locate on individual websites.”
   
• “ASSIST is my number [1] go-to tool when reviewing major prep or to determine transferability of courses. It’s [the] easiest, most practical tool that I use on a daily basis as most of my students are transferring.”

We will continue to share these findings as more data becomes available.

ASSIST Resource Center New Look Coming Soon!  - The ASSIST Resource Center is getting a new look. While the existing website content will remain, the available resources will be organized by user type, rather than by the resources themselves, and navigation of the website will be streamlined to improve the user experience. Be on the lookout for more updates and an announcement regarding this change in the near future!