What is an Academic Operations Platform?

Academic operations encompasses all of the processes and policies that enable institutions to deliver educational programs. An academic operations platform enables institutions to manage all of these processes in one place, enabling better data access, transparency, and efficiency.

An academic operations platform helps institutions manage the many processes that are required to deliver educational programs to students and provides an underlying data infrastructure for connecting the processes. Academic operations encompasses a wide range of functions across the institution and AACRAO defines it as:

Curriculum management, syllabi management, catalog management, classroom space management, class scheduling, credential audit and completion processing, class registration, and institutional and/or programmatic accreditation.

These processes aren’t just key to delivering on an institution’s educational mission, but efficient academic operations are also critical to learner success, persistence, and completion (AACRAO). In fact, 90% of survey respondents agreed that barriers in academic operations impact students.

Below, we walk through each element of an academic operations platform and how they contribute to delivering the educational experience.

Key Components of An Academic Operations Platform

Curriculum Management

Curriculum lives at the center of academic operations, as it consists of all of the academic offerings available to students. An academic operations platform helps institutions maintain an accurate repository of all of their curricular offerings, such as programs and courses.

Maintaining the curriculum also involves reviewing proposals to update curricular offerings. Faculty members will submit a proposal to update or add new curriculum that then must be reviewed by multiple individuals and committees.

An academic operations platform enables institutions to collect, review, and approve all of these proposals in one place. By housing all of this information in an academic operations platform, institutions are able to maintain a single source of truth and avoid disparities that arise from collecting and reviewing this information across multiple locations (e.g., forms, emails, online folders).

Curriculum Analytics

Curriculum analytics help administrators understand where students struggle on their academic journey and identify high risk points. Using data from the academic operations platform, administrators can identify high-risk course combinations where students are more likely to fail. Curriculum analytics also offer insight into where students are more likely to experience attrition on their academic path.

Catalog

The catalog, also sometimes referred to as a handbook, is the public repository of the most up-to-date curricular offerings and policies of an institution. The course catalog has traditionally been seen as a 'contract' between the institution and students regarding the academic offerings available at a given term. Consequently, the catalog should always accurately reflect an institutions curriculum and policies, as this is the primary source for students to understand academic offerings and expectations.

An academic operations platform connects the online catalog directly to the institution’s curriculum management system. This ensures that institutions aren’t publishing inconsistent or inaccurate information.

The catalog is also seen as a marketing opportunity for an institution’s programs and often referenced as an academic planning tool for students and advisors.

6 in 10 students at four-year institutions report that they use the catalog to understand degree requirements - College Pulse

To aid students, the catalog should be easy to navigate so students can easily find the information that they need.

Syllabi

Syllabi provide students with key curricular (e.g., learning outcomes, program outcomes) and policy information at the course level. An academic operations platform helps institutions ensure that all syllabi display accurate information by pulling in course information and policies directly from the catalog. Auto-populating syllabi from an academic operations platform also saves faculty time and ensures that faculty don’t accidentally list outdated information on their syllabi.

Creating and storing syllabi within an academic operations platform also gives institutions the option to publish syllabi directly to the catalog, which may be required by some states or accreditors.

Academic Scheduling

Each term, administrators must build the academic schedule for all of the relevant curricular offerings. The academic schedule involves a complex set of factors including which courses to offer, how many sections, the modality, location, and timing. Oftentimes this also includes coordination with academic units and department schedulers who determine what will be offered.

An academic operations platform provides institutions with one place to build the course schedule. Academic departments can all build their schedules in one place that is accessible to the registrar’s office and other relevant units. The platform provides transparency, such as by identifying potential conflicts when the schedule is being built. An academic operations platform also helps enforce scheduling policies (e.g., standard meeting patterns) through automated rules that prevent violations.

Preventing course conflicts is a critical part of building the course schedule as course timing and availability determine if students are able to enroll in the classes they need to progress through their degree on-time.

“The most common problem is that classes get full too quickly or don't have enough sections. This tends to happen with the more popular classes that fulfill multiple prerequisites or are foundational to your later classes, like intro to biology.” - Student at public, two-year institution in the Northeast

Course Demand Projections

Rather than rolling over the schedule or making guesses, course demand data in an academic operations platform helps administrators determine which courses to offer and how many sections are needed. Course demand projections leverage degree audit data to show administrators which courses students have already completed, and which ones they still need to complete.

Real-time data helps administrators ensure that they are offering enough sections to meet student demand and keep students on-track. Meeting student demand is critical as survey results show that students are frequently unable to get into the classes they need, with 6 in 10 reporting that a class was already full when they tried to enroll.

Faculty Workload Management

Once the academic schedule is built, instructors are assigned to scheduled sections. In an academic operations platform, administrators can assign instructors to sections directly in the scheduling tool and see instructor workload calculations while making assignments.

Integrating instructor workload information is key so schedulers are able to assign instructors based on the proper workloads calculations and avoid overloading or underloading instructors.

Event Scheduling

While most space on-campus primarily serves to hold classes, space is also used for a variety of meetings, events, and conferences. An academic operations platform allows institutions to see all events, both academic and non-academic, in one central calendar.

Managing university space in one location is critical for transparency, allowing institutions to see room utilization patterns and optimize space usage. When classrooms are not in use for teaching, they can be used for faculty, staff, and student meetings, events, and more.

Assessment

Assessment represents another key aspect of managing curricula within an academic operations platform. Assessment information, such as learning outcomes and curriculum maps, is critical to ensure that courses and programs deliver the intended content and value.

An academic operations platform enables institutions to map and track learning outcomes in one place, ensuring that they are present across all programs and courses. This also helps reduce the burden on faculty and administrators by eliminating the need for manual data entry, which is often prone to error.

Each Piece of an Academic Operations Platform Works Together to Support Students & Administrators

When all of the processes that compose academic operations live in one platform, administrators are able to reduce manual work, increase efficiency, and make more informed decisions. This ultimately enables administrators to focus on what matters most—supporting student outcomes.