2022 BUTTERFLY EFFECT CHALLENGE
TOP-RANKED FINALISTS AND SPECIAL AWARD RECIPIENTS
Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation (ORI) is pleased to announce that following evaluation by an independent judging panel and review from Ginger Grant, PhD., Dean of Research and Innovation, the top-ranked finalists and special award recipients of the 2022 Butterfly Effect (BE) Challenge have been selected.
These (often simple) solutions have collectively resulted in annual savings of more than $150,000 of costs, almost 2.5 years of employee time, and the equivalent of two 45-foot mature pine trees worth of paper! The members of these ingenious teams will also be sharing their solutions with other employees to multiply their impact.
TOP-RANKED FINALISTS
First place
Streamlining Indigenous Student Residence Applications
Second place
QR Code for Lakeshore Campus Map
Third place (tie)
y Upgrading Webchat PowerPoints to Run Automatically
y QRevolution (QR Codes for Office of Sustainability Info)
SPECIAL INNOVATION AWARDS
ORI Dean’s Special Award: Student Impact
y Gecko Live Chat W idget (for Student Customer Service)
y Course Fee Calculator
External Panel & ORI Team
Special Award: Hearts & Minds
y Streamlining Indigenous Student Residence Applications
Sustainability Spotlight Award
y Recycled Waste Material to Personalized Gifts
y QR Code for Lakeshore Campus Map
Simply Smart Spirit Award
y Operation Excellence (Tech Zone Tablet Charging)
Microsoft Automation Award
y IT Email Template
y Outlook Templates (Student Research Emails)
Innovation Sandbox Award
y Upgrading Webchat PowerPoints to Run Automatically
y Streamlining Indigenous Student Residence Applications
ABOUT THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT CHALLENGE
The BE Challenge seeks to discover and celebrate Humber College’s front-line innovators. The Challenge looks for simple, low-cost or no-cost integrat ion and/or automat ion solut ions that have already been implemented by Humber’s support staff and non-manager ial administrat ive staff. The solut ions can improve both on-campus and remote work arrangements.
Humber’s front-line colleagues are cont inuously improving the Humber exper ience, but their ideas and solut ions often remain hidden in plain sight. This init iat ive is part of a broader Inclusive Research & Innovat ion training program the Humber Office of Research & Innovation (ORI) has been pilot ing. ORI
staff have been trained in the pr inciples and processes of Inclusive Innovat ion, and they launched and managed The 2022 Butterfly Effect Challenge over the summer and fall.
Please reach out to the Humber Off ice of Research & Innovat ion team at be@humber.ca if you’re interested in learning more about the BE Challenge.
Interested in learning more about the projects?
The following are br ief descr ipt ions of the projects.
External Panel & ORI Team Special Award: Hearts & Minds
Innovation Sandbox Award
FIRST PLACE
STREAMLINING INDIGENOUS STUDENT RESIDENCE APPLICATIONS
Humber Department/Team: Indigenous Educat ion and Engagement
Problem: Indigenous learners can face administrat ive barr iers and social/emot ional challenges associated with living in a major ity non-Indigenous environment when apply ing to live on campus. Addressing the administrat ive challenges histor ically required Indigenous students to reach out to var ious teams for assistance, adding t imeconsuming and tax ing addit ional manual steps for students and staff.
Solution: We modif ied the residence applicat ion for self-ident if ied Indigenous learners to provide equitable access to Indigenous students, aligning with the Truth and Reconciliat ion Commission Call to Act ion. Our team developed a seamless process, reducing the addit ional burden on Indigenous students by repurposing ex ist ing automated processes. Students who self-ident if ied as Indigenous when apply ing to Humber College now automat ically follow the Indigenous stream when apply ing for residence. In addit ion to standard required informat ion, the Indigenous stream of the applicat ion offers flex ible payment opt ions/deadlines that align with their sponsorship status, asks for Indigenous-focused roommate-matching preferences, and allows students to upload sponsorship letters directly. This reduces manual steps, promotes addit ional support by allowing Indigenous students to choose to live with other Indigenous students, and increases equity and inclusion in residence.
