News on the Burgess Report

Change by degree

Student grades are to be reformed. But has the new system already been watered down? Polly Curtis reports

Tuesday October 16, 2007
The Guardian

Firsts, upper seconds, lower seconds and thirds have been part of the academic landscape in the UK for 200 years. Bob Burgess, the vice-chancellor of Leicester University, has spent three years examining how degrees are classified. When he issued interim reports declaring the current system "not fit for purpose", he triggered reports of a death sentence.

Today, the system gets a reprieve. His final 76-page report suggests the present classifications should remain, but a new Higher Education Achievement Report (Hear), will be issued alongside them, giving the "fine-grained" details of a student's learning: what they studied and how it was assessed. It is hoped this will be in place in all UK higher education institutions by 2010. Link

Graduates to get details of marks

• Current degree system not fit for purpose, report says
  
• Universities resist move to scrap existing grades

Polly Curtis, education editor
Tuesday October 16, 2007
The Guardian

Students will be given a detailed breakdown of every mark they receive in their degree and how it was assessed from 2011 in an effort to help employers distinguish between the increasing number who graduate with 2:1s and firsts.

The marking details will be given in a new two-page Higher Education Achievement Report (Hear), which will allow employers to scrutinise the detail of applicants' degrees and even to advertise for applicants who got a certain mark in a particular module. Link

Office life; how is it for you?

Here's an article from the BBC I read whilst, yes, scoffing a sandwich at my pc:

Workers 'want tea trolley return'

A survey of 1,000 office staff showed a break to buy tea and cakes from a trolley - a regular feature of offices in the past - would help motivate them.

Others traditions that workers want revived include a subsidised canteen, an annual works outing, and, above all, having a full hour's break for lunch. Link

and here's another, on another aspect of our daily lives here:

Email most stressful app

Email represents the single most stressful business application causing employees to become “tired, frustrated and unproductive”, according to research carried out by the University of Glasgow’s Computing Science department.

The survey of 177 subjects’ working habits found that 34% of workers feel stressed by the volume of emails they receive daily, with a further 28% of respondents regarding email as a major source of pressure. The research also found that workers typically switch applications as often as 40 times an hour in order to view their email, suggesting the application fosters unhealthy compulsive behaviour. Link

Online results in the news

Here's an article from the BBC, on how the Scottish Qualifications Authority are following our lead, kind of.

Pupils receive results on the web

Almost 35,000 pupils will receive their Scottish exam results a day earlier than most after they registered to access them over the internet.

More than a fifth of candidates have chosen to use the service, which has been made available across Scotland for the first time. Another 120,000 will wait until Tuesday for results to be delivered by post.

Meanwhile, Royal Mail has said that planned industrial action will not disrupt the results.

A total of 34,683 candidates signed up for the online results service, which allows candidates to view their results on a secure site. Link

The paperless office? Ha ha hah hah hah ha hah!

Paper. We get through so much of it it's not true. Or rather, it shouldn't be true.

I've no idea how many trees it takes to make a ream of paper (no doubt Wikipedia could give me number), but I'm sure there's a forest somewhere feeling significantly smaller as a result of two recent Registry projects. The first was servicing the year-end Exam Board, where everyone's results and awards are ratified and formally signed off, and the second was the publication of those results and awards to all the students.

The business of the Exam Board is to work through individual profiles for almost all our programmes, to discuss what needs discussing, and to confirm awards and progression. The profile itself is a Microsoft Access report, landscape format, with module and programme info for about half a dozen students on each page -- the modules they've registered for across all academic years, the marks they've received, the number of attepmts they took, the credits they've gained, and for finalists the award calculations and classifications they end up with.

There are pages and pages of these profiles, about four to five hundred for the July Board, and we need about twenty sets for all the members of the Board, Heads of Programme, Exam Officers and so on. And who knows how much paper we get through beforehand, when we first start running these reports, finding errors, reprinting, finding gaps, reprinting, inconsistences, reprinting. It all adds up.

The question of whether there's another way is one we hope to have answers for in the coming academic year. Possible avenues of enquiry include projecting the Board's set of profiles onto a screen in the boardroom, or perhaps filling the room with laptops or tablets or something. The mechanism for producing these reports will have to be re-written, but that's long overdue anyway. Something must be done.

And the second Registry project, hot on the heels of this one -- the publication of results -- is another A4-heavy process that is not sustainable, going forward. Currently every student whose profile goes through the Board get a letter. Thousands and thousands. It's right and proper that finalists should get the 'congrats-here's-your-award' letter, so too for the 'sorry-you've-been-terminated' letter, but the normal fail/resit letter? The normal pass/progress letter? There must surely be a greater role for e:Vision and e-mail in all this, for these thousands of bog-standards communications. The 'next actions' from these results letters, to borrow a GTD term, are in the main tasks like re-enrol for the next session, or register for re-sits; the former an e:Vision task, the latter soon to be. So let's have it all online.

