From Fragmented to Frictionless: Practical Lessons from UChicago Professional on Scaling Continuing & Professional Education

What looks like a simple registration to a learner can involve a long chain of work behind the scenes: checking payment, updating learner records, creating the enrollment, providing LMS access, sending communications, verifying the enrollment, and reconciling records. Multiply those steps by every learner, every course, and every term. Suddenly, “just enrolling a learner” isn’t so simple anymore. Does that sound familiar?

Join Yacob Abdi, Associate Director of Program Operations and Systems at UChicago Professional, for a practical look at how their team is rethinking the operations behind the learner journey, from registration and payment to learning, completion, and return, to reduce manual work and create a more connected experience for learners and staff.

Rather than starting with technology, UChicago Professional began by looking at people, processes, and data across the entire learner journey. The team mapped each step, from registration and payment to learning and completion, to understand where staff were doing unnecessary manual work, where systems weren’t connecting, and where learners were experiencing friction. This helped them identify which processes could be simplified, connected, or automated.

In this session, you’ll hear how UChicago Professional is moving from fragmented processes toward a more connected ecosystem, with Eduframe, Canvas, and LearnWise AI, each serving a clear role across student administration, learning, and learner support.

Attendees will gain insights into:

Speakers: