Business Case Transition to College

This case study will analyze the current business processes of Transition to College (TC), a pre-college preparatory program for new students at an Ontario Community College. The TC program aims to address the need to prepare students from high-school who are transitioning to a college program for the level of engagement, planning, preparation, and independent learning required of a college level program.

The TC program equips students with learning strategies, connections with college support systems, and an upper-level peer mentor to help with the first semester transition to college. At the end of the TC program, students receive a micro-certificate of completion and a "requirements met" grade on their formal transcript. The TC is FREE to all new students to the community college.

To maintain the current funding and resources for the TC, the Director of the program wants to implement a database driven reporting structure. The TC management team includes three full-time staff and three part-time staff. The Director is the project sponsor and champion for the development of the database and reporting system. As the champion for the project, the Director will ensure team members are devoted to and highly involved in the development process. The Director will determine which database and reporting system features are required, provide direction on the order in which features are constructed and tested, and serve as the final decision-maker on the systems and their features. The TC management team will provide information regarding their role in the organization, how they interact with internal and external users, what types of data they collect, and report on the challenges within the current business model. They will be involved in the review and development of new business processes and provide a wish list of features they would like included in the database and reporting system. Each team member will be deeply involved to improve workflow for tasks directly related their functional area. They also will be highly involved in the testing and deployment of the new database and reporting system and will participate in training sessions to learn how to maintain the system long-term. ldf

The introduction of a new database and reporting system will have an impact on the business processes for the TC management team.

The Business Problem

The TC program has been available to new students for the past 15 years. During this time, personnel have established sound procedures and protocols for collecting and managing student information, tracking student participation and programmatic activities, and maintaining student records. Unfortunately, the program has not maintained an internal procedures manual or documentation outlining their business processes. Their procedures have not utilized advances in information technology to improve workflow and efficiency.

The TC program primarily uses Microsoft Excel, Qualtrics, and SharePoint to manage a majority of business practices. Physical files store studentartifacts, such as research posters, publications, and articles. Paper forms collect student information, including registration information for programmatic activities. Administrative personnel are responsible for data entry into the student database and multiple personnel are responsible for updating and maintaining the various databases. These methods create multiple challenges, such as: Accessibility: Permissions are set to allow only one user at any given time to access Microsoft Excel files, thus affecting productivity when multiple users need to access the file to add, edit, or update information. Organization: Personnel have difficulty locating files in SharePoint and distinguishing current files from previous versions. This is particularly an issue as it relates to the student database, which is composed of multiple Excel files and stored in SharePoint. Inefficiency: Information is store in multiple locations, which requires team members to locate other files to retrieve and copy the information. With the disorganization of SharePoint, team members spend additional time trying to locate the files they need before they can copy data to another file.

Business Solution

A "work collaboration" software solution is being considered to streamline the inefficiencies of the current processes.The "work collaboration" platform has the potential to address many of the accessibility, organization, and efficiency problems the TC program currently experiences. However, staff of the TC program lacks the expertise and professional IT staff to assist in the transition of their legacy systems to the "work collaboration" solution. While TC has ideas regarding how to implement or utilize particular features within the platform, the program needs direction when it comes to creating a holistic structure that improves efficiency across all areas or all departments.

Current State

The TC management team pre-identified the programmatic areas they wanted transitioned to the "work collaboration" platform and the potential outcomes. Data from each of the programmatic areas intersects with other areas, except in the case of the Teachers Manual. For the purposes of this project, the programmatic areas of emphasis were:

Recruitment: new college students were recruited to the program during the first week of their first semester. These students remain in the program throughout their first semester. Student Experiences: students engage in a series of activities and events to prepare them for college. Teachers Manual: The manual or handbook guides each teacher's involvement and defines expectations for teachers in each program or school.

An initial consultation with the TC management team was conducted to determine what current processes exist, how information is shared and stored, what outcomes or solutions did the team what to achieve, and what is each team members' role within the organization. During the interview, the TC management team reported that current business processes are not formally documented even though the team operates under a clear set of procedures.

As such, a preliminary business case was developed to guide the project, ensure current processes were defined, define performance criteria, identify solutions to bridge capability gaps, and create a new set of processes utilizing the "work collaboration" platform and integrating the software's features to improve workflow.

As Is Process: Teachers Manual

TC creates and shares .pdf copies of their Teachers Manual with each teacher involved in the program. Teachers review the manual and keep it on hand as a reference guide. Templates are included in the materials, such as a teacher information form that each teacher is directed to complete when they join the program. Email of the teacher information form are collected and manually entered into an Excel database. As teachers update their contact information, they contact the TC office to inform them of the changes. The TC administrator manually updates the teachers' contact information in the Excel database.

As is Process: Recruitment

Students enter the TC program in the first week of the first semester and remain with the program to the end of semester one. Teachers in each undergraduate program in the School of Business compile a list of TC eligible students. This list is sent to TC for review and manually entered into a Excel database. Students who meet the minimum requirements are issued acceptance letters. If a student accepts the invitation and terms of the program, a contract is initiated and signed between the student and TC. Once the contract is signed, the student's assessment information is entered into an Excel database. As students progress through the TC program, they are required to participate in activities. Student participation is tracked and their scores are entered in a separate Excel database that is directly related to programmatic activity before being transferred to the main student database (Excel file). Artifacts, such as personal statements or presentations, are collected and stored in SharePoint files.

As is Process: Student Experience

The TC management team visits each course involved with the TC program to meet with and evaluate each student's performance. Students are required to submit a written personal statement and give a presentation to the TC management team. Digital copies of each student's personal statement (or artifacts) is collected from the student and stored in SharePoint as part of the student's TC record. After each presentation, TC staff members meet one-one-one to evaluate the student's progress in the program. Evaluations are recorded using Qualtrics, an online survey instrument. After the event, scores are downloaded from the Qualtrics platform into an Excel file and manually entered into the main student Excel file.

To Be Process: Teachers Manual

The To-Be process eliminates the need for a .pdf manual. An electronic copy of the manual is stored in the workspace and on a dashboard that compiles important documents, templates, and any links the teachers need to access on a regular basis. Each teacher is provided permissions to access the "work collaboration" workspace affiliated with their course. After they gain access to the "work collaboration" platform, teachers are instructed to review the teachers manual and complete a teacher information webform. The webform collects each teacher's contact information, which is electronically recorded in the teacher information database in real-time.

The TC management team receives a notification from the system when a new entry or changes have occurred in the database to allow for easier tracking and monitoring. Teachers may modify their existing contact information at any time, by accessing the teachers' manual database and updating specific information or completing another webform. Through the use of timestamps, the TC management team can monitor and/or determine when the most recent entry occurred.

To Be Process: Recruitment and Student Experience (Integrated and Combined)

The remaining two processes are combined to create an integrated process. Several steps were eliminated in both the Recruitment program and Student Experiences models. The main differences between the As-Is and To-Be processes are:

The master recruitment database is a compilation of all courses and students, rather than separate files for each course. The master student experience database pulls in information from the recruitment database automatically, eliminating the need to manually enter the information. This reduces the time spent locating a specific Excel file and copying and pasting the data into a master Excel file. Webforms are used to collect student applications and to check-in students when they arrive at various student experiences events. Artifacts (presentation, research posters, personal statements, etc.) are collected and stored electronically. This reduces the need for physical storage space. "work collaboration" webforms are used to collect evaluations reducing the need to use multiple software platforms (Qualtrics) for programmatic activities. Student records located in the Student Experience database are linked to the Student Information and Records database for easier conversion of the student's record when the student completes the TC program