Closure Report

Project Summary 

The University of Edinburgh hosts start of term open days for new students joining the University twice a year; September and January.  This project manages the delivery of the September activities as well as assuring IT Service readiness across ISG. This project has now been running for several years and is delivered in two strands.  IT Readiness and Welcome Week. Following on from the success of previous years, the project hired a students dedicated to working solely on the project. Initially, the idea was to hire one student, however, the standard of applications was so high we decided to hire two project assistants. One of those hired was Portia Brugger has worked on the project in 2023. We wanted to build on Portia's experience and allow a second student, Leah McGregor to take on some aspects of the welcome week planning. Leah picked up the social media workstream and it proved to be very succesful, out engagement as can be seen from the student survey results showed that we reached more new students through social media that ever before. We would look to continue this next year with, where we employ one experienced student and one student who is new to the role. 

As this project has grown of the year we are acutely aware that although we document as much as possible on a dedicated Sharepoint site, a lot of the knowledge remains with the individuals working on the project. To spread the knowledge we brought a second project manager on board this years. Anna Forostianko joined the team and picked up several pieces of work across the project. Anna lead the IT Readiness Strand this year. in 2025 Anna will take the lead, thus achieving the need to spread the project management knowledge.

IT Readiness Strand

This strand of the project uses a well-established framework to ensure that all projects, services, and operational activities which are required to deliver a successful experience for new and returning students. All areas of ISG are represented along with colleagues from Student Induction. This group meets every fortnight starting in early May, moving to a weekly meeting in August, leading up to the start of term. This strand uses a SharePoint solution which allows each project, service, or operational activity, to be added at the start of the project, then updated on a fortnightly and then on a weekly basis until the start of term. The Readiness Tracker Dashboard was used for the third time with some improvements made from last year. The solution offered live information on RAG status, RAG commentary, and escalation status as well as various other views, e.g. RAG by priority or category. 

The key to the success of this strand is the engagement across ISG, representatives need to proactively follow up with colleagues in their area, to ensure that reporting is up-to-date and accurate. Again this year, this was very successful and our thanks go to colleagues from all directorates of ISG for working so closely with the core project team, led by Anna. 

As in previous years, at the start of Welcome Week, USD picked up the monitoring of services, projects, and operational activities. Daily meetings are held well into the start of teaching, with a daily update sent out to ISG SLT. 

Welcome Week Strand 

This strand of the project covers all aspects of delivering a successful Welcome Week, with the Card Collection event extending into the first week of teaching. This strand manages the delivery of a wide variety of different activities including:

• Card production and collection for new students
• Queue Management
• IT connectivity
• All non-library activity in the main library
• Welcome Week specific signage
• Experiential activities and giveaways
• Recruitment and management of student helpers
• Library Tours

Over the last few years, this strand of the project has grown into a full blown event that requires a lot of planning an on the ground management during Welcome Week. This strand consists of several workstream, each workstream has a lead who is responsible for the deliverables associated with that workstream. This year the work stream and leads were:

• Online Students - Anna Forostianko
• Student Comms - Anna Forostianko
• Experiential - Portia Brugger 
• Card Production and Card Collection - Pam Wells
• Library Tours - Marshall Dozier
• Floor Planning and Queue Management- Craig Robertson
• Student Helpers - recruitment and Management - Paul Gorman
• Social Media - Leah MacGregor
• Content Creation - Tim Gray
• Budget and Purchasing - Tim Gray
• Library Comms - Marshall Dozier

New Student Numbers

The figures supplied by Student Systems, noted 19,947 names in 2024. Of these 2,031 were marked as distance learning students. This means nearly 18,000 new students arrived on campus over Welcome Week. Compared to 2023 which had 18,619 students on it, of which 1740 were marked as distance education students.

This means the total student numbers increased by 1,328 from last year, or about 7%.

