New Modular Scheme
SITS Implementation Project
Year 1 Review Report
September 2011
Document revision history
Version
1
2
3
4
Who
Cathy Colless
Helen Macrae
Del Gee
Matt Hanson
What changed
First draft of work summary and actions
Progress update on process manual revisions
Major additions and revisions
Updates on progression and mark schemes
When
20-Sept-2011
22-Sept-2011
22-Sept-2011
23-Spet-2011
The SITS Project Team
Del Gee, Matt Hanson, Russ Brown, Helen Macrae and Will Breatcliffe
http://www.york.ac.uk/about/departments/support-and-admin/student-systems/programmes-modules/
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Table of Contents
1.
Purpose of Review ....................................................................................................................... 3
2.
Summary of Work Undertaken..................................................................................................... 4
3.
4
2.2
Development of systems for managing module and assessment marks in eVision ................ 4
2.3
Bespoke developments for calculating compensation and reassessment................................ 5
2.4
Training ............................................................................................................................... 5
2.5
Reporting ............................................................................................................................. 6
2.6
Notifications to students of board decisions and reassessment opportunities ....................... 6
2.7
New transcript ..................................................................................................................... 7
2.8
Implementation of academic integrity tutorial regulations ..................................................... 7
2.9
Project communications ....................................................................................................... 7
Specific Review Findings and Actions .......................................................................................... 8
3.1
Marks-ready checklist ........................................................................................................... 8
3.2
Reports for pre-board meetings ............................................................................................ 8
3.3
New evision screens for devolved management of module availability and diets ................... 9
3.4
Improve awareness of resit eligibility rules .......................................................................... 10
3.5
Clearer date for degree classifications release to student in evision...................................... 10
3.6
Failed students to receive immediate notification of board decision................................... 10
3.7
No more paper copies of notification of board decisions on departmental files .................. 11
3.8
Attendance confirmation in eVision for non exam type re-assessments .............................. 11
3.9
Explore opportunities to simplify any overly complex re-assessment setups. ..................... 11
3.10
Withholding marks from students in eVision for shared modules ....................................... 11
3.11
Development of a workflow for course transfers ................................................................ 12
3.12
Implement LDAP Security on Business Objects Report Writing System ............................ 12
3.13
Create a new standby instance of the SITS ......................................................................... 13
3.14
Storing supporting documents for mitigation and alleged offences in SITS ........................ 13
3.15
Further refinements to the assessment bespokes and rules ................................................. 14
3.16
Investigate the possibility of publishing of the Resit Timetable earlier ................................ 14
3.17
Improvement to the re-assessment guidance and setup ...................................................... 14
3.18
Development of early exit award processes ........................................................................ 15
3.19
Storing and managing Special Cases Committee decisions .................................................. 15
3.20
Accredited Prior Learning .................................................................................................. 16
Conclusion and Next Steps ........................................................................................................ 16
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1. Purpose of Review
The SITS Project Team is pleased to report the success of the first year of using SITS to centrally manage
assessment and progression processes across the University for students on new modular scheme
programmes. This document presents the outcomes of a review of the processes and systems that were
implemented across the University following the Pilot phase in 2009 to 2011 with the departments of
Law, TFTV and Music.
The review is primarily based on feedback gathered from academic departments. A feedback gathering
session was held on 12th August 2011 and feedback was also sought from the Exams Office and the
Student Systems team.
The objectives of the review report include:




To learn from the experiences of the first year of processing on a mass scale to identify opportunities
to improve the systems and processes as we further rollout the new scheme
Document specific actions and recommendations to take forward to the next phase of the project
Provide a response to the departmental staff who took the time to provide their feedback and
suggestions which informed the work of this review
Provide a report to Teaching Committee on the activities undertaken and actions going forward
This report provides a summary of the project activities and identifies the actions to be taken forward to
refine and improve the processes and system.
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2. Summary of Work Undertaken
2.1
Programme, module and assessment setup
Based on the approved new scheme programme and module specifications, SITS configuration was setup
for each programme, module and assessment activity.
