SAS005 Exam Timetabling ( Service Excellence Project)

 

This project has moved the exam timetabling processes on to a new platform, and has enabled personalised exam timetables to be published to students' Office 365 calendar.

The existing Exam scheduler product (v2 classic) has been replaced with the new Exam Scheduler product (v3.5) from the same supplier - Scientia.

Scientia are the market leader in Timetabling systems for the HE market in the UK.

The new solution went live in June 2018 , ahead of the August 2018 resits.

Then Phase 3 delivered small enhancements to the feed to Office365 and to BI Suite BI/MI reporting  for the Exams Office, ahead of the main Dec 2018 exam diet.

There were three phases of work across 9 work packages:

Phase 1 - End to End solution for Main exam diets ( Delivered)

WP1 - Install new products on new dedicated servers for DEV , TEST and LIVE

WP2 - build and test new incoming data feed from Student Systems , using the new 'Connect' ETL tool

WP3 - build and test new outgoing Calsync feed from Exam Scheduler to Office 365 Calendar

WP4 - BI Suite Reporting Universe for Exam Timetabling, and Generic Exam web timetables

 

Phase 2 - Testing and delivery  for two exceptions - Resits and Fixed Date exams (Delivered - scope excluding full end-to-end solution for 'fixed date' exams managed locally by Schools) 

WP5 - Resits

WP6 - Fixed date resits ( out-of-scope : business process change for those exams locally managed by some schools)

WP7 - Calsync Enhancements

 

Phase 3 - Upgrade & Small Enhancements & prep for Dec 2018 main exam diet (Delivered)

WP8 - Upgrade to ES v3.5.9

WP9 - small enhancements required for the Dec 2018 main exam diet ( BI Suite reports and universe changes) 

 

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Service Excellence Outline Business Case noted that:

  • Most students do not have access to a full timetable for all the elements of their courses – including examinations and resits.
  • Information about exams (e.g. title, time and place) is currently accessed via a tool based on the main University website and it is both difficult to use and not personalised.
  • There is poor systems integration between Syllabus Plus (exam scheduling system) and EUCLID, which means that data must be moved manually between the systems which is time consuming and prone to error.
  • Staff are manually scheduling exams (involving large volumes of data) and not making use of the full range of the tools available within the exam scheduling software.
  • There is inefficient and manual processing of special adjustments for exams.
  • Only a small number of staff at the University (with one expert user) are able to carry out the exam scheduling function putting the university at risk of being unable to deliver the service to students.

The objectives of this project are to deliver:

  • Publish personalised Exam Timetable to Office365 calendar - for those students whose exams are  already currently scheduled by the central Examination service team
  • Upgrade the  Scientia Exam scheduler software and  host it on a resilient IT platform supported by ISG.
  • Build a new feed of student exam data from Student Systems to Exam Scheduler.
  • Efficiency improvements when  scheduling  exams and producing seating plans
  • Efficiency improvements when scheduling additional sittings for students who need extra provision / reasonable adjustments

In Scope

The scope of the project  covers the main exam diets in Dec at end of Semester 1,  in April / May at end of Semester 2 ,  the re-sits in Aug each year and the fixed data exams that run throughout the year.

Out of Scope

Any changes to how 'class exams' and other in-course assessments are scheduled are out-of-scope of SAS005  - these events are currently scheduled as teaching events with the other course events in the Teaching Timetable, and are managed locally by schools and colleges .

There will be no outgoing data feeds  from Exam Scheduler back to Student Systems or Enterprise Timetabler.

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Image icon SAS005 Plan overview96.16 KB

Current project status

Report Date RAG Budget Effort Completed Effort to complete
October 2019 BLUE 495.0 days 531.0 days 0.0