Categories and Tags are platform wide identifiers that are used to group students into sub-populations based on specific attributes. All the categories which a student is a member of, or tags which have been added to a student,can be found on the overview tab of the student’s page. Both categories and tags are valuable pieces of data that are used in advanced searching and reporting. A primary difference between the two is that information for categories comes from PeopleSoft on a nightly basis, while tags are manually added and removed by platform users.
Categories
There are over 800 Categories in the Pathways platform, so to help make sense of this information the Pathways team has identified 18 category types and descriptions.
We have also identified Categories that will be relevant for advising and reporting on each campus into Campus Category Essentials Packs (see below). The complete list of Categories and descriptions can be found in this interactive Category Details spreadsheet (Excel download).
- Campus Category Essentials Packs
Choosing the correct Categories is an essential step in creating accurate searches and reports in Pathways. To help get started, we have created Campus Category Essentials Packs for each campus. These are lists of the most commonly used categories in the platform, which will be helpful in identifying populations of students to allow for data informed advising and support.
PIT Campus Category Essentials Pack » (Excel download)
UPB Campus Category Essentials Pack » (Excel download)
UPG Campus Category Essentials Pack » (Excel download)
UPJ Campus Category Essentials Pack » (Excel download)
Tags
Tags are short text labels that Pathways users can apply to students to create ad-hoc groups of students based on information not available in PeopleSoft.
There are two types of tags in Pathways: platform-wide tags that all users can apply to their students, and school-specific tags that should only be used by the staff, faculty or administrators in the specific school denoted by the school prefix.
Tags should only be removed by the person who added the tag, or by an administrator or department leadership responsible for managing it.
The Tag Definition and Management Guide (Excel download) includes the list of tags available to use in Pathways, along with the description and guidance for how each tag should be added, removed and managed. Individual staff should seek guidance from their school or department leadership regarding the usage of tags for their students.