The more applications and services we push online the better, as far as I can see, not just in terms of improving our service to staff and their Exam Board profiles (faster access to the data, improved portability, clearer presentation of information, more convenient and useful formatting) and students and their results (no postal delays, instantaneous processing, 24 hour access, off-site access, with of course e-mail support and phone support), but also in terms of improving how we use our resources.

The whole save-the-planet campaign seems to be bordering on the manic these days (where's the equivalent one about human trafficking, say, or Darfur) but however corny the sentiment it's up to us to play our part, to find areas to improve and, in improving them, move us all along a little.

Module evaluation on e:Vision

I've just finished a PowerPoint presentation to Academic Standards Committee on how we could use e:Vision to create, deliver and collate module evaluation questionnaires. It seemed to go down quite well, my shaky delivery notwithstanding, and I'll now be trying to pull together people and modules for an extended pilot for semester 1 of 2007/8, across all the faculties and subject areas.



See also:
Now - headaches, coffee. The future - slick, efficient processes. Oh yes.

Laurels

Right. Back in the land of the living.

It's great having a blog, I feel very cutting-edge, but they tend to fall into disrepair very quickly if left unattended, as this has been for a while now. Two large projects, and a growing series of smaller ones, have prevented me -- or rather, I have let them prevent me -- from updating this blog with what's current and underway with Registry, with my half at least.

First we had a(nother) HEFCE audit, swiftly followed by a year end Exam Board. The former involved a lot of running around with various lists making sure all the records in our central student database match with reality, as experienced by module tutors and students and the like, whilst the latter involved a lot of running around with various lists making sure all the records in our central student database match with reality, as experienced by module tutors and students and the like. Another way of looking at it would be to say the former checks the data that becomes the information that becomes the money, and the latter checks the data that becomes the information that becomes the awards. Both equally important, both dependent on the other. Either way, both were dealt with very successfully, thanks to the great work put in by the team.

But sadly there's no time to rest on our laurels (do any of us ever get the chance to do that?), as we're straight into the next set of projects: publication of results, enrolment, graduation, module evaluation, collaborative provision processing, HESA etc etc etc.

Web Review staff survey

Well, the Web Review staff survey has finally been released. To recap, we're seeking views on how we need to develop both the intranet and internet to meet the needs of all our users in the future. We'll also be surveying and talking to students and external users of the website. The results of this survey work will inform our website strategy, and will be the launch point for more detailed one-on-one interviews.

http://web1.yorksj.ac.uk/Survey//TakeSurvey.asp?SurveyID=mM3l934L996KG

The responses I've had already are flagging up a general confusion about what is internet and what is intranet. What I've been saying is that the internet site is the external-facing website at www.yorksj.ac.uk and the intranet sites include the Staff Homepage, the Student Homepage, the Document Directory, the Staff Information Point; sites that require users to log in, or are not generally intended for the public. The rule of thumb I've always gone by is that inter- is between or amongst, and intra- is within; the internet is stuff for everyone and the intranet is just stuff for us staff. I managed to identify 38 distinct websites or microsites within our total web presence, however we describe it, and I hope we don't get too bogged down with worries about assigning the correct label -- it's all stuff that needs sorting, that needs pulling together. What all these sites provide is valuable, useful content; it's just that it is all so awkward to find, difficult to navigate through, hard to digest.

Here's a quick question to illustrate my point. The hefty Your Rights, Rules & Responsibilities guide book that we distribute to all the students at the start of their programme; that contains all the policies and contracts, the regs and procedures; that they read from cover to cover and internalise fully; an important document they might need to refer to at any point in their time with us — where's that on the web?

Stick a link in the comments if you think you know.

Brave new world

Here are two articles from the Guardian. As far as I can see, they weren't linked to each other, but it's quite fun to view them as a pair. A glimpse into the future?

Online-only business foundation degree to launch

The University of Essex and education and training provider Kaplan are this summer to launch a business studies foundation degree which is completed entirely online.
Debbie Andalo Link

It's a world of possibilities

Virtual campuses are springing up in Second Life, as universities discover the advantages of cyberspace.
Jessica Shepherd Link

We're in the middle of our semester two exam period at the moment. I love the idea that in the future our invigilators will all need 3D cyberspaced alter egos. But who's to say they've not got them already?

For those with a healthy first life, and have no idea what I'm on about, Second Life is "a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 6,206,722 people from around the globe." Here's a cached copy of an FAQ from Oxford University on Second Life, with an academic angle, and here's a list of other institutions and organisations with an online presence there, and here's the obligatory link to Wikipedia.

It's that time of year again

It's that time of year again
Originally uploaded by YSJU Registry.

