Placement Officer -The Best Job in the World

Some people think the role of a placement officer is easy: "Have a chat to the academics, ring around a few organisations, use Excel to draw up a list of students - piece of cake". The reality tends to be somewhat more complex, more stressful and less appreciated than it should be. You are probably juggling demanding students, indecisive organisations and last minute changes from the academic staff.

Sonia Can Help

Sonia helps you stay on top of placements and keep the stress level down. Your students will use Sonia to keep track of their placements, prerequisites and preferences - meaning fewer emails and phone calls to you.

Sonia helps you manage the organisations you deal with. Your relationship with an organisation is more than a name and address. You want to make sure that the placement providers and your students enjoy a really great placement experience. Students will be prepared with the right information. Organisations will be happy with the students you send them. More time to do those other tasks - or lunch.

Sonia can help.

Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Support

Sonia is a fantastic choice for universities looking for an organisation-wide placement solution. While schools can keep and control their own terminology and business rules, Sonia allows placement providers to be shared across the university.

Potential organisations can use the Sonia web site to nominate themselves and provide the initial contact information.

These new organisations can be tracked and processed in Sonia and eventually turned into qualified placement providers.

Only Sonia gives this flexibility plus the power to manage thousands of student placements simultaneously.

Social Networking

Everyone is aware of the popularity of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. You now have the option of sending messages to these services from within Sonia.

Your students (or placement contacts and supervisors) may choose to "Like" or "Follow" you by choosing the icon on the school's Sonia web page.

You can simultaneously post a short message to all of your social network sites from within Sonia with one click!

Sonia Key Features

• Supports multiple schools across the university
• Partner organisations can be shared across all schools in the university
• Staff involved in regular placement administration can customise the terminology and business
  rules to suit their unique requirements
• Placement options range from student-driven through to blocks - and everything between
• Custom fields can be added to any part of Sonia
• Social networking built in - send your alerts to students via Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• Ad Hoc reports and exports give you flexible access to the data you need
• Online registration of potential new placement providers
• Student nomination of new sites
• Easy to use wizards to reduce data input
• Connection to your student enrolment system and other university infrastructure
• Placement history is retained indefinitely

System Requirements

Minimum

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with IIS, 4G RAM
• Microsoft Windows SQL Server 2005, 4G RAM
• Placement Officer Workstations: Microsoft Windows XP

Recommended

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with IIS, 8G RAM
• Microsoft Windows SQL Server 2008 R2, 8G RAM
• Placement Officer Workstations: Microsoft Windows 7 or 8, multiple monitors

Optional

• Rather than using Microsoft SQL Server, support for Oracle can be provided.