UW is Early Adopter for Student Cloud SIS

February 10, 2021

In August 2018, the Division of Continuing Studies and the Division of Enrollment Management began partnering as an Oracle Early Adopter of the Student Cloud SIS product called Oracle Student Management Cloud (OSM). The project’s current focus is to help Precollege programs move off of departmental spreadsheets and into a unified student information system. In February 2020, the team went live with their first Precollege Program, DoIT’s Information Technology Academy. UW–Madison is the first institution to go live on the product in the world, and the team has received praise from Oracle and other institutions on this wonderful achievement. Long-term, this initiative is an important step in a powerful vision of having all learners in one system whether they are 5 or 105. A dream shared amongst DEM and DCS is to one day be able to bring up a learner record and see ALL of their interactions with UW–Madison. OSM is still in its early design, and while its current functionality serves the noncredit population, it will one day ”go off to college” to serve the credit functionality as well. Our unique partnership with Oracle provides a multitude of opportunities for influencing the student cloud product roadmap. As part of Oracle’s Early Adopter Program, we have already seen UW’s project feedback impact the development of future product functionality. In January, the project team accomplished yet another major milestone! They went live with two more esteemed Precollege Programs: Badger Summer Scholar and WCATY (Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth). With this implementation, the team has introduced credit card payments for application fees and tuition payments. This was no small effort as it required not only pushing Oracle to build up functionality on a short timeline, but it also required the team to learn Oracle’s Financial ERP system, integrate it with a new credit card payment system, and tie that information back to the campus General Ledger. Kudos to the project team and many more milestones to come!