Source: RWTH Aachen University
RWTHonline: The campus management system of RWTH supports the organization of studies and teaching. RWTHonline accompanies and helps you throughout the entire student life cycle, from application to graduation, and runs through many important processes with you. In addition to the more than 47,000 students, many of the RWTH’s 10,000 employees also use the system to organize their studies and teaching.
However, RWTHonline was not created at RWTH itself. It was not developed by RWTH Aachen University, but is based on a software solution developed at the Technical University of Graz. The instance running at RWTH Aachen is called RWTHonline.
Until now, the system could not be extended by ourselves, which meant that certain processes could not be tailored to RWTH Aachen University. There, one then had to be satisfied with makeshift solutions. This will now change!
For certain extensions to the system functionality, RWTH is now no longer dependent on the provider, but can implement these extensions itself in order to advance the digitization of workflows and processes at RWTH.
Long awaited: Extensions for RWTHonline
Our developers are in an intensive exchange with the TU Graz. This cooperation has now made it possible for the IT Center to develop RWTH-specific extensions for RWTHonline to optimally support the specific processes of RWTH Aachen University.
You as users will not have noticed so much of the achievements so far, because first the way had to be paved and some background processes had to be supported. In the course of the last year, however, it has already been possible to make visible changes for you.
To give you an idea of which enhancements are now already possible, we present two examples.
RWTH Print
As the name suggests, the extension RWTH Print deals with print products in RWTHonline – roughly speaking, all files that are available for printing, e.g. PDFs. RWTH Print should be able to automatically integrate these files.
To get a better idea of how this could support the study processes, here is an example:
Let’s imagine that a student of RWTH Aachen University starts a student job at an institute of RWTH Aachen University. To do this, the student must prove that he or she is currently enrolled. Until now, the student had to submit a certificate of enrollment manually – i.e. download a certificate of enrollment from RWTHonline under “Documents”, often print it out, and then hand it in to the RWTH HR department.
RWTH Print can save this loop for RWTH students. In this case, the RWTH Human Resources Department – with the consent of the respective students – can query in RWTHonline whether the persons are enrolled at RWTH and then also directly retrieve the corresponding certificate.
This means that students no longer have to “carry slips of paper from A to B” and the transfer of the required information is also faster.
RWTH DivA
A visible example is RWTH DivA. This is not about an eccentric lady sitting in an office. DivA stands for “Digitale Abgabe von Abschlussarbeiten“ (Digital submission of final theses). Together with the central university administration and representatives of the faculties and the student body, the IT Center has developed an application to create a barrier-free and intuitive way of submitting theses. You can read more about how this works in the corresponding blog post.
Outlook
RWTH Print and RWTH DivA will not be the last extensions for RWTHonline. Many ideas are still in the pipeline to better support RWTH-specific processes. So stay tuned!
You need support for RWTHonline?
Then take a look at the RWTHonline documentation portal! Here you will find many illustrated instructions and helpful information.
Important: The RWTHonline documentation portal is only available from the RWTH network. So if you are not connected to eduroam, switch on the VPN.
Otherwise, please use the RWTHonline support form!
Responsible for the content of this article are Linda Jörres and Peter Steves.
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