Introduction

The Advisor software is an academic course-tracking program that allows you to chart your progress through the Kinesiology major. Students in the Exercise and Movement Science degree program can use Advisor to keep track of the courses that remain to be completed in their major programs. As your work in the major proceeds, you can Email Advisor program data files to your faculty advisor to keep him/her up to date on your progress. Most important, Advisor will check the courses that you propose to take in the upcoming semester, and alert you to any prerequisite conflicts that may exist.

The following sections of this guide will discuss the features of the Advisor software and show you how to install and make use of the software. The next section covers the software installation process.

Software Installation

The Advisor software places very modest demands on your Windows XP personal computer. The software setup file (AdvisorSetup.exe) is 6.1 MB in size. To download the advisor setup file, click the link below:

Download the Advisor Software

Working with Advisor

Run Advisor by clicking the Start button and selecting the Programs, Advisor, Advisor option.

Getting Started

When you first run Advisor, a screen showing a list of all required courses in a given emphasis area will be shown next. The following figure shows a portion of this list with data entered for student "Joe Studyhard":

The full Advisor screen involves three basic areas: the main course list grid (on the left), the Proposed course grid (at the upper right) and the Help window (on the lower right):

The first time you run the Advisor software, information on the courses that you have already taken will be blank.  The main grid (at left) shows the courses and prerequisites in your emphasis area. The Proposed Course Work grid (at the upper right) is used to show the courses that you identify as “proposed” for next semester in the main grid section. The help information area will show general help for data entry, specific help topic information (when selected from the Help pull down menu) and notes on your proposed course conflicts or other reminders.

 Advisor Views

Advisor can show your course information in four different viewing modes. The above figures show the data for a  student who is near to the beginning of his work in the HMS concentration. The default view of the main grid shows all courses for this area. The letter “T” is shown in the first column to indicate the courses that have already been taken. A “P” in the first column identifies courses that are Proposed to be taken next semester. Those courses that will be taken after next semester are left blank in column one.

The above figure shows the pop up menu for the Human Physiology course. Click the mouse on either the “T”, “P” or blank options to set the status of the course. 

The option buttons above the main grid indicate that four viewing options are available for the Advisor data file. The default option (“All”) shows all courses. The “Remaining” option shows all remaining courses and the proposed courses (the “taken” courses are removed from the list):

The “Priority” listing shows the remaining courses, with the most important (in terms of prerequisite and even distribution) are shown earliest in the list:

Finally, the courses that have already been taken, organized by term taken, are shown when the “By Term” option is selected:

 Entering Advisor Data

The first time you run Advisor, you should enter the information for the courses that you have already taken. For example, if you have already taken Elementary Statistics, Math 124, you should right click in the first column and select the “T” (taken) option. You should also right click on the Term column cell and select the appropriate term (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) from the pop up list. The Year and Grade information should be entered for each “Taken” course by right clicking on the cell and typing the information. If you are currently taking a course, you should mark the course as taken and leave the grade information blank until it becomes available.

Special “Notes” should be entered in the last column. If you took an equivalent course to Math 124 at a community college, you should enter the community college name (abbreviated), course prefix and number in the Note column. Similarly, if you have taken another SFSU course that is “equivalent” to a course specified in the main grid, check the specified course as Taken and enter a note in the Note column.

Once you have entered all “Taken” courses, you should enter the courses you “Propose” to take next semester by marking their first column with the “P” option. When you have listed your complement of proposed courses, click the Save button (on the upper right side of the program window) to save your data and run a check on your proposed course prerequisites. The following figure shows that “Joe Studyhard” has made an error in his Fall 2000 program:

The Biomechanics course is proposed to be taken in Fall 2000 but its “P” indication in the left column has been changes to a red “PX” to indicate that a prerequisite problem exists. As noted in the Help area, Biomechanics cannot be taken until after Computer Applications and Anatomical Kinesiology have been taken (this proposed course is illegal on two counts).

 If Joe Studyhard were to register for Biomechanics in the Fall 2000 semester, the registrar’s office would (assuming a seat were available) allow him into the class. However, on the first day of the class, Joe would be told by his course professor that he must withdraw from the course because of the missing prerequisites. Joe’s honest mistake in the planning of his course schedule would most likely cause him a lot of trouble, because it would be very difficult for him to find a seat in one of the prerequisite courses during the first week of classes. Such a mistake could delay Joe’s graduation by at least one semester.

As a result, we see that running the Advisor software to set your proposed courses for next semester can be a very valuable exercise. If you know the courses that are most important (in terms of prerequisites) ahead of time, you can make these courses your top priority when you begin the registration process. You will find that scheduling the most pressing courses first and then “filling in” your schedule with other (less pressing) courses will allow you to graduate in the shortest time period possible.

Communicating with your Faculty Advisor

The Advisor software data files are very small (less than 1 kilobyte) and they can be easily Emailed as attachments to your faculty advisor.

All Kinesiology faculty advisors already have the Advisor software on their office PCs, and they will be able to inspect your proposed course data very easily and Email you back with approval or suggestions for improving your program. The delivery of your course information by Email should be very convenient for both yourself and your faculty advisor, especially if you have a job or other commitments during your advisor’s office hours.

You are, of course, encouraged to see your advisor in person for discussion of any issue that concerns you either within the Kinesiology major or from any other perspective. You should nevertheless, send your proposed course file to your advisor so that we can keep information on all of our majors in a compact and easily accessible format. We hope to use the Advisor data files to make better-informed decisions about the courses and number of sections to be offered in upcoming semesters.

In addition, we would like to use your Advisor file data to allow all faculty members (not just your advisor) to know you a little better. The Advisor software allows you to Email a small photo of yourself to your faculty advisor. A display of the File Open command display on a faculty PC is shown below:

To EMail your Advisor data file to your Faculty advisor, you must send it as an attachment in your EMail. Your data file will be stored in the "C:\Program Files\Advisor\" folder on your PC. The base file name for your Advisor data will be your name. The extension name will be "hms", "exs" or "pet" depending upon your area of concentration.

To EMail your photo file to your faculty advisor, create a 120x160 pixel "headshot" photo file of yourself and save the file in JPG format. Be sure to use exactly the same base file name for this photo file as you have used for your Advisor data file (i.e., if your data file name is "John Q Student.hms" your photo file must be named "John Q Student.jpg"). Send this file as an EMail attachment to your faculty advisor along with your data file.

For details on working with photo files, please consult the  Kin 325 - Computer Applications in Kinesiology textbook.

Conclusions

Our discussion of the Advisor software is now complete. If you have any problem with the installation of maintenance of the software, ask your Kin 325 professor or Lab section lecturer for help. If you have questions on your course program contact your faculty advisor. We are hopeful that the Advisor software will make it easier to plan your course work as you proceed through the major.