Terminology can impact a Workday® Student project more than is realized. Be sure your project members are working as a team by ensuring consistent terminology.
The amount of confusion that I've seen over the word "active" is incredible.
I realized over the years that it's because this word's meaning changes depending on how you use it in a sentence. The term "Active Student Population" is very different from being an "Active Academic Record". People often talk about "Active Students" and no one knows exactly what they are talking about without context. This is so confusing especially for a school that's just learning Workday® Student terms for the first time.
Here are some tips to address the confusion:
Tip #1 - Use more technical terms
Anything that can be interpreted multiple ways (e.g. historical) cannot be said in a meeting. It's not worth risking the miscommunication and just having more meetings where you could have just been on the same page from the beginning.
Tip #2 - Agree on terms
For example, for the "Active Student Population".
I ask in meetings if we can call it the "Activated Student Population." This term is more precise because it communicates the students reading off of the Workday configuration plus data conversion. The "Non-Activated Student Population" are the text files that are called Historical Students by Workday.
Tip #3 - Avoid Legacy System terminology
Don't use terms from your legacy system when speaking about Workday. What "Active" means in another SIS can be completely different in Workday Student.
Tip #4 - In terms of the Academic Record Status, don't use the Workday® Student field of Active/Inactive in conversations or reports
This relies on the person in the conversation or running the report to understand that Active will include students that are matriculated/incoming (which you may not want to show in a report if they haven't started classes), in-progress, or on a leave of absence (again, depending on the report, you may not want them).
Inactive will include those that are suspended (who you may want in the report because they will be returning), dismissed, withdrawn from the institution, discontinued, or completed/graduated.
Instead of using Academic Record Status, use Primary Program of Study Status and then default your prompt in a report to the statuses you think people would want to see in the report (e.g. In-Progress, Leave of Absence, Suspended). Using this more technical detail is better for both conversations and long-term in your reports.
Next Steps
As former higher education professionals ourselves, we love working closely with schools to meet their goals. If you have something on your mind or want to brainstorm your institution's specific goals, reach out to request a no-obligation discovery call.
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