Fellowship Management
Everything from an open application to a graduating fellow, for the EPL Ghana Public Service Fellowship.
The problem
A competitive fellowship gets hundreds of applications for a handful of places. Each one has to be read, scored by more than one assessor, taken through several interview rounds, and decided. Most programmes run that on spreadsheets and email.
It falls apart in predictable ways. Two assessors score the same candidate and nobody can reconcile the sheets. An applicant is dropped between rounds because a row was sorted wrong. Nobody can answer where a candidate is in the process without opening four files. Then the fellows arrive and the whole teaching side has to be run somewhere else entirely.
Who it is for
Applicants
Applies once, and can see how far they have got.
Assessors and interviewers
Scores against a defined sheet, without a spreadsheet each.
Fellowship managers
Sees every candidate's stage, moves them forward, and decides.
Fellows and instructors
Courses, lessons, quizzes and discussions once the cohort begins.
What we built
One system covering the full lifecycle. Configurable application forms, then a pipeline that carries a submission through vetting, two interview rounds, career direction and a final decision, with scores recorded against a defined sheet at each stage and multiple assessors on the same candidate.
Once the cohort starts, the same system teaches them. Courses with image led catalogues and progress, lessons with videos and materials, quizzes with automatic marking for multiple choice and a clean grading screen for written answers, plus per lesson discussions. Placements, institutions, supervisors and alumni are all tracked through to the end.
Notable engineering
- A multi stage application pipeline with per stage scoring and controlled progression between rounds
- Configurable application forms, so the programme changes its questions without a code change
- Nine distinct user roles, each with its own permissions and views
- Automatic marking for multiple choice with a dedicated manual grading screen for written answers
- An automated test suite covering the learner and instructor journeys so the flows keep working
Hundreds of applicants, several rounds, and a spreadsheet holding it together. Until it did not.