Creating Sections and Mapping Enrollments: User Self Service

Conference Registration Edit Registration WebCT Homepage

Friday, 22 July 2005
This presentation is part of L-4: Creating Sections and Mapping Enrollments: Applying the Vista APIs
Creating Sections and Mapping Enrollments: User Self Service

Description: In 2004 Purdue began a BPR effort to examine and improve the way that section level contexts were created in Vista and how section student enrollments were established. The result was a Web application that empowers end users to manage and create their own Vista sections as well as establish the section enrollments using registrar data. This session will highlight the design considerations and technology choices as well as demonstrate the final product.
Presentation Format: Showcase
Topic: Integrating the campus: Technical solutions and extended uses
Target Audience: System Administrators
Appropriate Audience Level: Beginning or new users of WebCT, Experienced WebCT users
WebCT Version:
Abstract Text: Purdue University's decision about the system access level permitted to instructors has increased the workload for the system administrator and support staff. At the West Lafayette campus, end users have not been allowed to have course level access. Manually creating sections on behalf of users was becoming unmanageable as the rollout progressed. Furthermore, less than half of all Vista sections map to Registrar courses on a one-to-one basis – most have one-to-many relationships that have thus far been manually maintained by the system administrator and support staff.
This presentation documents the design and implementation of a Web application that reveals the required functionality to end users while enforcing University policies about how student data may be handled. Creating this application outside of Vista made it possible for users to act on their own behalf and will eliminate or at least reduce the tedious manual work that has been performed by our user services staff.
After mining the requirements, conducting analysis, and beginning design, a variety of implementation alternatives were considered. While the presentation focuses on the actual set of technologies used to develop the application, the alternatives will be discussed, as well as the criteria used to make the final selection.
The primary purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate how the power of the Vista Powerlinks API may be harnessed to create custom applications that address business cases that may be unique to one school or implementation. While some customers may use the pre-built adapters to connect Vista directly to one of several vendor-created student information systems, our custom application reveals the same functionality to the end user (in that the enrollments for their classes are established for them once they create the mapping) while not sacrificing the flexibility that the end users have become used to.

See more of Creating Sections and Mapping Enrollments: Applying the Vista APIs
See more of The 7th Annual WebCT User Conference

Description:	In 2004 Purdue began a BPR effort to examine and improve the way that section level contexts were created in Vista and how section student enrollments were established. The result was a Web application that empowers end users to manage and create their own Vista sections as well as establish the section enrollments using registrar data. This session will highlight the design considerations and technology choices as well as demonstrate the final product.
Presentation Format:	Showcase
Topic:	Integrating the campus: Technical solutions and extended uses
Target Audience:	System Administrators
Appropriate Audience Level:	Beginning or new users of WebCT, Experienced WebCT users
WebCT Version:
Abstract Text:	Purdue University's decision about the system access level permitted to instructors has increased the workload for the system administrator and support staff. At the West Lafayette campus, end users have not been allowed to have course level access. Manually creating sections on behalf of users was becoming unmanageable as the rollout progressed. Furthermore, less than half of all Vista sections map to Registrar courses on a one-to-one basis – most have one-to-many relationships that have thus far been manually maintained by the system administrator and support staff. This presentation documents the design and implementation of a Web application that reveals the required functionality to end users while enforcing University policies about how student data may be handled. Creating this application outside of Vista made it possible for users to act on their own behalf and will eliminate or at least reduce the tedious manual work that has been performed by our user services staff. After mining the requirements, conducting analysis, and beginning design, a variety of implementation alternatives were considered. While the presentation focuses on the actual set of technologies used to develop the application, the alternatives will be discussed, as well as the criteria used to make the final selection. The primary purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate how the power of the Vista Powerlinks API may be harnessed to create custom applications that address business cases that may be unique to one school or implementation. While some customers may use the pre-built adapters to connect Vista directly to one of several vendor-created student information systems, our custom application reveals the same functionality to the end user (in that the enrollments for their classes are established for them once they create the mapping) while not sacrificing the flexibility that the end users have become used to.