What's happening in IRP Student? Summer 2022 Update

What's happening in IRP Student? Summer 2022 Update

September 02, 2022

The last few months have seen many important achievements within the Integrated Renewal Program – Student. The completion of Milestone 3, the formulation of the Transition Network, and more regular and focused touchpoints with our community.  

IRP Student Program Update! 

A program-wide review took place on July 28, 2022. This critical checkpoint (Milestone 3) was focused on the Design and Architecture stage of the program. To meet this milestone, the program: 

  • determined how Workday Student would be implemented at UBC by reviewing current business processes and conducting gap analyses to accommodate UBC’s needs 
  • focused on engaging with key UBC community experts and committees to make several design decisions that informed how Workday Student will function. 

The next checkpoints for the program (Milestone 4 and 5) are the Build and Test phases. Here the focus will be on: 

  • incorporating design input into Workday Student, its integrations, and newly created point solutions 
  • testing the final system to ensure Workday Student and all applications function as expected to support UBC processes. During this stage, the project team will also finalize the training materials and kick-off end-user training. 

Learn more about Workday Student’s timeline and milestones here. 

Below, some of the highlights of 2022 Quarter 2 are featured. 

Academic Requirements  

Configuration and validation of academic requirements for majors in Workday Student’s Academic Progress Report (APR) continued. APR will replace the Degree Navigator reports for those programs that are currently using them when Workday Student is launched.  

The program has completed the configuration of the majors for:  

  • Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (Okanagan) 
  • Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (Okanagan) 
  • Faculty of Applied Science (Okanagan) 
  • Faculty of Science (Okanagan) 
  • Faculty of Management (Okanagan) 

Currently, the program is validating these requirements with these faculties to make sure they are accurate and ready to be used by UBC students and advisors. Many thanks to the advisors in these Faculties who have been supporting this work!  

Sessional Evaluations 

Great progress has been made on the sessional evaluations! The team has wrapped up the design consultations on the rules and processes for the sessional evaluations with the units that currently run them in the Student Information Service Centre (SISC). The focus over the coming months will be on building reports that would support and complement the sessional evaluations functionality in Workday Student and enable advisors to run effective evaluations of their students’ academic performance. 

Continuing Student Onboarding (Graduate Students) 

With the help of the Graduate Education Working Group, the program is finalizing the design for this brand-new process at UBC. This Workday Student functionality will enable UBC graduate students to confirm their attendance for the next academic session. It will take them through onboarding activities to prepare them for the start of the session. As a result, the administrative staff and advisors who work with the graduate students will have helpful insight into who is not coming back, the reasons behind it, and who will benefit from an advisor to reach out for further guidance and resources. 

Graduate Milestones 

Another area of ongoing design for graduate students is non-course milestones for research-based programs. All the milestones that mark a graduate student's progress towards their degree requirements and that are currently tracked in the SISC will be recorded and traced in Workday Student. The team looks forward to engaging with the Graduate Education Working Group to discuss the design and potential change impacts to students and administrative staff this Fall. 

Pathway Declaration 

The Pathway Declaration team is full steam ahead on exploring and validating processes for declaring, changing, and dropping majors, minors, and other pathways with the faculties. The program has completed work with: 

  • Faculty of Arts (Vancouver) 
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences (Okanagan) 
  • Faculty of Creative & Critical Studies (Okanagan) 
  • Faculty of Science (Okanagan) 
  • Faculty of Forestry (Vancouver) 

Work will be started to build these processes for the remaining faculties in Fall 2022.  

Learner Financial Management (LFM)  

The program has progressed the configuration on Financial Holds, Refund Recovery, and Student Residency. Working with the Cross Platform Change Review Board, the program has received endorsement for several cross-platform configuration changes in Workday Finance that are required for our Workday Student implementation.  The team has worked through complex scenarios and completed a deep dive into Sponsorship contracts, which allowed the team to work closely with the stakeholders to understand the business requirements, given sponsorship functionality differs significantly from SISC.  

Noteworthy progress has been made on the U-Pass Vancouver integration with Translink and solidified the solution for how students will access tax forms (T4A and T2202) for tax years prior to 2024. The team has started security role work with key stakeholders to identify the segregation of roles and appropriate level of access to sensitive information. The team will be continuing to build TouchNet as UBC's online payment solution in the upcoming months, as well as engagements with stakeholders on security role definition, validation, and mapping. 

