Ellucian Degree Works is our online degree planning and audit system. Students and their advisors may use it for individual degree audits, “what if?” scenarios, planning, sharing notes, and processing exceptions. Below you will find instructions for many of those features. Click on an item to expand its content.
Not finding the answer to a question here? Let us know. If you have questions about degree, major, or minor requirements or academic policies, please check the OWU Course Catalog, and/or contact the Registrar’s Office.
Sign in with your OWU username and password. Only students with active academic records and their advisors, plus department/program chairs and academic secretaries, will have access to the system.
In addition to traditional letter grades, you might also find other codes in your Worksheet or Class History report. These represent other grades or types of credit:
- CR (credit by examination, credit but no grade is computed in semester or cumulative average)
- I (incomplete)
- IP (In Progress)
- NR (no grade reported)
- PR (progress)
- S (satisfactory, credit but no grade is computed in semester or cumulative average)
- T (transfer credit, credit but no grade is computed in semester or cumulative average)
- U (unsatisfactory)
- W (withdrawn)
- WF (withdrawn with failing work)
- WP (withdrawn with passing work)
- WVR (waiver, no credit and no grade is computed in semester or cumulative average)
The ‘at’ sign (“@”) is simply a wildcard, or placeholder. When you see it after a major code, such as “ASTR @” or “ZOOL @”, it means than any course in Astronomy or Zoology will meet the requirement. When you see two of them back to back, like “@ @”, it means that any course in any major or program will meet that requirement–usually these are followed by some qualifier, like “with attribute WRI” or “with attribute QUAN”. In other words, any course in any department, as long as it offers Writing Credit or Quantitative Credit, will meet that requirement.
Data in the degree audit system is synchronized nightly with official Registrar’s records.
The system is programmed with “best fit” logic. For example, it will assign credit towards more stringent requirements before more general requirements, to get them out of the way first. It also prioritizes in-progress courses before completed courses, if the in-progress course will provide greater benefit to the student in completing requirements. Here are a few examples:
- If you’re currently re-taking a course to get a better grade than the first time you took it, the system will use the in-progress course, rather than the previously completed course.
- If one course is in progress meeting a General Education requirement, it will apply that toward the requirement, even if you end up taking two in a different area to actually meet the same requirement.
- It will insert higher level, in-progress courses in place of completed, lower level courses meeting the same requirement.
Plans allow administrators to create specific course of study plans for specific majors or minors, such as paths to various teaching certificates.
Visit transfer.owu.edu to see how classes taken at another school will transfer in at OWU.
- Note: new majors won’t be in the current year catalog.
- You will get “Error 0778: Authentication is invalid. Please contact the school’s help desk for assistance.” if you have a valid OWU account but do not have a Degree Works user account. Many administrative staff fall into this category. If you feel you should have a Degree Works user account, please contact the Help Desk.
- If you get an “IRISLink CGI Error: The request did not include appropriate headers.” quit or close down your web browser, and relaunch it, then try again. You can also try a different browser.
Note: new majors won’t be in the current year catalog. If you’re seeing a message that Major and Minor audits for your catalog year (or Academic Year, in the Worksheet) are not available, it means a degree audit has not been programmed for your major or minor’s catalog year.
Students will see their worksheet as soon as they log in. Advisors must first select a student. Student information is displayed at the top of the page, including the date the last audit was processed in the black bar. This is the date that a manual audit was processed. Advisors may process audits for students with options to include in-progress and/or preregistered courses. (Both are included by default.) Degree audits include requirements for and progress toward:
- Specific Degrees, such as Bachelor of Art and Bachelor of Fine Art
- Specific Majors and Minors, such as Accounting and Zoology
- General Education, such as Group I – Social Sciences and Group III – Humanities/Literature
- Whole-Unit Courses, or 1.25-unit courses
- Upper-Level Courses, 250 and above
- Additional Courses, such as electives
- Additional Requirements (i.e. Competency in Writing and Quantitative Reasoning)
Note: If you have no advisees, you will see a message, “No students found” after logging in.
Students will see their worksheet as soon as they log in. Advisors must first select a student. Student information is displayed at the top of the page, including the date the last audit was processed in the black bar. This is the date that a manual audit was processed. Advisors may process audits for students with options to include in-progress and/or preregistered courses. (Both are included by default.) Degree audits include requirements for and progress toward:
- Specific Degrees, such as Bachelor of Art and Bachelor of Fine Art
- Specific Majors and Minors, such as Accounting and Zoology
- General Education, such as Group I – Social Sciences and Group III – Humanities/Literature
- Whole-Unit Courses, or 1.25-unit courses
- Upper-Level Courses, 250 and above
- Additional Courses, such as electives
- Additional Requirements (i.e. Competency in Writing and Quantitative Reasoning)
Notes are used to notify students or advisors of additional details of an advisor meeting or class. Notes can either be seen by the public or made to be seen by advisors only by selecting the Internal tab. All notes are stamped with the date and the last person to add or modify a note. Notes can be added, modified, viewed or deleted on the Notes tab.
Petitions, found on the ‘Request Exception’ tab, allow advisors to submit requests to the Registrar’s office for substitutions, waivers, and changes to the degree audit only, such as adding a writing or Q option. Please be sure to include all necessary information, including the course(s) it pertains to, the semester(s) and year(s), and the specific action being requested, along with a detailed explanation. For requests that require special permission, use the Petition for Special Permission form instead.
- Select advisee from drop down list
- Click on the Request Exception tab
- Select Add Petition from the menu on the left side of the screen (this does not send a petition to the Academic Status Committee)
- Enter your request in the text box and hit the Submit Petition button.
- An example of an exception would be the substitution of a temporary or transfer course for a major requirement
- To prevent delays in processing, please be explicit and include course codes and the specific name of the requirement. The more detail the better.
- Students can see your comments and track the status
- Requests made by an academic advisor must be approved by the chair or program director prior to processing.
- This is not an automated process. Turnaround time depends upon the chair/program director’s response rate and the office of the registrar’s workload.
NOTE: Please use this process instead of sending an email to the registrar’s office.
More information on the product: Ellucian Degree Works