From tuition and financial aid to fees and incidental costs, many students struggle to figure out the actual cost of university. But U of T is implementing an online statement to make this process easier, helping students plan their finances and academic future.

In July 2018, students will have access to a simple snapshot of their net cost of tuition and fees in ACORN. The summary view will also show an estimate of the amount students will owe once they receive aid from the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP).

“This statement gives students easy access to their OSAP aid amounts,” says Farah Ally, Project Manager with Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI). “It helps them know how much government financial aid they are eligible for before they register, and it gives them a comprehensive picture of the actual cost of their education before the start of the school year.”

The changes were mandated by Ontario’s Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development, and EASI is partnering with Enrolment Services and others across the University to bring them into reality.

“Making these changes has truly taken a team effort. They don’t just affect OSAP administration, they  affect business processes within Enrolment Services, Student Accounts, EASI, and the academic divisions,” says Donna Wall, Director, Financial Aid & Awards at Enrolment Services. “It was important to have expertise at the table from all of these areas.”

Wall also participates in a Council of Universities working group, which advises on this and other sector-wide issues.

As part of the Ministry changes, U of T and all other Ontario postsecondary institutions will directly receive students’ OSAP funds to apply against student tuition and other fees. This streamlined process will save students the extra step of paying their U of T fees after receiving their OSAP funding.

To make sure the changes will be effective, EASI’s User Experience and Process Design Team interviewed and conducted usability tests with students.

“We went through several rounds of testing with students to design something that works well,” says Laura Klamot, a User Experience Designer with EASI. “It’s an iterative process – we keep simplifying and refining the design to make sure we communicate the clearest possible information to students.”

And in July 2018, students will benefit from that design.

“When I receive OSAP it can be difficult to get a realistic estimate about the cost of attending university,” says Ibraheem Aziz, a third-year Rotman Commerce student. “It will save so much time to see all information in one location at the same time.”

Ally agrees.

“We want students to be focused on their academic studies, and anything we can do to make financial planning easier for them is a priority for us. This is an exciting initiative that will help to provide clarity and transparency about the out-of-pocket cost of tuition.”

After 19 years, ROSI Student Web Service (SWS) will officially retire on February 15, 2018. In its place, ACORN has now become the primary student web service since launching in 2015 – with over 12 million logins in the past year.

U of T’s Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI) kept the two systems running concurrently to help students make the transition. Now, ROSI-SWS is ready to officially hand over the reins to ACORN.

But how did we make the leap from long lineups and paper-based registration to technology that revolutionizes the student experience?

Assembling ACORN

When ROSI-SWS was nearing the end of its lifecycle, the project team decided to rewrite the code with contemporary best-practices and student expectations in mind. These included using inclusive design principles for accessibility, improving mobile usability, and making the process of planning and enrolling in courses more helpful and personalized to each student.

The team engaged hundreds students through interviews, usability tests and other research activities.

“Our goal was to improve the student experience using the web service in a number of different ways: planning for and conducting course enrolment, understanding and accessing financial information, as well as increasing the visibility and engagement with student life services,” says Michael Clark, manager of User Experience and Process Design with EASI. “ACORN provides a cohesive experience that helps students navigate an otherwise complicated network of resources across the University.”

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ACORN’s Enrolment Cart (mobile view) allows students to plan course choices ahead of time and simply click “enrol” on enrolment day

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The ACORN project team within EASI partnered with Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions and with Information Security and Enterprise Architecture to launch the service.

“ACORN is a more highly polished and functional website than ROSI could be during its time. Students can see if there’s room in a course and how long a wait list is – there’s much more transparency to the process,” says Karel Swift, who was U of T’s University Registrar and led the functional development and implementation of ROSI. “Fees can also be paid in the same place as course and program selection – it truly is a one-stop shop.”

What existed before ROSI-SWS?

Before 1974, students registered through an entirely paper-based system.

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Students register for classes at University of Toronto Scarborough in 1969 (photo courtesy of University of Toronto Scarborough Library, UTSC Archives Legacy Collection)

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The University moved from this system in 1974 to enter students’ paper-based course selections into computers. In 1978, staff transcribed 31,400 students’ selections.

“In the 1980s, students used to wait in long lineups to have their paper course selections processed in the computer system,” says Rodney Branch, who worked in college registrars’ offices at the time and is currently Manager of Client Services and Process Integration with EASI. “They would then have to line up separately to pay their fees. The line ups would go out the door, down the hall and onto the sidewalk.”

