What's happening in IRP Student? April 2022 Update

What's happening in IRP Student? April 2022 Update

April 20, 2022

The Integrated Renewal Program - Student (IRP Student) teams are working full steam ahead - not only focusing on the design of Workday Student and point solutions for Admissions and Learner Financial Support, but also engaging regularly with the UBC community. IRP Student has made noteworthy progress toward this renewal over the past few months.  

The second wave of hiring for the program has commenced and is almost complete with 80% of the target achieved, and a detailed review of progress vs the plan was completed in March. Project outputs were assessed, met outlined requirements, and provided a clear picture of the work ahead.  To create efficiencies in project activities and for administrative staff who support Admissions, Learner Financial Support, Curriculum Management, and Scheduling, implementation of these functions has been combined to form the first release of IRP Student in the fall of 2023.  

IRP Student’s successes are due to the ongoing support and help of the UBC community. IRP Student sponsors, stakeholders, Community Design Consultants (CDC), Student Process and Outcomes Committee (SPOC) members, the Academic Model and Transformation Advisory Committee (AMTAC), and many others.  We are currently in the process of establishing a new targeted group of CDCs, specific to the areas of registration and scheduling. We will be onboarding these departmental administrator CDCs this month to supplement and complement our existing consultation network. 

2022 will bring many more accomplishments through continued partnerships across both campuses.  

Below, some highlights from the first months of 2022 are featured. 

Academic Requirements  

Excellent progress has been made on configuring academic requirements for majors in Workday Student’s Academic Progress Report (APR). With IRP Student implementation, APR will replace the Degree Navigator reports for those programs that are currently using them. The configuration for the majors for Bachelor of Arts (Vancouver) and Bachelor of Science (Vancouver) have also been completed. Now, validations of these requirements are taking place to make sure they are accurate and ready to be used by UBC students and advisors. Many thanks to the advisors in both Faculties who have been supporting our work over these months! 

Sessional Evaluations 

The focus of this area has been on engaging with the Faculties and Schools that are currently running sessional evaluations to: 

  • confirm their current rules, 
  • explain how Workday Student functionality can support the automation of those rules, and 
  • explore opportunities for simplification and streamlining of these rules to take advantage of the strong automation features available in Workday Student. 

Over the last 3 months, 30+ engagement sessions with 14 Faculties and schools across the university have occurred, and the IRP Student teams are very thankful for the time and participation in this design process! Another achievement is the approval of the streamlined and modified values of Academic Standings and Additional Period Honours designations by the Senate Academic Policy Committees on both campuses.  Recognition to the Community Design Consultants from the Senate Secretariat team for supporting and guiding that process. 

Pathway Declaration 

Pathway Declaration is an umbrella term that is used at UBC when referring to a student declaring, changing, or dropping an academic pathway (for example Majors, Minors, Combined Majors etc.). 

Ongoing consultations with our Faculties to explore and validate the best way to set up these processes are taking place. Work has been completed, in this regard, with the Faculty of Management and School of Health and Exercise Sciences at Okanagan, School of Kinesiology, and Land & Food Systems at Vancouver. The Faculty of Arts, School of Music, and Sauder School of Business at Vancouver will be consulted next to finalize their configuration over the next few months. 

Graduation 

The IRP Student teams are continuously exploring what Workday Student can offer to support students applying for graduation as well as those doing graduation adjudication. Stay tuned for more news on the graduation front! 

Learner Financial Management (LFM) 

The team has spent a lot of time configuring charges and calculations in Workday Student. Tuition and student fees set up for all Undergraduates and mostly Graduate students have been completed. 

The first student engagement for LFM took place with co-op students working with IRP Student. This engagement exposed the students to the student financial page design and the team gathered their feedback. 

In Jan 2022, monthly CDC meetings were created with new and long-standing CDC members. The goal is to highlight Workday Student functionalities and to enable two-way communication on the design going forward. 

Something to look forward to: 

  • More student engagements for future Student Experience Design Consultations. 
  • The detailed design and configuration of the required operational reports in support of business processes will be worked on. 
  • As of March 2022, Touchnet has been confirmed as the chosen platform to replace the SIS E-Payments solution and design work has started for the months ahead. 

Learner Financial Support (LFS) 

IRP Student continued to work closely with Deloitte to refine the project plan, and completed the first iteration of the design for the following topics: 

  • AwardCloud user roles 
  • Learner Profile Design integration from Admissions and Workday Student to LFS 
  • Merit Award Application, Adjudication, Assignment, and Offer processes 

Multiple ad-hoc consultation meetings and recurring consultation meetings with the CDCs have been set up. 

Something to look forward to: 

  • Design iterations will continue and more design topics will commence 
  • More targeted engagements with stakeholders on specific award processes, for example, ISI, Go global exchange, etc. Will be happening soon. 

Scheduling  

The Scheduling team has started up their own internal cross-functional working group to focus on Standard Timetables, the Business Process Management System (BPMS), and integration with Scientia/Workday Student. The BPMS is a point solution, or newly created system, which is required when Workday Student or an existing application does not meet UBC’s needs. The BPMS will support several areas of the IRP Student program, including Scheduling.  

Other highlights include: 

  • Streamlining the use of instructional formats in course configuration 
  • Consultations on Waitlist configuration of the planned size 
  • Academic Appointments and assigning Teaching Assistants to course sections 
  • Decision made to have a public-facing course schedule 
  • Design of variable credit courses for Scientia integration 
  • Gathering requirements for exam scheduling BPMS  

Registration  

The registration area has had a busy couple of months as configuration work got underway. Consultations around waitlists, registration appointments, and credit limits took place. The team focused on gap testing and building out the detailed plan for registration during the configure and prototype phase. 

We are currently in the process of establishing a new CDC group for Scheduling and Registration. We will be onboarding these departmental administrator CDCs in April 2022 to supplement and complement our existing consultation network. 

Transfer Credit  

In March 2022, the Transfer Credit and Internal Articulation functions within Workday Student were demonstrated and the potential for its use within Graduate Programs was discussed. 

Admissions 

The Admissions team is fully engaged in the design and development work that will continue through 2022. The Admissions CDCs meet bi-weekly to provide input, and discuss requirements and various design topics. Most recently, the CDCs had demonstrations on the progress of development on the following key systems of the Admissions solution: 

  • Applicant Service Centre (ASC): the applicant-facing portal where applicants can perform various admissions-related actions, such as; checking the status of their application, uploading supporting documents, and accepting or declining an offer of admission.  The ASC replaces the applicant functionality that is currently part of the Student Service Centre (SSC). 
  • Admissions Administrative Portal (AAP): the administrative portal where Admissions staff will process admissions applications and perform other admissions functions.  The AAP replaces the admissions functionality of the current SISC. 

Curriculum Management, Assessment Outcomes, and Learner Management 

Quarter 1 of 2022 has seen several highlights for these areas. The Senate Academic Policy Committees began to review new and revised course standings and an update to the supplemental examination policy based on the Workday Student configuration. Work has begun to prepare for validation of course and program of study information and the expected Completion Date configuration is confirmed. Discussions have been occurring around accessibility, use of preferred names, program of study statuses, and status reasons. 

Something to look forward to: 

  • Engagements around changes to course equivalencies and course eligibility rules 
  • Program of Study (April/May) and Course validation (May/June) exercises 

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