what's happening with electronic transcript exchange in ... · •documents required vary by...

What's Happening with Electronic

Transcript Exchange in Canada: An Update

from Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario(and a few other places, eh?)

Presented by:

Wednesday, April 02 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM

Session ID 2062

Doug Holmes

Programmer Analyst III

Ontario Universities’ Application Centre

Dorothy Chapman, M.A.

Systems Manager, Admissions

Registrar's Office

University of Waterloo

AACRAO - Denver 2014 Session ID: 2062

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IntroductionThis session will offer:

• Shared experiences from four Canadian admission application centres successfully using the PESC Standards and how this has allowed them to be successful in improved data exchanges

• Perspective from a partner school, The University of Waterloo

• Updates on other electronic exchange initiatives across the Canadian higher education landscape

Let’s journey across Canada from west to east ...


BCcampus Overview• BCcampus, located in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, is a publicly funded organization

that uses information technology to connect the expertise, programs, and resources of all B.C. post-secondary institutions under a collaborative service delivery framework

• About BCcampus

• Connect and collaborate with B.C.’s 26 post-secondary institutions.

• Receives its annual operating funds from the government of British Columbia, Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology.

• Advised by a Strategic Council comprised of decision-makers in the post-secondary system and the Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology.

• Included in their list of services are ApplyBC and TranscriptsBC.

Source: http://bccampus.ca/

BCcampus & data standards• The PESC data types are used as the underlying types for

• Online admission portal to post-secondary BC institutions

• Province-wide directory of confine and distance courses in BC

• Course record retrieval (unofficial)

• The PESC standard is used for the transcript exchange service for 6 institutions now and is expanding.

• Provincial government also has proprietary electronic high school transcript

Source: Presentation: “Introducing PESC – Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council" CANHEIT 2012 conference


British Columbia Transcript Exchanges• B.C. secondary via proprietary

• B.C. postsecondary via EDI and PESC XML

PESC XML College

Transcripts

EDI Postsecondary

Transcript s

Proprietary High

School Transcripts


ApplyAlberta Overview• ApplyAlberta is a made-in-Alberta post-secondary application system.

• ApplyAlberta makes it simple to apply to one or more post-secondary institutions.

• ApplyAlberta takes the guesswork out of requesting Alberta high school and post-secondary

transcripts.

• History

• In 2005, the Access to the Future Act was passed by the Alberta government. Among other

thing, this legislation called for the development of a common application system for

Alberta’s publicly funded post-secondary institutions. Twenty-one universities, colleges,

and technical institutes collaborated with Alberta Advanced Education and Technology to

develop ApplyAlberta.

• In July 2008, the Alberta Post-Secondary Application System was incorporated as a non-

profit society under the Societies Act of Alberta. Membership was subsequently expanded

to include the five Independent Academic Institutions in the province, bringing the number

of participating institutions to 26.

• ApplyAlberta went live in October 2009.


ApplyAlberta & data standards• ApplyAlberta uses the PESC standards for:

• Application for Admission

• High School Transcripts

• Post-Secondary Transcripts

• Data transport

• Transcript request and response

• University of Lethbridge was heavily involved in the creation of the Application for Admission standard and helped to ensure it reflected what Canadian institutions needed



Alberta Transcript Exchanges• Alberta secondary and postsecondary via PESC XML

PESC XML High

School Transcripts

PESC XML High School &

College Transcripts


Saskatchewan - Upcoming Transcript Exchange• No centralized application centre

• Project underway to send high school transcripts from central government database to postsecondaries

PESC XML High

School Transcripts


OCAS Overview• The Ontario College Application Service Inc. (OCAS), located in Guelph, Ontario,

Canada, is a is a non-profit corporation created by Ontario's twenty-four public

Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology and Institutes of Technology and

Advanced Learning.

• About the OCAS

• Three primary lines of business: applications to college, data warehousing, marketing

• Services include (among many others):

• online applications sent electronically to colleges

• electronic secondary and postseconday transcripts (eTMS)

• Imaged copies of applicant driver's licenses, proof of citizenship and other documents

available via web, email or download

• The OCAS annually processes applications for more than 180,000 people.

Source: http://www.ocas.ca/


OCAS Electronic Transcripts – eTMS

• Trading partners...• 28 Ontario Colleges

• 53 Ontario School Boards

• Nearly 1,200 Ontario High Schools

• 20 Ontario Universities through the OUAC (hub to hub)

• Transcript fulfillment has been reduced from 28 days to under 5 days on average

• Partners that use their new Auto eTMS real time web services solution fulfill a transcript request in minutes

• Nearly 98% of these requests require NO manual interaction.


Auto eTMS Turnaround Time

* = Current Academic year: October 8, 2013 – March 5, 2014

Average turn around time for 98.1% of transcript requests is less than 1 minute!

Total Transcript Requests Sent * 860 %

Automated Transcripts 844 98.1%

Manual Upload Transcripts 4 0.5%

No Matching Transcript 12 1.4%


Comparison...days waiting for transcripts

Traditional

eTMS

Auto eTMS


OUAC Overview• The Ontario Universities' Application Centre (OUAC), located in Guelph, Ontario,

Canada, is a central bureau whose key function is the processing of applications for admission to the province's universities.

