According to KMPG research, only 54% of surveyed educational institutions build their workflows on digital platforms. So, what keeps the other 46% from implementing information technology and workflow automation in their day-to-day processes, and which challenges do they have to address?

In this blog, we’ll look to answer these questions as well as explore the three most typical workflows for higher education that can be automated with airSlate in mere minutes.

Take note: airSlate offers a library of ready-to-use Flow Templates for higher education institutions. But we’ll dwell on that more a little later.

What is workflow automation in Education?

In simple terms, workflow automation is the process of automating human tasks, data, and file routing between individuals or systems.

Speaking of higher education establishments, such processes include student registration, workshop application, checklist evaluation, lesson planning, student attendance checking, student data tracking, and many others.

The table below contains the main automation functions for higher education establishments and the impact of automation on education (improving the student experience, reducing errors, increasing efficiency, etc.):

Each workflow automation solution has a set list of steps a user has to follow to automate a certain process. The level of complexity depends on whether the platform is low-code or no-code. 

If you’re using a low-code solution, your educational establishment will most likely need a professional developer to set it up. In the case of no-code solutions, some organizations tend to rely on citizen developers. However, the key benefit of such platforms is that literally anyone can learn to use them, no coding skills required.

In one example, Claremont Graduate University used airSlate to streamline its adjunct contracting process. The university suffered from data errors, misplaced signatures, time loss, and additional expenses because most of its workflows were paper-based. airSlate enabled the Claremont Graduate University to create automated workflows across multiple departments and solved the establishment’s key issues by going paperless.

airSlate helps digitize and automate academic processes of any complexity. Take paper, confusion, and mistakes out of the equation and replace them with fast and simple forms for collecting more accurate data and saving time.

How to assess document workflow automation needs for colleges and universities

To derive maximum benefit from workflow automation for your institution, start by identifying:

• which processes should be automated
• how an automation system can increase a school’s efficiency
• what business process automation solution is best suited for this purpose

1. Conduct a workflow audit

Investigate and assess the structure of those workflows you’ve already been using to identify their strong and weak points.

Here are some useful questions to help you conduct an efficient workflow audit:

• Which workflows does your educational institution have in place?
• Which of them require the most paperwork?
• Which of them require the most people to sign off?
• Which automation tools are you already using? (if any)
• Which processes have been automated to a certain extent?
• What is the current state of data security within your educational institution?

2. Determine the key inefficiencies to work on

The next step is analyzing the processes that suffer from inefficiencies due to a lack of automation.

As a rule, these include:

• Manual tasks (data input and transfers, document sorting, and other routine, repeatable processes)
• Resource wastes (paper, ink, printing/scanning equipment, etc.)
• Communication challenges (reminders, notifications, scheduling, etc.)
• Educator and student satisfaction (suggestions, complaints, etc.)

3. Visualize your workflow

Simple though it may seem, workflow visualization is a highly useful technique. By creating a process diagram you observe:

• the parties involved 
• documents included
• document routing from one party to another 
• actions each party takes with those documents
• and more.

As a result, you will get a clear picture of which processes don’t require human involvement and can be automated or even eliminated.

4. Pick the right automation tool

And finally, select the automation solution that addresses the exact pains your current workflows suffer from. There are plenty of tools and techniques for automation of data sources in higher education, that’s why we advise focusing on the following key points:

• Functionality

Check whether the automation platform’s functionality fulfills the requirements of your educational establishment’s workflows. For example, if you work with external systems (cloud storage services, CRMs, etc.), the solution should support integrations with those systems.

• Required skills

Determine if the automation platform requires a certain level of programming skill (low-code) or doesn’t require coding at all (no-code). In the first case, you will need to involve professional developers, while no-code workflow automation solutions are easy for anyone to master.

• Deployment speed

This point is connected to the previous one: the simpler and more user-friendly the automation platform operating principles are, the faster it is to deploy.

• Price

‘The cheaper the better’ approach doesn’t work here. Even if the initial price is higher, you can end up paying less because there’s no need to organize special staff training, outsource to expensive developers, or buy additional tools (e.g., PDF editor, electronic signature).

