Find Potential Equivalent Courses By Title Keywords: EQ Search

This article provides instructions for using the Equivalency Search—or EQ Search—functionality within the Course Finder in TES®.

In this article

What is EQ Search? 

EQ Search is a tool within the Course Finder where users can compare the keywords from a sending institution's course title to the receiving institution's titles and descriptions. The ACCESS EQ user right is required to use this feature.

Once a potential equivalent course (or courses) is identified, users can review the course details and choose between creating an equivalency or initiating an evaluation task.

This functionality is beneficial to use when:

    • Users are still becoming familiar with the institution's curriculum.
    • Courses at the receiving institution have undergone recent changes.
    • The course subject is one that is not often reviewed for transfer.

To begin:

  1. Go to the Search menu.
  2. Select Course Finder.
  3. Within the INSTITUTION SEARCH, enter the name of the institution.
    • The U.S. Schools radio button is selected by default.
      • To search for institutions outside of the United States, toggle either the Non U.S. Schools or All radio button.
The callout highlights the institution name entered into the search box.
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  1. Select the Search button.
  2. Select the arrow to the left of the institution's name ("Select an institution").
The callout highlights the Select an institution button.
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  1. Under DATA SET, select the data set containing the course that needs review.
    • Choose the Select button to the right of the data set name.
The callouts highlight the location of the data set drop-down and the Select button.
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Another option is to use the Course Code or Course Title radio buttons to search across all data sets.

  1. Select the checkbox to the left of the course or course(s)
    1. Search by Course Code, Course Title, or use the SELECT DEPARTMENT drop-down to see all courses within a Department.
    2. Select View.

  1. Select the EQ Search button.
The callout highlights the location of the EQ Search button.
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Search by Keywords

Within the Equivalency Search page, the keywords from the sending institution's course title (in this case, "INTRODUCTION" and "SOCIOLOGY") will appear in the search fields. TES® will automatically search the receiving institution's most recent catalog edition for courses that have ALL these keywords in their title. If courses are identified, they will appear under SEARCH RESULTS:

The first callout highlights the Course Titles Only checkbox. The second callout highlights the Course contains all of the checked terms toggle. The third callout notes that no courses were found at in the receiving institution's catalog with both introduction and sociology in the title. It is suggested that the user modify the search criteria and try again.
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Modify the Search Criteria

If no results are found, the search criteria may need to be adjusted. In the example above, no courses within CollegeSource University (SH)'s 2024-2025 catalog data set contain both the words "INTRODUCTION" and "SOCIOLOGY". However, a course (or courses) may contain some of these keywords.  

Users have five options:

  1. Remove the checkmark from the Course Titles Only field to look for matches to keywords in the receiving institution's course titles and descriptions. 

Depending on the keyword(s) (i.e., INTRODUCTION), this could yield many results!

  1. Remove the checkmark next to a keyword to exclude it from the search.
  2. Toggle Course contains ONE of the checked terms to return courses that contain any checked terms.

Depending on the keyword(s), this could yield many results!

  1. Add an additional keyword to the search criteria.
    • Mark the checkbox to its right to include it in the search.
  1. Mark the BROWSE MODE checkbox to browse a listing of courses (by Department) within the selected catalog.

View Results

In the example below, the search criteria were adjusted to look for any CollegeSource University course in the 2024-2025 edition with "SOCIOLOGY" in the title. One course - SOC 101 Introductory Sociology: The Study of Society - has been identified.

To view the receiving institution's course details:

  1. Check the box to the left of the COURSE CODE.
  2. Select View.
A callout highlights SOC 101 Introductory Sociology The Study of Society. The view button is also highlighted.
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  1. Review the course information in more detail.

Highlight Words in Common

When comparing one send course and one receive course, users can select the checkbox to the left of WORDS IN COMMON to bold and highlight the words that appear in both descriptions. This visual indicator can help users scan the course descriptions more quickly to look for shared content.

To aid in the comparison, common words that do not factor into the meaning of the sentence (such as "a," "as," "and," the, "they," etc.) will not be highlighted.

Create an Equivalency

To create an equivalency to the selected courses:

  1. Select EQ Add.

  1. Select Preview.
    • The transfer course and equivalent course (or courses) will already be selected.
A callout highlights the location of the Preview button. The Transfer Courses and Equivalent Courses are also highlighted.
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  1. Enter an optional Begin Date, End Date, Public Note, or Private Note.
    • Mark the Public View Hide? checkbox to prevent the equivalency from displaying within the TES® Public View and Transferology®.
The callout highlights the location of the fields noted above.
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Need evaluator input? Select Create Eval Task above to send the course to the Evaluation Tracker workflow.

  1. Select Create.

Create an Evaluation Task

To create an evaluation task for the selected courses:

  1. Select EVAL Add.

  1. Select Preview.
    • The transfer course and equivalent course (or courses) will already be selected.
A callout highlights the location of the Preview button. The Transfer Courses and Equivalent Courses are also highlighted.
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Review any duplicate evaluation tasks before proceeding to the next step.

  1. Select an evaluator from the Assign drop-down.
The callout highlights the location of the Assign drop-down.
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  1. Check the Send email alert? checkbox, if not marked.
    • Whether this box is marked by default depends on the institution's Email Alert Default Status. It's best practice to send an email alert.
  1. Add optional Comments for the reviewer.
  2. Attach an optional Support file, if needed.
    • Up to two support files can be attached to a task. The user can do this by dragging the file onto the Choose File icon or by selecting the button name and picking the file.

Support files can be uploaded as PDFs only and must be less than 10 MB in size and no more than 20MB total. Users can add additional support files through My Evaluations and All Open Evaluations.

  1. Select Create Evaluation Task.
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