From Professor Sarah O’Hara, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education and Student Experience

 

Happy New Year! I hope that you had an enjoyable and hopefully restful break.

Before things get too busy I wanted to update you on our progress with Campus Solutions. As you will be aware, we began the massive task of migrating and integrating data from our numerous stand-alone systems into Campus Solutions at the end of November. Thus far progress has been good and colleagues in Student Services now have access to the system.

I now want to highlight what you and colleagues can expect to see over the coming weeks as we start rolling out the new student records system across our UK campuses.

Exam boards and results

Exam boards and marks processing for January/February will be carried out in the usual way in Saturn. Exam results for the Autumn Semester will be released on Thursday 14 February through BlueCastle. Students who do not usually receive their results through BlueCastle will continue to receive their results in the same way as they have previously done. Please view the Exam Boards and Marks Processing frequently asked questions for further information.

Student ID numbers

In preparation for the move to the new system we added a ‘1’ to the beginning of the student ID numbers for the majority of our UK students. Please remember this change if you work with student ID numbers, in addition to the other student ID number changes that you will need to be aware of.

New UK module codes

As we have previously advised, the implementation of Campus Solutions involves the introduction of new UK module codes. Colleagues and students can view the complete list of old and new module codes on the Module Codes Workspace site.

Campus Solutions access for staff

As detailed in the rollout and support plan communicated at the end of last year by Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Andy Long, colleagues that will have access to Campus Solutions will be notified during the week commencing 14 January. These colleagues will be able to access the new system during the week commencing 21 January. In the meantime, student records can be viewed in Saturn Web until at least the end of February.

The access level for Admissions Tutors was updated on Monday 7 January to reflect the new role assigned to them in the system. Admissions Tutors can continue with their admissions processes and they have been notified separately regarding this change.

MyNottingham access for students

Students will be able to use the MyNottingham website, the student-facing part of Campus Solutions, to check and update their personal details from the week commencing 21 January. They will also use the system to request some online support from the Student Services team – this feature will be introduced to students in phases as the service is expanded.

Module selection pilot

At the beginning of the Spring Semester, the Schools of Geography, Physics and Computer Science will be taking part in a pilot where students will complete module selection in the MyNottingham website during the change-of-mind period. Although module choice might seem like a very simple part of our processes, it is in fact remarkably complex as we need to ensure that a given student has the right module mix, pre-requisites, co-requisites etc. required for their particular programme, and this data then needs to feed through to other functions such as timetabling. Adopting a pilot approach will allow us to mitigate against any problems that might arise because of our underlying data (see below).   All other students will need to complete and submit a paper form, as usual, for this change-of-mind period.

Guidance and support

A full range of help and guidance will be available to support colleagues as they start using the new system. This includes nominated go-to expert users and support coordinators, along with drop-in sessions, webinars and online support materials. Further details will follow for those colleagues using the system.

Data quality

One of the challenges that we have had throughout the project is data quality. Although colleagues in Schools, Faculties and Professional Services invest immense amounts of time ensuring our data is correct, given the size and scale of the University and the fact that we have numerous sources and multiple versions of data, we will no doubt have errors in our underlying data. As anticipated, the move towards Campus Solutions is highlighting these errors.

Data used by Campus Solutions is owned and managed right across the University. Technical experts and senior ‘business owners’ of the data have ensured that colleagues in their teams will prioritise the validation and rectification of data errors as soon as they can after data queries emerge. Moving forwards, Campus Solutions will allow us to ensure these errors are minimised as data will be added and be available in only one central system rather than multiple systems.

Thank you for your continued support as we rollout Campus Solutions. If you have any questions or feedback please email campussolutions@nottingham.ac.uk.

 

Best wishes
Sarah

 

Professor Sarah O’Hara
Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education and Student Experience