Because the pass mark changed from 35 to 40 new module codes were created with new mark schemes.
To clearly differentiate modules with the new pass mark, new-style module codes were created. The new
scheme modules are coded as: Department abbreviation + sequential number + module level e.g.
ENG00001H, MUS00098I, COM00044C. The sequence number is incremented by 1 whenever a new
module is setup and holds no meaning.
Once all the setup was complete each department was sent a bundle of reports in November along with a
request for them to check the setup of the Modules, Availability, Assessment components, and the
compulsory modules for each programme, and return the reports with any corrections (see action 3.3 for
proposed process improvement).
The progression and award rules were configured in SITS to process the marks in accordance with the
new scheme regulations. These rules allow for recommendations to be automatically calculated for
progression decisions and award classifications and for these then to be reported to the Exam Board.
Mark schemes were setup to automatically calculate module marks from the individual assessment results
in accordance with the new scheme rules, creating reassessment records where appropriate.
2.2
Development of systems for managing module and assessment marks in eVision
Departments were given access to a new set of evision screens to manage the entry of assessment and
module marks. An evision screen was also developed to allow departmental administrators to assign staff
to modules so that they could delegate the entry of assessment component marks to other staff in the
department.
An electronic mark-sheet was developed to allow departments to load marks from a spreadsheet directly
into the system. This allows departments to create a csv file that can be used to import assessment
component marks into SITS electronically. The Mathematics and Computing Science departments piloted
the electronic import facility this year. The project team also loaded marks on behalf of the Chemistry and
Physics departments using this tool. We will be extending the pilot to other interested departments for
the 2011/12 mark entry process.
Evision screens were developed to allow students to view their assessment and module marks from
evision. Departments can temporarily withhold the release of marks to students through eVision while
the data entry is being checked. Once the withholding constraint is lifted the marks are available for
students to view in evision. Evision screens were also developed to allow teaching and administrative
staff to view student assessment and module for all students in their department (not just supervisees).
A new module of SITS was purchased to support the scaling of component marks. Marks can be scaled at
the component level and the overall module mark is recalculated to take the scaling into account.
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While there is no denying that the evision screens for entering marks are not entirely intuitive, they have
proven to be comprehensive, robust and reliable. Without an exception every department managed to
enter their assessment marks in time for the June Assessment Boards, either through the csv file upload
or by using the evision assessment screens.
2.3
Bespoke developments for calculating compensation and reassessment
The new scheme regulations provide common rules for eligibility to compensation and reassessment.
Out-of –the –box, the SITS system did not provide the necessary functionality to calculate and apply
these compensation and reassessment rules. To support these new requirements, Tribal was
commissioned to development a bespoke suite of SITS processes.
These new bespoke processes are run by the project team after the department has finished entering all
the marks for the academic year. The bespoke processes check each student's eligibility for compensation
and reassessment. After compensation has been applied and a progression decision calculated, the newstyle Board report that includes the calculated progression decision is printed in time for the Board
meetings
These bespoke developments proved to be invaluable in June when the project team were working with
departments to prepare reports for the progression Boards. It would not have been possible to produce
the board reports within the necessary timeframes without an automated way to calculate the
compensation and reassessments outcomes.
2.4
Training
Eighty four staff from academic departments attended the eVision mark entry training sessions that the
project team provided in November 2010. The feedback received was overwhelmingly positive. The
average mark on the evaluation forms was 4.25/5, and for the important question "This training will be
beneficial to me in the performance of my job" the average rating was 4.5/5. A comprehensive guide to
mark entry assessment processing was written to support users through the training sessions and as a
reference to be used back at the desk.
A further series of mark entry training session for the Postgraduate scheme are scheduled for November
2011.
A round of briefing sessions on the progression and boards were held in Spring 2011. These sessions
were very well attended and provided administrators with a walkthrough of the new processes for
mitigation, running board reports and returning sign-off lists, the resit examination timetable preparation
and processing re-assessment results. In these sessions we also demonstrated the two new eVision
screens that were developed to allow students to view their progression outcomes as a printer-friendly
letter they can print from eVision, and also the screen for students to indicate which of their resit
opportunity offers they plan to take up.
