Melbourne’s RMIT partners with Interfolio to digitise its academic promotion and reporting framework
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 — RMIT University today announced its investment in technology to support academic development and recognition. By partnering with Interfolio, the creator of the leading Faculty Information System (FIS), RMIT further bolsters its support of its over 2,000 academic staff members.
The partnership, spearheaded by Interfolio’s Oceania services and support partner Edalex, culminates a multi-year process led by RMIT leadership to refine and standardise the expectations and processes around academic promotion. The technology from Interfolio will allow RMIT to realise the full potential of the new framework by providing a platform to evidence academic achievements and research outcomes. Additionally, it will streamline the logistics of the annual review process reducing the significant administrative work of both individual faculty and faculty committee members.
“At RMIT, we realize that our academic staff are our most important resource. As such, we have been proactively assessing how we can support all academics to develop and progress at our institution,” says Marilyn Capper, Director, Academic Development and Workforce Transformation. “Our partnership with Interfolio allows us to evidence the important contributions of our academics over the entire staff lifecycle, allowing a more accessible, customised and equitable promotion process for all our staff, irrespective of academic discipline, job role, or professional focus.”
A key component that RMIT considered when transitioning to a digital platform was the ability for each academic to tell their unique story. Additionally, RMIT required integrations with existing platforms, especially Workday, its system of record for payroll and employment status for its 6,000 employees. RMIT will also use Interfolio to provide reporting for external compliance needs, including national regulatory audits, with data around academic progression, development, and credentialing.
“True teamwork between RMIT, Interfolio and Edalex delivered an innovative solution under aggressive timelines,” states Dan McFadyen, Managing Director of Edalex. “With this technology, RMIT now has a system to support its academic staff and their career development. As a company dedicated to extracting hidden value from educational data to make it accessible and more meaningful, we were pleased to work alongside Interfolio to realize the full potential of its faculty-centric platform at RMIT.”
Andrew Rosen, Interfolio CEO, expands: “Our focus has always been on streamlining and digitizing the complex processes involved in shared governance and peer review to ease the administrative burdens on administrators and academic staff, while empowering scholars to showcase their significant academic contributions in ways to tell their best story. By deploying Interfolio’s modern academic information system to the benefit of its academic constituencies, RMIT joins its leading peers across global higher education in modernizing its approach to accomplishing its academic mission.”
###
ABOUT RMIT UNIVERSITY
One of Australia’s most renowned dual-sector tertiary institutions, RMIT University enjoys an international reputation for excellence in education, research, and engagement with industry and community. RMIT is a global university of technology, design and enterprise, leading in Art and Design; Architecture; Education; Engineering; Development; Computer Science and Information Systems; Business and Management; and Communication and Media Studies.
ABOUT INTERFOLIO
Conceived by academics for academics, Interfolio is an education technology company headquartered in Washington, DC, USA and in Cambridge, England, UK. Founded in 1999, Interfolio operates the acclaimed Faculty Information System for colleges and universities, the Researchfish impact assessment platform for funders and research organizations, and the widely used Dossier service for individual scholars. Over 300 clients based in 15 countries choose Interfolio’s technology for hiring and recruitment, academic appointments and timelines, activity data reporting, faculty reviews and promotions, and research impact analysis. Interfolio provides scholar-first products for the full academic lifecycle—from job seeking to professional accomplishments, committee service, funding award compliance, career growth and advancement, administrative leadership, and beyond. For more information about Interfolio, please contact team@interfolio.com.
ABOUT EDALEX
Edalex is an edtech company on a mission to surface digital learning assets, outcomes and the power of individual achievement. Founded in 2016, Edalex develops technology solutions that extract hidden value from educational data to make it accessible and more meaningful. Edalex brings together the team behind the CODiE award-winning openEQUELLA open source platform that centrally houses teaching and learning, research, media and library content. Edalex has served as the Oceania regional services and support partner for Interfolio since 2018. In 2019, Edalex launched Credentialate – a Micro-Credential Evidence Platform that increases the power and meaning of digital badges and analyses performance against learning outcomes like never before. For more information about Edalex, please contact info@edalex.com.