Email bankruptcy

I know, I know: this is hardly the most prolific of blogs out there, but I promise to try harder. So, to continue-

This caught my eye, from Double-Toungued Dictionary, "Slang, jargon, and new words from the fringes of English":

email bankruptcy

n. choosing to delete, archive, or ignore a very large number of email messages without ever reading them, replying to each with a unique response, or otherwise acting individually on them.
English, Online, Technology

Obviously we would never have anything to do with that kind of carry on here, but I thought it was a coincidence that I spotted this the day I'm trying to write up a little 'Getting the most out of Outlook' guide.

Now - headaches, coffee. The future - slick, efficient processes. Oh yes.

Friday headaches and coffee
Originally uploaded by YSJU Registry.

Another one of those full-day consultancy/training days that we know and love, this time with Ollie Magro and Howard Ormerod from Tribal, to get the ball rolling on the Process Manager project that will move the first of hopefully many off-line paper processes online, onto e:Vision.

I think it went quite well, and both Ken and I ended the day with a fuller understanding of the tools available, and how our existing process can map against their online templates. More training and consultancy booked in next month, with the aim of being able to deliver a working process in May. All good stuff.

"Students object to the changes on the UCAS application form"

This, from the Independent:

Students object to the changes on the UCAS application form

UCAS is planning to ask university applicants for more details of their background. Lucy Tobin reports

Published: 29 March 2007

The plan by UCAS, the university admissions service, to require applicants to record whether their parents went to university is deeply worrying to today's students. I probably wouldn't even be here under the proposed new admissions procedure," says Sara Carr, 21, an undergraduate at Cambridge University. "I went to a private school, both my parents went to university - and I'm middle class. I think it's terrible that, if I had applied via the new UCAS form, universities might allow my background to overshadow the A-levels I worked so hard for."

Continues...

And lots more here: http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=uk&ie=UTF-8&q=ucas+applicants+parents

AUA's code of professional standards

The Association of University Administrators (AUA), a professional body for higher education managers and administrators, has drawn up a code of professional standards that provides the framework of core values and principles to underpin the profession of university administration. I joined the AUA about a year ago, not that long after I started here, and found it a useful source of information on best practice across the sector on a range of issues. Their code of standards sums up quite nicely for me what's important, what it means to be a professional.

The code

This code of values and principles establishes the framework within which AUA expects its members to set the highest standards of professionalism. In order to demonstrate this professionalism and their commitment and contribution to higher education, AUA members are expected to:

• provide high quality professional services
  
• develop an appreciation of the academic culture, of the traditions and values of the organisations and institutions through which it is sustained, and of the roles of colleagues at all levels and in all branches of higher education
  
• be sensitive to the multiplicity of clients served by the higher education administrator and to the need to balance conflicting demands
  
• act with integrity, honesty, fairness, professional impartiality and diligence and without discrimination
  
• observe due care, objectivity and respect for confidentiality
  
• be explicit and straightforward in their dealings with colleagues and clients
  
• ensure that personal interest does not override the needs of clients
  
• accept responsibility for their actions
  
• challenge existing practices and ideas when necessary
  
• be committed to their own personal and professional development by seeking new knowledge and skills to enhance professional performance
  
• foster the development of others by sharing expertise and good practice and by encouraging employers to support professional development.

http://www.aua.ac.uk/about/code

But what is a Content Management System?

I've just realised that I've written an entry about what I feel are the requirements for a content management system, without actually explaining what one is. I'm sure the term can mean many things to many people, but this is what I'm on about at least:

A content management system is a software system that helps us manage our content. Sounds obvious, but to expand, it helps us produce, organise, control and publish large amounts of documents, web pages, images and multimedia resources. We're interested in web content management systems, as I think there is a recognised need to address some of the shortcomings in our external and internal websites.

Here's the obligatory steal from Wikipedia:

A web content management system is a computer system used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates document control, auditing, editing, and timeline management. A Web CMS provides the following key features:

Automated templates

Create standard visual templates that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, creating one central place to change that look across all content on a site.

Easily editable content

Once your content is separate from the visual presentation of your site, it usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most CMS software include WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content.

Web standards upgrades

Active CMS solutions usually receive regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards.

Workflow management

Workflow is the process of creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must be accomplished in the CMS. For example, a content creator submits a story but it's not published on the website until the copy editor cleans it up, and the editor-in-chief approves it.

Document management

CMS solutions always provide a means of managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction.

Summary of requirements for a Content Management System

I think we're all agreed that we need a new Content Management System, but we need to make sure we get the right one. Here's a summary of what our basic requirements might be. This isn't entirely my own work, I hasten to add. It's based on example requirements from elsewhere, but I think it provides a useful starting point. I'd be very interested in what you think.

