Student Engagement & Support Ecosystem (SESE)

Project Overview

The Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education (OVPIUE) and the Office of the Vice-Provost, Students (OVPS) aim to support a seamless student wayfinding and participatory experience across career and student life services and experiential learning programming. In 2022, a multi-stage tri-campus review process identified that these services would benefit from an upgrade to a more mature, user-friend, and interoperable solution that could better support both co-curricular and academic services and programming across academic divisions and shared service units.

Stemming from these reviews, the University invested in a new platform, Folio, powered by the Symplicity UniHub system, to provide a new foundational platform for tri-campus student life services and other co-curricular and academic student engagement opportunities. And, in 2023, the institution signed a Master Service Agreement (MSA) with Symplicity that brought the more than 16 existing Symplicity instances together under an institutional agreement, allowing for cost savings and a more strategic approach to our relationship with this vendor.

Now referred to as the Student Engagement & Support Ecosystem (SESE), the suite of Symplicity products and instances are leveraged by 52 units from across the tri-campus. The ecosystem includes: 34 units leveraging UniHub /Folio; 14 units leveraging CSM/Outcome; 6 units leveraging or in implementation for Advocate; 1 unit in implementation for Accommodate. This ecosystem is supported institutionally by the OVPIUE’s Digital Transformation team and managed locally by the individual units leveraging these systems.

Rationale

Many divisions and shared service units leverage products offered by a single vendor, Symplicity, to support their academic, co-curricular and experiential learning experiences. Through this project, OVPIUE aims to consolidate some of the administrative efforts to support these functions while allowing divisions and units to maintain autonomy over the management of their own technology platforms. Our aim is to ensure that students engaging with institutional career and student life services and experiential learning programming do so in a seamless and integrated manner.

Foundational Platform: Folio

U of T has implemented Folio, an experiential and co-curricular learning platform designed to provide a user-friendly experience to serve as a gateway for students to access a wide array of essential services, programs, and activities seamlessly. Tailored specifically for the unique needs of university life, this platform strives to empower students to make the most of their journey at U of T while staying connected with the vibrant campus community.

Benefits of Folio

Students

  • Customized student experience based on affiliations (degree, unit, program, etc.) and more efficient and user-friendly student wayfinding.
  • Enhanced search functionality that allows students to locate opportunities by keyword, areas of interest, etc.
  • Streamlining of some current manual processes.
  • In-system activity validation, recording, reflection and credentialing.
  • Stackable accomplishment recognition (i.e., badges, competencies, etc.).
  • ‘Skills Development’ module to support an enhanced Co-Curricular Record (CCR) experience.
  • Integrated ‘Work Flow’ functionality that allows for program automation.
  • Queueing functionality to support drop-in appointments.

Faculty / Staff

  • Decentralized permission structure to delegate admin rights to local users at division, unit or program level providing increased autonomy.
  • Supports integration of additional Symplicity instances within seamless enterprise portal.
  • Linking to non-UniHub systems to support seamless cross-system student experience.
  • Comprehensive reporting across all Symplicity instances connected to the UniHub system.
  • Streamlining current manual processes.

Institution

  • Support institutional goals for student success, quality service, and student engagement.
  • Advance U of T’s mission to re-imagine and re-invent undergraduate education and demonstrate its commitment to helping students connect to the community and pursue enriching experiences.
  • Integrate into the broader Institutional Academic & Student Applications (IASA) Systems, which creates and deploys technological solutions that help students fully engage in rewarding learning experiences and achieve academic and personal success.

Additional Symplicity Products

CSM / Outcome

  • Student CRM Recruiting
  • Appointment & Event Scheduling
  • On-Campus Recruitment Management
  • Employer Scheduling of Information Sessions, Interviews and Virtual Career Fairs
  • Swipe Card Kiosks
  • Reporting with advanced metrics & outcomes
  • Virtual Mock Interviews
  • Custom Dashboards for students that are mobile responsive
  • Pathways for Experiential Learning

Advocate

  • Case management system
  • Seamless end-to-end process for all types of activities/actions 
  • Proactively identify and support students at risk
  • Robust reporting engine with automated statistics, reports for accuracy and compliance; unique reporting system for campus security Engagement Toolset
  • Automation, personalization, and notification features
  • Highly configurable workflows
  • Out-of-the box report forms and templates
  • Enhanced recording and tracking capabilities for increased transparency and compliance
  • Record referrals to other university or external support services; guest tracker with card swipe integration
  • Mobile adaptive, user-friendly, and highly-engaging system
  • Comprehensive IT system integration and granular user rights

