Transfer Assurance Guides (TAGs)

What is a TAG?

A central feature of the policy is the Transfer Assurance Guides (TAGs). TAG is an initiative that guarantees the course equivalency and applicability of degree pathways. TAG is also an advising tool for students and advisors to plan out students' degree pathways from two-year to four-year degree programs in specific disciplines.

Within each TAG pathway guarantee, pre-major-/beginning major courses or course sequences called TAG courses that are identified as being a part of the TAG may be offered at any public higher education institution in Ohio.

Submission Process

Approximately one time each year, the associate provost in communication with representatives from the Ohio Department of Higher Education/Ohio Articulation and Transfer Network audit the existing course matches for Transfer Assurance Guides. If a match needs to be revised or added, the following steps are taken:

1. The associate provost contacts the chair or director of the appropriate department or program to inquire about a possible course that might be an appropriate match.
2. Once the course is identified, the chair or director selects a faculty member who has taught and has in-depth knowledge of the course.
3. The associate provost provides the faculty member with the appropriate templates and guidelines for creating the needed materials to create a match (see list below) in the ODHE’s electronic system.

Statewide Review and Approval Process

There are three submission deadlines per academic year--the first at the beginning of October and the second at the beginning of March.

However, Miami typically submits materials to the Ohio Department of Higher Education/Ohio Articulation and Transfer Network for a preliminary review approximately one month prior to the formal submission deadline so that the liaison can quickly skim the materials and offer suggestions, and the faculty proposer has time to make changes before the formal submission occurs.

Faculty proposers are encouraged to submit their materials to the associate provost by one of the following dates:

• September 1
• February 15

Materials Needed to Propose a Match

To propose a match, each faculty member will need to assemble the following:

• Detailed and current syllabus with week-by-week or day-by-day schedule, student learning outcomes, assessments, and grading distributions from summative assessments included as a minimum;
• Course Inventory Template which includes course number and title, term when course was first offered, credit hours (including contact hours for lectures, labs, and others), pre- or co-requisites, catalog description, textbook ISBN, outside readings and materials, instructional goals or objectives, description of assessment or evaluation of learning;
• Learning Outcomes Template which includes a list of the statewide learning outcomes for the course within the Transfer Assurance Guide, a detailed description for students’ learning process (activities/exercises) that clearly articulates how the students in that course will meet each outcome, the assessments used to validate student learning outcomes (formative and/or summative), and a percentage of the course time devoted to each outcome.

The associate provost will provide you with a copy of the two templates which you may complete.