Challenge

VU Amsterdam faced the twin challenges of enhancing the quality of its services while significantly reducing operational costs. This required a holistic reevaluation of their existing processes and the adoption of innovative solutions to streamline administrative tasks and educational logistics.

Approach

Embarking on a transformative journey to implement TE Curriculum, VU Amsterdam placed a strong emphasis on empowering all stakeholders, from the administrative cadre to the academic faculty. This ethos was central to the deployment of TE Curriculum by TimeEdit, aimed at augmenting process management capabilities and enhancing data transparency. As VU implemented TE Curriculum, the project reviewed it's business processes for curriculum demand, build and approval - from the ground up.

"The empowerment and collaboration the system implementation fostered have been pivotal in enhancing our educational offerings and operational agility", Chantal Bot, process director at VU Amsterdam shares.
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Results

The initiative culminated in notable advancements in service quality and operational agility, underscored by the strategic reallocation of resources and the modernization of curriculum processes. Three key improvements were paramount:

1. Continuous Curriculum Insight: The initiative fostered an ongoing awareness of curriculum development, facilitating the identification and mitigation of bottlenecks and administrative burdens.
2. Full Change Control: It established a robust framework for change management, ensuring that all modifications were efficiently managed and documented.
3. Enhanced Stakeholder Engagement: The project significantly bolstered stakeholder management throughout the curriculum development and approval phases, fostering a collaborative environment.

Through this endeavor, VU Amsterdam not only showcased the transformative impact of strategic process management but also underscored the value of collaborative effort in redefining service quality and operational efficiency standards in the realm of higher education.

Reflecting on these achievements, Chantal Bot at VU Amsterdam reflects: "The transformation has been significant. The insights we now have into our curriculum building process have not only reduced administrative load but also fostered a more dynamic and responsive educational environment."

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Potsdam University increases graduation rates and room utilization in a resource constrained environment

THE CHALLENGE
In beautiful Sanssouci Park in Potsdam near Berlin, Fredrick the Great built his impressive palace, Neuen Palais. Nearby, there are large palatial buildings that once served as living quarters for the guards who worked at the palace. Today, they serve a completely different purpose, namely the largest university in Brandenburg, Germany - Potsdam University.

Potsdam University has grown beyond expectations, from 3,000 students 20 years ago to 21,000 students today. And despite having three campuses in and around Potsdam, there is still not enough space for them all.

“We’ve lived with this restricted space for some time and have always received complaints from teachers and students. Rooms are often double-booked, or too small for the number of students in the class.”

Moreover, the university offers more than 100 different programs. The focus of these programs is on teacher training, something that demands courses in a variety of subjects while allowing students to make individual choices. As a result of new directives implemented in 2010, each module must be concluded with an exam and a grade before continuing on to the next one. This directive, along with too many curriculum scheduling conflicts, narrowed down the course flexibility and let to fewer students graduating in time.
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THE SOLUTION
Potsdam University had been watching TimeEdit evolve for about two years, while the company and solution gained momentum in Europe. As the product became more mature, it eventually grew close to Potsdam’s vision for how to operationalize room management and scheduling. The team at Potsdam evaluated their options and came to the conclusion that it was time to swap their home-grown legacy system, excel sheets and paper lists to TimeEdit.

“Our resources must be better utilized and we need to simplify the administration across planning and scheduling. We were looking for an easy-to-use, flexible solution with integration capabilities to our SIS and LMS - TimeEdit ticked all the boxes”

In order to find bottlenecks and under utilized time slots and resources, Potsdam University turned to TE Reporting for a cross campus, in-depth analysis of their resource usage.

“We simply don’t have enough rooms for the number of students, so TimeEdit helped us utilize our rooms in a more rational way. For example, we quickly understood that we had a lot of timeslots that were under-utilized - like Monday mornings and Friday afternoons”

In TimeEdit, all of Potsdam’s resources are stored in one database for easy room and resource sharing across departments to enable full transparency. That ability, along with using TE Core’s built-in functionality for interdependency constraints (pre-requisites), enabled the university to ensure a conflict free schedule.

