Symplicity’s UK team recently hosted an informative, all-star university panel to discuss how they are each utilising Symplicity and IT solutions to pivot their career services in the wake of COVID-19. Technology (including Symplicity solutions) has enabled each university to offer its students high level ongoing services, but all in unique ways.
The panel included:
- Jo Earl, Student Data and Systems Manager at the University of West England, Bristol;
- Martin Dones, Information Services Manager at the University of Bath; and
- Stuart Marriott, Associate Director of Career and Employability at the University of Nottingham
Discussion Topics and Highlights
COVID-19 Tracking
At the University of West England, Bristol, Jo Earl and her team had to re-evaluate their systems as it became increasingly necessary that the university needed to track and manage any students, staff, or faculty that may have tested positive for COVID-19. Ultimately, it enabled them to track and support their students, report cases to various teams across institutions, and provide in depth reporting for internal and external reporting and local councils in the region.
COVID-19 Testing
CareerHub was instrumental for the University of Nottingham to help manage its COVID-19 response plan and booking regular COVID-19 testing for the over 20,000 students at the university. This enabled the university to develop up to date workflows to support students returning home for holidays and then test the students again before they returned to campus all achieved with the CareerHub Events module.
Bringing Campus Departments Together
At the University of Bath, CareerHub’s appointment module enabled the accommodations and placements offices to customise the system for their own needs to continue providing ongoing, uninterrupted support by easily finding time to connect with students that needed their services. Additionally, with CareerHub, the university launched workflows for COVID-19 support and resources that were continuously updated with campus information.
While at the University of West England, Bristol, student record staff and inquiry management implemented a variety of workflows and procedures to help their departments manage their offerings.
Customisable Reporting
Jo Earl discussed how her team at the University of West England, Bristol has implemented CareerHub’s reporting features to support the university’s COVID-19 team. With a customizable form, the team was able to pinpoint who was having a challenge using the form, where questions should be improved to provide better data, and find out what questions they should have been asking to get an overview of how the team is responding to various COVID-19 student requests. This has enabled the team to stay up to date in ensuring a safe campus environment and easily improve their workflows.
Virtual Is Here to Stay
All three panelists agreed that even with a return to in-person university teaching, their use of IT solutions to meet a virtual world are here to stay. As Jo Earl summarised, “I think that virtual appointments will remain very popular. And there is a lot to be said about the time saving nature and efficiency of them and obviously the convenience of them for our students.... I think the expansion to support services we wouldn’t normally have in the systems are going to stay.”
You can view the full recorded session below.
Symplicity CareerHub is a career development platform for universities and colleges. Its highly configurable components and workflows empower teams to enhance career development and your students’ employability. Over 100+ universities depend on CareerHub as their central employability hub. The platform is a one-stop-shop for managing appointments, events, activities, vacancies, and employability. CareerHub enables you to digitalise your service offering, collaborate through scalable utilisation across multiple teams, and provide tailored services to your students 24/7.
If you want to directly contact us on how Symplicity can support your university, email info@symplicity.com or schedule a conversation.