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Students waiting in line outside of Woodsworth College, formerly Drill Hall, to register for classes in 1988 (photo courtesy of Richard Chow)

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Donald Boere, Registrar of Innis College, remembers ACCESS, the Assisted by Computer Course Enrolment and Scheduling System used by the Faculty of Arts & Science starting in the late 1980s. “In the summer, students wrote their options for timetable scenarios on paper forms, and all these requests would be typed into IBM dedicated terminals by staff, though in later years, students with touch-tone – not rotary! – phones could enter their own requests through the Student Telephone Service. Resulting timetables were mailed to every student. For changes, there was a second round, called Mini-ACCESS, and students got new timetables during Registration Week. It was pretty cutting-edge for its time.”

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Most staff used IBM 3279 Colour Display Terminals to enter students’ course selections and create timetables (photo by Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island)

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Anil Purandaré was one of those students. “During my first year, I was anxious and pretty naive about the process. New College had a large sign that said, ‘Don’t Worry – We’ll Help You.’ It was lovely to meet people, but increasingly complex registration required a more effective process,” says Purandaré, now a Doctoral Registration Specialist at the Office of the Registrar and Student Services, OISE. “ACORN has made the registration process much more student-friendly. When you’re anxious, and perhaps naive about the process, that helps a lot.”

ROSI-SWS was introduced in 1999 and was used, along with the ROSI telephone service, to enable 54,132 students to register in real time.

The future

In 2016-17, 88,766 students enrolled at U of T. To accommodate increasing numbers and enrolment complexity in the future, Information Technology Services will implement a new computing platform in 2018. This upgrade will improve system performance and capacity, allowing up to 15,000 students to register simultaneously for classes during peak registration times.

ROSI-SWS is also planning to keep busy during retirement. The service, now called ROSI Alumni Transcripts, will continue to exist in a simplified form for alumni to view their academic history, request transcripts and reset their PIN. Staff will still use the administrator-facing ROSI to manage and maintain students’ records, and ACORN will evolve to serve students’ needs.

“ACORN will continue to be timely, personalized and helpful – with improved accessibility, mobile optimizations, financial tools and additional complementary tools, including the Grant Application, GPA Calculator and Financial Planning Calculator,” says Clark. “We’re the hub in the wheel of student services and we’ll be strengthening that core to consistently improve the student experience.”

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If students have not yet used ACORN, they need to activate their UTORid.

Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI) and Next Generation Student Information Services (NGSIS) have been working to modernize U of T’s student information system, ROSI. This project involves converting over 2 million lines of code and replacing the mainframe server to improve system performance and capacity and real-time integration with other applications.

Throughout October and November 2017, the EASI team met and consulted with 21 academic divisions and 6 administrative units. Here are the top five FAQs:

1. When is the NGSIS Platform Modernization being implemented?
   The change from the mainframe server to the more efficient and robust server infrastructure, as well as the updated code, is  scheduled from end of day November 16 to the morning of November 19, 2018.
2. Which systems will be affected from end of day November 16 to the morning of November 19?
   ROSI and ROSI Express (admin facing)
   • ACORN, associated applications and SWS (student-facing)
   • Other systems dependent on the mainframe and connecting to ROSI and ROSI data:
   • Degree Explorer
   • MyRes
   • eMarks
   • Varsity Blues Registration System
   Note: The Learning Portal will not be affected.
3. After the cutover, will other student- and staff-facing systems be different? ACORN, Degree Explorer, and Course Finder will operate in exactly the same way, as will ROSI Express, eMarks, StarRes, and MyRes.
4. Will I be able to use the function (PF) keys?
   Most of the function key actions will require the use of mouse clicks. You can still use the “enter” key for most enter functions, but many keyboard functions (like paging up and down with PF7 and PF8) will require a mouse click.
5. Can users still type direct commands to get from menu to menu?
   Direct commands will still be the main way of navigating around ROSI. You will type menu selections, then use mouse clicks for paging, returning to a previous screen, etc.

Tuition is just the beginning. Housing, utilities, food, textbooks, transit and recreation costs all add up, and managing expenses can often become an overwhelming task for busy students. But the Financial Planning Calculator, now available to all U of T students, is helping them to easily and accurately predict their living costs for a year – setting them up for academic and future success.

