Sonia is a database driven tool that helps a placement officers better manage the various parties involved in student placement. These include:
- Students – Sonia imports student information directly from the Uni’s student enrolment system. It allows the placement officer to quickly identify students who have changed their enrolment and of course dramatically reduces data entry and possible errors.
- Student Checks – such as police clearance, immunisation, insurance etc are all tracked
- Placement History – Sonia remembers past placements the student has attended
- Sites – Not only does Sonia keep contact information for sites, it keeps metadata about sites that makes it easy to identify and target sites for future placements.
- Supervisors – these are the people who go out on site with the students and help guide and train them “on the job”.
Sonia helps place students at sites according to customised criteria and business rules including:
- Distance from site
- Previous attendance at the site
- Student’s preference
Sonia's password protected Web interface enables you to provide convenient and secure off-site access for users to enter their preferences and print data summaries.
As you’ll discover, there is no need for expensive staff re-training or systems reconfiguration due to Planet Software's customisation services and Sonia's ability to integrate with other information systems.
Automation
Sonia automates many processes involved in student placement, such as notification of selection process outcomes to students and off campus work experience suppliers, through Sonia's bulk email features.
Reporting
Sonia's report generation capabilities enables universities’ to easily archive, retrieve, analyse, and have up-to-date data in a number of formats, including PDF and Excel.
Web Interface
For students, Sonia provides a simple web site to all them to see when and where they will be going for their placement. They may also be asked to choose their top 5 sites they’d like to go to – if the placement officer makes this feature available to the students.
Sonia uses the university’s existing student authentication system (such as Active Directory or LDAP) to log in students, meaning they won’t need to remember another login and password to access their placement information.
Sites and Supervisors may also be permitted to access the Sonia web site. This will show them the names of students they can expect plus it has the facility to allow entry of grades and attendance information.
The team at Planet Software will work with you to customise Sonia to meet your specific needs - wherever you are located in the world – and provide ongoing support and training services to ensure your staff can maximise the benefits Sonia has to offer.