Overview

Background

The Enhancing Student Support (ESS) Project (ESS) project has been established to provide an improved experience for students on programmes at the University of Edinburgh. It aims to improve student satisfaction with the quality of the programme through an enhanced support infrastructure for students. In the first phase of ESS basic IT tools were supplied to support Personal Tutors and students in the recording of one to one meetings and notes. This project is a follow up of previous ESS projects and will enable students to view photographs of relevant staff.

It is recognised that it would enhance the student experience if students were able to see a photo of their tutors prior to (and throughout) their tutor sessions. In addition to this it would be a benefit to enable students to see other students in their group and staff to also see photos of the students in their group.  

Scope, Objectives and Deliverables

The high level objectives for the overall project are as follows:

• Enable staff, who are authorised users of EUCLID, and students to view photographs of those staff and students they are associated with
• Enable staff, who are authorised users of EUCLID, and students the opportunity to opt in/ opt out of having their photographs displayed, and that this choice is maintained in real time (Student opt in/out is in Phase 2, currently out of scope)
• Enable photographs to be printed, by group, for display (in Phase 3, currently out of scope).

To deliver full functionality, this project is dependent on the delivery of functionality to group students, which will be delivered through project SSG007 ESS Small Group Functions next year. Therefore, to enable benefits to be realised as soon as possible, the project will be split into 3 phases.

The initial plan and requirements will work through the solution for Phase 1, with the working assumption that the design for Phase 1 will be able to be tailored for use within Self Service for Phases 2 and 3. Each Phase will be designed/ built/ deployed sequentially. At the end of each phase, there will be an estimate review and a decision point on whether to proceed to the next phase.

For this project, "Staff" are defined as all Staff who are authorised users of EUCLID. Whilst this is not all Academic staff, this does cover the majority of Personal Tutors at whom this service is targeted.

As this project has a limited budget of 100 IS Apps days, the scope of this project is limited to Phase 1 only. The design will aim to take account of the future phases where possible.

The deliverables for each phase are as follows:

Phase 1 (in order of priority):

1. Enable Staff to opt in/ opt out of card photo being made visible (behind EASE authentication) to Staff and Students. The minimum period which will be given to opt out is 4 weeks. This information will be maintained on a real-time basis.
2. Enable Students to see staff card photos of those staff who they have an association with in the Personal Tutor system i.e.  Senior Tutors, Personal Tutors, and SSOs.

Note: For clarity, phase 1 will not enable students to view other students. This will enable opt in/ opt out for Staff only.

Phase 2: Out of scope of this delivery

3. Enable Students to opt in/ opt out of card photo being made visible (behind EASE authentication) to other Students. The minimum period which will be given to opt out is 4 weeks. This information will be maintained on a real-time basis.
4. Enable Students to see photos of other students on their programme/course (via EASE authentication) through self service.
5. Enable Staff to see staff/student photos of those staff/students who they have an association with e.g. personal Tutors groups etc (dependency on SSG007 - ESS Small Group Functions - not in scope)
6. Enable Students to see photos of other students who they have an association with e.g. personal Tutors groups etc (dependency on SSG007 - ESS Small Group Functions - not in scope)

Phase 3 : Out of scope of this delivery

7. Enable Students/Staff photos to be printed with the intention for them to be displayed in a university public place  e.g. notice board in a School

 NOTE: The scope of this project will be Phase 1 only. The requirements and estimates for Phases 2/3 provide a baseline position for future estimating and will be revisited once Phase 1 has been completed.

Objectives and deliverables

Benefits

The primary benefit is that staff and students will be able to recognise the other staff/ students related to their course/ activity. A current complaint of both staff and students is that they do not always know staff members or students.  This will enhance the overall student and staff experience, by helping to provide a sense of belonging and community.

Success Criteria - phase 1 (in scope)

• "Staff" are defined as authorised users of EUCLID who also have an image held by Card Services
• Staff are able to opt out of displaying their card photo to other staff and students
• Once opted out, eligible staff are able to opt back in (opt in / opt out flag is held in real-time)
• Only images of eligible staff who have not opted out are available for display; student images remain available for display to staff as per the current service offering.

Success Criteria - phase 2 (out of scope of this delivery)

• Students are able to opt out of displaying their card photo to other staff and students
• Once opted out, students are able to opt back in (opt in / opt out flag is held in real-time)
• Only images of students who have not opted out are available for display
• Staff can view photos of students in their groups (recognising that these deliverables are be dependent on other projects).
• Students can view photos of students in their groups (recognising that these deliverables are be dependent on other projects).

Success Criteria - phase 3 (out of scope of this delivery)

• Staff to display existing groups (delivered as part of SSG007), with the purpose of displaying and printing the photographs within the group for those who have opted in.