Ep. 176: Voices of Student Success: How AI Can Smooth Transfer Processes

This series of Voices of Student Success focuses on the use of generative artificial intelligence in higher education and how technology can support student success goals.  

Upward transfer is viewed as a mechanism to provide college students with an accessible and affordable onramp to higher education through two-year colleges, but breakdowns in the credit transfer process can hinder progress toward a student’s degree.  

A recent survey by Sova and the Beyond Transfer Policy Advisory Board found the average college student loses credits transferring between institutions and has to repeat courses they’ve already completed. Some students stop out of higher education altogether because transfer is too challenging. 

CourseWise is a new tool that seeks to mitigate some of these challenges by deploying AI to identify and predict transfer equivalencies using existing articulation agreements between institutions. So far, the tool has been adopted at over 120 colleges and universities, helping to provide a centralized database for credit transfer processes and automate course matching.  

In the most recent episode of Voices of Student Success, Joshua Pardos, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses how CourseWise works, the human elements of credit transfer and the need for reliable data in transfer.  

Hosted by Inside Higher Ed Student Success reporter Ashley Mowreader, this episode is sponsored by Strada Education Foundation.  

Read a transcript of the podcast here.