Overview
Background
The EUCLID Student Hub was originally developed just before the original EUCLID project went live as the main access point for staff to view and administer the student record. It has had significant content added to it over time which has meant because of the evolving technical framework which Student Systems Partnership (SSP) have been using it has become inconsistent in its look and feel and the presentation of the data is both cluttered and fragmented in terms of where the data is displayed.
The requirement of the Postgraduate lifecycle strand of work to pull in the Postgraduate Research Data from the Postgraduate Progression Management Database (PPMD) into EUCLID if developed in the existing hub would mean that a large number of tabs within the hub would need to be touched. This requirement means that this is the correct point to re-write the hub in order to make the pulling of this data / placing of the data easier to achieve and scalable for the future both technically and in terms of usability.
Re-writing the hub at this point will also address the following issues which are inherent in the way the hub is currently designed and maintained: 1) Performance Issues with the way the data is pulling into the hub with it all being pulled as the search is completed.
2) Issue with the way the search works which hampers staff trying to look at more than one student at a time.
3) Build a framework where certain tasks currently performed by the Student Records Team can be rolled out in a controlled manner to staff in schools and colleges.
4) The role groups applied across the hub are complicated and confusing and need to be rationalised so they can be easily understood both by the support team and staff in the schools and colleges.
Scope and Objectives
To produce a student hub which is fit for purpose and scalable for the future both from a user and a technical perspective. Produce a hub which can act as a front window for staff as to what can now be achieved in EUCLID, re-using and extending all the work that has been done this far to develop a webframe work compatible with EUCLID which gives the users the usability which they need to complete task quickly and efficiently rather than having to work around the tools.
Create a hub which will draw more people particularly academic into using EUCLID because it is easy and intuitive to use.
Re-write and deliver the hub within this project before the PGR data is added so that the wider user community can see the benefits without having to wait for the PGR project to be completed. Limit the impact that this project has on any other project which requires to amend the student hub.
Deliverables
The high level devliverables of the project will be as follows 1) Review with the current users of the hub how they use the hub / what they would like retained / what they would like improved.
2) Redesign the search screens available to staff combining them into one search which can then be used by all.
3) Present results of the search so that access can easily be changed to be looking at one record or a list of students which meet the criteria as this toggling between these modes is key to how staff in schools and colleges work. This will build on screen design already implemented in Direct Admissions.
3) Change the design of the screen to use menus and wording that can be used across all student types.
4) Present key data as a header available at all times to staff as they navigate through without having to click back and forwards to look for key data.
5) Allow staff to be able to pick which aspect of the record they wish to look at from the search and hold this while they navigate through a list of students.
6) Review all update tasks in terms of roles allowed to access and level of task being completed with a view to the role out of tasks to staff and students being looked at by another project immediately after the student hub is delivered. This project will only look at how to stucture the tasks so that role out is possible in the future.
7) Maintain access for specialist staff such the student record team and fees team without cluttering up the screens for ohter users.
8) Develop the blocks of data and how they are displayed so that can potentially be used in other areas of the system such as student self service with little re-work.
9) Develop integrated context sensitive help which can be maintained easily going forward by the student system support team.
10) Develop online training to support the student hub which site alonside the online help and FAQs.
Benefits
The benefits of the project can be split up between the user benefits and the technical benefits are below.
User Benefits
| Description
| Benefit (Tangible or Non-Tangible) |
1 | Hub Re-Write will give huge benefit to the useability and the performance of the hub for staff. | Hard to estimate the level of improvement and impact as it depends on the task being undertaken by the staff. |
2 | It will allow staff the ability to review groups of student at once which is currently not the case using the type of framework developed for admissions. The data will be presented as a student lifecycle which staff have said is one of the good points of PPMD. | Hard to estimate the level of improvement and impact as it depends on the task being undertaken. |
3 | Re-writing of the hub will make the rollout of business process to the schools a lot easier to achieve as the code will be more modular which will aid the implementation of school related access. This is a separate project for 2015/6.
| Saving 10-20 days for the next project |
4 | Remove the Tribal Functionality which is validating the supervisor details as this fails and causes 20-30 calls a year. Leaves the data in an inconsistent state which causes issues within HESA and other downstream systems. The qualitity of the data will be important once EUCLID is feeding PURE with PGR data. | 0.5 days per call = 15-20 days. |
Technical Benefits
| Description
| Benefit (Tangible or Non-Tangible) |
1 | Student hub design already cluttered and not designed for the amount of information added into it. Adding new tabs will complicate this and increase the cost of ownership going forward. Work is urgently required to review and re-structure the data content. The large number of tabs (which for the most part appear to have been organised based on project work… makes content in places difficult to locate and not related to business processes.
| Small amount of time saved on each access to the hub. Training new staff easier and the use of the hub as the place to go for information will increase. |
2 | The Student Hub currently does not use any of our new JavaScript standards. The code is outdated and dispersed across various records, which will complicate any developments carried out on top of it. This has already been experienced on recent developments.
|
This will save 3-5 days on every project which has to look at the student hub from the point of the re-implementation forward. |
3 | Undertaking significant development like this within the existing hub will only add more effort in the future when the Hub is rewritten. It will also make any other project in the future less likely to tackle this work so a project just to re-write the hub will be required which will be difficult to justify in terms of business benefit.
| Futureproof the student hub |
4 | The hub is currently loading over 10 pages in the background every time it is hit, each one using it’s own source files meaning the page is extremely intensive on both the browser and the servers. Developing new pages using our new standards would make this even worse, as we use newer versions of many files that will all be loaded on top of existing content. | Small amount of time saved on every access to student hub. Remove staff frustration when using the hub and waiting for the data to load. |
5 | It uses an inconsistent mix of no bootstrap & bootstrap 2, not our latest bootstrap 3 based designs. The existing designs do not conform to current web accessibility guidelines. Alongside this it does not support responsive design which a design fully implemented in bootstrap 3 will do. | If any assessment was made on this functionality currently in terms of accessibility it would fail. |
Success Criteria
The success of the project can be measured using the following criteria.
- New look hub is well received by staff raising the perception of EUCLID being a useable system.
- More users can use the hub with ease with little training, access to online help is clear and is context sensitive.
- Less queries are received about the data as the data is ipresented in an ntuitive and clear way.
- Performance is improved, search can be used for a full programmes of students with no issues.
- Estimates for future projects are lower where they touch the student hub.
- SAC050 project (Consolidate PPMD functionality into EUCLID) can add the PGR Lifecycle data to the new student hub.