Projects
With its commitment to facilitate more comprehensive understanding of the ever-changing BC post-secondary environment, BCCAT conducts and coordinates a wide variety of research and technology projects to inform and support institutional planning, procedures, and policies, and to enhance educational opportunities and experiences for BC post-secondary students. The projects listed below comprise the work approved by Council in the BCCAT workplan that are currently underway.
The list of Completed Projects contains information on earlier workplan projects. For published research, search Publications.
Transfer Mechanisms & Innovation
The goals of this project are to identify the resource requirements for participation in the articulation process, and to assess the value of participation in the BC Transfer System.
The goals of this study are to identify and explore systemic barriers to transferring credit in the BC Transfer System, to assess whether they have different effects on the academic progress of transfer students, and to propose actions to address any negative effects.
The project will use a review of literature and of institutional websites, as well as interviews with Indigenous post-secondary organizations to explore how Indigenous approaches to research could inform BCCAT’s approach to research.
The goal of the project is to overview examples of program laddering below baccalaureate degree level beyond traditional pathways, such as associate degree to baccalaureate.
This project is aimed at assessing how BC public post-secondary institutions currently use associate degrees, and how they perceive the programs’ advantages and disadvantages.
The proposed research project will review the transfer credit appeals processes at BCTS member institutions, and make recommendations to assist institutions in ensuring that these processes are equitable, fair, and accessible.
Anecdotal information indicates an increasing number of student-initiated transfer credit requests for “retrospective” transfer credit, after the student has been admitted to a post-secondary institution. This project will review BCTS member institutions’ policies and practices around “retrospective” transfer credit requests, and to provide recommendations for managing these requests.
BCCAT in partnership with the BC Credit Bank and the Ministry of Post- Secondary Education and Future Skills is planning to examine how AI might be used to evaluate non-credit micro-credentials for academic credit to assist with articulation and enhance learner pathways.
Student Performance & Mobility
The project aims at reviewing the efficacy and applicability of different admissions models and exploring the perspectives of admissions professionals on the models they use.
The project aims at reviewing the history of developing three-year degrees as well as the policies and practices of administering such degrees internationally and in Canada.
The Student Transitions Project links student data from the B.C. Ministry of Education with public post-secondary student data. The data allows investigation of student transitions, mobility, and outcomes from the Kindergarten-Grade 12 (K-12) education system to the public post-secondary system, while protecting individual privacy. The Student Transitions Project is governed by a steering committee with representation from British Columbia’s public universities, colleges and institutes; the Ministries of Education and Advanced Education, and BCCAT. Find out more about the Student Transitions Project.
This pilot project is aimed at assessing quantitative institutional data on transfer student and transfer credit volume from several Alberta and BC institutions to several BC and Alberta institutions respectively.
The Survey of Movers (2012) and the Survey of Mobile Students (2019) collected responses from students who had moved between BC public PSIs. This iteration of the survey aims at uncovering insights on students’ motivations for and experiences of transfer in the post-pandemic setting.
Data & Decision-Making
While transfer is designed to remove many of the barriers faced by first-generation learners, it is not yet well-understood how effectively this segment of the student population is able to access and leverage transfer: this project is meant to address this informational gap.
Stopout students temporarily leave their post-secondary studies and return to re-enter the institution that they started at or move to a different institution. This project investigates the efficacy of transfer in supporting such learners to prevent dropouts.
The goal of the project is to review the perceived value of post-secondary education by multiple stakeholders and analyse what the implications of these perceptions are for post-secondary admissions, progression, retention, and transfer.