• About the OUAC

• The OUAC manages the flow of student applications to Ontario’s 20 universities so that the universities can make offers of admission for Undergraduate (UAS), Law (OLSAS), Medical (OMSAS), Rehabilitation Sciences (ORPAS) and Education (TEAS) programs.

• The OUAC is a non-profit organization, classified as a charity.

• Proceeds, in excess of operating costs, support the admission services at the universities.

• The OUAC provides contracted development for university-specific, applicant-related systems (graduate applications and undergraduate part-time).

• The OUAC processes more than 600,000 applications annually, for 175,000 applicants.

• Most of the major business functions at the OUAC are heavily dependent upon the exchange of electronic files.


OUAC Proprietary Transcript Exchanges• For Secondary, the OUAC supports several proprietary

data formats (would like to move towards PESC XML)

Proprietary

XML

~ 3,000

students sent

annually

~ 87,000

students sent

annually

~ 4,500

students sent

annually

Proprietary

flat file

Note: OOP = Out-Of-Province (i.e. non-Ontario) postsecondary


OUAC EDI Transcript Exchanges• For Postsecondary, the OUAC supports the full EDI SPEEDE

transcript suite (an accepted PESC standard … www.pesc.org)

~ 200 transcripts sent

annually from 2 colleges

~ 170,000 transcripts sent annually

does not include “College to College”

recipient for Law, Medical, Rehab

- EDI for 19 universities; Paper for the 20th

- WES and OUAC Proprietary PDF for Law,

Medical and Rehabilitation Sciences


OUAC PESC XML Transcript Exchanges• Secondary - OUAC receives the PESC XML High School Transcript for non-

current Ontario high school students and returns the PESC XML Transcript

Acknowledgement

Phase 1 - PDF

Phase 2 - XML

XML

XML


• Postsecondary

• Support the PESC XML College Transcript & Acknowledgement (using

corresponding SPEEDE EDI XML crosswalks)

OUAC PESC XML Transcript Exchanges

XML via

WS

EDI

Phase 1 - Pilot (2 senders)

Phase 2 - Additional senders

Phase 3 - Bi-directional

Paper


• Postsecondary (cont’d)

• Apr 2014 - support full PESC XML transcript suite & transcript batch (using all

remaining SPEEDE EDI XML crosswalks) with 1 pilot school

• Convert other trading partners from EDI to PESC XML over time

XML

EDIEDIEDI

OUAC PESC XML Transcript Exchanges


By the numbers …• First production year …

• 23,514 transcripts …… 815 (3.5%) of those fully EDI!

• Most recent production year (2013 application cycle)…• 171,915 transcripts …

… 141,388 (82.2%) of those fully EDI!

• Since 1997 application cycle:

• 1.99 million transcripts

• 1.36 million sent fully EDI between partners

• UG enrollment 30,000• Grad enrollment 5,300• UG applications 2013 cycle 35,800• Grad applications 2013 cycle 9,700

SIS = Campus Solutions since 2001 (Oracle)DMS = OnBase since 2008 (Hyland Software)

Home to the world’s largest post‐secondary Co‐operative Education program!

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/campus-solutions-1915256.pdf

https://www.hyland.com/

http://uwaterloo.ca/co-operative-education/

Agenda• Applications

• From the OUAC…

• SIS for Applicants

• Document Uploads

• Test Scores

• Keywords

• SIS / DMS Integration

• Lessons Learned

• On the Radar

• Q & A

• Online applications @ OUAC

• Applicants can order electronic transcripts as part of the online application

• Applications loaded M-F into the SIS (Quest)

• EDI (post-secondary) and Ontario (secondary) transcripts received M-F and processed

• Identity Management runs nightly to assign userids

• Applicants activate their Waterloo accounts and create their own passwords

• SIS sends biographic and application info to DMS

• Applicants can log in to SIS (view status, upload docs, complete AIF)

Applications

• OUAC pdf application data sheets, EDI transcripts and pdf BC high school grades which are loaded into DMS and automatically indexed

• Auto-indexing: thanks to the OUAC providing file naming options, we take ‘keywords’ from the pdf file name and via an SIS process, rename the files with student# _school#.pdf; the DMS collects the files and uses the student # and school# to auto-index the doc

• SIS process takes EDI transcripts and uses ‘keywords’ in the file and also renames docs for DMS auto-indexing

• UG also receives pdf transcripts from ‘Parchment’

• UG & Grad final official transcripts are received as EDI or paper (this is the only paper document for Grad)

From the OUAC, we receive:

http://www.parchment.com/

SIS Landing Page

View Application on SIS

Ontario

High

School

Transcripts

• Documents required vary by program or faculty

• Documents may include unofficial transcripts, resumes, personal statements, writing samples, test scores and immigration documents

• Currently accept pdf format only (but plan to accept other formats next cycle – new virus checking functionality available)

• Uploaded transcripts are ‘unofficial’

• ‘official’ transcripts, direct from the institution (EDI or paper), are required after offer acceptance