Communications

This year we under took a review of our email communications and reviewed court online information. The email communications, including timings, were updated to ensure that all the information seamlessly aligned across all our comms channels. 

Use of Social Media

This workstream, lead by one of our project assistant interns, played a crucial role in communications with our incoming students. We use established accounts on Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok and Facebook to post information to support students before and after arriving on campus. This year our social media campaign was more extensive and creative than ever. In our student survey, 37% of students said they heard about events in the Main Library across social media, this is slightly up on 2023. The campaign covers a range of themes which include:

• Tip tasks to complete e.g. how to get a student card, how to connect to eduroam
• What is going on in the Library e.g. card collection times, experiential/giveaways, dance performances, library tours
• Competition infos, Scavenger hunt, social media challenge 
• Student life, informative and light hearted stories

The graphs below shows our Social Media Production Trello board

Kings Buildings

For the second year, we had two stalls in the Nucleus Building at KB. On these two stalls, we promoted IT Equipment Funding, Library Tours and some giveaways. Our I Heart Ed letter were also there, used for our Instagram challenge. Footfall at King Buildings was comparable with last year.  

IT Connectivity

One of the most important aspects of making the experience for new students as best as possible is to ensure that they can connect all their devices as seamlessly as possible to our secure network. With our eduroam connection app, this experience has greatly improved over the last few years, however, we still aim to improve this experience. There is now an easy-to-join SSID available throughout the campus. The eduroam connection app continues to be a great tool to allow students to easily prepare their devices to connect to eduroam, whether on or off campus. In total, we had 14,797 downloads in September. The majority took place over welcome week. The app is a fantastic aid as it simplifies the eduroam configuration process greatly. Over the start of term period only 218 WiFi support calls were logged at both IS Helpline and the EdHelp support desks, this in comparison to thousands before we used the app for configuration and connection.

This year we did not offer additional onboarding support in person at Pollock and O’Shea Halls due to the lack of demand last year.  

Card Production

This was the first year using the new card system, which presented several challenges. One of the stand out differences to previous year was the number of UG cards printed prior to Welcome Week and in particular the reduced number of cards delivered to student accommodation. This figure alone meant that an additional 4,200 students queued at the Main Library to have their cards printed. A detailed  analysis is on the project's SharePoint site: 2024 Card Production Analysis (please note that access is restricted).

One concern is that there was significant under-estimation of the position  and the reality only became apparent when very long queues formed at the library from Saturday. The underestimation was caused largely by misinformation being delivered by the card printer. This issue has now been fixed, in addition, we will implement more check points next year. 

A comparison of card production figures between 2023 and 2024 is below.

Queue Management

Due to the number of students coming to get their cards printed at the Main Library (see above) the queues were significantly longer than in the previous 6 years under the current project management. From early on Saturday afternoon, the waiting time was occasionally over an hour. Several ad hoc decisions were made to alleviate the waiting time. These included asking students to fill out a short form so that helpers could ascertain if the card was already printed or not.

Not all students used the MS Booking system which had been so successful over the previous years. At one point the system was unavailable for a short period of time, making it frustrating so ask students to book a time slot when they were unable to do so. Due to the numbers coming to the Main Library, the slots available were insufficient anyway. This lead to students who had time slots booked still waiting in the queue. We tried to mitigate this by having staff ask people in the queue if they had a booking then bringing them forward. Although the sheer numbers of people made this a challenge in itself.

The students, and at the weekend parents, who had to wait were very understanding with very few disgruntled people. In terms of student numbers queuing we were caught off guard due to the number of pre-printed cards. We had an additional 4,200 students from University accommodation coming the library to get their cards printed. Despite this, the atmosphere was happy, vibrant and positive as usual, which is backed up by the Student Survey results below.

Overall, the situation was managed as best as it possibly could be and it should be noted that the all the helpers and University staff pulled together extremely well to get through a sometimes very stressful situation. 

