Office of the University Registrar

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education illustrates that the open-source approach to developing software to help manage universities is gaining legitimacy. Released earlier this week on its website, The Chronicle’s article “Business Software, Built by Colleges for Colleges, Challenges Commercial Giants” outlines how the Kuali Foundation’s grassroots efforts are beginning to challenge “Big Software.” (That term is a reference to traditional, fee-based software and consultation companies.)

The article focuses on Kuali Coeus, the grant-management component of the Kuali software suite, but also mentions Kuali Student (KS). The UW contributes to the development of KS and will consider using it in the future. That this open-source initiative is being discussed in The Chronicle as a legitimate contender to expensive, proprietary systems is an important part of Kuali’s evolution.

See other posts about Kuali on this blog.

The November edition of Highlights, the newsletter published by the Office of Information Management (OIM), recaps many important projects. Though they all originate with OIM, some of these projects are joint efforts with other UW departments, including the Office of the University Registrar (OUR), UW Technology, and UW Marketing.

The one-page newsletter is available at OIM’s website and additional information about projects the OUR played a part in are linked to below. Each post is grouped by the section of Highlights in which the project is mentioned.

Information for Decision Making

• “New UW iPhone application allows students and faculty to view and search course information online.” – Carry the UW in your hand.
• “Partnering with the UW community to prioritize Web Services” – Course Catalog Search, at your (web) service and 

Replace the Base

• “Kuali projects make major move forward” – Kuali Rice Officially Released

The term “web services” has been used frequently on this blog when discussing new tools for the University community. Some examples include m.UW, the UW’s iPhone app; an improved course catalog search; and Kuali, the next-generation student software initiative. With the fourth version of the Student Web Services (SWS) open and available for use, it’s time that the Office of the University Registrar officially invite interested developers (and their managers!) to dive and start creating new, useful tools.

Okay, but how do I start?

That’s a good question. Here are the ingredients necessary to get a SWS project off the ground:

1. Join the community – The UW’s web services community is strong, and if you’re going to develop something using SWS you should get to know it. Read On the ROA, the UW’s web services blog; review ideas from other developers at UserVoice; and stop by at a Web Services Discussion Group meeting. Sign up on the “appdev@u” mailing list to be notified of meeting dates and locations.
2. Identify a need – Have you wished there was a site that did X? Are your students asking for Y? Want to find a better way to display Z? Once you’ve identified something to build, fix, or improve upon, you can plan a web site, iPhone application—or something else—to accomplish it using the data available to you (see number 3).
3. Research the services at your disposal – The Web Services Registry is a maintained list of UW web services, including a description and links to documentation and a contact person. You can also submit your own UW-centric web service to the registry. But don’t limit your idea to UW-specific data; maybe there’s another dataset that you could mash up it up with?
4. Build it – Web services really shine when it comes to accessing data. If you’re using public information you can simply access the service you want and start using the data returned. And it’s easy to do so regardless of your preferred language: PHP, Python, .NET, Ruby on Rails, etc. There’s a PHP class already available to simplify things even further; a .NET version is in the works.

What about an example?

Part of the reason for inviting the community to built tools with SWS is the “serendipity” factor. With pubicly-available data and a whole community of smart people, the sky’s the limit on what sort of useful tools might emerge.

An example is the recent improvements to the University’s course catalog search. A developer in the Office of the University Registrar saw the data available, knew of the issues with the current Google-based search, and built a prototype replacement in just a few days. A presentation of this tool’s development was recently given at the Office of Information Management’s Community Forum (the developer’s slides are available for download).

So go ahead: wow your students and the University as a whole with your creation. Show us the tool we didn’t know we couldn’t live without.

This post is an update to a previous entry, available here: Carry the UW in your hand.

Last week the UW released a version of its mobile application, m.UW, for the Blackberry smartphone platform. m.UW has been available on the iPhone since Sept. The application was introduced at Educause, a major conference focusing on information technology in education, to a fair bit of fanfare. Because the UW is the first university to release a mobile application on the Blackberry platform, the release has garnered attention from local media, including KOMO news and the Seattle PI.

Blackberry users can download the m.UW for their devices at the UW’s mobile website.

Until now, students whose hard work throughout the quarter earned them a spot on the Dean’s List have been notified by mail. Their academic achievements will continue to be recognized with a letter, but the delivery method has changed. Beginning summer quarter 09, Dean’s List letters are delivered by e-mail, not by postal mail. Students receive a letter containing a link to a secure website (more on that below) where the letters can be viewed or saved in PDF format, so they can easily be printed if desired.

Why the change?

There are a few reasons for transitioning from physical to electronic letters. Financial responsibility is certainly one of them. The cost of paper, envelopes, printing and postage for the thousands of letters mailed each quarter adds up. Even in summer, the quarter with the least enrollment, there are typically about 1,200 to 1,500 Dean’s List students; that number can reach 8,000 or even 10,000 in autumn quarters. With each letter costing about 50 cents in postage and materials alone, going electronic saves a lot of money. Although sharing good news with our students and their families is a good reason to spend funds, in these tight fiscal times it’s prudent to save money wherever possible.

Also, today’s students are increasingly accustomed to electronic versions of documents: online bill payments and banking; e-mailed receipts for both online and in-store purchases; even some medical records have moved to the web. In this environment it makes sense to deliver notification of academic scholarship online, too. It’s worth noting that students who made the dean’s list—and whose information-release status permit it—are posted on the University’s website as well.

What about information security?

We’ve taken great care to ensure that this new process meets FERPA guidelines for protecting student data. The notification message, which is e-mailed to the student’s official UW-provided e-mail address, contains only a generic introduction, the student’s name, and a customized link. When following that link, the student must prove their identity by authenticating with their UW NetID before their letter is displayed.