Open Source

Sinclair Community College Improves Adviser Notifications with Apereo Integration

• By Rhea Kelly
• 01/27/15

Sinclair Community College in Ohio is working with open source services provider Unicon to develop an integration between the Apereo Notification Portlet and Student Success Plan (SSP) for the institution's uPortal environment. The integration, or data source, will "make it possible for advisers, faculty, and students to view action items from within uPortal in regards to their activity in SSP," according to a press release.

Sinclair will contribute the code back to the Apereo Foundation open source community. Another institution running uPortal and SSP, for example, could use the integration to remind students of upcoming appointments with advisers, or alert advisers when they need to connect with at-risk students. The reminders and alerts appear to users through the Notification Portlet as items marked as completed or incomplete.

"Improving student success is a critical initiative for Sinclair and the main focus for our advising staff. Having a tool that allow us to effectively communicate with our students, providing reminders and action plans from their assigned adviser is one way we are working to be proactive in supporting that success," said Andy Runyan, chief academic advising officer at SCC, in a prepared statement. "Sinclair would encourage any of the institutions in the open source community to consider using this new functionality, or to develop their own to share in support of all our students."

The integration requires the latest version of uPortal; SCC is also working with Unicon to migrate its existing uPortal deployment to version 4.1. New features in the upgrade include responsive design, customizable skins, performance and scalability improvements, and a marketplace for adding portlets.