When adding students to Merit achievements, it's important to take the names that you are using into careful consideration. You can have columns for both preferred and legal names in any spreadsheet you upload, but you should decide which ones you’d like to use regularly in Merit before uploading your document.
Click here to learn more about how students' Merit data potentially changes over time.
Here's a brief description of how names are used in Merit:
Imports
When importing your list of students for the first time, you're creating Merit pages for each of your students. The first names that you choose here can be either students' legal or preferred names.
Students will then have the ability to change the name that appears on their Merit page at any time.
For example, if Colin Ryan is included on your student import, they can log into Merit and change the name on their page to Colleen.
Pro Tip: You can have columns for both first names and preferred names in your spreadsheet, but only one will be saved inside Merit.
Achievements
When you upload a spreadsheet of students for an achievement, you can choose between using the first name column from your spreadsheet or the first name data saved in Merit. Keep in mind that the names in these two places could be different.
For example, a student could be listed as Colin Ryan in your spreadsheet but as Colleen Ryan in Merit. In this scenario, the name that appears in the student's achievement will depend upon whether you chose the first name placeholder from your spreadsheet or Merit when writing your story.
Pro Tip: Audit your student data before uploading your spreadsheet to determine which set of first name data you'd like to use in your achievement.
Please note that students cannot edit the text in their online achievements. If the name used in their story is no longer accurate, someone at your institution (or a member of Merit's team), will need to update the achievement text for them.
Certificates
Certificates will always use the student's saved name in Merit. The name that appears here will change immediately if the student updates their page to use a different first or last name.