The first phase of Project Beacon, the Student Management Program Project, began last week with a demonstration of the new Curriculum Management System, CourseLoop.

Gail White, Executive Director, Student Engagement and Registrar, has kicked off our new Curriculum Management System (CMS) implementation project, part of Project Beacon, with an initiation workshop attended by the internal project team, University stakeholders and representatives from Factor5, the creators of the new CMS. This is the first major milestone after selecting CourseLoop by Factor5 as the preferred CMS.

The team was given a demo of the CourseLoop system and an overview of the implementation approach.

Over the next five weeks, the project will work through an intensive Planning, Scoping and Design (PSD) phase involving 36 workshops. Teams of stakeholders from across the University will plan and design the first module of the CMS implementation, a governance module, to replace the existing and outdated ‘Webforms’, which will manage, review and approve workflows for new and updated Course Proposals.

“It is very exciting to launch this project, which is so important to both the staff and student experience, and to be on the leading edge of curriculum management technology. We will be working with thought leaders from Factor5 who truly understand higher education and our curriculum management needs,” explains White.

Professor Sean Brawley, PVC Programs and Pathways, was equally excited to attend the kick off and saw it as an important milestone.

“If you had asked me 12 months ago if I thought we could identify the requirements, select a vendor and kick off the project in less than six months, I would have had my doubts. That we have achieved this milestone is a testament to the power of collaboration among our colleagues and our ability as an institution to embrace agile approaches and methodologies,” says Professor Brawley.

The CMS will be implemented in three phases with Module 1 going live at the end of 2018 and subsequent releases in mid-2019, including the replacement of the Handbook system.

This story was also published in Teche.