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DAVIDSON COLLEGE & COVID-19

Davidson College Controls Spread with No-Code Symptom Reporting

women wearing facemasks and maintaining distance due to Covid

Davidson College used Kuali Build and SnapLogic to collect and leverage COVID-19 data, providing decision-makers with the timely information they need.

1

Problem

Colleges and universities across the nation took many precautions moving into fall 2020 to avoid a campus-wide outbreak of COVID-19. Like other institutions, Davidson College had a matter of weeks to develop a system to keep campus safe.
Davidson’s Digital Transformation team searched for a way to track, collect, and leverage COVID-19 surveillance testing data. Their solution needed to be:

  • Easy and fast for students, faculty, and staff.
  • Easy to understand for back-end users (i.e., avoid custom code where possible).
  • Deliver data on symptoms, cases, and testing compliance for decision-makers.
2

Solution

The Digital Transformation team quickly produced a scalable solution that met all of their requirements. They selected Kuali Build, a forms and workflow software, to collect and store data, and SnapLogic, an integration tool, to manipulate the data.

3

Methodology

In Kuali Build, the team created two forms:

  • A form to track student attendance at the COVID surveillance testing site.
  • A form to help administrators reconcile student attendance against assigned testing dates. When connected to a SnapLogic pipeline and the master student testing data set, the form produces the following lists:  

    1)  Students who were tested and should have been tested

    2) Students who were not tested and should have been tested

    3) Students who were tested and should not have been tested

    4) Exempt students

At the test site, the attendance tracking form provides a seamless user experience for students, test site volunteers, and test site coordinators. Using Kuali Build’s APIs for integrations, the Kuali Build form pulls information from Davidson’s identity systems. Students scan their ID card and step up to a laptop where a new Kuali Build form has been opened with their ID number and name already entered. The students answer only a few questions before moving on to complete their COVID test with an on-site medical provider.

At the end of each testing day, COVID test site coordinators submit the second form to start the reconciliation process. The day’s attendance data then feeds into SnapLogic. Within SnapLogic, Davidson can easily manipulate data into custom formats without writing and maintaining custom code. After processing through SnapLogic, Davidson has the information needed to monitor testing compliance, namely students who were tested but should not have been tested, and students who were not tested but should have been tested. That data is pushed to administrators who use it for reconciliation purposes.

When combined with detailed daily records of students’ symptoms and entry onto campus, Davidson has the data to carry out contact tracing when necessary.

4

Results

Together, these tools provided the agility needed for the team to exceed expectations. The team delivered the data leadership needed, provided an easy-to-use interface for students, faculty, and staff, and wrote no custom code.

These impressive deliverables were developed and deployed in under ten days. Over time, Davidson has and will continue to leverage new Kuali Build features to iterate on and improve the attendance tracking and reconciliation processes. Without their current solution, Davidson College would likely use a data management tool like Excel to export, manipulate, and analyze the data manually, which would undoubtedly take far longer to process and significantly limit data reportability.

Already, Davidson has received 10,000 submissions in six weeks of using the Kuali Build form. The scalable solution not only saved Davidson College substantial time and labor costs but empowered the campus to return to in-person instruction. Most importantly, the solution provided confidence for university leadership when certainty in data and student safety was critical.

Are you looking for a solution to bring agility to paper and PDF processes? Learn more about what you can build today using our workflow and form builder software.

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