“Managing rooms is optimally all about avoiding collisions, and ensuring that the right class is held in the right room. TimeEdit gives the university a bird’s-eye view of the resources available, which lets us to put together schedules with zero collisions and problems”

Of course increasing utilization rates and gaining a better overview are great, but without a system that is easy-to-use, it is difficult to put theoretical opportunities into practice.

“Everything has become so much simpler for our schedulers. They are not IT experts, but often teachers who have other tasks beside scheduling and planning. This is why user friendliness was important for us. With scheduling becoming so much simpler, they now have time for other things that need to be done.”

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THE RESULTS

• Number of students graduating on time (defined as within 6 to 7 semesters) increased by 5%
  
  
• Resource utilization increased to 92%
  
  
• Number of complaints from curriculum and room related issues fell by 80%
  
  
• Student satisfaction related to curriculum and course quality increased by 25%

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A multi-year search for a cutting edge scheduling system came to an end when Condé Nast was introduced to TimeEdit
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With only 3000 students, Condé Nast College is undoubtedly one of the smallest TimeEdit customer, however that is in no way equal to low ambitions. In contrast, creating unique personalised schedules in a complex education setting requires intricate planning, flexibility and resource control.

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Where Only the Best is Good Enough

When Condé Nast opened the doors to its College of Fashion and Design in 2013, they did it with an ambition to provide an unparalleled student experience similar to what everyone has grown accustomed to with the group’s publications. Setting the bar high, Condé Nast were adamant about exclusively using state-of-the-art technology solutions across their entire EdTech software stack, to ensure they could deliver on the ambition.
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A Century Of Media Leadership

The story of Condé Nast dates back to 1909, when Condé Montrose Nast, a New York City-born publisher, acquired Vogue - first created back in 1892 as a New York weekly journal of society and fashion news.

Considered the inventor of “class publications”, a magazine type focusing on a particular social group or interest rather than trying to attract the largest possible readership, Condé Nast has successfully expanded its portfolio of publications and digital assets over the decades and are today the undisputed leaders in the segment they once created.
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Perfecting College Education

With a century of built-up brand equity as a result of perfecting the art of magazine publishing, there’s a lot at stake when you venture into a new market. Well aware of this, Nicholas Coleridge, Managing Director of Condé Nast Britain and founder of Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design, made it clear from the beginning that the College wouldn’t settle for anything but state-of-the-art solutions to ensure they could provide an unrivalled student experience.
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Choosing TimeEdit for Resource Management and Timetabling

Having scoured the UK market for adequate timetabling solutions with little to no success, TimeEdit’s 2017 expansion to Britain couldn’t have been timelier for the College. CTO of Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design Sepehr Malek recalls.

Despite numerous attempts and demos from providers we couldn’t find a solution that really did all the things we wanted and provided the type of student experience we were looking for – that is, until we came in contact with TimeEdit*

The Center of Attention

“We use TimeEdit to create unique schedules for all of our students” Sepehr continues, “and that’s a feature no other provider could give us”. On top of that, the College embeds TimeEdit into their Canvas installation to provide students with a seamless bridge between the two core products governing the daily life of the students.  “When you come into our building you typically see a large group of students gathered around our TVs displaying our TimeEdit schedule – it’s become the de-facto center of attention when you’re not attending a session” Sepehr says.

All is Well That Ends Well

TimeEdit provides each of its customers with a dedicated Customer Success Manager to help with implementation, training and whatever questions that may arise along the way.. Sepehr appreciates this intimate approach and concludes the interview:

We’ve all been incredibly happy with how our CSM has been working with us. Proactive and solution-oriented, he really made the transition to TimeEdit a breeze. I would definitely recommend every CTO out there to try TimeEdit

Key Achievements

• Institution-wide resource management & timetabling
  
• Study room bookings for students & simple scheduling of guest lecturers
  
• Individualized student schedule
  
• Built-in event management for internal and external use

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