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RouteFinder

1. What is articulation?

Articulation is the shorthand term for arrangements whereby universities give HNC/D students full

academic credit for their HN awards and permit direct entry into years 2 or 3 of a degree programme.

An articulation route is a single instance of articulation from a named HNC/D award to a named

undergraduate degree programme.

2. What is RouteFinder?

RouteFinder identifies routes from HNC/D to degree study for which:

1. A named HNC award may provide direct access to year 2 (or equivalent part-time point of

entry) of the degree programme.

2. A named HND award may provide direct access to year 3 (or equivalent part-time point of

entry) of the degree programme.

3. Both the delivery college and receiving university recognise the route.

4. The receiving university has confirmed the route with ELRAH.

5. The college and university are both ELRAH partner institutions.

RouteFinder provides a single point of current information on HN-degree articulation routes within

the ELRAH partnership of colleges and universities in south-east and east-central Scotland.

Current ELRAH partners are:

Colleges Universities

Adam Smith College Carnegie College Edinburgh’s Telford College Forth Valley College Jewel & Esk College Oatridge College Scottish Borders College Stevenson College Edinburgh West Lothian College

Edinburgh Napier University Heriot-Watt University Open University in Scotland Queen Margaret University University of Edinburgh University of Stirling

Undergraduate study: general entry considerations

Other Scottish colleges have their own formal and informal articulation arrangements with ELRAH

partner universities while ELRAH partner colleges also have their own articulation arrangements

with universities outside the ELRAH partnership. For information on these routes you should contact

the individual colleges and universities direct.

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Note that possession of an HNC or HND award from a named college which is recognised by a named

university for direct entry into years 2 and 3 does not guarantee entry for all students who gain the

award at the college. Competition for limited places, individual student performance and

achievement on the HN course, academic references from the college, quality of application

submitted, individual performance at degree course application interview are all factors which may

result in qualified students not receiving credit for entry to a later year or even being accepted into

the first year of the degree.

Similarly, if you hold an HNC or HND award not recorded in this database you may still be eligible for

entry to a related degree programme. Simply contact the university direct to find out whether your

award may be recognised for entry and, if so, to which year of the degree programme you may be

accepted.

3. HN to degree search options

Click Find a course to display the main search options for routes by which students may progress

directly from a Higher National Certificate or Higher National Diploma to years 2 or 3 of university

undergraduate degree courses.

You have 4 main search options:

Start by clicking the button next to your preferred search option. This displays boxes in which you

can enter appropriate search terms.

You can use any combination of the search options presented to display articulation routes which

match to your own needs. All search options in this view are selected from dropdown lists.

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Once selected, a dropdown entry automatically filters all other available dropdowns to display only

those which meet the selection(s) already made.

Example 1

Here, Edinburgh’s Telford College and HND have already been selected and the course title

dropdown options displayed are now limited to Telford’s HND courses with recognised articulation

to ELRAH partner universities.

Changing your selection

If you select an option and wish to change this before submitting the search click the Reset button to

clear the selected search options.

Running your search

Having made your search selections click Submit Search to retrieve the articulation routes.

The articulation routes associated to your selected search options are now displayed.

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Example 2

In this instance there are 2 confirmed routes from HND Accounting at Edinburgh’s Telford College to

ELRAH partner universities . A tick displayed against each year of entry means that HND Accounting

students may be able to enter the named degree programmes in 1st, 2nd or 3rd year of study,

depending on their performance at HN study and other entry considerations (see entry

requirements in the full information for BA (Hons) Financial Services Management below).

Full information

To display further information about an individual route click the + button to the left of the row.

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To hide the detailed information click the Close Details button below the degree and HN course

Subjects information.

Search path breadcrumb trail

Note the Results for breadcrumb trail above the search results which shows your selected search

terms.

Should you wish to display all articulation routes associated with a single search option (eg HND)

then click the option within the breadcrumb trail.

Example 3

This screen shows the results for HND when selected from the multiple options used in the

breadcrumb search path shown above. Note that as this includes all subjects, colleges and

universities a long list of routes is returned. The total number of routes retrieved and total number

of pages is displayed at the bottom right of the page. Use the Page size: options to display a larger

or smaller number of routes per page.

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Use the page navigation buttons at the bottom left of the page to go to the first or last pages or

select individually numbered pages.

Narrowing your search results

The search illustrated above returned only 212 articulation routes relevant to the broad HND search

option selected. You can now filter this list further by using the column filters at the top of the list.

Assume you now want to check only the HND courses offered by Stevenson College Edinburgh. To

do this, key in as much of the college name as required to filter down the list in the College column

filter and key Return or Enter on the keyboard..

Only results for Stevenson College Edinburgh are now displayed, with the original 212 routes filtered

down to 31 items in 4 pages which you can select to be displayed within a single larger page if

required:

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Sorting your search results

You can sort your list of routes by Degree Course, University, Degree Level, HN Course, College and

HN Level. Simply click the column header once to sort the list in ascending A-Z order and twice to

sort in descending Z-A order. The upward or downward pointer which appears to the right of the

column header indicates the current sort order applied to the list of routes.

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You now know how to use all standard search and display functions for RouteFinder. Click the

Back to main search options link at the top left hand of the list to end a current search and return to

the original search options.

4. Other main search options

The other main search options enable you to:

Search for articulation routes by university degree course

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Search for articulation routes by subject

Here you can retrieve routes by subject category. All HN and degree courses are categorised to a

common subject classification for ease and consistency of retrieval. Within the Subject Group

options you can opt to filter your results by either HEI or HN course subject alone if you are primarily

interested in one or other course subject grouping. This will reduce the list of subjects displayed in

the Subject dropdown to the subjects covered by the selected course level.

Use of the subject dropdown guarantees that at least one route exists for every listed subject. You

may also type terms which may appear in course titles in the free text Course Keyword box; please

note, however, that the term selected may not retrieve any routes. Should this happen, use the

subject dropdown to check if relevant courses with synonyms or alternative spellings exist.

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Devise your own search

This selection opens a screen which brings together all search options in a single display and offers

combinations of search terms not otherwise available in the other search screens individually.

You can, of course, search from here using the same combinations of entries available in each of the

other main searches when required. As with the other 3 main searches, when you make a selection

in one or more of the dropdown lists the options in the other boxes are filtered and reduced

accordingly.

Donald Steele

Lead Specialist: Data Collection & Reporting

ELRAH

2 November 2010