Projects
Career Center & ITS work together to streamline reporting of experiential learning opportunities
Project Spotlight
More areas on campus are finding a place in their office for a custom OnBase solution provided by ITS. OnBase is an enterprise information platform for managing content and business process automation. At BGSU, many people know it as the system we use to store Registration and Records documents or completed e-signatures.
During the summer months of 2018, ITS Digital Services set out to assist the Career Center with streamlining their process for reporting experiential learning opportunities to the state of Ohio. To maintain compliance, the Career Center must submit specific statistics on clinicals, practicums, internships and co-ops. Previously, this data was assembled in the individual colleges, by hand, and then merged by the Career Center. Since the process involves mandatory reporting and student data, and there is currently no handy software available for purchase, OnBase was a good candidate for a custom solution.
The first step was to properly tag all coursework in PeopleSoft, which the Career Center had already been coordinating. ITS was tasked with creating a new link from PeopleSoft CSS to OnBase, and creating a new Workview solution accessible via OnBase.
Based on the student data received from CSS, the OnBase solution allows college administrators to add the details necessary for state reporting that are not contained in PeopleSoft, for example, additional information about a co-op employer:
Data entry deadlines are based on the state’s reporting deadlines. With our starting point being the list of students and experiences from PeopleSoft, those using the solution can see the progress of record completion. Filters to search for specific data points are available to staff in the Career Center and the Office of the Provost.
This information is added via the web or the OnBase Unity Client, a small desktop application available through the self-service software center. Training on the usage of the software and the solution was completed by the Career Center this past fall. With this new OnBase solution in place, BGSU has increased the accuracy and efficiency of its experiential learning reporting and improved our capacity to analyze the data.