3 airSlate Flow Templates for workflow automation in higher education

Here are the top 3 most popular airSlate Flow Templates for higher education:

1. Application Form for University Flow Template

Collecting and sorting applicant information is one of the biggest challenges for any educational institution that typically suffers from data loss, misplaced information, typos, and more. airSlate helps eliminate these issues with a fully automated Application Form for University Flow.

The configuration process is fast and simple:

1) Get registered with airSlate and create your Workspace.

2) Select the Flow library within your Workspace, enter the workflow keywords in the search field, select the flow template, and click Import.

3) Edit the default form or add more documents, if needed.

4) Visualize the process by adding workflow Steps and assigning access permissions to them.

5) Install and configure airSlate Bots to automatically transfer data, send notifications, archive completed documents, and more. The Bots are no-code so their configuration doesn’t require any technical skills.

That’s it! Just click the Send button and share your flow template with the specified recipients or create a sharable link for them to access.

2. Module Registration Form Flow Template

As a rule, module registration involves tons of paperwork and collects the usual types of data: student’s name, email, degree, selected courses, and so on. Education automation with airSlate solves this issue without hassle.

The template for proceeding with automation in the classroom is very similar to that of the previous Flow. 

The only difference is:

• the document to be used (you can add any document to the workflow but the default one in this flow template is a Module Registration Form):

• The workflow Steps and access permissions you assign (you can add the Steps you need and assign documents to them; the most typical Steps for this flow template are Student, Teacher, and Registrar):

• The Bots to add (this flow template has only one Email on Documents Completion Bot added, you can choose to add more Bots if needed):

Upon configuring the Bots, you can share the Module Registration Form Flow Template just like the Application Form for University Flow Template.

3. Student Attendance Form Flow Template

Be it college, or university, student attendance checks are an integral part of the educational process. That’s why the last on our list of airSlate Flow templates for higher education is the Student Attendance Form Flow Template.

You are already familiar with the flow configuration process from the previous two examples. Follow the same pattern, just:

• add the document you need for this flow template (the default one is a Student Attendance Form)

• add the necessary workflow Steps 
• install and configure the Bots you need
• Share the Student Attendance Form Flow Template with recipients just like in the previous two examples.

How to learn workflow automation in higher education?

To make matters more convenient, the airSlate Academy has created a compilation of courses dedicated to workflow automation in university or other education establishments.

For example, the Student Registration course demonstrates how to streamline and simplify the process of registration for any class, course, workshop, etc.

With the airSlate Academy, you get all the necessary information for setting up automatic workflows within your educational establishment quickly, easily, and without any coding skills required.

The bottom line

Regardless of your institutions’ education, profile, or size, workflow automation is capable of addressing its most common challenges by eliminating human errors, reducing resource waste, and streamlining the process from end to end. With airSlate Academy courses, you will learn to configure these types of workflows in a matter of minutes.

Stay tuned! Our upcoming posts will provide you with more information on the most popular workflows that other industries automate.

Contact us to explore the possibilities of business automation with airSlate.
Fill out the form below to request a free demo!

The post Workflow automation in higher education: 3 airSlate workflows for colleges and universities appeared first on airSlate Blog | Business automation.

The Problem

By way of background, I spent four years as a full-time faculty member at a large public university in the United States. I taught a bunch of technology- and analytics-related courses in the school’s Department of Information Systems (IS). Brass tacks: if there was any department within the university that should have embraced automation, it was mine.

Sadly, however, the IS department — and the entire university, for that matter — largely relied on manual processes when automated ones existed. Here are a couple examples to illustrate my point.

Inefficient Process #1

First, every professor had to fill out mid-semester student academic status reports (ASRs). The rationale here was straightforward: to formally document the progress of students and allow for corrective action. That way, a student couldn’t say, “Professor! I had absolutely no idea that I was failing your class.”

To call the process inefficient would be the epitome of an understatement. Professors needed to do the following:

• Download all student grades from the Canvas — the school’s learning-management system (LMS).
• Launch a separate website where they needed to manually input students’ ASRs and recommended corrective actions. 
• Routinely hit the save and next buttons because the web app only displayed 30 students.

