Prior to CORE, pre-clinical documentation was submitted through faxes and stored in electronic files (at that time electronic forms systems were not as common as they are now).  The documentation for each course was submitted in the online classroom for each clinical experience. Staff who were responsible for checking compliance had to access each classroom and go student by student to check documentation.  We also had written timesheets at that point, so staff members were responsible for checking that the hours entered on every single timesheet were accurate.

Implementing CORE allowed us to have one centralized place where all information for each student was housed. Electronic tracking of hours lifted a huge burden from the staff. Having all of the documentation for each student in the same system was much more efficient than having to check compliance classroom by classroom. The change to CORE allowed staff members to focus on quality experiences and student support rather than just auditing documentation. As the CORE product has evolved, our use has also evolved.

 The electronic forms and evaluation processes simplified tasks for our team, the log feature allows for transparency across our virtual team, the messaging system allows us to quickly communicate with both student and clinical site groups, and the reporting helps us monitor student progress as well as stay in compliance with University requirements.  

CORE has allowed us to expand the number of programs we are offering, and it allows us to leverage one system across the University.  We have clinical requirements across three different schools and a vast array of programs, each with very different needs.  The system allows us to customize what we build for each academic program so we are able to meet those needs with one product. That creates efficiency for the University overall and allows for staff transfer of knowledge across programs which is very helpful when new programs are created. 

One of the things I have most appreciated is the CORE staff hearing our concerns and requests and then working to make them happen.  A perfect example of that is the integration with our compliance tracking system for health and background check documentation.  Years ago, I was frustrated with the amount of labor time my team was spending recording information from that system in CORE.  I asked the two organizations to create an integration of the two systems so CORE could show us when students had completed their requirements. It took some time to get put in place, but when the integration was built, our school was the one to test it.  The completed integration freed up our administrative assistant, who no longer had to take information from the other system and record it in CORE. It decreased her workload by nearly 1/2 and allowed us to allocate her time to tasks that could not be completed through automation.