Delightful Progress: Kuali's Legacy of Community and Leadership
We integrate well with lots of different systems… But, if you're using multiple Kuali software solutions together, that integration is absolutely seamless.
Grush: Great points. Is there anything else you'd want to mention?
Dehlin: The last thing I'd mention in terms of big shifts we're responding to is AI. There's such an opportunity for AI to enhance people's work, but there's also such an opportunity for things to go off the rails. We've already embedded AI heavily into our systems, in thoughtful ways that safely help improve the timeliness and quality of work, with guidance from the institution. Our approach with AI lets the customer think of creative ways to use AI, and we're seeing really cool ideas come out of it.
We've already embedded AI heavily into our systems, in thoughtful ways that safely help improve the timeliness and quality of work, with guidance from the institution.
Grush: You often talk about an integrated user experience. Do you have an example of why that's important?
Dehlin: Faculty don't play with software for a living. They use software to get their actual work done. Software should help, without getting in the way. As a faculty member, I might be a principal investigator, filling out forms for projects I'm sponsoring, or IRB forms because I'm doing research with human subjects… but I might also be teaching a class and recommending curricular changes, and filling out a Conflict of Interest form, plus literally a thousand other forms. This shouldn't be a burden. The system should act the same way in each case, and it should know a lot of the data already and pre-fill it for me. The experience should be light and quick.
Grush: What's in the future for Kuali software? Do you have any hints you can give me about upcoming software announcements?
Dehlin: We're continually working on new stuff! But I can provide a little hint here about what's stirring interest right now.
For the Research suite, we have all of the major protocols, COI/COC, and pre/post award now. We're seeing great interest so far.
We have early success with our new Internal Opportunities module, which allows people to post (or apply for) internal sponsorship opportunities. We're also working on a new Animal Management Module.
For the Registrar/Provost, we're testing a new Syllabus module and working on a couple other new products.
We'll have a press release in October, which will provide more on these and all the announcements for Fall 2024. So watch for that and join us at EDUCAUSE for the official and in-depth introductions!
Grush: Kuali development has certainly evolved over time, starting with its beginnings as open source in a fledgling software company, and maturing with the Kuali solutions suite.
What are some of Kuali's underlying development principles now?
Dehlin: One of the things that we've done is to create a platform that we use internally to create new modules very quickly.
It's part of what is allowing us to flesh out the entire research suite, without acquiring other companies, and without trying to integrate software that doesn't fit well together. It's allowing us to create new modules where the workflow is the same as our other products.
Grush: And your designers and developers can benefit from that consistency, for their work internally?
Dehlin: Yes. For the form designer we have a nice drag-and-drop form design tool, and a drag-and-drop workflow tool. If you're creating forms or workflows, it's a very simple — again, we'll use the term delightful — experience to create these forms.