“When we interviewed students before developing this application, we discovered that they didn’t know how to budget, how much to budget or didn’t have effective tools, aside from calculating everything manually using a spreadsheet,” says Laura Klamot, a user experience designer with U of T’s Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration department (EASI). “Now students have a simple, customizable tool they can use each year to plan ahead.”

Since its launch in February 2016, the calculator has helped over 14,152 undergraduate students. Now the application is available to all graduate and second-entry students.

“It’s hard to predict what everything will cost – especially food and recreation,” says Yanna Ding, a first-year Faculty of Arts & Science student. “When I graduate I don’t want to have a lot of debt, so I want to manage my finances closely. I’ll also need to develop economic independence, and a tool like this could really help in my future planning.”

The tool helps students quickly predict how much it will cost to live in Toronto, an often difficult task for those who are unfamiliar with the area. It is also highly customizable for each individual depending on their program, year of study, residency status and campus. The application will suggest specific resources for awards and financial aid to help them save money and manage expenses.

“If you’re spending more money on meals, compared to your peers, then the application will notify you and offer resources such as U of T’s Food Services, and there’s also information about cooking for yourself,” says Michael Clark, manager of User Experience and Process Design at EASI.

The team is planning to solicit feedback and make improvements for future releases.

“I’m happy we’re providing this tool to students as it will help them make informed decisions about their finances,” says Clark. “We’re focused on improving the student experience, and this tool is an example of how we can approach that objective from a different direction and offer value to our community.”

See a demo of the Financial Planning Calculator

It’s a project that will convert 2 million lines of code, replace a 1,014 kg mainframe server and will modernize U of T’s registrarial system, ROSI, for years to come. Set to launch in spring 2018, the Next Generation Student Information Services (NGSIS) has been updating the system’s code and hardware to enhance services for staff and students.

Led by U of T’s Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration department (EASI), the NGSIS Platform Modernization project is focused on improving system performance and capacity, and real-time integration with other applications.

Frank Boshoff, Enterprise Architect at U of T and one of the project leaders, explains how the conversion will evolve, how it will affect users and what’s planned for the future.

Why is EASI replacing ROSI’s platform and how will this happen?
The university implemented ROSI in 1996 as a solution to the Y2K bug – the pre-existing system used two-digit dates and needed to be replaced before 2000. ROSI uses Natural code and runs off of a mainframe, which is a large server. While this technology served us for 21 years, it’s now time to update it.

In 2015, we started working with an IBM business partner to convert over 2 million lines of Natural code into Java – a more flexible and common code that could run off of smaller, web application servers. U of T’s Information Technology Services has created a private cloud with 48 servers. Six of these servers, also known as blades, are equivalent to the current mainframe and are much more cost effective. If one blade fails, then the servers will transfer the load to another one.

What are the overall benefits of the new system?
If you look at general systems theory, the more flexible a system is the more resilient it will be. The new platform will provide a foundation for future interoperability and “boundaryless information flow.” In the past the university has had many silos, and now we’ll be able to get the right information to the right people at the right time.

What are the direct benefits to users?
The system will be able to handle much more volume. In the past, it could handle 700 concurrent users during enrolment. Soon it will be able to handle up to 15,000 concurrent users, which is equivalent to all first-year enrolments and enrolments at UTM and UTSC.

IT professionals around the university will be able to securely integrate the system into their divisions because Java is a common computer language. As a result, it will have more longevity, and longevity is key for the university’s administrative systems that need to run for decades.

The new system will be entirely web based, with single sign-on using UTORid, and for the first time the system is compatible with Mac computers.

How has IT architecture evolved at U of T over the years?
I was an architect at IBM for 14 years in global services and in business consulting services. One of my colleagues summed my role up beautifully – architects compellingly trivialize the complex. Being an architect is a multi-layered function and, depending on the organization’s needs, they can work at the project or strategy level, or both at the same time. Since I started working at U of T 10 years ago, this role has become more important – linking the university’s mission and strategy to the IT strategy.

What is the future of ROSI?
We will be rolling out the new system to users in spring 2018, and they will notice that it is very similar to what they’ve used before. Now that we have a more flexible platform, we can build on this in the future and will continue to improve the system, and integrate more easily with other systems – in the divisions and in the cloud.

It was a fast four months, but the ten co-op students who joined Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI) this past summer gained a wealth of experience – from developing applications to analyzing data and improving user experience.

