The project launches the findings from a NATIONAL STUDY identifying existing practices for student document and data exchange in Canada
Abstract
Advancing Student Mobility through Data Mobility – A BC Focus represents the findings of a national research project that spanned from April 2018 to September 2019. Funded by the British Columbia Council on Admissions and Transfer (BCCAT), the research report identified the practices and potential opportunities for improving transfer and mobility by enhancing digitization and exchange of students’ official academic credentials and transcripts. Extensive consultation occurred for the study with registrarial leaders at post-secondary institutions and their partners such as BCCAT, EducationPlannerBC, the BC Ministry of Education, and others from across Canada and beyond. The University of Victoria represented by the interim registrar, Wendy Taylor, partnered with the Association of Registrars of the Universities and Colleges of Canada (ARUCC) to help guide this project.
The impetus for this research resulted from broader efforts to create a national student data exchange network for academic documents such as transcripts. Called the ARUCC Groningen Project, the goal of that larger initiative included enabling students to move seamlessly into and between Canadian post-secondary institutions and into the workforce by improving official academic document access and exchange. This BC study was supported by a similarly focused companion study conducted for the Ontario Council on Articulation and Transfer (ONCAT) called, Advancing Student Transfer through Enhanced Data Exchange. Partners across all three projects agreed to collaborate on the research and share the findings given the close alignment between each of these initiatives.