SECOND PLACE
QR CODE FOR LAKESHORE CAMPUS MAP
Humber Department/Team: Off ice of the Reg istrar, Faculty of L iberal Arts & Sciences
Problem: Humber’s Lakeshore Campus is made up of sprawling grounds and cottages which is usually hard to navigate for new students or faculty, visitors and guests. In addit ion to the Campus Compass app, the Welcome Centre front desk also provides direct ional support and paper maps for assistance. In March 2022, we pr inted more than 70 maps per day which we not iced would be discarded after the person had reached their dest inat ion (We know this because we got quite a few of the same people back for another map).
Solution: Seeing this wasteful trend, our team - Aman and myself - decided to tweak the ex ist ing map with extra locat ions marked down that were popular with visitors or students and created a QR code with a pdf version of the edited map and displayed it at the desk. As a result, our pr int ing numbers went down to 10-20 per day for accessibility purposes (we recognize that not everyone is comfortable using a phone, nor do they f ind the Campus Compass app easy to navigate) and introduce a more sustainable approach to our direct ional support strategy.
THIRD PLACE
UPGRADING WEBCHAT POWERPOINTS TO RUN AUTOMATICALLY
Humber Department/Team: Faculty of L iberal Arts & Sciences, Internat ional Centre
Problem: Dur ing the pandemic, our team hosted daily webchat sessions so that our Internat ional Students could join and ask quest ions they had, even if they were overseas. Our manager asked our department to look into improving work processes in our area. Our team of 3 worked on improving the webchat exper ience for students. A key problem we ident if ied was with the PowerPoint slides that we showed at the start of each session. This resource was small (1 FAQ slide with a max imum of 3 quest ions + introduct ion and conclusion slides) and the PowerPoint funct ion was not automated. Our team needed to handle incoming prospect ive student quest ions alongside chang ing the slides for the introduct ion/conclusion of our session.
Solution: Our team of 3 worked on automat ing this process to include a constant FAQ PowerPoint loop. This helped so that our team no longer needed to manually change slides, and we could incorporate more FAQ slides in our presentat ion (increasing from 1 FAQ slide to 8 slides, with small breaks between that allowed students to read through the FAQs). We engaged with other teams to include their FAQ informat ion. We were also able to customize which slides would play in our loop, so that a general set of quest ions that may not have been relevant dur ing a certain t ime per iod were hidden. We also incorporated an embedded video with webchat instruct ions so that our students felt more connected to us online.
THIRD PLACE
QREVOLUTION (QR CODES FOR OFFICE OF SUSTAINABILITY INFO)
Humber Department/Team: Off ice of Sustainability
Problem: Often at Humber events, there are tables with many papers, pamphlets and st ickers g iven out in order to share informat ion with students. We didn’t want to create this waste at our Off ice of Sustainability event tables.
Solution: Instead of offer ing these single-use items, we have added QR codes to our signage that students can scan with their devices to access informat ion about the Off ice of Sustainability.
GECKO LIVE CHAT WIDGET (FOR STUDENT CUSTOMER SERVICE)
Humber Department/Team: Internat ional Centre
Problem: Students would have to wait up to 2-3 business days for a response. Once our team got the inquiry through the contact form, the response would be emailed at 5:30 pm each day. One inquiry could take days to be resolved. If a student had an issue that needed immediate attent ion the student would f ill out the contact form, call or visit the off ice. While these opt ions were available, we exper ienced large phone call volumes, visit ing the off ice took t ime and planning, and wait ing to get a response through the contact form could take up to 2-3 business days. We needed to get students to connect with us in real-t ime so that we can provide real-t ime solut ions.
