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.

This project will conduct an environmental scan on the processes and criteria used by BCTS members to determine whether to grant transfer credit to courses or programs from external institutions.

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.

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.

Data & Decision-Making

This study aims at creating a repository of institutional surveys in order to summarize key findings, and to provide a resource for institutions designing surveys in the future.

This project explores how the affordability of post-secondary education is assessed and defined in different sectors and institutions.

This project is aimed at exploring PSIS and other Statistics Canada datasets to assess their usefulness in tracking inter-provincial mobility of BC students.

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.

BCCAT is currently engaged in stakeholder consultation with regards to a modernization effort for the Transfer Credit System (TCS). The goal is to gather requirements to develop the TCS to support the articulation processes for BC Transfer System members.