Stands

The number of stands in and about the Main Library continues to grow. Our aim is that students get the most out of their visit to the Main Library and this is also a factor in our additional offerings such as dance performances. This year we had three difference dance groups perform sequentially each day. The overall performance time was under 5 minutes and very well received. 

We had stands from a wide variety of areas and representatives from the following:

• Campus Security
• Careers
• Digital Strategy
• Experiential
• Digital Skills
• Police Scotland
• Information Security
• IT Equipment Loans
• Library Tours
• Student Counselling
• Study Spaces
• uCreate
• Victim Support Scotland

Experiential Activities

This year we invested considerably in our experiential offerings and giveaways. First of all to the very popular and successful tote bags. We continues to use the Library design and this year chose to purchase high quality bigger natural cotton 10oz bags. Due to the size and quality, the cost of this was significantly more than the recycled bags purchased in 2023.  We ordered 15,000 bags and all were given away at the Main Library and on our stand at Kings Buildings in the Nucleus Building. 

Again this year, we also decided to give away lanyards (and cardholder), we chose three options, the classic university blue, the rainbow lanyards, supporting the LGBTQ+  community, and finally a new black lanyard with the Library identity mentioned above. These proved to be very popular again.

A new addition to our experiential offering was a printed world map, where we invited students to put a small red dot on where they came from. The idea was to highlight how international our student community is.

Piper's Welcome 

After the success of the traditional Scottish welcome in 2023, we repeated this on both Saturday and Sunday this year to give a special welcome to our International Students. In the past only card collection has been offered at the weekend. To make improve the welcome for international students even further, we opened the experiential (giveaway) desk on both days over the weekend. 

Scavenger Hunt

Following the success of last year's scavenger hunt, this was repeated again in 2024. Some changes were made to the make some of the questions slightly more thought provoking and ensure that participants reached 70% in order to collect a prize. This year's prize, an Eco Coffee Cup, we had 220 of these. The uptake was excellent with all prizes collected by the start of welcome week. This event was promoted on out social media channels and by Library Tour guides. The event was so popular that all prizes were collected by the middle of welcome week. Next year, we will make this more challenging, to give the opportunity to students to participate until the end of the welcome week.

Social Media Challenge

We repeated our social media challenge where students went to the Nucleus at Kings Buildings, took a selfie informant of our "I Heart Ed" letters and posted this on social media with the appropriate hashtags. We offered 100 McCoowan toys, as prizes, all of which were collected by the middle of welcome week!  

Dance in the Library

On the first three days of welcome week, we had a Scottish dance performance by the New Scotland Dance Society along with the South Asian Dance Society (Junoon), and Salsa Society. These were short performances under 5 minutes for all three. The short performances proved to be popular with new students and something to be repeated next year. 

Collect the Libraries

After the success of our Collect the Libraries stickers designed by Ally McKay in 2023, we repeated this again this year. Students could collect a sticker when they visited each of the 10 university libraries. 

Photo Backdrop and Hashtags

Again with sustainability in mind, we reused our Champions League-style photo backdrop and selection of handheld #hashtags. 

Library Tours

As in the previous years, Library Tours were very popular among the students. The only difference to be made next year is to print more QR codes for signing up to these, and put them around the Main Library. This will help to avoid students creating additional queues around the stalls to inquire about the tours.

Student Survey

The survey results were excellent with 96% to 98% finding our services helpful or very helpful. The main reason for visiting the Library is card collection. Email and Instagram continue to be the top communications channels to new students to learn about our welcome week activities in the Main Library . 

The results are below:

The number of respondents to this year's student survey 1.358, was lower than in 2023. The reason being the layout of the stalls and the waiting times for card collection.

Principal's Visit

During Welcome Week, Principal Peter Mathieson was joined by EUSA President Dora Herndon, CIO Gavin MacLachlan, Vice-Principal Students Colm Harmon, and ISG Directors Jeremy Upton and Gosia Such for a tour of the Main Library. This visit coincided with the final dance performance as noted above. This year our student project assistants, Portia Brugger and Leah Macgregor did a splendid job leading the Principal and guests around the Main Library. 

