Devin Lampe
When I joined The Mountaineers this past fall, I had the opportunity to quickly connect with many passionate volunteers who were deeply involved in course management. One common theme I kept hearing from these volunteers was how time-consuming it can be to manage the various aspects of our courses, including course-related activities, post-course tasks, co-requisites, and other essential requirements.
Various committee leaders showed me the detailed and complex processes they had created to streamline course management and minimize manual effort wherever possible. There were also a lot of submissions through our feedback channel, UserVoice, that requested tools for easier data exports from rosters to aid in customized course management. It was clear that everyone was looking for ways to make course management smoother and more efficient.
Piloting a new Course Management Tool (CMT)
Given the unique needs of each course and the limitations of our current website, a few volunteers and I decided to explore ways to improve course management beyond just the website roster exports. By combining Salesforce reports and Google Sheets, we came up with a solution that allowed us to automate the exports in a way that could easily be shared with course leaders.
What we created was a new Course Management Tool (CMT), which not only enhances the flexibility of each course, but creates a repeatable process that can be replicated for future courses, helping streamline the entire workflow. The core functionality of the Course Management Tool allows for:
- Data to be automatically refreshed each morning.
- Tracking students' progress toward required corequisites (such as stewardship, navigation, wilderness first aid, etc.).
- Monitoring the registration status of course field trips and lectures.
- Keeping track of registration status for activities that are required post-course.
- Showing the total count of monthly activities registered or completed for conditioning courses.
- Providing quick links to profiles and email addresses for easy access.
Feedback from Volunteers
To test the Course Management Tool, we enlisted a few courses into a pilot program to gather valuable feedback and identify areas for improvement. Overall, the feedback has been incredibly positive, and we’re thrilled to see how much volunteer time we've been able to save!
“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much — new web tools usually make me want to pull my hair out. But this one? Total game-changer! Stuff that used to take hours now gets done in minutes. I barely even needed the training — it's that easy to use. I can check what attendees signed up for and completed without spending hours playing detective scrolling though profiles. Pulling a reminder email list together takes about 2 minutes. Highly recommend — unless you actually enjoy wasting time.” – Jennifer Bell
“This tool has been incredibly useful for me, and saved me a lot of time inputting everything into my own spreadsheet. “ Rachel Rubin
“The course management tool is amazing and keeps the info where it should be within The Mountaineers and based on the website instead of in separate documents on private shares. It is an excellent resource and has lowered the amount of time spent updating excel sheets.” – Annora Ayer
What's Next
We hope the CMT will not only help reduce course administrative efforts, but also support succession planning, with the default template being owned and maintained by The Mountaineers Technology staff. Once the CMT pilot wraps up this spring, we plan to onboard more complex courses to the tool and continue expanding as capacity allows. This includes conditioning courses, courses with multiple co-requisites, or courses with many trip/lecture requirements.
If you have any questions or want to be notified when more courses are being onboarded, reach out to Devin at devinl@mountaineers.org.
Thank you to all the volunteers so far that have provided helpful feedback to the CMT pilot! Particular shout-outs to Travis Prescott, Nathan Foster, Christina Black, Stella Kim, Mary Lou Biggs, John Gilbert and KD Dase!
