Higher Education – Now & Future: Callista Community Event 2010
Callista & Callista Users Shaping the Future of Student Management Systems
I had the pleasure last week of attending the Callista Community Event (CCE) for 2010 in Melbourne – apart from making me feel old (by hearing how much has changed in how universities manage their student relationships since I left university), it was a real eye opener regarding how much effort is going in to ensuring the relationship between a University and its Students is as rewarding for both parties as possible and how technology is playing an important part in achieving that.
Let me back up…Callista are one of the leading Student Management Systems in Australia. They’re kind of like an ERP for Universities. There are 13 universities in Australia using Callista and Avoka were invited to attend and sponsor because a project we’ve been involved with was the integration of Adobe LiveCycle for eForms and Workflow with Callista at the University of Western Sydney (there’s a little blurb on that project below) and UWS presented to the group on the challenges and results delivered by that project.
So what did I learn about IT and Universities? Well…
- Students are Customers: Universities are treating their students as customers – to the extent that they are looking at ensuring the student experience before joining the university, whilst studying, after leaving the university are all exceptional experiences. Hence the UWS project for eForms and Workflow to ensure administrative processes for students are easy to access, complete and track online and provide minimal overhead for lecturers.
- Lecturers and Administration Staff need to be attracted and retained: Talented staff are just as valued in the university sector as they are in any other industry. So mechanisms that allow the university to simplify the job of staff are a hot topic. Lecturers will have contact with hundreds of students (customers) every week.
- CRM and Analytics: Universities are using Student Management Systems, Student Information Systems and CRM systems to manage and improve the relationship with their students. In fact, Deloitte presented on the use of data analytics to identify things like the propensity of a student to leave the university before completing their studies (this has a financial and reputation impact on the university). This wasn’t theory – Deloitte have done this predictive analytical work.
- Education is Global: Not only are universities marketing to attract students from overseas, but with the use of eLearning technologies, they’re educating students globally and in some cases have established Campus(es) in far reaching corners of the world. So IT is helping the universities take their teaching to the world.
- Universities are Businesses: Universities face the same financial challenges as every organisation – do more with less. The GFC impacted enrolments, particularly from overseas students, so retention of existing students became an even bigger priority. IT systems that streamline labour intensive processes mean staff and financial resources can be directed to attracting and retaining students. Marketing in the university sector in Australia is a multi-million dollar business, for each university.
- Social Networking: Social Networks are changing the way universities work – students are collaborating online. Asking questions online. Sharing thoughts online. This is obviously an area the universities can leverage – work is going in to determining how the value of social networks can be harnessed to improve the student experience.
- Green is on the Agenda: As thought leaders in so many areas (most areas of everything!) the university sector feels an obligation to lead the way on sustainability. A historically paper focused sector is trying to move away from paper to electronic documents and communication methods (web conferencing) without compromising a student’s ability to take notes, collaborate with class mates, etc.
- TLA’s: I learnt a few new 3 letter acronyms (I.T. is probably the only acronym in I.T. that isn’t a TLA!!!)
- SMS – Student Management System
- SIS – Student Information System
- LMS – Learning Management System
Universities are preparing themselves now for a world where:
- Courses are dynamically assembled from modules;
- iPad and other mobile devices chance the way students (and lecturers) work;
- Virtual Classrooms – anywhere in the world with real-time and recorded audio/visual materials;
- Study Groups on Facebook – why not!
- Intellectual Property – As you move to electronic distribution of lecture notes, how do you protect this valuable asset that takes significant time to develop and maintain?
Adobe LiveCycle and Callista at UWS
In a world of consolidation (we’re heading towards having 2 airlines, 2 banks and 2 IT companies…Microsoft and Google…globally with all the consolidation going on!) it shows a real maturity in a company like Callista to not only support the integration of Adobe LiveCycle for eForms and Workflow at UWS but to invite UWS and Avoka to speak at their Community Event to other universities. The open architecture of Callista means Callista doesn’t have to be all things to all people – allowing for integration allows for flexibility without compromising the core source code of the product by creating customised versions for every client.
UWS capitalised on this and used Adobe LiveCycle for eForms (SmartForms) and Workflow Management to create electronic processes where paper reigned previously on ‘exception processes’ such as obtaining credits for previous studies in respect to the requirements on a current course of study. Where these transactions were paper forms completed by students, hand delivered to lecturers for approval and processing and manually entered in to Callista…they are now
- accessed online as interactive PDF’s by students,
- completed in the free Adobe Reader,
- submitted to an automated workflow for routing to lecturers (with reminders, escalations, etc.)