Professors with hundreds of students could expect to spend a minimum of three hours completing this manual process. If you think that this process was prone to error, trust your judgment.

The easier, faster, and safer way would have involved automation via a simple bot. After all, students with A’s could stay the course. Those with D’s and F’s, however, needed to meet with the professor.

Brass tacks: a simple if-then statement meant that professors could spend less time completing low-value manual tasks and more time teaching.

Inefficient Process #2

The second example demonstrates that the first wasn’t unique. Some professors used Slack in lieu of email or Canvas’ messaging functionality. (I was one of them and even wrote Slack For Dummies, but I digress.) Canvas remained the system of record. That is, students didn’t submit their assignments via Slack. Professors didn’t store student grades there. Talk about channel conflict.

Every semester, hundreds of professors created their project teams in Canvas. Although Canvas-to-Slack integrations existed, the school opted not to deploy them. As a result, professors would have to manually create their groups in both systems, unless they wanted to play with Python scripts. (Few professors wanted to invest the time, though.)

Beyond the initial stage of creating a group, a related problem stemmed from group maintenance. That is, when a student dropped a class or transferred into a different section, Canvas would automatically reflect the change — but Slack would not. Again, this forced the professor to manually alter Slack groups. (To be fair, my ex-employer was hardly unique; plenty of other universities face similar problems.)

Simon Says: retire manual business processes once and for all

If you think that a single employee wasting time every week doesn’t matter, allow me to politely disagree. Over the course of the semester, it adds up.

Every minute spent copying and pasting means one fewer minute instructing students. #automation #education @philsimon
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Beyond that drawback, think about the overall effect on worker morale. Organizations that persist in using traditionally manual processes implicitly minimize the value of their employees’ time. By way of contrast, progressive institutions identify inefficient business processes and automate them with simple low- and no-code tools. It’s not hard.

About the author

The post Automation in action by Phil Simon appeared first on airSlate Blog | Business automation.

We talked to Eric Werner, Academic Affairs Analyst at CGU, to learn how airSlate helps streamline their workflows.

Scroll down to download the case study

Company profile

Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, research-intensive university dedicated to graduate-level education in Claremont, California, with around 2,300 students currently enrolled.

Interviewee’s name

Eric Werner

Academic Affairs Analyst

Location

Claremont, CA

The customer

Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a higher educational institution known for its cross-disciplinary research methods. At CGU, students get a tailor-made learning experience with the ability to take courses outside their field and pursue advanced degrees by blending programs. On top of that, limited enrollment and a vast selection of resources available to students allow them to effectively collaborate, innovate, and stay current.

The problem

Claremont Graduate University was facing recurring issues within their analog contracting processes, which specifically affected adjunct faculty employment. Sending paper-based contracts and forms back and forth would often result in multiple errors and misplaced signatures, not to mention the additional time and costs needed to resolve the errors. On average, it would take anywhere from three weeks to one and a half months to get a signed employment contract returned.

For CGU staff, finding a flexible digital solution capable of collecting signed contracts faster with eSignature was a critical need. Eric Werner remarks:

“I just need[ed] something that would let me put digital signatures on contracts because if I can cut off those three weeks that it takes us to go from putting a contract in the mail to getting it executed, that would just make my job so much easier.“

– Eric Werner, Academic Affairs Analyst at CGU

Another pressing issue came from the ever-expanding physical storage space that the actual paperwork was demanding. The persistent buildup of paper documents resulted in poor file maintenance, duplication, and failure to update records.

The answer

Adopting airSlate allowed for flexible no-code workflow automation, making the signature process easier and faster. Within Claremont Graduate University, airSlate is used to build workflows across multiple departments, including the registrar’s office, the provost office, HR, and others.

One of the most common use cases for airSlate is building a Flow for requesting access to university applications. When a new staff member is hired, the supervisor can request access for that staff member. Once they complete the request, it’s sent as an attachment right into Zendesk, CGU’s ticketing system. Werner says:

“The flexibility and customization that you can do with airSlate – that’s something that I didn’t really see with a lot of the other products that we were looking at.“

airSlate allowed Claremont Graduate University to go paperless, thus eliminating the need for storing physical copies and digital backups. Since March 2020, the institution has not added a single piece of paper to its document workflows. On top of that, their office supply expenditures have almost completely disappeared.

