Brock University’s Faculty of Applied Health Sciences has partnered with InPlace Software to unify and elevate student placement management. The Faculty plans to bring 10 undergraduate and graduate programs across five departments onto a single, integrated platform.
- Health Sciences (Including Public Health)
- Kinesiology
- Nursing
- Recreation and Leisure Studies
- Sport Management
Currently, each program manages its student workflows independently. By transitioning to InPlace, the Faculty can introduce unprecedented cross-departmental visibility while preserving the specialized placement models that keep students, community partners, and accrediting bodies thriving.
“We selected InPlace because it provides more than a digital replacement for existing processes. It offers an opportunity to rethink and modernize the entire placement management experience.”
— Jeff Aird, Faculty Services Manager, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences
The Challenge: Breaking Down the Silos of 10 Distinct Programs
The Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at Brock had been operating without a single source of truth. Coordinating diverse clinical and field placements has required an array of manual spreadsheets, isolated workflows, and paper-based tracking. This decentralized approach created significant administrative bottlenecks.
- Hidden Partner Insights: Institutional knowledge about vital health care and community partners lived in informal notes, leaving staff without a shared view of historical engagement.
- Manual Agreement Tracking: Crucial affiliation agreements requiring Provost signatures were managed by hand, demanding labour-intensive yearly audits to track expiry dates.
- Labour-Intensive Reporting: Aggregating data for ministry compliance, the Dean, and cyclical program reviews meant piecing together fragmented data by hand.
Innovation in Action: One Platform, Infinite Flexibility
Instead of forcing every discipline into a rigid, one-size-fits-all box, InPlace will act as a versatile bridge. The software seamlessly supports three completely different placement models side by side, feeding all data into one centralized system.
“The decision to implement InPlace reflects our commitment to modernizing placement management and creating a more seamless experience for students, staff, faculty, and community affiliates. InPlace provides a centralized platform for managing the placement lifecycle, bringing together placement opportunities, student requirements, documentation, communications, and placement information in one accessible system. This will reduce manual processes, improve visibility, and enable more efficient coordination of placements.
This implementation represents an important step forward in how we manage placements and support experiential learning. By leveraging technology to simplify our processes, we can better support our students, strengthen our affiliate relationships, and enable our teams to focus on what matters most — creating exceptional learning experiences for our students.”
Unlocking Value for Brock University
- Next-Gen CRM: Maximize community partnerships with a shared dashboard mapping out coordinator workloads and past partner history.
- At-a-Glance Compliance: Instantly track student clearance statuses, site-specific onboarding, and pre-placement training.
- Automated Alerts: Never miss an expiry date with proactive system tracking for all affiliation agreements.
- Digital Timesheets: Modernize the student experience with online logging and formal approval workflows that replace outdated spreadsheets.
- On-Demand Reporting: Pull accurate analytics for ministry reporting and program reviews in just a few clicks.
- Data-Driven Recruitment: Turn placement success metrics into compelling marketing assets to attract top-tier future students.
Spotlight on Nursing: Mastering Complex Clinical Rotations
Brock’s rigorous four-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BScN) program places students with Niagara Health, Hotel Dieu Shaver, and a wide network of long-term care and community partners across the region. InPlace will be set up to handle the specific demands of nursing clinical education, alongside the other programs in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences.
Once implemented, InPlace will track theory, lab, and clinical hours from a student’s first day to graduation, mapping progress directly against program learning outcomes and skill checklists. Digital timesheets will reduce paperwork for students, preceptors, and staff, giving everyone a clear, real-time view of hours completed. Students will also be able to flag accommodation needs, travel limits, and work commitments up front for smarter matches, and InPlace can even support self-sourced placement requests where appropriate.
“For students, InPlace provides a more centralized, equitable, and transparent experience, allowing them to access important placement information, requirements, documentation, and communications in one location. By simplifying administrative processes, our goal is to allow students to spend less time navigating placement requirements and more time focusing on their learning and professional development.”
About Brock University
The Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at Brock is dedicated to understanding health broadly to help gain, maintain, and restore it. Through progressive teaching and research, its students and faculty examine topics that range from developing forward-thinking health policies benefitting specific groups to revolutionary health care delivery that treats the individual.
About InPlace
InPlace is a world-leading placement management software, trusted by more than 250 institutions globally to manage over 1 million student placements annually. InPlace supports placement, compliance, and experience management across nursing, allied health, career services, and more.
