Overview

Background

Project HSS014: CAHSS School and Programme Quality Systems (SPQS) was an Agile-methodology delivery project that was completed during September 2017.

This project developed a new SPQS application, within EUCLID, to support the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences’ (CAHSS) annual report writing processes for quality review at a Programme, School and College level.

A Senate QA Committee paper in 2016 developed templates to support the annual programme and school QA review processes within the University, as part of the new University Quality Framework (UQF).  It was assumed during HSS014 that the SPQS system could be used beyond the life of the project by other Colleges, as well as by CAHSS.

The SPQS system has now been in operation with CAHSS for two annual cycles of programme and school-level quality reports.

Project HSS029 is a follow-on to project HSS014, which will focus on delivery of desired enhancements to the production SPQS system, following review by the CAHSS College Quality Assurance Committee during October 2018.

This project will therefore improve on the current SPQS application by:

1. Implementing functional enhancements, as identified by members of the CAHSS College QA Committee, and
2. Reviewing and consideration of options for revising the current Operational Level Agreement (OLA), which defines the on-going system support model for SPQS, with an aim to extend support to other Colleges.

Scope

In-Scope:

Key activities that are within HSS029 scope include:-

• Data source re-pointing for the Annual Setup (EUCLID system feed) process
• Changes to programme-level report template/s, so that GPDR breaches can be identified
• Review of and consideration of revisions to the current system support model for SPQS
• A review how the new School Administrator role in SPQS, which will be developed during HSS029, can better support SPQS System Administrators in their current reporting role
• SQPS reporting capability for CAHSS courses that do not form part of a specific academic programme
• SPQS provides the capability to identify  programmes that do not need to be reported on for the current academic session
• SPQS report formatting enhancements to support more effective transfer of MS Word documents, without further re-editing in SPQS
• SPQS report tracking enhancements
• System testing of all impacted Annual set-up process data sources
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT) of planned system configuration changes
• Resolution of any significant (Critical or High priority) defects identified during Testing
• Re-pointing any system interfaces and existing BI universes, also based on the Testing results
• Deployment activities for agreed configuration changes, assuming that Deployment Sign-off  Review has been completed
• Communications strategy development for HSS029 project stakeholders, and
• Project Closure activities

Out-of-Scope:

Activities that are not within HSS029 project scope include:

• Course level QA reporting in CAHSS
• Any EUCLID system data feeds, which are not impacted by the Annual Setup process
• Implementation of SPQS within the two other University Colleges:
  • College of Science and Engineering (SCE), and
  • College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine (MVM)

Objectives & Deliverables

A summary of key objectives and associated deliverables for HSS029 is given in the table below:-

Benefits

Benefits realised by delivery of HSS029 include:

• Better compliance of programme reports with GDPR requirements - Must
• A more streamlined academic programme reporting process – Must
  • SPQS reporting enhancements, including better text handling capability, and
  • Enhancements to the current EUCLID data feed to SPQS, should reduce CAHSS staff work-around effort during each SPQS annual set-up cycle by 15 – 20 days.
• Keeping the current EUCLID Admissions data feed will help to ensure that academic programme sustainability is assessed on a continuous basis, prompting Schools to review programmes no longer running and to work with Student Systems to update - Must
• A more standardised approach for future SPQS system support across the Colleges - Must
• Adoption of more standardised process workflows across CAHSS schools; and reduced re-keying of data - Should
• Further improvement of the audit trail for compliance, which promotes better submission quality and adherence to deadlines - Should
• Better tracking of SPQS report completion and enhanced data visibility for further analysis - Should

Success Criteria

The main success criteria include:-

• Future extension of the SPQS system to other Colleges in the University - Should
• A more efficient SPQS annual return set-up process, due to improved use of the current EUCLID data stream to SPQS - Must
• Positive user feedback to all Must-priority HSS029 changes from CAHSS stakeholders - Must
• Any HSS029 project work performed is delivered within the agreed baseline budget - Must, and
• That there is minimum downtime at go-live, particularly during the programme and school reporting cycle for 19/20 - Must

Project Milestones

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