This winter, the Student Sunrise project held configuration review sessions with campus teams as a way to showcase work completed to date and gather feedback from those who have contributed to the system design process.
While the configuration reviews didn’t demonstrate every process or function, they did help Workday Student “come to life” and showed progress made in translating requirements from the campus community into a system that functions well for WashU specifically. The sessions also were an opportunity for campus teams members to build their knowledge of other functional areas, as well as for the project to hear feedback on configurations before we finalize system design and begin testing.
“Any time we can review our progress with our campus partners is a win,” said Beth Lee, functional director on the Student Sunrise project. “It gives us a chance to touch base and make sure we’re on the right path, and anything that doesn’t work quite right is noted sooner rather than later.”
Attendees offered their thoughts in a post-session survey. Below are a few aspects of the system that participants viewed as improvements over our current systems and processes.
Advising & Curriculum
- Greater visibility into academic requirements and progress tracking will help students plan what courses they need when. Academic requirements will also tie into course registration, making it simple for students to register for those courses. Greater visibility will also help advisors and students ensure they are meeting goals along the way to graduation.
- Consolidating advisor types into one system gives students a streamlined view and advisors a more complete picture of their students’ progress.
- International students are identified on their student profiles and in reporting, giving advisors a quicker understanding of their registration needs and class requirements.
Academic Foundations & Admissions
- Because HR, finance and student data will be integrated in one system, changes to personal data won’t need to be made in multiple systems.
- Students will be able to add, edit and remove “friends and family” data. This access enables students to allow others to make payments, view their accounts and statements, view current classes, and/or view grades. Each individual may have different levels of access, and the student has full control over all access decisions.
- Transfer credit rules in Workday can be configured to automatically award transfer credit. These transfer credits can then be applied to course pre-/co-requisites as well as support academic planning for students and advisors and degree auditing for registrars. This automatic process supports equitable evaluation processes and minimizes manual application of credit.
Financial Aid & Student Financials
- Payment precedence groups will be used to designate how financial aid is applied. These groups will determine the order in which awards are applied (both in contrast to other payments and the timing of the charges), the period of charges to which the funding is applied, and which charges the item can or cannot cover. This will ensure payments comply with regulations.
- The ability to automate tuition charges based on several factors such as registration or special programs will save manual work.
- Workday will automate holds for students who have balances that are past due. These holds also will be automatically removed when the student has paid, and they can be temporarily overridden if needed.
- Payments can be applied in a designated order to designated items based on payment precedence groups. This will ensure that the charges designated as most important are paid first. For example, payments can be applied to the current academic period before being applied to prior periods.
Records & Registration
- Students will be able to register from a saved schedule/plan, which will enhance the student registration experience. Students will be able to plan ahead (including by making alternate schedules) to make registration more efficient.
- Leave of absence (LOA) requests will be unified across the university ensuring we are collecting the same information from all students. The system will notify appropriate campus partners when a student’s LOA request is approved.
As the project progresses, there will be additional opportunities for students, faculty and staff members to get involved and see Workday Student firsthand.