What is the Faculty Credentials module?
In order to teach a specific course at a certain level, a person must meet a set of established requirements. These requirements may be designated academic qualifications, or there may be alternative experience or knowledge that justifies qualification to teach.
The various accrediting bodies provide guidelines for minimum credentialing requirements. In addition, institutions often develop their own criteria. It is up to the individual institution to decide how it will meet the accreditation standards for faculty credentials and to determine in what manner this information will be recorded and kept up to date.
The AMS Faculty Credentials module tracks the information that your organization uses to substantiate faculty qualifications for accreditation.
System Administrator
The first step to managing your institution’s Faculty Credentials module is to log in to your System Administrator account. If you see this link on the left side of your homepage...
...you have access to the System Administrator!
*This link is usually housed in the institutional manager account homepage. If you do NOT see this “System administrator” link on the left side of your homepage, contact your institution’s AMS Administrator for assistance setting up and managing Faculty Credentials
From your System Administrator home page, click Faculty Credentials from your General Application Settings area.
You will then be taken to the Manage Faculty Credentials page, where you will see various options to manage your institution’s Faculty Credentials module.
Make Faculty Credentials Active/Inactive
Changing the Faculty Credentials status to Inactive will disable your colleagues from entering content in their Faculty Credentials profile and will cause the following message to appear when they click the Faculty Credentials tab from their homepage:
*Please note that if any of your colleagues have started entering content into a profile, they will not be able to retrieve that content once this module is Inactive. However, that content is not deleted and will be available again if you change that status back to Active. For this reason, we strongly recommend that, if you want to disable Faculty Credentials at your institution, you do so before anyone starts any work in it.
Customize Directions
You can create instructions tailored to the needs of your institution for your colleagues to follow when they work on their profiles. To start, click Edit Directions.
You will be taken to a page with a text input area where you can enter your custom instructions, including an html toolbar for formatting your text. When you are finished, click Apply Changes.
As this is an optional process, if you choose not to custom these directions or if you leave this text area blank, the following message will appear to your colleagues when they select their Faculty Credentials tab:
Course Setup
Viewing your Total Course Listing
When your colleagues create their Faculty Credentials profiles, they are able to select courses they have taught from your institution’s total course listing. You can view the courses that your colleagues can select from by clicking View Courses.
This will take you to a page that looks like this:
Setting up your Total Course Listing
If you have not yet documented your institution’s total course listing in AMS, the first step is creating a CSV (comma separated value) spreadsheet using the following four column format, identifying the CourseSubject, CourseNumberID, CourseTitle, and Department for all of the courses offered by your institution. You can email Support at help@watermarkinsights.com to request this template.
Once you have filled out this template with all of the information for all of your courses, email help@watermarkinsights.com with the completed version, and within two business days, your total course listing will be imported into your system.
Editing your Total Course Listing
After your initial total course listing has been entered in the system, you are still able to make changes to it, like adding new departments and course or renaming existing ones. First, return to your System Administrator home page, and click Institution Structure from the Integration category at the bottom of the page.
On the following page, locate your Total Course Listing branch and click define nodes to the right of it.
On the following page, you can add a new department. First, click Add a Department next to the Branch title, Total Course Listing...
...then, fill in the Name of node field. It is best practice to follow the naming convention of “Name of Department” plus “Courses” (e.g. Biology Courses, Spanish Courses, etc.) to best organize your total course listing. You can ignore the rest of the fields, and click Submit once you have entered this name.
You can also add a new course. First, click Add a Course to the right of the department in which it belongs...
...then fill out the Course Subject, Course ID, and Course Title fields for that course and click Submit when finished.
You can rename a department or course by clicking Edit to the right of the node you want to change...
...then updating the appropriate fields and clicking Submit when finished.
Managing your Terms
View/Add Terms
When your colleagues document the courses they have taught in their profiles, they will be able to identify when they taught those courses based on terms you define from your System Administrator access. You can view the terms that have already been set up, by clicking Manage Terms. Please note that you must enter at least one term before your colleagues can document courses taught.
You will then see a list of all the terms you have entered (if any):
Enter the Term Name, Start Date, and End Date for your term, then click Apply Changes.
Now your colleagues will be able to select this term as an option for when they taught their courses. If you need to change the name or dates of a term, click Edit to the right of its name.
Manage Permissions
Viewing Permissions
All user accounts at your institution have access to the Faculty Credentials module to create profiles, and you can grant select users additional administrative access. To view which users have these higher level permissions, click Manage Permissions.
On the following page, you will see a list of all individuals who have been designated as AMS Coordinators at your institution, with varying levels of administrative permission.
The five permissions on the far-right are specifically for Faculty Credentials:
Faculty Credentials Permissions
Faculty Credentials: Activity Report
Users with this permission can run reports to monitor activity entered into users’ Faculty Credentials profiles.
Credentials Report
Users with this permission can see statistics on how many faculty CV’s, degrees, and courses taught has been confirmed using the Faculty Credentials module.
Review Credentials
Users with this permission can indicate that user CV’s, degrees, and courses taught have been reviewed and are ready for approval.
Approve Credentials
Users with this permission can approve the CV’s, degrees, and courses taught that have been reviewed. This permission includes all of the permissions from Review Credentials.
Enter Information on Faculty’s Behalf
Users with this permission can enter information in the profiles of other users.
Add New AMS Coordinators with Faculty Credentials Permissions
Either enter an individual’s name in the Search by Name text area, then click Search, OR click on the first letter of that individual’s last name in the Browse by Last Name area.
Click Select User to the right of their name in the Search Results area.
Check the boxes next to the Faculty Credentials permissions you like that user to have
Then, check the boxes next to the participating areas of your organizational hierarchy that this user should have administrative domain over. An AMS Coordinator’s permissions only apply to other users who are affiliated with one or more Participating Areas in the coordinator’s administrative domain.