Increase Student Engagement with Education Data Architecture

Most people tend to think about education as a sequence of separate phases: primary school, followed by high school, then undergrad, and then post-grad. But with the dynamic nature of student demographics today, and an imminent need to revise current skills and acquire new skills throughout our lifetime, many are beginning to understand that education today is more than just a series of stages – it’s a lifelong journey.

And it is evident that the lines are blurring more and more between these stages of education – underlining an opportunity to create a connected experience for the learner. The student lifecycle is also becoming more and more dynamic with learners engaging with education at various points in their lifetime. Educational institutions are beginning to acknowledge that understanding and evolving these varying student journeys is the key to success – for both students as well as institutions.

Education is one continuous experience. And as a certified Salesforce Implementation Partner, we believe it can be powered by a one data architecture too.

EDA: The Foundation of Education Cloud

Any discussion on Salesforce solutions for student engagement will be incomplete without talking about Education Data Architecture (EDA). EDA is the cornerstone of Salesforce Education Cloud. It allows you to completely customize your institution’s processes to meet the specific needs of your student engagement staff. EDA comes with pre-built objects and automation specific to education to enable you to get a complete view with traceability of members of your campus community: who is this individual, where have they been in their educational journey, where are they headed, what are their interest areas, and who are they connecting with?

EDA is a data architecture and not a product, which means institutions have the power to customize a solution in a way that is aligned with their unique needs and processes.

Let’s take a look at what EDA can deliver to student engagement teams.

Get a 360-Degree View of Students

For institutions, it is important to have a complete understanding of a student’s daily life and having insight into how they are engaging with the institution. While student staff are keen to know more about their students, it is virtually impossible for a single advisor to remember every detail about each and every student they work with. Salesforce relationships and affiliations offers support great support in this area.  

Relationships and affiliations are standard EDA objects that deliver a complete view of a student. Relationships in EDA show contact-to-contact connections. While creating a new relationship, you can choose its type (friend, spouse, parent and so on) and its status (former or current). And every time a new relationship is created in EDA, Salesforce creates a reciprocal relationship, mirroring the same relationship in the opposite direction.

Affiliations tell you about interactions between a contact and another account. In EDA, entities such as clubs, sports teams, departments, and external institutions where students may volunteer or work are represented as accounts. Contacts can be connected to these accounts through affiliations.

What does Education Data Architecture look like?

Before EDA, institutions spent lots of time and money customizing Salesforce to fit their specific needs. Now institutions can leverage a common language and configuration across the student lifecycle. EDA makes it easy to manage student data holistically with 360-degree views powered by industry standard objects that are built directly on the Salesforce platform.

https://www.salesforce.org/

Education Data Architecture allows you to get started with Education Cloud faster than ever before.

As the foundation of Education Cloud, EDA provides a flexible and scalable framework that can fit your specific use case needs from Day 1. With a solid building block for growth, your institution will be well on its way to becoming a connected campus and increasing student engagement across the entire lifecycle. Contact your Salesforce Consulting Partner today to know more.

About Author

Indranil Chakraborty

Indranil is a technology enthusiast with over 25 years of experience in project management, operations, technology and business development. Indranil has led project teams in egovernance, business process re-engineering, product development and worked with Government and Corporate customers. Indranil truly believes in the power of technology to drive productivity and growth for teams and businesses.