The CMS must be an established system, with demonstrable market presence, from a financially stable provider. It must provide a single repository for the storage of information, and enforce the separation of content from design. It must be easy to use and cater for a cross section of skills, and should improve the speed of creating new content and editing existing content. The system must be able to run both our public-facing external website and our internal intranet, with reliable security measures and system contingency. It should be easy to extend or customise the software, and develop into other web service areas, such as discussion threads and online form design. It should be possible for the system to interact with other software in industry-standard formats such as XML and RSS. Technical support must be available from the supplier.

The system must enable decentralised management of content to avoid authorisation bottlenecks, be accessible 'outside the office', and must have the ability to manage users and administrators efficiently, incorporating role-based security and group profiling. A full audit trail of content authors' activities must be available. A workflow model must be in place, with clear content approval processes.

The output of the CMS must conform to accessibility and disability standards, without requiring content contributors to have any technical (e.g. HTML) knowledge in this area. The system must provide the ability to publish content to a variety of channels, including mobile devices, as well as text only. It must enable the incorporation of multimedia content and be capable of displaying content 'dynamically' so that pages can appear fresh and different each day. The system should incorporate a link-checking mechanism, and links within the site should not be broken if a page is moved or renamed.

The CMS should publish pages with human-readable URLs and have an automatic, customisable sitemap capability. Site navigation must be easy to maintain, and should preferably automatically reflect changes to the site. The CMS should provide conversion and publication of MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF documents, and should preferably have tools to enable the migration of content from our legacy CMS.

CMS administrators and authors must not need to have proprietary software skills (e.g. HTML, JavaScript, ASP etc), but it should be possible for advanced users to take advantage of their extra skills. The system must have a WYSIWYG style content preview function, and enable users to add images easily from a 'library' of acceptable images.

The CMS must have version control functionality, allowing users to view versions of published content, subject to permissions. When approving a new version, it should be easy to determine how the current and the new versions differ. Roll back and roll forward functionality should exist, that retains the integrity of the version history.

It should be possible to create secure areas of the site that only some site users can access, and a full audit trail must exist for both content and users. The CMS should provide a visitor statistics facility and a search facility.

Is it even possible to list them all?

To help with the review of the Univerisity's web needs, I've attempted to list every identifiable website, or distinct, discrete section of the University website, in order to outline the scope and breadth of our online presence, as it were. It aims to be comprehensive, but I'm sure there's something I've left out.

In summary, I can find 38 websites or microsites or whatever: 12 internal and 26 external; 18 served by Linneys and 20 on home-grown software. Wouldn't it be great if we could pull the whole lot together, and present a coherent, consistent picture to our staff, our students -- future, current and former -– and everyone else with an interest in what we do and how we do it. It's all about the same university after all.

• Alumni Society
  
• Business Development Centre
  
• Careers Service
  
• Change Password Page
  
• Committee Directory
  
• Document Directory
  
• e:Vision
  
• e-Learning Department
  
• Faculty of Arts
  
• Faculty of Business and Communication
  
• Faculty of Education and Theology
  
• Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
  
• Finance Department
  
• Fountains Learning Centre
  
• Freedom of Information Act
  
• HR and Job Vacancies
  
• Institutional Advancement
  
• International Centre/Study Abroad
  
• IT Help Documents
  
• IT Support
  
• Joint Honours Homepage
  
• Module Specifications
  
• Professional Partners
  
• Programme Specifications
  
• Prospectus – postgraduate
  
• Prospectus – undergraduate
  
• Recreation and Sports Services
  
• Research and Enterprise
  
• Schools and Colleges Liaison
  
• Staff Homepage
  
• Staff Information Point
  
• Student Homepage
  
• Student Services
  
• University website
  
• Web-based e-mail
  
• WebCT
  
• York Comenius Centre
  
• YSJ Calendar

Registry join in too

Corporate Systems Board -- a termly meeting of Exec and others charged with developing and implementing the University's information strategies -- were impressed when it last met that one of its papers was a blog post. elearning-ysju.blogspot.com is the address for the 'e-Learning @ York St John University' blog, "an informal place where the department will post information about what we're currently doing, advances in technologies, web 2.0, useful website links and general issues affecting the world of e-Learning and learning technology." (There's more about e-Learning at York St John on their website.)

We all thought it was a great idea, so I've set this Registry blog up to see if it can help things from our side too. As Mark describes in his blog, "Lots of people have heard of weblogs or blogs, but many are unsure of what they are or how they are used. This is a blog - a website where we can send messages which are posted in reverse chronological order, to which people can comment upon. Blogs can be on a variety of topics, a single topic or just a stream of consciousness, with the main aim of letting the world know what the blogger thinks and feels."

I suppose I should have a disclaimer at the foot of every page along the lines of "the views expressed here are those of the individual and not necessarily those of the University" blah blah blah. Anyway, I've made a start, let's see if I can keep this up.