EagleApps is a program sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Information Technology Services. This multi-year, multi-project effort will result in a next generation suite of flexible applications that will enhance the experience of current and future students, faculty, and administrators.
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What's included in EagleApps?
EagleApps is a set of modern web-based applications that manage the academic and enrollment activities for students, faculty, and administrators. The design of the system allows for modular and incremental implementation which helps to mitigate implementation complexity and risk.
Curriculum Management
Course and program management functionality including course numbers, titles and descriptions, and other attributes about a course.
Enrollment
Supports the complex management of the student lifecycle once admitted to the institution; modules include registration, calendaring and schedule of courses, program and course selection, class lists, grades, and graduation.
Financial Aid*
All the processes to manage internal and external loans and awards; supports all pertinent legislative and government requirements and regulations, and tracks external loans on behalf of other awarding agencies.
Student Accounts
The student financial services component built to support student accounting needs including tuition, room and board charges, financial aid disbursements, payments, refunds, billing, and external system charges (parking, dining, residential life, etc.), reporting, analytics and auditing.
Degree Audit*/Transfer Articulation
Enables a student and his or her faculty advisor to assess the student’s academic progress and unfulfilled degree requirements; a valuable tool for matching the courses a student has taken with the requirements of his or her degree program.
*Includes vendor product
Current Activities
EagleApps Modules in Production
- Curriculum Management - Course Offering
- Financial Aid
- Financial Aid - Institutional Awards
- Student Accounts
EagleApps Modules in Development
- Enrollment
- Degree Audit/Transfer Articulation
The modules in development include functionality for registration, program enrollment, degree audit, transfer articulation, grading, graduation, advising, academic record, and transcripts.
EagleApps Future
Boston College seeks to advance the use of EagleApps beyond our implementation on campus. We are confident that the product set and its architecture could be valuable to many other institutions seeking a modern student system that can be deployed in an incremental manner. Boston College has begun working with DXtera to explore how other institutions could benefit from EagleApps.
The Modules
The University Core Systems Project will be rolled out in components:
This module provides course and information including course numbers, titles and descriptions, and other attributes about a course that are printed in the Catalog. Course management and scheduling functionality will be delivered in the next release this fall.
The Enrollment module allows institutions to manage the enrollment life cycle of students once admitted to the institution. It supports all the functionality required for students to complete any activities that are offered. It supports registration, schedule of courses, program and course selection, grades, and class lists.
The Financial Aid module comprises all the processes to manage internal and external loans and awards. It will support all pertinent legislative and government requirements and regulations. It also tracks external loans on behalf of other awarding agencies.
The Student Accounts module is the student financial services component built to support student accounting needs including tuition, room and board charges, financial aid credits and subsequent billing statements.
The Degree Audit module will enable a student and his or her faculty advisor to assess the student’s academic progress and unfulfilled degree requirements. The degree audit is a valuable tool for academic planning because it matches the courses a student has taken with the requirements of his or her degree program.
Key Architectural Features
EagleApps is designed as a component solution allowing for institutional expansion of each component or for a tenant to replace or supplement the component without disruption to the other components. The component approach allows Boston College the ability to implement and manage change to the enterprise without disrupting the entire enterprise.
EagleApps is written entirely in Java and uses Javascript frameworks with a responsive design experience. The software is portable to any major server (Windows, Linux-flavors, etc.) and end users can access via any modern web browser. Most functionality can also be accessed using mobile devices with a mobile experience responsive to the mobile footprint.
Flexible business decision points are managed in domain user sustained business rules or user managed configuration options to allow for flexibility and support change in operational capability.
Integration points are managed using well documented service contracts to allow for components to operate in a distributed enterprise and available for external consumption. The EagleApps services are independently deployed. All services may be used from Java, via SOAP web services or via REST.
In addition to common enterprise services, a set of abstract services work together to ground the business of offering something from a canonical definition in a time period, tracking participation, and measuring results. This abstraction allows the creation of various kinds of courses and programs, exams, sports programs, budgets, student activities, jobs, and payment plans. It is upon this core model that more concrete services may, and are often built.
Real-time event management provides support across the distributed enterprise and can be used to move component content to a big data or institutional research endpoint.