• Documents uploaded by the applicant go to a document server and stored by document type; the file is ‘named’ by the SIS with enough information to facilitate auto-indexing (e.g. student#_school#.pdf)

• Files are picked up by our DMS, auto-indexed and matched up with the applications in workflow

Note: we still get paper ‘application packages’ – manually scan and index

Document Upload

Document Upload Page

Test Scores• Graduate applicants can upload unofficial score reports (TOEFL,

IELTS, Pearson-A, GRE, GMAT)

• Official TOEFL and GRE reports for grad applicants are collected electronically as csv files from ETS and auto-indexed into our DMS

• DMS matches report to existing applications based on name & date of birth

• Project in progress for XML format IELTS loaded directly into DMS

• Unmatched test scores and other documents are indexed with the information available (names, gender, document type, school)

• Test scores without applications & other unsolicited documents go to ‘Unfound’ queue in DMS; matching process runs 4x/day and potential matches listed for staff review

Keywords on a Transcript:

Keywords

Facilitate document retrieval (i.e. search for a person and/or their documents)

Can be used to enforce for document security

Enable users to compare documents from the same school

For scanned paper documents, keywords entered manually

Used by & for auto-indexing

Can be used in Queries

Can be used for aggregate reporting

Some Document Counts

Sept 1/12‐Aug 31/13 ‐ Sample of UG doc counts

TOEFL 1,924IELTS 3,056AP 643SAT/ACT 1,422Official Transcripts - EDI 2,546Official Transcripts – other 26,602Official Ont. High School Transcr. 23,963Unofficial Transcripts 6,475

• Document types in Admissions:

• program (e.g. reference letter)

• person (e.g. transcript)

• Update documents received

• Create html AIF/SIF forms

• Transfer uploaded files DMS

• Generate autofill files (applicant, school and referee data) for DMS

• Reference received displays in SIS

• Update admission decisions (admit, deny)

• UG some application evaluation data to SIS

• Update user security

SIS/DMS Integration

• Naming conventions (WatCLASS, document types, checklists)

• Defined document management policies

• Expect to provide lots of customer service to applicants who don’t read instructions

• Provide inquiry access to staff at the same time as go-live

• Communicate, communicate, communicate

• Provide exceptional training to all levels of end-users (one-on-one, manuals, video)

Lessons Learned

https://uwaterloo.ca/records-management/records-classification-and-retention-schedule/introduction-university-waterloo-classification

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfF0DzvK8jQ&list=PL4A004E16895C3039&index=7

• New technology requires training for technical staff too (e.g. XML)

• Don’t wait 2+ years between implementing DMS for Admissions & other functional areas

• Document ‘customizations’ (especially ‘why’)

• Users’ technical skills improve over time

• Different cultures expect different services

• Always have a plan ‘B’

Lessons Learned (cont’d)

On the Radar...• IELTS (XML format) – in progress

• Canadian Transcript Exchange Network – in progress

• Mobile! (summer 2014)

• Convert EDI transcripts (send & receive) to XML

• UG Offers online

• Real-time environment (identity management system, SIS security provisioning, web services, automated notifications)

• De-customize self-service and use more delivered features/functionality

• Electronic ACT/SAT loads

Q & A

Contact Information:Dorothy ChapmanSystems Manager, AdmissionsRegistrar’s OfficeUniversity of WaterlooWaterloo, ON Canada N2L [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


Québec Transcript Exchanges• CEGEP via proprietary XML for over 10 years

• Québec universities exchange their transcripts via PDF

Proprietary

XML

Proprietary

PDF


Québec Transcript Exchanges (cont’d)• McGill University & CEGEP transcripts

• Many common elements in terms of programs, courses, graduation requirements etc. between all the colleges so we designed a program to make certain calculations based on faculty needs

• Wrote an auto-decision program to take advantage of all this common data

• Designed a common transcript for the CEGEP information (very similar to the real one) which:

• makes life much easier for those reviewing the transcript

• allows faster decisions

• allows monitoring cut-off values quite closely

Acknowledgement: Karen Sciortino, Senior Admissions Officer, Enrolment Services, McGill University


Eastern Canada – Upcoming Transcript Exchanges• No centralized application centres

• Projects underway to send high school transcripts from central government databases to postsecondaries

- Provincial governments house

high school transcripts

- Transmit in PESC XML format

• Canadian National Transcript Network – all electronic

• All provinces & territories (in time)

• PESC XML standards

• Secondary & Postsecondary Transcripts

• Requests

• Acknowledgements

• Faster, less work, more accurate

• Potential to eliminate fraudulent transcripts!

• Major benefit for the entire sector: Students, High Schools, Colleges, and Universities

The National Dream

Provinces Engaged


Cross-Canada Electronic Transcript Exchange

• PESC Canadian User Group (PCUG) initiative underway to develop a

framework for Canada-wide transcript exchange

Phase 1: PESC XML

High School Transcript

sent to colleges & universities

Phase 2: PESC XML

College Transcript

sent between colleges &

universities


Doug Holmes

[email protected]

519.823.1940 ext 6224

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Session ID 2062

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Thank You!

mailto:[email protected]