Student Attendance Monitoring

I am presuming as a response to the value being attached to the Student Engagement System (SES) data warehouse a new project is to be undertaken to introduce a student attendance data warehouse alongside the SES.  This is at the initial planning phase but quick progress is being made.  The project will be in three phases.  UHF RFID equipment will be installed at University entrance/exists.  This will be of great benefit to the SES as there will then be full coverage of people onsite so that those requiring further support, as they have not been on the premises, can be quickly contacted and any problems can be rapidly resolved.

The second Phase will be to install monitoring stations in all University classrooms and last but by no means will least be a data warehouse project to link the attendance data with the student record system and the timetabling system.  Although, this will be a large scale development it will provide a crucial role in supporting several prominent business imperatives that are in the new draft strategic plan.

Student Engagement System

On Friday 20th April the revised Student Engagement System was presented to the Monthly Head of Department meeting.  There was a live demonstration of the fully functioning system and an explanation of how the system worked, how it was being used and future a related projects.  It was explained that the original concept of the system remained the same as back in 2009 and all the technical issues had been resolved.  The positive influence on the system of the JISC BI project was discussed and it was explained that a second section "Dev Tab" of the system was available to all users and they had been tasked with evaluating enhancements that had come about because of the project.

Concept: A system to automatically identify students who are starting to disengage but not impose any extra administration by using data that is already being stored in University systems and then analysing what has happened in the last few days, while recognising the patterns will vary from course to course

SIMSE project meeting on 20 March 2012

SIMSE project team members met on 20 March 2012. The project team shared information on university wide IS development and updates on the current project development. Below is an outline of project development and issues discussed in the meeting:

• Draft implementation plan was made ready for discussion.
• The original BAG participants questionnaire was revised based on the initial feedback. The revised questionnaire was sent to BAG members again. Six responses have been received so far.
• · The first SG meeting was scheduled on Monday 26 March. The agenda and documents to be sent were ready.
• Reminder emails were circulated to all faculty managers regarding the use of tracking devices in class rooms. This was to remind students to swipe their ID card when attending lectures.
• The team members had extensive discussion on how best to implement JISC’s Strategic ICT Toolkit for the strategic use of SES. They shared their understanding and views, raised questions, and challenged their current thinking. For examples. what is the wider context of making the best use of SES, should the data be managed by the university’s planning department in the register office? Should the SES outputs be integrated directly with DVC’s student retention dashboard? Would our project benefit from an institutional level ICT maturity audit to know where we are now even it may be beyond the scope of the SIMSE project?
• It was agreed that all six key enablers in the Strategic ICT Toolkit should be considered in the implementation plan. Some of the key enablers, e.g. EA, may needs more attention and in-depth investigation. The revised implementation should be sent for approval by the SG meeting.
• The team had useful discussions on the purpose of the next SG meeting. It was agreed that it was to review and approve the implementation plan. SG members serve as the critical friends to evaluate the progress and outcomes. Two formal meeting were planned, but the SG members will be regularly updated with the project progress and milestones for their feedback.
• Marcus offered to showcase the SES to SG members on Monday morning 26 March.

JISC SIMSE Project Meeting

The JISC SIMSE project meeting took place on 21 February 2012. After providing feedback about cluster online meeting and updating on new development in university wide IS projects, the project progress was reviewed and further actions were identified. The questionnaire survey, which had been piloted on BAG members, will be further developed and redistributed to the BAG members. The steering group members are confirmed. A number of JISC tools that had been reviewed by the team were felt to be developed primarily for improving high level strategic alignment rather than a specific project. The need for adapting JISC tools to this specific project was highlighted and more JISC resources will be reviewed.

Student Engagement System Business Action Group 9 Feb 2012

Last week I attended the Student Engagement System Business Action Group.

The student engagement system is a piece of software that monitors individual student’s engagement with the University.

It does this by collating information from a number of sources as follows.

1. Records of assessments received and those that may be overdue.
2. SiD activity
3. Logins to Blackboard
4. Logins to e:vision
5. Novell logins
6. Library – taking out of books.
7. Swipe / auto-readers in lecture rooms

The system has just been updated and we now want to encourage all students to swipe when they encounter a reader. Could all course leaders please make sure that their students are aware of the importance carrying their cards and of swiping as standard.

We currently have two types of reader, first the standard swipe reader, but also a small number of auto-readers where students do not need to swipe, the reader picks up on the chip in their cards, so they only have to be near enough for it to trigger.

The Polhill readers are as follows.

P0.32 – auto reader
P0.33 – auto reader (thus the students do not now need to swipe when using these rooms – the swipe readers are redundant)
D1.01 (theatre) - swipe reader
P0.50 – swipe reader
P1.01 – auto reader
P2.04 – swipe reader

The Business Action Group would like to receive any suggestions for other locations that would improve the chance of recording a student’s presence on campus. Currently, if students do not enter any of these locations they will not be recorded. Suggestion can be passed directly to me.

The card readers are not attendance monitors and so it is also important that normal attendance records are also kept.

The software calculates an overall engagement factor. It would be helpful to have any opinions from course leaders on how this data might be used. Again, please contact me by email with suggestions that I could pass onto the group.

Phil Wright 13th February 2012.

JISC SIMSE Project Meeting

The JISC SIMSE project meeting took place on 25 January 2012. After updating on new development in university wide IS projects in general and the student engagement system and JISC BI project in particular, the potential application of relevant JISC resources in the strategic use of SES in the university is discussed. As a result, two main JISC resources, Enterprise Architecture and IT governance, are considered to be the most pertinent.  It was also agreed that a systems thinking approach -“The Critical System Heuristics (CSH)” will be used to operationalise Enterprise Architecture and IT governance for the SIMSE project.

Project meeting at Bedford Campus 3pm on 3 Feb

Another SIMSE meeting was held at 3pm today in Bedford Campus. Team members discussed the questionnaires to be used for SES (Student Engagement System) Business Action Group (BAG) meeting.

The purpose of the Business Action Group is to determine how the Student Engagement System (SES) can be best used to support the student experience. The group will ensure that a consistent approach is taken so that duplication is avoided and produce the necessary support documentation including:

• Triaster process maps
• Training requirement specification
• User documentation
• Communication plan - user instruction, advertisements and posters
• Equipment monitoring specification

The group will also input into the feasibility of expanding the current placement of attendance equipment and web based analysis software to interrogate the attendance monitor unit data.

BAG membership consists of the representatives of the key SES stakeholder including Registry, ISD, faculty managers, faculty administrators, UKBA compliance offer, Academic staff, International office, etc.

Based on the Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) framework and JISC EA guidelines, the questionnaire asks respondents to reflect their thoughts on the “as is” (current) state and the “to be” state of SES in the following four basic boundary issues: source of motivation, decision making and governance, source of knowledge and guarantee, and source of legitimacy. To each basic boundary issue, three categories are assigned: stakeholder, concerns and difficulty.

This is an exploratory exercise aiming to examine stakeholders’ understanding of SES and their sense of directions.