STU External Examiners - Evaluation of the pilot for the External Examiners Online Reporting System (Phase I)

Proposal Sponsor:

Dr Tina Harrison, Assistant Principal Academic Standards & Quality Assurance

Overview

The External Examiners Online Reporting System (project STU235 https://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/project/stu235) will be delivered as a pilot for a few schools to use after the November 2014 PGT Exam Board. Once evaluated it is expected rework will be done before being deployed to the whole university in June 2015 for use at the Exam Board. IS resources will be required to manage this post go live phase: support software once delivered, evaluate pilot and build/test/deploy the rework.

Other contributors:

Franck Bergeret, Barry Neilson, Anne-Marie O’Mullane, External Examiner Project Board

Why is it needed/What are the benefits?:

The introduction of the pilot was stakeholder driven - it was requested from stakeholders at the College Quality Assurance Committee, CHSS and was mentioned also in Information Sessions to launch the project. It was approved by the Project Board at its first meeting. This approach was welcomed by the School Directors of Quality at their annual briefing session.

Delivery of Phase I will be significantly compromised (and potentially fail) if resource is not allocated to the Pilot, Evaluation of Pilot Phase and Rework resulting from the Pilot.

This pilot will evaluate the impact and validate the benefit of the IT Tools during the November Exam Board before it is implemented across the whole University.

Benefits

It will contribute to ensuring that stakeholders buy in to the IT tools that are developed.

It is expected 6 schools will evaluate whether the pilot is used effectively by External Examiners and staff, and assess its impact on the University.

This approach will enable to engage with users at an early stage.

Staff will be able to try the process and feedback to the project team; this will enable to rally support for the IT Tools before the roll out.

The schools will be able to propose further meaningful enhancements to the IT Tools, which will then be implemented by IS Apps.

This rework will maximise its benefits once rolled out to the whole University for the June Exam Board.

Impact

If the IT Tools is delivered to the whole university without a pilot:

Although IT Tools will have been user tested during 13/14 build phase, going live may highlight some bugs. This will affect users’ confidence in using the IT Tools.
There would be less engagement from users; staff will not be able to try the process as they have requested it. As such the pilot can be a great approach to convincing the sceptics and bringing them along as supporters.
There will be no post live scope to get users’ feedback to help us to refine the IT Tools. When the full IT Tools is launched after the pilot, the university will have already improved on the original vision.

This phase is the follow up of 13/14 phase 1 project STU235 and as such will help to reduce the risk of the project failing.

Planning Status:

Fully Allocated

Programme Priority:

Portfolio:

SASG

Planned Start:

14/15

Multi-Year:

Yes

Project Owner:

SASG

Procurement > £50K:

Funding Source:

Core Grant

IS Admin Tab

Estimation Reference:

It is expected we would involve staff from the 6 pilot schools during the project, meaning less training will be required during the pilot evaluation phase. For the roll out to the whole University training would be done by SACS and Colleges.

Estimation Type:

Software Development

Estimated IS Apps Days:

Small

Estimated Business Partner Days:

Small