Problem: Paper-Based Processes

Bow Valley College, a public community college in Calgary Canada which supports approximately 15,000 students, was struggling with their curriculum management business processes. These processes lacked standardization and were heavily based on email communication and paper forms.
Bow Valley administrators were most concerned with the lack of transparency in their processes; tracking down a proposal took hours. Additionally, due to the nature of paper-based processes, administrators spent hours structuring and organizing data manually.
Bow Valley searched for a solution to help them improve business processes and expand the
capabilities of their curriculum management team.

Solution

Enter Kuali Student. With Kuali Student’s Curriculum Management and Catalog Management
modules, Bow Valley College moved their curriculum management business processes to a
digital format and automated the process of building the catalog.

“I have to say it’s a really remarkable and unique approach to curriculum and is
something that would benefit a lot of institutions. What we’ve seen so far has been
awesome.” - Arif Ansari, Assistant Registrar, Bow Valley College

Results: Streamlining Processes Saves Time and Resources

The Kuali Curriculum & Catalog Management solution saved Bow Valley College 50 to 75 hours each month and well over 100 hours each curriculum and catalog cycle!

Bow Valley College achieved these impressive time savings using Kuali Curriculum & Catalog
Management to streamline processes and reduce errors.  

Reliable Transparent Processes

Before using Kuali, Bow Valley lacked standardization in forms and workflows across departments. Processes were managed inefficiently on paper and spreadsheets, and data was duplicated and stored in multiple places. Additionally, staff wasted time tracking down proposals.

With Kuali, Bow Valley streamlined, standardized, and automated processes using tailored smart forms and dynamic workflows. Automated processes allowed Bow Valley to collect structured data that was already organized and could be shared across systems to improve accuracy and data integrity, significantly reducing manual entry, data duplication, and unorganized file storage.

One staff member remarked, “(The benefits are) obvious, really. A tracked workflow with sign off versus documents flying around all over the place to random people via email. Pre-Kuali, it was fairly chaotic.”

Reduced Errors

Before Kuali, Bow Valley faculty and staff regularly dealt with confusion around the most updated version of a course, program or other content type. There were inconsistencies in program mapping and credit distribution. All of these issues caused frustration among faculty and staff.

With Kuali, Bow Valley provided staff with clearly versioned and accessible courses, programs, and other content types from one solution. Kuali’s system significantly improved the accuracy of dependency mapping and program credit distribution.

Additionally, curricular data and content was dynamically added to the catalog, reducing the time spent manually inputting and cross-checking for errors by up to 50%!

With Kuali Curriculum & Catalog Management, Bow Valley now has:

1. A repository for course outlines.

2. A single source of truth for curricular data that connects to other systems and can
produce specific outputs.

3. An auto-generated Academic Calendar using approved CM data.

4. Reporting on-demand so that users can create their own custom reports about
curricular data captured in the system.

5. Workflows are consistent, transparent, and enforceable; and decisions are stored as
a record in one place.

Bow Valley College looks forward to continued success with Kuali Student!