The University of Oklahoma School of Music developed an application with Xojo to streamline the enrollment process for faculty and students. In the three months it has been online, the application has been used by more than 200 students and 300 people to submit materials, complete essays and resumes, arrange audition dates and submit recommendations.
The problem: An outdated and hard-to-manage system needed to be updated to support realtime data and access by multiple simultaneous users
With the new application, the School of Music has eliminated the need to manage the overwhelming process of duplicating and distributing applications and related materials, while saving significant time and money. Additionally, because of clear status updates and reminder emails, students are not missing deadlines and faculty are fully prepared for auditions. Faculty can also now use their computers or smartphones to work remotely and view the latest information on a prospective student.
For years, the University of Oklahoma School of Music had used a paper-based application process. As the materials arrived at the School of Music, a file would be created for each applicant and duplicated and distributed to the faculty for admission consideration. Keeping track of who received what materials and when was a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. A review of the admission process identified several areas needing greater control and oversight to ensure that deadlines were met, critical information was received and potential students had the best possible experience with the University of Oklahoma and the School of Music.
It was clear an online system needed to be developed to enhance and streamline the application process. Glen Buecker, web technician for the School of Music, worked with HTML, HTML5, CSS, PHP and Javascript to develop websites and other applications for the school, but found development and testing to be time-intensive and unable to meet the demands of short development cycles often required.
Faced with a two-month deadline for the online admission application, Glen wanted to quickly produce a reliable, cross-platform web application that looked and functioned properly across multiple operating systems. As the application was being developed, he also needed to demonstrate it to faculty to elicit input and quickly incorporate changes.
Glen used Xojo in the past for his own hobby work and knew how quickly he could bring ideas to implementation with it. Discovering that Xojo supports web development, Glen decided to give it a try and determined it was the best choice because of the following features:
- Cross-platform: Xojo supports Windows, macOS and Linux with almost no extra effort. Unlike other cross-platform development tools, Xojo creates a proper user interface for each platform using native controls for each platform. Xojo helps programmers create the best user interface with automatic guidelines for spacing controls, default control sizes, even special menu items that can automatically move to different locations based on the operating system.
- Integration: Xojo integrates with many web technologies and popular databases.
- Rapid application development: Xojo is a rapid application development environment that gives programmers the power to write, test and ship software four times faster than C++ or Java.
- Interface toolset: Xojo allows for implementation of dynamic, on-the-fly menus and interface elements, which can change based on database queries, image formats, and conditional checks.
- Security: Xojo compiles code into secure machine code that eliminates the security concern inherent with Java’s byte code.
"We were able to develop the registration system in two weeks, compared to the months I would have spent writing and debugging code in other languages," commented Glen Buecker, Web Technician for OU Music School
The Solution: An app made in Xojo rolled out to students and faculty in less time than anticipated that reduced paper and manual processes
Since going paperless, the OU School of Music has had no student arrive for auditions unannounced and because application status can be checked online, students know if they are missing information before they come to campus.