Solution: Our team introduced the Gecko L ive Chat Widget. This widget is located on our website so that current and perspect ive student can connect with a Customer Service Advisor instantly. With Gecko chat we were able to extend our real-t ime communicat ion window from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm allowing students the flex ibility to connect. The app also uses predict ive text Art if icial Intelligence (AI) to help select the ideal response dur ing the chat based on things like key words and topic popular ity – mak ing the process even more eff icient and accurate for the Customer Service employees.
COURSE FEE CALCULATOR
Humber Department/Team: Off ice of the Reg istrar
Problem: While Humber full-t ime program fees are available on program web pages, students tak ing part-t ime load courses would need to email our team to provide an est imate of how much they would pay for a single course. A staff member would then have to look up relevant informat ion from var ious sources, perform the calculat ion manually and then respond to the student.
Solution: With our Excel-based solut ion, a front-line staff member enters the course code on a search f ield and the fee est imate is generated based on a behind-the-scenes lookup table. The lookup table is in turn built from 2 separate datasets sourced from Banner/ODS.
ORI Dean’s Special Award: Student Impact
RECYCLED WASTE MATERIAL TO PERSONALIZED GIFTS
Humber Department/Team: Barrett Centre for Technology Innovat ion
Problem: We work in the Barrett Centre for Technology Innovat ion (BCTI) and have “maker space” technolog ies such as 3D pr inters, laser cutters, available for prototyping projects with industry research partners and so forth. We were also asked a couple of years ago to use this equipment to make personalized, but very t ime-consuming, “Holiday Gifts” from new mater ials for Humber staff and industry partners who contr ibuted to the BCTI dur ing the year. Often other commemorat ive g ifts dur ing the year were purchased from a vendor. We wanted to make the g ift process more rapid and eco-fr iendly—a better representat ion of the school.
Solution: We decided to use the laser cutter to repurpose plast ic mater ial left over from other projects to create personalized corporate g ifts for Humber staff and industry partners. The plast ic mater ial would have been disposed of, if we had not repurposed it. The g ifts also added a personal touch which had a greater impact on those who received them after work ing on a signif icant project with the school.
OPERATION EXCELLENCE (TECH ZONE TABLET CHARGING)
Humber Department/Team: ITS
Problem: In the “Tech Zone,” we use tablets mostly for our front counter services. Somet imes, we would pick up tablets that were low on battery, or even dead from the previous day.
Simply Smart Spirit Award Creat i ve V isual Solut ions Inc. (2021). The Tech Zone – Humber College [Photograph]. The Vendry. https://thevendry. com/events/42059/the-tech-zone-humber-college-toronto/photos/251216
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IT EMAIL TEMPLATE (TO CONFIRM SUPPORT REQUEST RECEIVED)
Humber Department/Team: ITS
Problem: Clients reach out with tech/IT problems. Individual IT support members would create and send back emails conf irming that they have received the request and will get back to the client soon. IT support has new staff members often replacing earlier ones. This took too much t ime.
Solution: Now we have created an email template that just needs to be adapted with the client’s name, IT t icket number and problem and hit send saving at least 135 mins per IT support member per day.
OUTLOOK TEMPLATES
Humber Department/Team: Centre for Innovat ive Learning, Faculty of Health
Sciences & Wellness
Problem: We are part of a student-powered program at Humber where we support other undergraduate students with their research-related schoolwork. After the research support is provided, a follow-up email has to be sent out to the student receiving the support. However, there was no standard format or content for these emails.
Solution: Instead of copy ing and past ing blurbs from previously sent emails, each t ime we communicated with students, we created a template in Outlook to send. It saves us a few seconds each t ime one of us completes this task. It also provides consistent, professional communicat ions to the program clients.
Microsoft Automation Award
“[H]ow do we belong to the world?
Whether you are a person or a community: how do you fit in in a way that has integrity; how do you become a whole person; how do you ensure that you aren’t just moving in and out of projects.”
Zita Cobb