Closure Report

Project Summary

Phase 3 expanded on the number of rooms available.  In addition to this upgrades to existing teaching spaces there will be enhancements to the automated scheduling application after its successful launch at the end of 2018. 

We built on our reporting capability and continued to ensure data compliance through automating some manual processes. 

Finally as the three phase programme comes to an end we will ensure a successful transfer to business as usual for all lecture recording service activities.

Analysis of Resource Usage:

In terms of Applications Directorate day we have used 215 Days.  

This breaks down into:

• Project Services 180 days.  This is as expected as LTW have a Project Manager seconded at 1 FTE.
• Software Development 25 days.  Again, this was as expected.  We delivered version 2 of Replay Scheduler.  
• The other days are covered by Production Support, Governance, Meetings and Development Technology assistance.
• Overall the Programme had a budget for 950k for the 18/19 year and ended with a surplus of 129k.  The surplus was in the main due to lower costs for the procurement and installation of room hardware.  This is in line with the lower costs overall for hardware through the three years of the programme.

Outcome

Please find the link to our Impact Report.  The impact report details all of the work we have done within the lecture recording implementation and also details the ongoing work of academic groups, plus notes the future work to be taken forward in 19/20.

Please find the link to our Business Case Benefits Interim Report.  Benefits will continue to be monitored within the Engagement and Evaluation Group which continues for the next two years.

At our final Steering Group meeting the group acknowledged that all of our objectives and deliverables have been met other than those that could not be achieved due to Echo360 having not yet released the appropriate reporting API.  It was noted that we produced the appropriate reports manually. 

Success Criteria for MLE005

• 100% completion of room installations and superior kit to improve quality in place for the start of term.  This list is planned for approval at the Programme Board on the 07th of May.

Notes: Complete.

• Technical audio errors, those not related to human error are closely measured.  From the start of term 19/20 till project closure at the end of October these errors will continue to be measured and success will be reviewed at the final Steering Group meeting comparing whether there is a year against year improvement.

Notes: Audio errors have been closely measured and will continue to be monitored through the continuing work of the EEG.  Complete.

• With new rooms coming online and other estate changes outside of the project, continued success will be measured with 100% of lectures centrally booked into a lecture recording equipped room being automatically scheduled for the start of term 19/20.

Notes: Complete.

• 100% of Learn courses with a corresponding course space in Media Hopper Replay will be automatically linked.

Notes: Automatic linking has worked well.  Complete.

• The start of semester Student Helper initiative has operated successfully under the management of the Project Team since the start of the academic year 2017.  Success will see this initiative transferred to business as usual in time to be run at the start of the 19/20 academic year and a minimum of 30 students to be recruited at that time.

Notes: Now forms part of the on-going Student Experience Action Plan and will run with an enhanced   format for the full academic year beginning in Jan 2020.

• A reduction year on year in the number of support calls across the first 2 weeks of term.  This will be a year on year measurement for the Learning Spaces Technology Team and the Digital Learning and Media teams within the Learning Teaching and Web directorate.  

Notes: The actual number has increased by one each week within DLAM, however as a proportion of   the number of recordings/rooms there has been a significant decrease.

Key Learning Points

Success

• Having a technically sound, motivated and politically aware Steering Group bringing their experience from across the campus on a monthly basis was a great support to the project.
• On the same theme the programme structure worked extremely well for the project.  The work of the Academic User Group, Engagement and Evaluation Group and Learning Space Technical Group generally meant the project team and Steering group could keep focus on delivery.
• Key roles within the structure.  Great recruitment of key professionals to support the excellent professionals already here.  For example within communications and analysis areas.
• Room installations have been smooth as we have been able to add extra contractor resource when it was needed.  It was good to have scope for this in the budgets.
• Development deployments have been complicated but ‘smooth’.  The flexible use of 'maintenance' releases where we had significant development resource booked before, during and after release helped to smooth the data issues we encountered.  We appreciate the flexibility of support of colleagues across the applications directorate during development and deployment.
• Working with the Finance Programme to dovetail our developments which were both of the highest priority and targeting the same personnel went well.  Both teams understood the value of the other teams work.  Under significant pressure space was found to work together.  Both projects deployed successfully.
• Student Helpers will continue in an enhanced format as the value of student employment has been well proven within the implementation.  We expect 30-40 students to be in constant employment across the academic year, starting in august 2020.

Lessons

• It proved very difficult to test the application with an appropriate data set.  Our test data, although plentiful was too clean and errors would only rise to the fore when switching to live data.  
• We have had to deal with poor data quality which had and impact on development resource.  Using timetabling data (which is manually entered across the campus) in this unique manner as the driver of our scheduling service highlighted data quality issues and issues of poor practice where timetabling bookings are being made that do not conform to teaching time policy.  

Outstanding Issues

No outstanding issues.