Degree Audit (DARS) Software Upgrade—The DARS Team at the system office, in collaboration with ITS, is currently undertaking a long, complex process of planning for, testing and implementing a software upgrade from DARS to u.achieve®. It is important to note that u.achieve® is simply a software upgrade for our existing software. There is increased functionality and improvement available by using u.achieve® instead of DARwin, but for all practical purposes, campus DARS encoders will see only minor cosmetic differences in the work that they do. The various DARS software screens currently in use by campus staff remain unchanged in u.achieve®.
For further clarification, we currently license two completely different, but interconnected, software products from CollegeSource, Inc. This company was formerly called Miami University DARS and then redLantern, LLC. The two software products are:
- u.select® (formerly known as Course Applicability System) is an online transfer shopping tool for transfer students and advisors. u.select® provides students with an easy way to determine course equivalencies, program requirements, and applicability of coursework between the schools of their choice and is licensed and administered jointly with the University of Minnesota It has been fully operational since 2004. For more information, the u.select® website URL is www.transfer.org or go to: http://redlanternu.com/uselect/index.html
- DARS (Degree Audit Reporting System) provides up-to-date, real-time degree progress information for students, advisors and graduation evaluators. We are currently using a version of the software that is called DARwin. This software, originally licensed by MnSCU in 1999, has undergone a significant upgrade by the vendor. This new, Java-based software has been re-labeled u.achieve® by CollegeSource. More information about u.achieve may be found at: http://redlanternu.com/uachieve/index.html
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