- and then approved transactions are automatically updated to the Callista database and TRIM document management system.
PDF Accessibility – part 2 of 3 (reading fields)
This blog is the second in a series that explores PDF accessibility. This installment describes how to implement PDFs using Adobe LiveCycle Designer so that form fields are accessible to users of assistive technologies.
In this series:
PDF Accessibility – part 1 of 3 (introduction) – an introduction to accessibility standards and technologies
PDF Accessibility – part 3 of 3 (reading text) – a step-by-step guide on making text accessible
WCAG 2.0 Guidelines
1.1.1 Non-text Content: All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose 2.4.6 Headings and Labels: Headings and labels describe topic or purpose 3.2.4 Consistent Identification: Components that have the same functionality within a set of Web pages are identified consistently 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions: Labels or instructions are provided when content requires user input 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value: For all user interface components (including but not limited to: form elements, links and components generated by scripts), the name and role can be programmatically determined; states, properties, and values that can be set by the user can be programmatically set; and notification of changes to these items is available to user agents, including assistive technologies
These guidelines are all about making it easier for assistive technology users to use form fields.
This is important due to the way that assistive technology users interact with a form. Although, fields are typically represented by un-informative shapes such as a rectangle, unimpaired users can rapidly determind its purpose. They have the benefit of being able to scan a form by eye in any direction that they choose and see fields in context; location, label and surrounding content. Assistive technology users can access the same information, but at a slower pace. Mechanisms are required to enable the user to navigate directly through the fields, ignoring other content, and for alternate text to be read which describes the fields’ purpose without relying on context.
Using the field’s caption for alternate text
Whenever possible you should use the field’s caption for alternate text. Set the ‘Screen Reader Precendence’ property to ‘Caption’ in the accessibility pallet.
When a user tabs into this field, the screen reader JAWS V10 with default configuration reads the following:
Your country of citizenship… edit… type in text
The alternate text is read first to identify the field. This is followed by additional information to help the assistive technology user. In this case, it tells the user what type of field this is and how to use it. Although, this approach is common, the text read is specific to screen reader.
Setting custom text for alternate text
There are occasions when it is not appropriate to use the field’s caption, including:
- The field has no caption
- The caption is too verbose
- The caption is not meaningful out of context
Set the ‘Screen Reader Precendence’ property to ‘Custom Text’ and enter the custom text in the ‘Custom Screen Reader Text’ property in the accessibility pallet.
The field has no caption
It is sometimes necessary to implement a field’s label as a separate text object, for instance to implement multi-line labels:
In this case, it is common to use the text from the label object as custom text.
The caption is too verbose
It is important that the alternate text for a field is concise. Verbose captions that are provided to assist a sighted user may be frustrating for a user of assistive technology.
In this case, it is common to paraphrase the caption text.
The caption is not meaningful out of context
Field captions can depend on context to make sense. A common example is radio button lists. Typically, a separate text object is implemented to ask a question and a radio button is provided for each answer.
For instance, when a user tabs into a yes/no radio button list that uses the caption for alternate text, the screen reader JAWS V10 with default configuration would read the following:
Yes… radio button not checked… one of two
To resolve this, it is common to provide custom text that combines the question with the response for that radio button.
A closer look at how alternate text works
How alternate text is read is dependent on the assistive technology used. You can use the attached AltText-TestForm to test. The two most popular screen readers were used for this article:
- JAWS V10
- Window-Eyes V7.1
Screen Reader Precedence
The ‘Screen Reader Precedence’ property on the accessibility pallet has the following values:
- Custom Text
- Tooltip
- Caption
- Name
- None
The screen reader uses this property to determine what text to read. If no text is found, then the screen reader searches for text in the precendence order, starting from Custom Text.
When ‘None’ is selected Window-Eyes performs a search through the precedence order. JAWS does not search through the precedence order, but tries to find a caption, including looking for a text object that may be the label for this field. As a last resort, both screen readers read nothing for the field description, resulting in:
edit… type in text
Using tooltips
Tooltips are used to provide sighted users assistance with completing fields. The text is displayed in a box when the user hovers the cursor over a field.
Typically, tooltips are too verbose to be used as alternate text. To make important tooltip information accessible, it should also be displayed in the form content.
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