“I will say in my experience since we adopted [airSlate], it’s just reinforced how flexible a product it is and how adaptable it is. And for me, that’s just been a huge, huge boon.“

Implementing airSlate

airSlate helped automate CGU’s Request to Visit Campus Flow, which resulted in over 500 requests to visit the campus received and processed on a weekly basis from students, faculty, or staff members. airSlate’s auto-population feature made the process of filling out and submitting a request extremely intuitive and fast.

At the moment, Claremont Graduate University is using airSlate to automate their adjunct contracting process which has helped eliminate redundant work, allowing staff to focus on more high-priority tasks. Werner says:

“When I realized the power of the system, I sent 35 contracts for signature in one day. By next morning, we had half of them back signed. By the end of the week, we had 34 or 35 back signed.“

Going forward, CGU has the ambitious goal of streamlining the adjunct contract Flow per the needs of the different types of adjuncts already employed or hired by CGU. While the institution and the instructors are already in the system, integrating human resources and payroll remains a critical objective.

Conclusion

airSlate has helped Claremont Graduate University enhance the student, faculty, and staff experience with integrative technology. Leveraging airSlate across the institution is a work in progress, as some processes are still handled manually. Despite that, CGU has seen a surge in productivity across multiple departments. More and more staff are feeling empowered to build their own Flows or reach out to the support team for help with workflow automation.

“That’s the power of a tool like airSlate. You can have your staff focusing their creativity on bigger problems. Without having them caught up in process and procedure and the way you’ve always done things because once that ball gets rolling, it’s an invaluable tool. I can’t say enough about that.“

– Eric Werner, Academic Affairs Analyst at CGU

The post How Claremont Graduate University uses airSlate workflows to automate its contracting process appeared first on airSlate Blog | Business automation.

Still, the actual role of automation in education and in students’ day-to-day lives leaves much to be desired. Surrounded by gadgets, students predominantly use them for communication and entertainment. At the same time, the educational system itself remains stubbornly resistant to transformation. For most schools, the approach to teaching is still one-size-fits-all. At the end of the day, it’s the same old classroom with a single teacher teaching a group of about 30 students.

This level of uncertainty raises a bunch of questions:

• How will a generation of natively digital students react to the rise and spread of these technologies?
• How can students use automation to optimize their time and focus on accomplishing their academic goals?

Let’s try answering these and other questions by looking at some potential concerns and benefits that go along with implementing automation in education.

Educating educators: why automation in education is inevitable

The number one reason that automation in education lagging behind other industries has to do with the lack of knowledge and expertise on how RPA operates. That’s why it’s absolutely crucial to provide both teachers and school administration with in-depth training on the concepts of RPA.

If you think about it, there’s nothing unusual about new technologies slowly but persistently making their way into our daily lives. In fact, that has been the trend for many world-changing inventions including airplanes, umbrellas, and even light bulbs. All of which endured plenty of public ridicule before becoming wildly popular.

When speaking about education, there are electronic calculators, computers, slide projectors, “smart” boards and other amazing stuff that wasn’t there even a couple of decades ago.

The same can be expected of automation. Schools, colleges, and universities can reap long-term benefits by adopting RPA and AI. This can be the disruption needed to stimulate change in education.

Deciding to pass up these technologies is no longer an option as any educational institutions opting not to implement RPA and AI will most likely find themselves utterly obsolete in just a year or two.

A brief introduction to automation, education, and the future of learning

As a teacher or school administrator, you are probably wondering how exactly special education automated software works.

Just to clarify: by saying ‘robotic process automation,’ we don’t mean androids replacing teachers in the classroom. In fact, automation does not replace a process. Rather, automation complements a process.

In simple words, RPA is yet another way to build an effective working process using algorithms and software robots (Bots) capable of performing tasks without human intervention:

• An algorithm is a step-by-step instruction outlining a sequence of actions required to complete a task or process.