Accommodate

  • Accommodation request management system; online request and approval processes for accommodations
  • Customizable workflows for accommodation review and approval
  • Digital submission of medical documentation
  • Centralized student case files with history tracking
  • Secure messaging between students and staff with automated notifications and reminders
  • Automates letter of accommodation processes
  • Alternative testing / exam booking management*
  • Customizable reports for institutional and government reporting
  • Data analytics on accommodation trends and service utilization
  • Integrates via REST-APIs
  • Centre for Teaching & Learning, UTSC
  • Co-Curricular Record (CCR)
  • Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering: UNERD & USRP
  • Faculty of Arts & Science: Arts & Science Internship Program (ASIP)
  • Family Care Office
  • Indigenous Research Network
  • New College
  • Office of Indigenous Initiatives
  • OISE
  • School of Graduate Studies
  • Sexual Violence Prevention & Support Centre (SVPSC)
  • Sustainability Office

St George Student Life:

  • Accessibility Services
  • Centre for Community Partnerships
  • Centre for International Experience
  • Centre for Learning Strategy Support
  • Clubs & Leadership Development
  • First Nations House
  • Health & Wellness
  • Housing
  • Mentorship & Peer Programs
  • Multi-Faith Centre
  • Orientation, Transition & Engagement
  • TCard Services
  • UTM Student Affairs & Services
    • Accessibility Services
    • Housing
    • International Education Centre
    • Centre for Student Engagement
  • UTSC Office
    • Accessibility Services
    • Health & Wellness
    • International Student Centre
    • Student Life Programs
  • Legacy UniHub Units:
    • UTM Management
    • UTSC Management
  • Dalla Lana School of Public Health
  • Faculty of Information
  • Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
  • Rotman Commerce
  • Tri-campus Career Service Units (in implementation)
    • Career Exploration & Education (CxEd)
    • UTM Career Centre
    • UTSC Academic Advising & Career Centre (AA&CC)
  • UTM Institute for Management & Innovation
  • UTM Management
  • UTSC School of the Environment
  • UTM Institute for Management & Innovation
  • UTM Management
  • UTSC School of the Environment
  • U of T Co-op:
    • Arts & Science Co-op, UTSC
    • Management Co-op, UTSC
    • Professional Experience Year, FASE
    • Arts & Science Internship Program (ASIP), FAS
    • UTM Co-op Internship
  • Advocate
    • School of Graduate Studies
    • UTM Student Wellness & Support
    • UTM Academic Integrity (in implementation)
    • SCRAP / Sexual Violence Prevention & Support Centre / St. George Emergency Housing (in planning)
  • Accommodate
    • St. George Accessibility Services

System Integration

This image is being used to illustrate the potential connections between Symplicity products that are part of the Student Engagement & Support Ecosystem. At the top of the image is Folio / UniHub with arrows indicating that students, staff and faculty can all login to Folio / UniHub. There are also arrows pointing from Folio / UniHub to 6 circles in a horizontal line below. Five of these circles represent various Symplicity products (Accommodate, CSM, Advocate) that are owned by specific units listed in the image as Division A, Division B, Shared Service Unit X, Shared Service Unit Y, Division C. These circles are connected by bi-directional horizontal arrows that are intended to indicate that information can move between these systems, as appropriate. The sixth circle, that is to the far-left of the image, is also connected with a bidirectional arrow to the circle to its right. This circle is referring to IASA Applications such as the Student Advising Service (SAS) on Salesforce. From each of the five circles that represent Symplicity products, arrows come from the circle and point to a single circle below that represents the Student Experience Record Store. This indicates that student experiences can be pulled out of Symplicity products so that students can view and track their engagement across these platforms. And, finally, there is a single arrow from the Student Experience Record Store circle to another circle below that is titled the Institutional Data Dashboard. This indicates that the data from the Student Experience Record Store can be pulled into a data lake and visualized in data visualization software. At the bottom of the image is a caveat indicating that the image is a hypothetical scenario and isn’t representative of our current ecosystem and that cross-system integrations are to be developed as required.

Timeline

The Student Engagement & Support Ecosystem (SESE) is the result of the 2022 tri-campus technology review that was led by OVPIUE and OVPS and supported by Deloitte. The review resulted in three core recommendations:

  1. Approach to Technology: Ecosystem
    1. Explore supplementing a foundational platform with additional vendors as required to allow for flexibility across and within divisions and units.
  2. Foundational Platform: Symplicity
    1. Procure and/or migrate to a modular Symplicity system that leverages Symplicity products as U of T’s foundational platform for tri-campus student life services, careers, experiential learning and other co-curricular and curricular student engagement.
  3. Implementation Model: Hybrid
    1. Align on a hybrid implementation scenario where technology solutions within the ecosystem are negotiated institutionally, and the institution engages collaboratively with interested divisions and/or groups of divisions to support the implementation and integration of divisional and shared instances.

Following this review, the institution signed a Master Service Agreement with Symplicity to bring the existing 16 Symplicity instances at U of T under an umbrella agreement and implemented Folio (UniHub) in 2023.

Executive Sponsorship

  • Professor Susan McCahan, Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education and Innovations
  • Professor Sandy Welsh, Vice-Provost, Students

Questions about this project?

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