News and Events

The star-studded cast of Thesis SM integrations

Posted on Friday, September 27th, 2024

Four crew members on a film set, with one person operating a large camera and others assisting with lighting and photography.

Making great movies takes more than a talented director or a popular lead actor. Great movies are brought to life by the orchestrated effort of many hard-working people, from camera operators to caterers, each contributing their expertise to the project.

Similarly, a solid Student Information System (SIS) must be integrated with a variety of services to meet the needs of a community like ours. To achieve this, the R3 Project and Information Technology Services (ITS) are working together to integrate dozens of industry-leading solutions to Thesis SM, Algonquin College’s new SIS.

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The 5 Ws of the Portal Pathfinders

Posted on Thursday, September 12th, 2024

Thor, the mascot of Algonquin College Athletics, and four learners are smiling and hugging each other.

Nowadays, when we need technical support, we go online and look for tutorials, articles, forums, chatbots—anything that can help us better understand what we’re trying to do. There are times, however, that instead of scouring the web, what we really need—and want—is another human being who’ll listen to us, understand our issue, and help us solve it.

We at the R3 Project understand this! Yes, we’re preparing a plethora of online help materials covering every imaginable task in the new Thesis Student Portal. But we’re also partnering with other teams in the College to deliver the Portal Pathfinder Program and offer more personalized help to learners.

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Special interview: Haya Majbour and Lauren Draper discuss functional specs

Posted on Friday, August 30th, 2024

A photo of someone's hand adding a sticky note to a whiteboard.

Algonquin College is working closely with Thesis to develop a cloud-based Student Information System (SIS) that is tailor-made for our community. Part of this collaboration involves creating dozens of highly detailed functional specifications—or specs, for short—that will improve the College’s business processes and elevate the experience of both learners and employees.

Igor Coelho A. S. Marques talked with Haya Majbour, Business Analyst, and Lauren Draper, Project Manager, Business Transformation, to learn more about their work, including a recent push to deliver over 90 functional specs to Thesis.

Here’s some of their conversation:
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Special interview: Michael Kahil explains data migration in the R3 Project

Posted on Friday, August 16th, 2024

Michael Kahil sitting at his desk and smiling at the camera.

The R3 Project is replacing Algonquin College’s current Student Information System (SIS), GeneSIS, with Thesis SM. This means that all the important data GeneSIS has stored for nearly three decades needs to be migrated to the new SIS.

Igor Coelho A. S. Marques sat down with Michael Kahil, a data migration expert on the R3 Project’s Data Governance team, to chat about data migrations. Here’s a snippet of their conversation:

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Take a Micro-break and Complete the R3 Project Crossword

Posted on Tuesday, July 30th, 2024

A graphic featuring the R3 Project logo, a cartoon avatar of a person with glasses, a computer keyboard and mouse, and a crossword puzzle.

According to a group of Canadian researchers, taking regular micro-breaks at work can boost your performance and improve your well-being—especially if you can go outside for a little bit. Micro-breaks last only a few minutes, but they can relieve pressure and help us find the focus we need to tackle the challenges we encounter at work.

If you’re ready for a micro-break, we’ve got something to help you unwind and have fun: the R3 Project Crossword. Can you complete it in under five minutes?

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