Student Helpers

Our student helpers are critical in delivering a successful welcome week and this year was no exception. Across all aspects of the project, we employed about 50 students and they were all fantastic. They adapted to the challenges each day and assured that we could offer the best possible experience to our new and returning students.

Outcome

Key Learning Points

As one can read from the report above, this project was again a huge success in 2024 albeit with some unique challenges. However, despite this success and the card production challenges, the project team, in their strive for continuous improvement, completed a review and lesson learned exercise. The full details of which are on the project's Sharepoint site: Start of Term 2024 Lessons Learned (note access restriction apply). 

The main lessons learned to be considered next year are:

Card Production/Collection: As noted above the challenges this year were unique with the implementation of a new card service. While the technical issues have been largely resolved, next year we will have more check points during card production, with the focus on printing more cards to be delivered to the Accommodations before welcome week. Furthermore, we will look to employ more student staff and organise the work flow to support increased production. The option of purchasing additional production systems  (card printers) will also be investigated. We should all consider the possibility of splitting card collection between locations and or student groups UG/PG. 

Floor Planning: There was a lack of planning this year, primarily due to staffing issues. It is recommended that before project closure, the workstream lead documents what and when this workstream needs to deliver so that next year the project management can play a more active role in supporting and monitoring the workstream. 

International Arrivals Weekend: We should continue to offer giveaways of tote bags and lanyards to students arriving for the card collection event over International Arrivals Weekend.

Library Tours: Due to the uptake, it is proposed to offer tours of Murray Lib only on Monday through Wednesday of Welcome Week.

IT Readiness Stand: To monitor key services like ELM and Noteable, EDINA should be invited to the It Readiness Strand in 2025.

MFA: We need to do more publicity in respect of the MFA service. We received nearly 2000 support calls over August and September for this service. A report has has been produced detailing the types of call received. An understanding of the call type and improving comms accordingly will reduce the number of calls we receive.  

Project Management: This year a new project manager, Anna Forostianko, was brought on board to spread the knowledge across project services. Next year Anna will take a more leading role with support from Tim Gray. While this does increase the cost of the project, it is imperative that such a key and important project for ISG does not have a single point of failure. 

Queue Management: As noted above, we had a huge challenge with the number of students queuing for card collection. While improvements that will be made to the card production will alleviate this, we should still consider a better back up plan for next year and indeed a review of the expected number and our capacity to accommodate these numbers over the short time frame and physical space e currently used. The use of MS bookings will also be reviewed in 2025. We will also consider our signage options.

It should be noted again that this year the staff on the ground, alongside student helpers did an outstanding job under very difficult and stressful circumstances, in managing the number for students attending card collection.  

Storage: While the use of UCF at the Gyle offers plenty of space, any time welcome week kit is needed traveling to UCF takes time and needs to use personal transport. This year, last minute, a storage room adjacent to room 342, where the card collection, was located was used for storing deliveries as well as all the project kit after welcome week. This will make next year's project logistically easier and save time. 

Student Project Assistants : It is recommended to continue to employ two project assistants over the summer. This year we re-employed Portia Brugger with Leah MacGregor joining the team for the first time. If possible we should continue this model having one student return alongside a new student. This allows the project to use the experience gain in year one to build on newer areas like social media.

Welcome Week meetings: It has been raised that more frequent all round planning meetings are held in the run up to Welcome Week. For the last couple of years, the approach has been to have one larger meeting at the start and end of preparation, with regular catch up meetings over the summer with individuals workstream leads. This was primarily done to make best use of everyone's time, however, a couple of team members have requested that all work stream leads come together more often through out the project preparation. From 2025, we will schedule a catch up meeting with all workstream leads every 5 weeks.