Case study in institutional/supplier partnership; communicating timetables to student ARC/JISC Timetabling Group University of Westminster, London Leon Smith, Head of Timetabling Services, MMU Tony Vicente, Business Development Manager, Scientia

Overview Who we are Context The project Benefits of collaboration Lessons learned

Who we are – MMU Number of students34,595 Number of staff (all)2,150 Number of campuses4 Timetabling operationCentralised Active Modules5,106

Who we are – Scientia Leading provider of HE Scheduling Solutions Global user base 55% UK market share

Context Student Retention Success & Satisfaction Student Intake (Aspirations, Attitude & Abilities) Learning, Teaching, Assessment & Personal Development Processes, Facilities & Resources Reputation Marketing & Recruitment Processes All Year Numbers Resource allocation League table rankings A A A A Recruit to target B B B B Improve satisfaction, retention & success C C C C Inform decision-makers 2010 NSS Where to intervene?

A coordinated strike for step-change improvement EQAL New Curriculum designing new units, … New Admin Systems & Processes personal timetabling, … New Virtual Learning Environment Moodle & myMMU web/mobile, Talis Aspire… New QA & QE Processes facilitating curriculum transformation In the current climate Diminishing unit of resource Everything depends on everything else We are large and risk averse but Programme Board chaired by DVC Student Experience

Context – who collaborated Timetabling Services Learning and Research Technologies IT Services Scientia

The Project: Objectives Key deliverables for the Timetabling project strand: Individual student timetables supplied from the timetabling system Earlier publication of timetable information to staff and students Improved shape of timetable to better meet student expectations Enhanced systems support for timetable design, delivery and related services This required: Process redesign New technical solutions System upgrades and extensions A phased approach, with timetable deliverables building up year-on-year over the lifetime of the project

The Project: Process Curriculum available from SRS by beginning of January Staff availability submitted by end of February Returning student options available end of March All taught delivery structures delivered by beginning of April Draft timetables issued beginning of June Individual induction timetables (applicants and returning students) published mid July Final course timetables published end of August Individual student timetable conversion complete by end of induction week

The Project: The Technology This work is licensed under a Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence

Challenges Standardising process and development cycle Ensuring data correctly structured for accurate individual timetable information Accommodating interim arrangements where some students received individual information and others didn’t Combining data from different sources into a single unified individual calendar view Keeping student statuses up to date

Systems design and configuration Develop SWS templates which enabled content to be scraped programmatically Build lookup table to record student statuses Ensure token passing for single sign-on was in place Validate student against SRS (QLS)

The Output Student ID Timetable This work is licensed under a Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence Sync to personal device

Access statistics SeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember MobileApp165,427274,472165,952101,331 WebPortal314,676342,454136,47167,890 TOTAL480,103616,926302,423169,221 MobileApp34%44%55%60% WebPortal 66%56%45%40%

Areas of collaboration Look-up for contextual individualisation Integrated attendance monitoring database Self registration web portal Bespoke change notification framework Remote technical support

Benefits of collaboration Shared understanding and knowledge exchange Taking advantage of relevant expertise Shared costs for commercially desirable developments Improved continuity planning and risk management

Lessons learned Ensure there is clarity over roles Make sure requirements and specifications are clear on all sides Have robust forms of both formal and informal communication

Any questions?