Challenge:
The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) is an independent agency created in 1970 by the Ryan Act and is the oldest of the autonomous state standards boards in the nation. Colleges and universities across the state submit documentation to CCTC to obtain accreditation for their programs. Much of the information about accreditation was stored in a legacy File Maker Pro solution that the Commission was looking to replace with a more robust tool that could be supported by their IT team. The team was also leveraging third party tools to collect volunteer information and using manual processes to coordinate accreditation activities, such as site visits to the various institutions.
Action:
Kiefer worked with CCTC to enhance the Accreditation Data System (ADS), previously built by the Kiefer team, to include additional features. The ADS system is a custom .NET solution which streamlines the collection of institution program information from colleges and universities across the state. ADS also collects and stores pertinent information about each institution such as location, contact information, and site visit reports.
The ADS Enhancements Project allowed CCTC to retire the legacy accreditation system and also enables the surveying and coordination of volunteers within ADS itself. Volunteers submit information about their areas of expertise, conflicts of interest and availability for accreditation activities such as program review or site visits. After the survey information has been collected, the accreditation team at CCTC can leverage a new team builder functionality designed to streamline the process of matching volunteers to tasks.
Results:
The enhanced ADS system helped streamline critical processes at CCTC for accreditation activities. The .NET solution implemented modernizes the previously manual process of identifying and volunteers to accreditation tasks such as program and common standards reviews. The Kiefer designed solution eliminates the need for CCTC staff to compare spreadsheets of volunteer responses to required tasks. It also allows CCTC to retire a legacy database, thereby establishing a single-source-of-truth. ADS includes many features that gives CCTC the flexibility they require to manage and modify the system in the future.
We were happy to partner with the Kiefer team during this project. They quickly got up to speed on the requirements of the project, and often found innovative ways to meet our objectives. They were professional, personable, and responsive throughout its entirety. We’d be happy to collaborate with them again in the future.