IS Applications Division - Year End Project Report for Student and Academic Services Support Group
Student and Academic Service Group (SASG) projects have a direct positive impact on students at the University of Edinburgh, improving their experience and supporting their knowledge, learning and future careers.
The programmes in the SASG Portfolio are aligned to core SASG strategic objectives, as well as some University-wide objectives. In 2013/14 project activity was split across the following programmes:
· Student Administration Services
· Student Systems Partnership
· Timetabling
· Other Student and Academic Services
There were a number of successful projects across the SASG Portfolio delivering significant benefits for both students and staff.
Highlights of the Student Administration Services programme included development of a new External Examiner Online Reporting System to improve the experience of students and External Examiners and reduce the administration effort from Colleges and Schools, and enhancing the experience of students supported by the service through improvements to the waiting lists tools and through a simplified process for repeat applications for the Disabled Student Allowance with the Student Disability Service.
Student Systems Partnership projects addressed all strands of the Student Systems Roadmap. Highlights include the Online Registration for New Students project which supports students through the steps required for registration and enables them to take control of their personal data, and the Student Self-service project, which has given students access to their record online and they can now access this information and update their personal details any time, any place and on any device.
The Timetabling systems have been upgraded and enhanced, integrating with Learn group data for student class session selections, better reporting on Class lists and providing a more stable platform. Students and Personal Tutors will benefit from the new Course Timetable Browser via MyEd to highlight timetable clashes before making course selections.
A number of projects were started during 13/14 which, when started, were expected to complete at the end of 13/14. A number of issues and requirements arising later in the year meant that for some of these re-planning was needed and work was required into 14/15 to enable successful completion. Overall this has been a successful year, bringing a direct positive impact to students.
The following charts summarise the project activity with SASG for 2013/14.
Summary Statistics
Programme Budget (Start of Year) / 3654Project Days Delivered / 3888
Project Days Delivered vs Budget / 106%
Projects To Complete (Start of Year) / 33
Projects Delivered / 24
Projects Withdrawn / 11
In Year Projects / 8
Project Completion Rate (Excluding Withdrawn and In Year Projects) / 73%
Further information on SASG projects for 13-14 is available on the Projects Website at: https://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/portfolio/sasg/13-14
Student Administration Services
Student Administration Services includes those projects initiated from SASG business areas with a Student focus including (among others) Careers, Student Disability Service, Student Counselling, Student recruitment and admissions, Academic Services.
During 2013/14 the Student Administration Services programme supported several areas across the University in improving the service provision to students and staff and supporting the underlying infrastructure. Key deliverables of this programme include:
· Development of the Pilot for a new External Examiner Online Reporting System (STU235) to improve the experience of students and External Examiners for undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes, from nomination of the external examiner to analysis of the external reports. This will reduce the administration effort from Colleges and Schools whilst enabling an integrated approach to quality assurance and quality enhancement by facilitating effective qualitative and quantitative analysis of the external examiner reports.
· Enhancements to Student Counselling Systems to improve internal and external reporting and eliminate manual workarounds for amended business processes (STU237).
· Upgrade of the SAGE Application managed by the Careers Service (STU234), enabling better support, a more functional and productive software development environment and improved customer service.
· Evaluating and implementing CareerHub, integrating with Shibboleth authentication, ahead of the start of the year (STU242), which will offer a better experience to students and graduates, and offer more efficient tools to the Careers Service to manage its business and contacts with students, graduates and employers.
· Migrating the redeveloped booking systems for PG Open Day and Tours and their administration interface (STU233), reducing the risk of security issues and data errors, reducing administrative overheads and enabling more effective support.
The Student Disability Service and IS Apps project to enhance the experience of students has gone significantly over time and budget. The system was developed by SDS in 2006 and was agreed to be supported by IS Applications under best endeavours in 2012. A lesson learned would be that if IS takes over the support of other systems that were developed elsewhere, the code should be reviewed and migrated onto supported database and code versions at the time of adoption, before attempting further enhancements.
Summary Statistics
Programme Budget (Start of Year) / 665Project Days Delivered / 876
Project Days Delivered vs Budget / 132%
Projects To Complete (Start of Year) / 5
Projects Delivered / 4
Projects Withdrawn / 3
In Year Projects / 3
Project Completion Rate (Excluding Withdrawn and In Year Projects) / 80%
Student Systems Partnership
All strands of the Student Systems Roadmap were addressed during 13/14 through the completion of five 12/13 projects and the planning of 19 new projects, five of which were multi-year and so scheduled to be delivered in 14/15 and beyond.
