Work carried out under Service Excellence noted that:

• Schools are duplicating effort by creating local systems and records because there is no central workflow system in place to support ESC business processes.
• Student ESC cases are being handled inconsistently because SCEC Policy and the Taught Assessment Regulations are interpreted and implemented differently across Schools and Colleges.
• Student ESC cases are being handled inconsistently and inefficiently because roles and responsibilities are not clear at School/College/Central level and Professional Services/Academic level in relation to ESC.

The ambition of this Project is to deliver:

• Develop standard processes for ESC, introduce standard roles and responsibilities for all staff involved in the SCEC process, and make available standard training delivered to ensure that the process is managed consistently throughout the university.
• Introduce a University team to manage all Special circumstances and coursework extensions applications through the new online system
• Develop and implement a workflow for the management of SCEC cases from start to finish. The workflow would be used by staff and students and enabled via a digital interface.
• Provide a central repository for the information and supporting documentation associated with each student case.
• Provide appropriate visibility of information related to cases to relevant staff and individual students.
• Provide appropriate security and access control to safeguard students’ data and comply with UoE data protection and data retention policy.
• Provide appropriate learning resources and training opportunities to ensure staff are competent to deal with SCEC and are compliant with policy and regulations.

The benefits to the University will be:

• Improved student experience due to easy to use, trackable, online application process.
• Increased consistency through introduction of standard process across the University.
• More effective efforts and reduced duplication of effort through clarity of roles and University organised training.
• Increased efficiency and reduced duplication of effort due to faster, more secure and single source online workflow.
• Management information would be available at course, programme, School, College and Institution level. This has not previously been the case, with all records currently held locally and often not easy to report from. Management information would be beneficial to analyse in order to identify key trends in SCEC, which may indicate the need for additional resourcing, an amendment to policy etc. Information will also be available to support effective management of workflow.

Scope: 

The scope of the project is:

• All Special Circumstances and Coursework Extension administration handled by Schools and Colleges across the University, for all student types, from the point of a student led application, through to a decision being published on the student record.
• Introduce a new University team to manage all Special circumstances and coursework extensions applications through the new online system
• Definition of staff roles, responsibilities and training as they relate to the processing, approval and management of SCEC cases.

 Areas that are out of scope of this project include:

• Workflow and business processes to support Board of Examiners, this is a separate project proposed for Tranche 2. The deliverables of each of these projects may interlink, but the projects are not dependant on one another.

Plan

Project will be divided into below Workstreams (WS) to track the progress; identify, assign & complete various project actions; and for reporting purposes.

• WS1 – HR & People Transition
• WS2 – Change
• WS3 – Communications
• WS4 – Ways of Working
• WS5 – Logistics
• WS6 - Governance & Policy