University showcases

Next session is a series of University showcases, where various Universities share some best practice.

First is one "Enhancing the Student Experience", from London South Bank University. They need to attract and retain students, and especially in the new funding regime the student experience is vital. The ICT dept are moving faster, empowering staff, they have control over budgets, faster problem solving, leading to more effective delivery and improved morale in staff.

They implemented student shadowing, spent time with the students, watched what they did, went to classes with them. Rally good for ICT staff to get out there with them. Big cultural change, especially for ICT staff who previously had no contact with students. Really got a feel for what it was like to be a student. This sounds like a good idea to me.

First big project was student enrolment, all now done on-line, before they arrive, takes minutes and used throughout year. Interesting that when they had queues for enrolment they erected circus tents with games in to keep them amused while queuing!

Did a lot of work on progression analysis, a business intelligence application. Retention of students is an issue for them, 40% of students take resits. This tool allows them to see where students are failing, lots of drilling down. Can see why they are failing. Also work on SPOC student points of contact. All buildings have turnstiles, have to touch in and out, and they also measure blackboard log ins. Get alerts if student not turning up regularly.

Lot of work on student portal. Started from scratch 8 months ago and went live in September and adding more services. Has all student info in, very personal. Timetables, coursework tracker, reading lists etc. Have tried to do personal timetables but very difficult because of groups. Where have I heard that before?

Mobile app developed with Ombiel, sounds very like ours, very popular.

They use strategic outsourcing. If they can't do it quickly in house, they outsource it. New opportunities include partnerships with companies such as Pearson and social media providers. Showed example of a course page all based on software based outside the University including slideshare, blogger etc. More and more of this is going to happen. How are IT departments going to deal with it? Very good presentation.

Next session is the University of Leicester about a collaborative development for on line information security awareness training. They had a new is security policy so needed some training to help implement it. Looked around, nothing relevant. No resource to develop in house. So, looked at collaboration. Got interest from York, Leeds, Cranfield and IC. All could find money, but no staff resource. Used company called EPIC as a partner. Needed something that was high quality, delivered though VLE, customisable for different institutions. First they did a proof of concept to see if it could be done, and it if one be viable across the sector. The universities provide the training design and format and EPIC provided the technical design and development expertise.

It was successful, and they now have a product that a general member of staff can complete in 45 minutes and an additional module for research staff of 15 mins. Delivered though Moodle and Blackboard and to iPads, it also tracks completion. It is customisable and has a wider application in the sector and is being marketed via Epic. We saw a demo of it, and it looks good. Given the ICO's interest in data security training, this is maybe something we should look at?




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