Every digital device in the world uses algorithms to some extent. In the case of special education automated software, an algorithm is a set of precise commands telling a device how to perform a task or process data.

• Bots aren’t physical objects. They only exist on our computer screens interacting with us, as well as with other apps and systems, via a user interface.Bots can also vary in terms of their functions in a system. For example, Chatbots are “responsible” for text messages. In contrast, rule-based Bots act in response to a specific set of rules defined by the user or system admin. Yet, RPA is much more than just chat messages.When properly configured, it allows you to automate any progression of steps (tasks, events, interactions) — by performing certain operations based on pre-set triggers and conditions. With that being said, let’s see what benefits automation in schools can deliver to academic administrations, teachers, students, and their parents.

Applying automation education solutions to administrative educational processes

Academic administrations often find themselves overwhelmed with repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Managing class schedules, keeping track of student attendance, processing grades, admitting new students — all these processes are as dull as they are valuable.

In this case, education automation is the ONLY way to keep administrative processes running, allowing the people in charge of these processes to save insane amounts of time.

By deploying an automated school document management solution, much of the manual paperwork routines can be completely eliminated. In the long run, this means that academic staff will be able to fill roles that empower them to be more inventive and creative. As a result, they’ll be able to focus on what matters in education: developing closer, more meaningful relationships with teachers, students, and parents.

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Using special education automation software will shift teacher responsibilities

On the subject of how automation will affect teaching jobs, there are concerns about whether RPA and AI technologies will result in unemployment. What are the chances of a teacher being replaced by a robot?

We have reason to believe this is highly unlikely. Additionally, teaching is considered one of the least vulnerable occupations when it comes to automation. According to the 2019 Brookings research, only 27 percent of the current tasks required in “educational services” are capable of being automated using existing technologies.

Instead of being replaced, teachers will use special education automation software for scheduling, keeping track of attendance and even grading. Automating these tasks will shift the responsibilities of teachers and allow them to spend less time on routine tasks and more time with their students.

Experiential learning opportunities for students

As discussed above, automation in education delivers increased time-liberation and productivity. It also allows students to ease interactions with academic staff by receiving quality feedback on their homework, projects and exams, more quickly and accurately than ever before.

By adopting automation techniques, students will no longer have to deal with mistakes in grading or having to wait weeks to get feedback on their work.

Accordingly, schools and universities must de-emphasize role skills and use automation techniques to teach their students how to work better with machines — by doing what machines can’t. This means putting more focus on developing students’ digital skills, as well as an increased emphasis on experiential learning.

Security for children and serenity for their parents

Education automation tools can be helpful for younger students and their parents in a range of ways. Primary and secondary schools can use it to increase student safety by sending an automatic SMS alert to a parent’s phone when their child unexpectedly misses school.

Examples of automation in education: use cases outlined

How our customers from the education industry use our special education automation software to automate their enrollment processes

airSlate can be used by any college, university, or school to automate and digitize academic processes of any complexity. With airSlate, it’s possible to take paper, confusion, and mistakes out of the equation and replace them with fast and simple forms for collecting more accurate data and saving time.

Watch the video below to learn how airSlate’s workflow automation can help your educational organization:

Automating workflows for San Diego’s NewSchool of Architecture & Design

The NewSchool of Architecture & Design is a globally recognized and awarded design university. NewSchool’s vision is to be a leading provider of architecture, design, and construction management education. The university is focused on improving the quality of life in the built and natural environments on both the local and global scales as informed by nature, supported by research, focused on professional practice, and committed to sustainability.

However, because of their traditional methods for processing student applications, the university was experiencing a number of complications. One issue was the persistent buildup of hundreds of paper forms. That meant having to hire a part-time employee whose sole responsibility was to scan and file documents.

The biggest challenge came from students not completing forms with the necessary information before turning them in.

With the help of the airSlate team, NewSchool was able to determine the business needs of each form and figure out the best way to implement those needs. Mutchler recalls,

NewSchool students now enjoy a simpler way to access the forms they need and the Registrar’s Office has the ability to track at what stage each form is during its completion and easily store them afterwards.

