Swinburne University of Technology (SUT) is a dual-sector university offering tertiary education for higher education and Pathways and Vocational Education (PAVE). The university has multiple campuses in Melbourne and one in Sydney. There are international campuses in Malaysia, Vietnam and China, and the university also offers a range of qualifications online.
Automating Integration of UP Education and TechnologyOne Student Management System at Swinburne University
Overview
Fast Facts
- Four key integration points went live in November 2023: Admission, Deferral, Unit Enrolment, and Participation.
- Two integration points went live in December 2023: Results and Withdrawal.
- Improved error identification and trapping, and visibility using dashboards and improved error reporting to UP Education.
“Swinburne University of Technology engaged Atturra to support end-to-end delivery of an integration program, which required changes to the core Student Management System. Atturra’s team demonstrated their in-depth knowledge of StudentOne and dedication to successfully deliver a high-quality outcome for our university. Atturra team members were collaborative and readily available in resolving issues that arose. Atturra management demonstrated flexibility in accommodating additional resource requests on short notice to ensure program delivery as agreed.”
Subhir Sharma,
Project Manager, Swinburne University of Technology
Challenge
In early 2021, SUT partnered with UP Education to deliver a suite of online Vocational Education (VE) courses. The courses were delivered through UP Education’s online learning platform, allowing students to enrol at any time and learn at their own pace.
In 2022, SUT received approval to offer Vet Student Loan (VSL) eligible Diplomas through UP Education. Given the contractual, regulatory, and operational requirements for delivering VSL courses, the data of students enrolled in courses offered via UP Education had to be stored in StudentOne.
The manual process implemented as part of the original proof of concept to transfer data between the two organisations was labour intensive and time consuming. It required manual intervention to resolve data quality issues and was not scalable to meet the forecasted increase in enrolment numbers.
SUT required a robust solution to automate the data transfer between the two organisations in a way that still met their contractual, regulatory and operational requirements.
Solution
UP Education’s existing process managed manual files and manual rectification of errors for Admission, Enrolment, Participation and Results. SUT worked with Atturra from February to December 2023 to develop and deliver a new automated solution. It replaced the existing manual file import processes and data entry for students across the entire cycle.
It included the addition of new Withdrawal and Deferral processes utilising an ETL-based technical solution engaging TechnologyOne web services. A targeted error handling and rectification solution was also developed. It identified common issues through dashboard reporting for SUT staff and error notifications for rectification to UP Education.
The project was planned around key delivery dates to meet the anticipated volume of applications from November, and with a phased approach to deploying integrations into production iteratively.
Outcomes achieved
SUT’s successful implementation of the automated integration of student data from UP Education has enabled them to meet regulatory and operational timelines and improve compliance and reporting for the newly incorporated VSL courses. The automation improved data quality and reduced manual processing time for staff. The new error management dashboards provide improved oversight of data quality issues, enabling faster rectification and implementation of data quality improvements.
Technologies
- TechnologyOne’s Student Management System (StudentOne)
- UP Education Portal