“We have a lot of projects on the go and really needed the extra help over the summer,” says Cathy Eberts, Director of U of T’s Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration. “Implementing a co-op program boosted our capacity while directing this need to those who could benefit most – students looking for that much-needed job experience.”

The program, sponsored by Next Generation Student Information Services (NGSIS), included students from Seneca College, George Brown College, Ryerson University and the University of Toronto. From May to August, the recruits made major contributions to IT at the institution.

“I learned a lot! At school you learn things blindly and you don’t really participate in large projects,” says Saba Karamsoltani, who studies computer science at Ryerson University. “But working at U of T gave me a better sense of how to work with others.”

Karamsoltani worked on a large, multi-year project called the NGSIS Platform Modernization project – a project that will migrate the student system of record (ROSI) from an IBM mainframe to a distributed Linux platform. Five others – Nariman Saftarli, Nancy Mai, Thomas Marmer, Balkar Rana and Joshua Longhi – were also part of this vital effort.

Beyond application development, the co-op experience also extended Business Intelligence with Valerie Gilchrist and Mark Franciscus, and to User Experience and Process Design.

“In Computer Science at U of T, I study back-end development. While I’m still focused on back-end development, I’ve gained an appreciation for front-end design,” says Adnan Bhuiyan. “I didn’t realize how important it is to test different application prototypes and how rigorous the process should be.”

Bhuiyan used HTML and CSS to build an application that students can use to calculate their current as well as cumulative GPAs. He then worked with EASI’s User Experience and Process Design team to test designs with different users.

From an analytical standpoint, fellow co-op student Jason Sparks captured the Return on Investment (ROI) of the wide variety of current enterprise application projects.

“I hit the ground running and it was a great experience,” says Sparks, a Marketing Management and Financial Services student at George Brown College. “I analyzed 13 different projects and it was amazing to see the cost savings. Kronos, a time management system, saved U of T $14,622 in material costs in the past year after moving from a paper to a computer-based system.”

The program was so successful that Eberts plans to continue it next year.

“We had an outstanding group of students this summer.  Staff are already asking me how we can make this happen again next year – I think most of us feel very fortunate to work at U of T and it’s our way of giving back to the community.  Given enough physical space – expect the EASI co-op program to return again next year!”

New friends, new activities and a new school year were all part of UTSU’s Street Festival orientation 2017. And on September 12, students also voted on ACORN’s newest feature – helping to determine the future of the application that serves more than 75,000 users.

This year, over 10,000 students from U of T’s three campuses descended on the St. George campus, and 941 voted on how to improve the online academics, finance and student life service. With the sun shining and music pumping, the energetic ACORN team from Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration (EASI) encouraged students to place a sticker on one of five potential features.

“I chose for the Next Steps Planner because it could notify me about important dates and deadlines and how they affect my schedule,” said Ezra Fleisch, an Arts & Science student. “I found ROSI, the old system, really slow and cumbersome. ACORN is much easier to use with drop down menus, and searching for courses has become a streamlined process.”

And the winning feature? With a rainbow of 444 multi-colored stickers, the Auto Enrol Via Cart won by a landslide. This function would attempt to enrol students in course sections that they pre-select in their enrolment cart. It was by far the most complex idea up for discussion and is now an intriguing option to consider.

Other features included live chat help, a next steps planner, U of T map integration and an improved invoicing system.

“I’m definitely voting for the auto enrol feature – it would save time and would be so convenient,” said Maria Vo, another Arts and Science student. “I already like the system because it easily shows my schedule and potential conflicts, but it’s great to try to improve it further.”

Gaining insight into the student experience was exactly what the ACORN and Next Generation Student Information Services team wanted.

“The UTSU Street Fest is a great opportunity to have face-to-face discussions with students, so we can learn what they like, dislike and what they’d like to see happen in the future,” said Mike Clark, manager of User Experience and Process Design at EASI. “The day was a whirlwind, and I want to thank the team – they brought great energy to the day and the level of engagement with students really helps us plan future areas to explore.”

What’s next for ACORN?

“We’re going to continue to improve the performance of ACORN on peak load days, include more personalization and create better integration with other services. And we’ll definitely be at Street Fest next year to gather even more student input!”

Thanks to this year’s UTSU Street Fest team:
Mike Clark
Alex Dault
Laura Klamot
Stefanos Kythreotis
Evan Moir