Student Progress Page – Prograds Help and Support

The Student Page is where most of the action is in Prograds. It holds all of the student's history, progress, and current activity.

The Student Information Area (top of page)

At the top of the page you’ll see the Student's supervisors and committee, Stage of the Program, Research Title, On leave status, Year in the Program, and Lab membership.

Access the student’s files and messages in the top right by clicking the Hamburger menu icon in the top right. (Administrators cannot view the Student-Supervisor-Committee Messages page).

Users with administrative privileges (not Faculty) can jump to the Student's profile by clicking the Student Profile button in the top right of the page to add and change student information.

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The Student Page is made up of Items: Working Ons, Milestones, Requirements, Events, Employment, Funding, Courses, Stage Transitions, and Funding Timeline. All items except courses can have file attachments. Those are added at the bottom of each item and the files then also appear in the Student’s overall Student File List available from the top right of the Profile and Student Pages.

Working On

The Working On (WO) area is for the student to indicate what is being worked on, show what has been completed, and plan upcoming activities.

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The Working On area is at the top of the page to signal that Prograds is built mostly to help students make substantive progress in their research program. We hope students and their supervisory committees use it as a way to demonstrate progress and stay up-to-date on the research project.

Only Students can add to a Working On entry. Faculty Supervisor and Committee Members can edit the Working On items to add to the notes/description.

Each Working On item has a

Title and description,

Start date, due date, and completed date,

Indicators for completion and approval (optional)

File attachments.

Click on an existing WO to edit it, mark it complete or approved, and adjust dates.

When the Student Page is loaded, the Working On with a due date closest to the current date is displayed first.

When a student adds or updates a Working On, the supervisor gets an email notification.

Milestones

Milestones are embedded within the Program Stages. Milestones are populated with details and dates (in months relative to each Student’s program entry date) added when the Program is created. The milestones on the student’s Progress Page are populated according to the milestones of their program. When a Milestone is added by a Program administrator, it flows down to all Students in the Program.

Milestones have Ideal Completion dates and Deadline dates.

Students can be exempted from Milestones by administrators.

Milestones' titles are fixed.

Once Milestones are completed, they cannot be edited by the student.

Milestones and Requirements may need approval by administrators and/or supervisors and/or committee members. These approvals are built into Prograds, so when a Milestone is completed a list of approvers is generated, those faculty are notified, and can log in and indicate approval. Approvers and Approvals are indicated on the Milestone when multiple approvers are required for that item.

Click on a Milestone to edit it, mark it complete and approved, and adjust dates.

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Note: If you are joining Prograds midway through your program you may have lots of 'overdue' Milestones and Requirements. This is because their ideal and deadline dates are relative to your program entry date. You'll just need to go in and complete them and then wait for approval from your faculty or program administrators.

Requirements

The difference between Milestones and Requirements is that Requirements are not within Stages and so they are not as obviously chronological. The other difference is that supervisors can add student-specific requirements.

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Example Milestone: Selecting and appointing a dissertation committee. Example Requirement: A second language.

Like Milestones, Requirements are populated by the program. The requirements on the student’s Progress Page are populated according to the milestones of their program. When a Requirement is added by a Program, it populates to all Students in the Program.

The dates for Requirements are in months relative to the Student's program entry date.

Requirements have Ideal Completion dates and Deadline dates.

Click on a Requirement to edit it, mark it complete and approved, and adjust dates.

Once Requirements are completed, they cannot be edited by the student.

Milestones and Requirements may need approval by administrators and/or supervisors and/or committee members. These approvals are built into Prograds, so when a Milestone is completed a list of approvers is generated and those faculty are notified and can log in and indicate approval. Approvers and Approvals are indicated on the Requirement when multiple approvers are required for that item.

Unlike Milestones, individual Requirements can be assigned to a Student. This allows the supervising faculty member or the program administrators to add things that must be completed but are specific to a single student, students in specific fields, or students with different kinds of research or training needs.

Events

Events keep track of things that are not part of the program, but are useful to have recorded for reference by the Student or faculty. Events are basically free-form title and notes, with dates and file attachments. Events can optionally be classified by a fixed list of types of event provided by Prograds. At present those are:

Message (see Messages)

Publication

Award

Conference

Practicum

Internship

Leave of Absence (see also registering Leave dates on the Student Profile Page)

Reference Letter

Meeting

Note (a general category for all other events)

Stage Transition (a special event populated by program administrators)

Commitee Work

Presentation

Training

Volunteering

You can use the Search icon to open a box to search or list by keyword or event type.

Click on an existing Event to edit it.

Employment and Funding

Employment and Funding work similarly. For both, if you select a Funding Source and the "Use Source Defaults" switch, the name and amounts will fill in from the Funding Source's details specified in the Department Profile (see Student Funding and the Funding Table).

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We realize that Employment and Funding overlap a lot. We intend Employment to be used for Research and Teaching Assistantships, while Funding is for all funding not associated with a job.

Note that funding items have a maximum duration of one year. So for multi-year funding, separate annual items will need to be created by clicking ‘Create for additional years’.

Employment and Funding events have the following fields:

Start Date, End Date

Guaranteed Funding Package (yes/no toggle)

Received (yes/no toggle)

Organization (Employment only)

Supervisor (Employment only)

Lab (Employment only)

Notes

Attachments

Courses

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Courses are shown for informational purposes only. The Courses list on this page contains no other student-specific details, and just shows the department courses the student has completed. For example, it is not possible to indicate a student’s grade.

Click on the Plus button beside the Courses title to open the add/edit Courses box. Courses can be reordered manually to display chronologically or by topic.

Administrators can add Courses to students. If the Department permits, students can manually add courses to the department listing and they will be added to their own courses and then available for selection by other students. See Working with Courses.