Multiple benefits have been realised through the projects delivered by SSP, including:
· Admissions: the new admissions system went live with 2014 applicant data which delivers new functionality to the three College Admissions Teams to process undergraduate applications without the supply of UCAS paper forms and delivers standard data that can support MI requirements. The platform is being reused for the Direct Admissions project.
· Assessment: students are now notified of their awards electronically and schools can provide information on support available.
· Continuous Improvements: 10 enhancements delivered, including improvements to the Edinburgh College of Art Mini Portfolio and changes to support UCAS’ change from Graduate Teacher Training Registry to UCAS Teacher Training.
· Student Self Service:
o Students now have the ability to view and amend personal details and their address. They have the ability to view full course details and programme information and they can have direct access to the Higher Education Achievement Report and other documents in an electronic format.
o All students can now register online, reducing administration processes.
· Personal Tutor support was extended to all PG Taught students; the underlying architecture was reviewed.
· Enquiry Management: FAQ pilot has been implemented to support the management of student enquiries for frontline student services, pre-applicant and applicant enquiries.
· Compliance:
o Current version of SITS is being used, as supported by vendor.
o Delivery of statutory returns including annual amendments and alterations.
o Compliance with Data Retention requirements and removal of data from the system.
o Recording student UKBA Tier 4 data in the student record along with key documentation. Improved visibility of information, links to CAS information and reduces risk of holding information on separate databases.
o Adoption of new UI technology and standards with the result that the recently completed systems give a noticeably better user experience.
The 2014/15 priorities have been set by the Student Systems Board and projects have been planned accordingly, with the focus on executing the strategy defined in the Student Systems Roadmap.
Summary Statistics
Programme Budget (Start of Year) / 1918Project Days Delivered / 1932
Project Days Delivered vs Budget / 101%
Projects To Complete (Start of Year) / 18
Projects Delivered / 12
Projects Withdrawn / 3
In Year Projects / 3
Project Completion Rate (Excluding Withdrawn and In Year Projects) / 67%
You can find out more about SSP projects including a more detailed review of 13/14 project outcomes on the Projects Web Site at: https://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/programme/sac
Timetabling
2013-14 was the third and final year of the Shared Academic Timetabling Project implementation. It was a year to consolidate and embed the service changes delivered by this strategic change programme.
Overall the Timetabling service was handed over to the business as usual teams in good shape. The projects delivered in 13-14 are already delivering benefits of greater stability to the core system. The remaining limitations of the service relate to technical issues when scaling up the application to an institution of our size. Key deliverables for the programme included:
· Completing the Timetabling Upgrade (TTU002) successfully, after some unplanned effort with issues related to the disaster recovery site. The project recommended implementing a Veeam tool, to simplify delivery of future upgrade projects, and to ensure that the disaster recovery site stays in good shape as changes are made to the live service.
· The Annual Roll Forward to 14/15, including documenting the process to roll forward two new components – the Bookable Rooms and the Learn feed (TTU003).
· The Incoming Interface Refinements (TTU005) delivered a more refined selection of information, based on only returning current students on a programme of study and staff that have not been aged out from IDM. Although the testing of the changes to the IDM feed were more difficult than expected due to data in TEST, the changes will deliver increased stability of the timetabling system by virtue of it having a smaller volume of data and data change to handle.
· Enabling Personal Tutors to support their advice to students more effectively through delivering a Course Timetable browser (TTU006) that can check the student timetable for clashes.
· Replacing the bookable rooms website, enabling authorised users to book over 800 rooms compared with only 200 centrally bookable rooms previously (STU230).
Four projects for the Timetabling Programme will continue into 14/15, with the annual upgrade and roll-forward projects, as well as a number of planned enhancements to the service.
Summary Statistics
Programme Budget (Start of Year) / 584Project Days Delivered / 922
Project Days Delivered vs Budget / 158%
Projects To Complete (Start of Year) / 6
Projects Delivered / 6
Projects Withdrawn / 4
In Year Projects / 1
Project Completion Rate (Excluding Withdrawn and In Year Projects) / 100%
Other Student and Academic Services
The SASG Other programme started the year with 3 small projects for different areas within the support group. Key deliverables for the programme included:
· Completion of the PURE upgrade project (RES037) and PURE enhancements (RES049) to resolve a number of issues identified during the upgrade.
