Yes, there will be additional presenters for this sessionCommittee: Group III: Records and Academic Services
First Learning Outcome: Collaboration & creative problem solving between technical/functional teams
Second Learning Outcome: Stakeholder engagement
Third Learning Outcome: Benefits of leveraging delivered functionality for long term solutions
Core Competency: Problem Solving
Proficiency: Records & Academic Services Proficiencies
Intended Audience: General Audience / Intended for Everyone
Academic standing is an essential component of monitoring student success and progress. However, in December 2019, the process that assigns academic standing at the University of Wisconsin - Madison failed. It became clear that as we pulled one string the whole process could quickly unravel and would require a massive overhaul of complex and outdated technical code. Combine this with a recent implementation of a new transcript and looming governance-approved changes to school/college academic standing rules and it became clear that now was the time to prioritize the creation of a better solution. In summer 2020 the project officially kicked off.
Since then, we as functional users have worked closely with a team of technical folks. We have translated the technical code into easier-to-understand decision tables to document what the rules are doing, reviewed the tables with school/college stakeholders/deans offices to confirm that the decision tables accurately reflect their academic standing rules, and incorporated any policy changes if necessary. We then created rules in our student information system using delivered functionally where previously these rules only existed in custom and complex code that required a developer to update or fix. This new and future state will allow for functional users to make updates to academic standing rules when needed in the future thus reducing reliance solely on technical and development skills. This has created what we refer to as a “funky-tech” solution; a solution that is both functional and technical.
Presenter(s):
Katie Block University of Wisconsin-Madison
Beth Warner University of Wisconsin - Madison
A “Funky Tech” Solution to Academic Standing
Category
Breakout Sessions
Description
What happens when the technical infrastructure behind the process that assigns academic standing at UW-Madison goes awry? This session will tell the story of why the Office of the Registrar decided to crack open the black box behind the technical coding of academic standing in our SIS. We will discuss our approach to document, fix & improve the process, implement changes, engage stakeholders, and ultimately create a sustainable “funky tech” solution; a solution that is both functional and technical.
Submission ID: 19183
Room D139-140L: 4/5/2022, 01:15 PM - 02:00 PM