Common Errors in Degree Planner and How to Fix them

Degree Planner will only allow you to move a course into a quarter it is predicted to be available. Any attempt to move a course into a quarter it is not available in will result in a warning and the course bouncing back to its original quarter. 

Degree Planner will allow you to change the order of courses that have prerequisites, but it will give a warning about the course if that change causes the course to violate its prerequisites. Placing the courses back in correct order will resolve the flagged error. 

Once you have made and customized your plan, there will often be courses that you chose that had sections and availability that was merely predicted. Once section data is available, Degree Planner will update your plan and for any course where there was no section data, Degree Planner will now prompt you to choose a section with a warning. Choosing any section available will clear this warning.  

One of the most common actions you will do in Degree Planner will also trigger the Unmet Requirements error: Removing a course. There are a lot of reasons to remove a course: to fix mistakes, or make different elective selections, or just because. Degree Planner is checking each time something changes in the plan to make sure the plan is aligned with all the requirements. This is why it can move slowly at times when shifting courses around or making rapid-fire elective choices, because it must check and reload each time it happens. But this is a good thing. Degree Planner is making sure that a removed course will be accounted for if it is needed in the plan. If you remove a course and it does not trigger the Unmet Requirements error, then that course was not needed by the plan. Here are some ways to resolve the Unmet Requirements error when removing a course from your plan.

Residency requirements will usually not trigger the unmet requirements error, because it is simply checking that the number of specific credits taken or planned at Shoreline are at 25 credits, for most plans. However, for some plans with primarily elective options, this can inadvertently trigger the unmet requirements error since too many of those planned credits are non-specific. Selecting courses from elective lists will automatically remove the error once you reach 25 credits planned at Shoreline.

Typically, when the unmet requirements error populates, it lists more than 1 unmet requirement. That is because not only is one course or elective missing, but that missing course also drops the total credit value of the plan below the minimum number required for the credential. Hence two errors (or more). By resolving the primary course or elective, the second minimum credit requirement error will automatically fix itself. In most cases, there should be no need to use or place a minimum credit elective placeholder - the credits needed for the degree should cover the minimum needed, except for rare instances usually involving transfer credits.

Degree Planner will only place courses into your plan if you can clear the prerequisites needed to take them. This usually means that you have either gotten placement at an appropriate level or have taken courses that can grant you entry into the required courses in the degree. Some prerequisite courses can also be found as optional parts of degree plans, to ensure those with placement below the required level have an on-ramp to the requirements.

Usually, placement is determined as part of your orientation and on-board as a student. However, if you do not have placement into the required courses in a plan, Degree Planner will not automatically build them into your plan and will instead raise the unmet requirements error. 

You can explore and discover the prerequisite issues by clicking the view unmet requirements and clicking the + Add Course link on any requirement that failed to populate in your plan.

You will see a prerequisite warning when attempting to place that course into your plan. Note that grade prerequisites are also enforced, so completion of a course may be insufficient to work as a prerequisite for following courses.

In some degree plans a missing placement or prerequisite courses can cause all dependent courses in a sequence like MATH or CHEM to fail to populate in a plan, racking up a large number of unmet requirement errors.

Degree Planner will still attempt to make plans and will often populate elective placeholders that have prerequisite warnings on every course.

In addition, to make sure plans meet the minimum credit requirements needed, Degree Planner will also populate several minimum credit requirement placeholders into these plans to make up the difference of required courses not populating.

Such plans are not particularly useful. Until placement is granted or appropriate credits are applied in the plan, it is recommended to not build plans impacted strongly by placement. Check the degree details and information before building a plan. You should also work with your advisor to refine plans where placement is pending or at a lower level than recommended.

Program progress in Degree Planner is represented by two values. 

The Progress bar:

Program Progress:

Although rare, these values may sometimes differ or add up to values that are incorrect to your actual credit counts. These are numbers that are calculated by Degree Planner and may sometimes be inaccurate. More important than specific numbers of completed credits are the outstanding requirements as found on the Requirements tab. That, coupled with the credit values in the Courses tab represent the true number of credits outstanding and needed by the degree. While the number represented may be inaccurate, the plan itself is not.

When reviewing the Requirements tab you may encounter some of your requirements were satisfied by something other than completed required courses. Degree Planner calls these "Met by an alternative" credits.

These could represent placements or test scores that function as a course waiver, actual course waivers or alternative courses that can count as replacements. Effectively this is telling you that you do not have to worry about this specific requirement, it has been met alternatively.

Another way in which requirements can be exempted from your plan is in the advisor feature called "Marked as met."

If you encounter a course in your plan that has that label, an advisor has marked that credit as met for the purpose of this degree plan, and you do not have to worry about that requirement. 

Every time a requirement has been marked as met, it also creates a note from the advisor describing why it was marked and creates a new snapshot of your plan in the Plan History section of Degree Planner.

Degree Planner comes equipped with a feature to make transparent the process that went into making the plan. This is called "Why did this build here?" and is found whenever you first build out a plan in Degree Planner.

Clicking the link will open a side panel about the logic Degree Planner used when making the plan, using the priority list you can find in the Requirements tab sort view.

As long as the plan remains untouched, "Why did this build here?" will remain active so you can review the logic. This is especially useful when investigating unmet requirement and prerequisite errors because it will also detail what it attempted and failed to do and why.

However, this feature is only available to plans that nothing has been modified in. Once you customize the plan, even slightly, Degree Planner will replace the link with "Rebuilt plan to see explanations."

Rebuilding plans, while doable, is not often recommended, as it will remove all customization you have done to craft your plan and rebuild it from scratch. Why did this build here is useful for troubleshooting plans when they are first built and to glimpse the logic that went into the plan, but you can ignore messages asking you to rebuild plans. 

Only advisors or Starfish administrators are able to delete plans in Degree Planner. If you have plans built that you would like to have deleted for any reason, please contact your advisor or Starfish Support.