North-West University

We were contracted by NWU to develop an online system that will facilitate the capacity planning, placements and assessments of NWU students for the practical aspect of their studies. 

The system consolidates 8 API data streams from the existing University systems, and automates the placement process & management of student practicals.

With re-usable modules & components, our system core is designed for new modules and components to be added and shared, quickly and easily. The layered design and separation between databases, api and user-interface allow for upgrades to be executed with ease. The  generic core data model caters for multiple Faculties such as

Education, Nursing and Pharmacy students. The core offers a configurable WIL  Office ID functionality to each new NWU school, to provide for unique operational needs.

 During the placement period, students can place themselves at a Service Provider of their choice by clicking on a link. Mentors can be assigned to assess students on work-integrated learning activities. 

The system tracks capacity and scheduling with the registered and available Service Provider entities (such as Hospitals and Schools), as well as hours of practical work accrued by the student.

Each Student has one or more WIL Modules. For each module, they will have to complete Practicals (Subject for Education, Discipline for Nursing, Service learning for Pharmacy).

All students are linked to WIL Modules during registration, and by knowing the WIL Modules for a given student, the system will create a list of Practicals in which the student may participate. This will be done in a pivot tale, called StudentPracticals, which will serve to create a many-to-many relationship between Students and their Practicals.

When the ServiceProvider register we can show them the list of Practicals(Subjects for Education, Discipline for Nursing, Service learning for Pharmacy) available for selection. The ServiceProviderAvailability will then be populated by the Service Provider, and allows for one or many time AvailabilityBlocks.

When a Student is assigned to the AvailabilityBlocks they receive a Placement the placement is linked to a group of AvailabilityBlocks for the ServiceProvider indicated what ServiceProviderAvailability they had. The AvailabilityDetails column is used to specify if it is a Ward for Nursing, Grade for Education, or any other details that may be relevant for the available placement in order to facilitate the generic nature of all the availability blocks.

Each ServiceProviderAvailability can have one or many AvailabilityBlocks that indicates what time slots are available. The system then validates the assignment based on business rules from the faculty, setup as configurables in the system backend.

Matogen modeled the database for the project to adhere to three main criteria;

• The data model should be fluid, allowing for large-scale changes in the business rules over the course of 3 years with minimal effort.
• The data structure should be designed to contain & merge all data sources of existing systems into the fluid structure.
• The data should be maintained with automation to merge new input from existing onsite systems with our cloud-based system.