Category

Technology
Training/Education

Submitted By

Al Wirtes, al.wirtes@cu.edu [2], Director of Advanced Technologies & Enterprise Architecture

Project Team

Al Wirtes, al.wirtes@cu.edu [2], Director of Advanced Technologies & Enterprise Architecture
Faraz Ali, mohammed.faraz.ali@cu.edu [3], Lead Cloud Application Engineer
Toby Lutz, toby.lutz@cu.edu [4], Assistant Director, Identity Management
Robi Calderaro, robi.calderaro@cu.edu [5], Senior Technical Developer & Instructional Designer
Amar Tekriwal, amar.tekriwal@cu.edu [6], Assistant Director, Integrations
Pamela Song, pamela.song@cu.edu [7], Integrations Lead Developer

Project Description

When the Regents directed the University System to make ChatGPT available across CU, the expectation was set that users would take a brief prerequisite training course and then be able to login to their account in ChatGPT within five minutes of finishing this course. The existing technology could not accomplish this user provisioning in less than 48 hours. A Learning Record Store (LRS) was installed and integrated with both Skillsoft Percipio and UIS Grouper to achieve this service level. Additionally, and Application Programming Interface (API) was created so that campus OIT departments could provide the same service level to their users.

This solution can also be easily extended to work with any compliance-based training.

Project Efficiency 

Reduction in the time between when a user finishes a training course and when they can start using a tool. This time was reduced from 48 hours to less than five minutes. This solution can be applied to almost any of the technologies and tools we use at the University. It can also be applied enforce compliance training by automatically deactivating users who do not remain not up-to-date in their annual compliance training requirement. This project can enable a significant reduction in risk to the University.

Project Inspiration 

The Regents created a technical requirement that we did not the ability to deliver at the time. However, he requirement, itself, did not seem unreasonable. So instead of pushing back on the expectations, we assumed that this was a problem that someone else had probably already solved. We looked to open source solutions, and found a free, ready-made, open source solution to this exact problem. We added some components to expose this solution to campus OIT departments, and we very quickly had University-wide solution that can be extended to uses cases across the University.

What Makes You Happiest about this Project?

This problem seemed unsolvable given our current tools and mindset. Instead pushing back on the expectations and saying, “We can’t do that,” we changed our way of thinking about the problem. Once we changed our paradigm, we found that the solution was obvious, readily available, and free of charge. Not only that, with our new approach to the problem, we saw that we could offer this solution more broadly for almost any compliance-based training across the University. To be successful in our rapidly evolving IT landscape, you must continually update your mindset, not just your technology.