Overview

Background

The Student Administration Service use locally built MS Access databases and BI Report to manage the graduation process. These databases are locally supported by the Head of SAS and managed by the Student Services Manager. This presents a risk if these components were to fail.  EUCLID has the capability to manage the graduation registration process.  Integration with EUCLID and other corporate systems will mitigate risk, increase efficiencies and improve the student experience.

With regard to the Student Systems Roadmap this project will contribute to the strategic objective of Outstanding Student Experience.  This project supports integration of the Graduation registration process into the corporately supported infrastructure (EUCLID). 

Scope

The project will deliver an online Web Form authenticated by EASE and pre populated with available student data.  This form will present an option for students to indicate their intention to attend and to register for the relevant graduation ceremony, presenting them with their personal details and their graduation event information as derived from the EUCLID Programme data; replacing the need to self-select and eliminating errors. 

Tailored confirmation will be issued to each student with their only input to be confirmation of data accuracy, ticket requirements, special circumstances requests and data protection/publication confirmation.

The project will include a facility for data storage and editing up to the point of graduation deadline.

Automatic communication will be issued to non-responders.

A change facility will allow for information to be edited up to the point of Graduations deadline and there will be one dataset stored within the existing student database.

Objectives

The objective of this project is to provide a facility for students to indicate graduation ceremony attendance via supported systems which presents student and ceremony information directly pulled from Euclid.  This negates the need for students to provide this information manually thus significantly improving the student experience through streamlining the process and improving the quality of data.  The project will also ensure that only one master dataset is being maintained thereby reducing the resource requirement for data maintenance.

Deliverables

This project will be delivered following an iterative delivery focussed approach and therefore an absolute list of the deliverables cannot be provided.  The requirements will be recorded as user stories and prioritised by business representatives and estimated by developers. The expectation is that not all will be delivered but the subset provided will provide a viable product as determined by the project team during the course of the project.

Expected deliverables:

Phase 1

• Online access to graduation ceremony registration form.
• Student and Ceremony information pre-populated from EUCLID.
• Editable information to point of graduation deadline.
• Graduation master list and ceremony lists, including the Senate List, produced from BI reports accessing EUCLID.
• Certificates produced from EUCLID.
• Press list managed from EUCLID.
• Merchandise list managed from EUCLID.
• Graduation master list available to be exported from EUCLID.
• Equality Impact Assessment (EqIA) to be created by SAS.
• Award completion report for schools and Student Systems staff
• New BI reports and ongoing exports to access database

Phase 2

• Ticket allocation managed from EUCLID
• Seating allocation managed from EUCLID
• Award record automated chasing, reporting and online updating by schools and Student Systems staff.

Benefits

The benefits of this project will be:

Reduced Staff effort and processing times

• Eliminate risk of errors when manually keying personal & contact data – already exists in EUCLID.
• Schools able to identify missing awards via EUCLID - means less chasing by SAS.
• Elimination of duplicate submissions which require staff time to identify and archive.
• Early identification of students who are planning on graduating in absentia.
• Eliminate risk of requests from non-eligible individuals.
• Current process repeated for each ceremony (14 times), a more up to date central system will reduce the number of “per-ceremony” tasks.
• Improved presentation with new clear, responsive and professional looking web interfaces.

Student experience

• Ceremony information more visible within the process.
• Simple process for Student to confirm or decline the opportunity to attend graduation ceremony.
• System presents Ceremony date and location to student, rather than student identifying this themselves.
• System references data already held on student, such as name, UUN, programme, Intended award, contact information, which currently need to be entered by manually by student.
• Allow student to confirm correct spelling of their name, with option to request change to name spelling.
• Display held Special Circumstance information, and collect any additional information.
• Personalised confirmation email with ceremony information, confirming to the student all the information they have provided.
• Improved presentation with new clear, responsive and professional looking web interfaces.

Management information

• Having the graduation data in a central corporate system will allow management information to be delivered through B.I. suite.
• Instant availability of reports referencing live system at time critical points through the ceremony period.

Avoided costs

• Reduced institutional risk as process will be operated within corporately supported systems instead of 3 unsupported databases.
• Increased efficiencies as manual processes are moved into a set of flexible tools that can deal with guests and students separately.
• Automation of communications improving the student experience by providing personalised information at the earliest opportunity.

More specific detail of these benefits will be able to be defined in relation to expected reduction in processing time by SAS staff.  Numbers or percentage improvement is expected to be measurable. Baseline information is expected to be available.

Success Criteria

The measures for success of this project will be based upon the improved student experience, improved data accuracy and reduction in staff time.  It will not be possible to provide such measures until after the first graduation ceremonies following release and then after each graduation period.