· Initiating the PURE Database Migration (SAS001) project to ensure the service remains running as the existing end-of-life database is decommissioned. The completion of this project is included in the Research Programme from August 2014 onwards.
The Decommission ALUMLIVE Database project, used by Development & Alumni, was in progress at the start of the year and is still in progress into 14/15 as it was low priority and was frequently re-scheduled and then suspended for part of the year.
The withdrawal of the Training Records for Research Legislation project enabled the allocated budget to be transferred to support delivery of other programmes, including Timetabling and Student Administration Services.
Summary Statistics
Programme Budget (Start of Year) / 487Project Days Delivered / 157
Project Days Delivered vs Budget / 32%
Projects To Complete (Start of Year) / 4
Projects Delivered / 2
Projects Withdrawn / 1
In Year Projects / 1
Project Completion Rate (Excluding Withdrawn and In Year Projects) / 50%
Appendix 1 - Portfolio of Projects by Programme for 13/14
Student Administration Systems Projects
Project Name / Project Type / Overall Priority / Project Size (S/M/L)STU235 External Examiner Online Reporting System / Compliance / 1 / L
STU236 Student Disability Service Database and Web Application Enhancements / Compliance / 2 / L
STU242 CareerHub Implementation / Funded / 2 / S
AP34-059 Essential Enhancements to Student Counselling Systems / Compliance / 2 / M
AP34-061 Student Disability Services - Reasonable Adjustments Data to EUCLID / Compliance / 2 / M
AP34-062 Upgrade SAGE Application to CF9 / Compliance / 2 / S
AP34-912 PUBS Database Migration / Compliance / 2 / S
AP34-913 CARS Database Migration / Compliance / 2 / S
AP23-917 Open Days and Tour Migration / Funded / 2 / S
AP34-940 New Careers system - options appraisal / Funded / 2 / S
Student Systems Partnership Projects
Project Name / Project Type / Overall Priority / Project Size (S/M/L) /AP23-027 UCAS Paperless & Admissions Process Review / Compliance / 2 / L
AP12-937 SFC Outcome Agreements & Strategic Plan Widening Participation / Compliance / 1 / M
AP23-020 Online Registration for New Students / Discretionary / 2 / M
SAC017 Data Retention Business Analysis / Compliance / 2 / S
SAC018 UKBA Data Management Business Analysis / Compliance / 2 / M
SAC019 Direct Admissions Process Review Business Analysis / Discretionary / 2 / L
SAC020 Statutory Returns 13/14 / Compliance / 1 / S
SAC021 Integration of Bursaries & Scholarships into the Student Record / Discretionary / 2 / L
AP34-054 EUCLID Small Scale Enhancements - Internal / Compliance / 3 / L
AP34-055 EUCLID Small Scale Enhancements - Statutory / Compliance / 2 / S
SAC025 Student Self Service (Phase 2) / Discretionary / 2 / M
AP34-920 Upload and Communication of Awards / Discretionary / 2 / S
SAC029 Implement Tribal FAQ System / Discretionary / 2 / S
SAC030 Online Registration Phase 2 / Discretionary / 2 / S
SAC031 UCAS Paperless Admission - Year 2 / Discretionary / 2 / S
AP34-938 PGR - Engagement Monitoring / Compliance / 2 / S
SAC033 Tier 4 Engagement Monitoring / Compliance / 1 / S
AP34-050 SFC Outcome agreements additional requirements / Compliance / 2 / N/A
AP34-053 SAAS Loan Payments / Compliance / 2 / N/A
AP34-056 Storage of Special Circumstances and Viewing in Personal Tutors IT Tools / Compliance / N/A / N/A
AP12-927 Key Information Sets / Compliance / 2 / S
AP12-935 EUCLID Small-scale enhancements- Internal / Discretionary / 2 / M
AP23-021 Student Self-Service Initial Phase / Compliance / 1 / L
AP23-023 SITS Double Upgrade / Compliance / 2 / M
AP23-024 12/13 Statutory Returns Revisions / Compliance / 1 / M
AP23-051 ESS Architecture Review / Discretionary / 3 / S
AP23-051 ESS Functions for PGT / Discretionary / 2 / M
AP34-051 SITS Upgrade / Compliance / 2 / L
Timetabling Projects