Following the recent Campus News article on changes to the Academic Work Centre, we wanted to introduce the dedicated Education Administration and Continuous Improvement Team (EACIT) responsible.

The team’s purpose – in short – is to support the university in providing an excellent student experience.

The EACIT team comprises colleagues drawn from Digital and Technology Services (DTS), Registry and Academic Affairs (RAA), External Relations, and Infosys, one of the university’s strategic partners who supports our student system programming and maintenance, plus other colleagues from across the various university campuses.

Simplifying and streamlining processes

The EACIT team focus on reducing the complexity of university systems and processes (including the steps we take to make things happen) where Campus Solutions is at the heart of the student journey, making them as simple and as streamlined as possible.

In recent months, the team have successfully:

• Identified and deployed a simple email solution that confirms when students have completed registration, significantly reducing support requests at this busy time of year
• Upgraded systems to ensure Online Module Enrolment (OME) and other high volume system activities have greater capacity and perform better for staff and students. For example, in 2020, the enrolment form was accessed 1200 times in the first hour of OME and there were thousands of failed logins. In 2022, there were 20,000 successful logins in the first hour.
• Made marks visible in the Academic Work Centre.
• Updated the system to better support graduation in summer 2022.

Taidhgh O’Regan, Product Director within EACIT comments “Our focus is on solving problems, and improving staff, and our students’ experience. We are continually looking to improve the university’s student administration systems and processes, exploring all people, process and technology related options.”

“Our Vision is to help the University of Nottingham pave the way for exceptional student experience, being a leader in the Higher Education sector, by reducing ‘pain points’ in the administration of students and particularly student records, where Campus Solutions is at the core.”

“This of course doesn’t come without challenge. As a large, inter-continental organisation with a complex web of interlocking services and stakeholders, collaboration is key. We continue to champion and implement new and collaborative ways of working that empowers colleagues to radically improve the way services are provided and student records are managed.​​​​​​​​”

Looking forward

The University Council confirmed three years of funding from 1st August 2022. We are focusing the spend on people working with colleagues across the University to help us change process, address system issues and substantially reduce the problems experienced by students and staff.

Focus now is in three core areas:

• Assessment (the challenges with management of resits, resit timetable generation and wider assessment issues). In addition to the technical work, EACIT has established a joint programme of work on assessment issues with Registry and Academic Affairs.
• Admissions (replacement of the Online Admissions Application and the decision screens behind it to support direct (including PGR) student applications).
• Students on Variable Institutional Pathways (students who interrupt, are on mobility programmes, or transfer for example often have many challenges with their records and that damages their experience)

How can I find out more?

Should you wish to learn more about the EACIT team and their ongoing activities, there are several resources and opportunities available to all staff:

• The EACIT SharePoint site which contains recent news, information on ways of working and a link to the list of requests and work in progress.
• Anyone is welcome to attend fortnightly update meetings (Weds 8:00 and 16:00) – email for an invitation BR-EACI@exmail.nottingham.ac.uk with ‘Update Call’ in the subject line.
• Discuss the content of six weekly faculty user group meetings with colleagues. EACIT and RAA regularly present on work in progress, etc. at these meetings.
• The Product Director, Taidhgh, is also happy to meet with colleagues to discuss further, please use the email address above to get in touch.