Learner Financial Support (LFS)  

A number of key design topics have been completed in the past months, including:  

  • Learner Profile Management 
  • Award Budget Management 
  • Award Profile Management 
  • Hybrid & Needs-Based Adjudication: Financial Profile 
  • Merit Award Application, Adjudication, and Fund Allocation 
  • Award Assignment, Offer, and Disbursement 
  • Institutional Appendix 
  • Government Aid Management: SABC 

While the design on topics such as User Account Management, Donor Communications, Needs Assessment, and Course Load Calculation, are wrapping up, the program is entering the build phase for the topics above. 

LFS Community Design Consultants (CDC) Focus Groups have been set up, allowing award managers from faculties to provide input and feedback on the design. A few targeted engagements on specific award processes occurred, for example, ISI (International Student Initiative), Go Global, Graduate Student Funding Tracker, Hybrid, and UBC Bursary Financial Profile and Need Assessment, etc. 

It should be noted that LFS has been working through some challenges. In the coming months, build activities will be the focus. However, there might be a need to adjust the plan moving forward. LFS security role engagement will also commence on an iterative basis.  

Registration, Scheduling, & Transfer Credit 

The CDC group for Registration and Scheduling has been launched and meets every three weeks. This group provides the unique departmental focus and viewpoint which are included in IRP Student’s design configuration. A variety of topics for feedback has been brought to this group, including: 

  • Find Course Sections report for student registration activities 
  • Registration appointments for the first registration period in June 2024  
  • Enrolment credit limits 
  • Course delivery modes 
  • Reserved Capacity (aka Seat Pools) 
  • Teaching Assignments 

Various Workday Student features have been demonstrated to this group, such as: 

  • Workday registration tasks 
  • Course & Course Section Attributes 
  • Course eligibility rules 

In April, the design for the Standard Timetable Management System kicked off, which will be used by administrators to group together courses in a conflict-free schedule and communicate that schedule to students. 

Something to look forward to in the coming months is the build of functionality in the Business Process Management Solution (Appian), including: 

  • Exam application and Student Exam Schedules 
  • Continued design of the Standard Timetables 
  • Design of Special Topics/Variable Credit Courses 
  • And more!  

Admissions 

The Admissions team continues with design and development work. Over the last few months, the team has had some major achievements: 

  • The legacy Admissions System, also known as the PowerBuilder application, which is used in post-secondary evaluation processes by Undergraduate Admissions, and provides the capabilities to assign transfer credit to applicants and to store transfer credit articulations, has been successfully built in the new Admissions solution. 
  • The core Applicant Service Centre (ASC), which is the applicant-facing portal where applicants can perform various admissions-related actions, has been built and lays the foundation to integrate with other systems. 
  • Architectural design work for the external Admissions Management Systems that will integrate with the new Admissions solution is nearing completion. 
  • The Broad-Based Admission Evaluation Tool (BBAE), which is used to read and score Personal Profiles and in other admission processes, has been successfully extracted into the new Admissions solution. 

 The focus for the next few months will be the design and build of the Admissions Administrative Portal (AAP), the administrative portal where Admissions staff will process admissions applications and perform other admissions functions. The design work continues for the applications that will integrate with the new Admissions solution. 

Curriculum Management 

The Program of Study validation has been completed. The IRP Student team is working on reviewing the changes received during these validations and inputting said changes into the tenant. Course Validation will occur in the coming months, facilitated by the Office of the Senate. A memo will be circulated with information around equivalencies and eligibility rules in Workday Student and units will be asked to review their data and submit any changes through the Senates. 

Work is being done to review Credit Exclusion Statements by cleaning up the data, and entering them into Workday Student as ‘anti-requisites'. 

Assessment Outcomes 

In the coming months, work in this area will focus on the process for submitting final grades, the process for changing a submitted grade, and how to handle missing grades. 

Learner Management 

In this area, Program of Study Statuses were reconfigured so that the status of Dismissed will now be used for all cases where a student is asked to leave UBC. Tasks continue on the design and configuration of the student biographical section of Workday Student, including data governance standards, and challenging the current state limitations.  

In the new system, students will be able to change their gender identity as they see fit with no approvals required. Students will also now have the opportunity to self-declare their pronouns and their trans experience. All three of these fields are optional. The future direction for transcripts has been laid out and in the coming months, work will focus on this area. 

IRP Student’s successes are due to the ongoing support and help of the UBC community. We would like to use this opportunity to thank IRP Student sponsors, stakeholders, CDC’s, Student Process and Outcomes Committee (SPOC) members, the Academic Model and Transformation Advisory Committee (AMTAC), Advising Directors, Graduate Education Working Group, and many others for their contributions once again.  

Bookmark this page to stay up to date on the latest news from IRP Student. 

Program Updates