With airSlate, NewSchool was able to set automated routing and roles directly into their forms so that they are forwarded to the correct department for approval and then back to the Registrar’s Office as an email that goes directly into their Customer Management System. This eliminated any need for having to scan files and upload them into the system manually.

The feature that NewSchool uses the most is conditional routing or the Send Slate with Roles Bot.

Automating workflows for In at the Deep End

IATDE (in at the deep end) provides affordable and effective first aid and swimming solutions to the North East of England. IATDE’s custom and generic courses are flexible to suit your individual requirements. IATDE staff knows the education and voluntary sectors inside out, as well as the constraints being put on them at all times.

IATDE prides itself on being dynamic and forward-thinking while retaining its small family-like feel.

IATDE is adapting and modifying their teaching techniques to cater to all different learning styles and abilities. One of the swimming courses launched by the company is Autism Swim. And while the required information should be collected, it does take a lot of time to fill out.

Previously, the procedure of applying for the course would go as follows:

For someone to sign up for a class or to be an instructor, they would need to send an email asking for the necessary forms, print and fill them out, and then send them back accordingly.

However, very often, documents tended to get lost, so the applicants had to fill in all the documents and forms manually and send them back later. Delays like that caused clients to lose interest in IATDE.

Let’s see how the automation education process was optimized with airSlate

Step 1.

In order to take classes, the applicants have to fill out two forms: the Enrollment and Referral forms.
The participants fill out the Enrollment form with their personal and contact information.

Step 2.

The participant’s data is then automatically pre-filled in the next document (Referral form). Here the Pre-fill from Doc to Doc Bot populates documents with data taken from another document. Data from the selected document will automatically be copied to the respective fields of the other document.

Step 3.

After both forms have been completed, the administrator receives an email. Then, any completed documents or forms cannot be skipped or lost. The Notify via Gmail upon Slate Completion Bot sends automatic notifications when a Slate has been completed.

Step 4.

The completed Slates are saved to Dropbox in a folder named by/after the person who filled them out (e.g., Daisy Thorne). The Dropbox Bot then exports completed Slates to the designated Dropbox account.
After completing the Revision, two forms are successfully saved to this new folder and are available at any time.

As a result, IATDE has eliminated unnecessary paperwork, saving both time and money. They have streamlined the process of registration, allowing teachers to focus more time on teaching children how to swim while student-teachers can receive better training.

Learn how to digitize and automate the school processes through the example of the student registration process, which takes paper, confusion, and mistakes out of the equation and replaces them with fast, simple forms, greater accuracy, and time saved. Complete the Student Registration Automation Course from our airSlate Academy for free.

The future of strategies built around the concept of automated school processes

The most significant value-adding boost that automation in schools will bring to the table is the additional interaction time that it gives to students and those who educate them. Automation will enable schools to adapt to student needs and provide more individualized teaching, allowing students of different skill levels to work together in the same classroom.

With technology that’s constantly monitoring student progress and patterns of learning, automation will be able to help teachers identify and address gaps in their teaching. In addition to grading fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice assessments, education automation will help teachers quickly evaluate short-answer questions and essays.

This list could go on and on. While most of these benefits have yet to be implemented, there’s one thing we know for sure: with humans out of data-entry, educational processes can be streamlined and modernized while requiring far less time and effort to finalize.

The bottom line

Not all innovations are equally useful for achieving your goals. That, however, is not a reason to be skeptical. Automation does not necessarily involve complicated math or algorithms. In fact, deploying and administering workflows can be smooth, fun and… free!

With educational platforms like the airSlate Academy, you will learn how to build efficient working processes and design workflow to automate the school processes of any complexity. You’ll understand workflow analytics that can help you evaluate the efficiency of your current workflows and ones that you’ve recently automated. Plus, you’ll get hands-on experience with a cutting edge, no-code automation solution.

The automation journey will not come without challenges for both administrators and teachers. Though, that doesn’t mean that academic administrators won’t be able to reap the benefits of automation once implemented.

Learning automation is what will help you streamline your educational processes in the future.
Learn, transform and adapt to new models today!

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