In the feedback sessions the quality and relevance of the training and the mark entry guide delivered by
the project were highly praised. By popular demand, the mark entry guide has now been extended into a
full process manual covering all aspects of new scheme processing. The guide now includes step by step
instructions for: mark entry, business objects reporting, progression/award processing and reassessment
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processing. There is also a section on non-standard grades with detailed scenarios to enable
administrators to make an informed choice about which grades to use when.
2.5
Reporting
A suite of reports were developed to allow departments to report on the assessment information they are
now storing in SITS. These were developed using the Business Objects XI(BOXI) report writing tool.
These reports underpin the assessment and progression processing through SITS. The team develop a
user guide on “How to Run Business Objects Reports” that staff in the department told us they found
very useful .
Some examples of the types of reports that were developed in Business objects are an ‘Interim Board
Report’ that provides a summary on a single A3 page of all component and module results, an
‘Incomplete Module Results’ report that show students with Mitigation and Alleged Offence grades, the
official ‘Board Report’ and the ‘Progression Sign-Off List’ .
We received very positive feedback from the departments on the quality and usability of these reports.
2.6
Notifications to students of board decisions and reassessment opportunities
A new set of processes were developed to notify students of Board decisions. Once the team had
processed a department’s sign off sheet, the student’s progression status in SITS changed to “agreed”.
This triggered a set of processes to formally notify the students of the Board decisions.
The day after the decision was agreed in SITS, an email was automatically sent to students notifying them
that the board of examiners had recommended a progression decision for them and that they could log in
to eVision to view the outcome.
For students where the board had approved a reassessment opportunity, the email also contained a link to
the Student Guide to the University's Rules for Progression and Award in Undergraduate Programmes.
At this stage the students could log in to evision and access a printer-friendly page showing their
progression outcome and module results.
Teaching and administrative staff were provided with access to copies of these notifications in the same
evision screens that they already use to view students results. With this in mind departments were
encouraged not to print out hard copies of the notifications to place on student paper files.
A new evision option was developed that allowed students with a re-examination opportunity in the
reassessment period to indicate whether or not they intended to attend the exam. A report was also
developed to allow department to view the student choices. This information was then automatically
loaded into the examination timetable system (WASP) for the purpose of preparing the re-assessment
period exam timetable. The development of the automated process for including students into the resit
examination timetable should significantly streamline the timetable preparation process once all students
are on new scheme programmes.
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2.7
New transcript
A new academic transcript was developed to incorporate the requirements of the new scheme. As well as
some style changes, and a move to a landscape format, the new transcript includes an explanation of the
new mark scheme and the higher pass marks introduced with the new scheme.
A major benefit of implementing a centrally supported assessment system is that the transcripts
production process will be significantly more efficient. New scheme transcripts will be issued based on
the marks in the central system without requiring a step (delay) for checking by the academic department.
This will dramatically reduce turn around times for transcript requests.
2.8
Implementation of academic integrity tutorial regulations
Successful completion of the Academic Integrity Tutorial is now a compulsory progression requirement
for all first year students. A nightly data feed has been developed to load the academic integrity tutorial
result from the VLE into SITS. We used this information in SITS to send automated reminder emails to
students who had not completed the tutorial.
A new option was added into the student enquiry screen that allows staff in the department to check who
has not completed the tutorial. We also sent each department a list of those students who had not
completed the tutorial two weeks before the progression board , so that any recalcitrant students could be
dealt with before the meeting to try and avoid any issues/delays arising at or after the Board meeting.
It’s clear that these proactive measures were effective. By June 2011 more than 99% of first year
undergraduate students had completed the tutorial successfully.
2.9
Project communications
Each member of the project team was assigned specific academic departments to oversee. This meant
that departments dealt with a person familiar with their previous or ongoing issues. We received very
positive feedback from departments on this approach to managing relationships.
The team sent bi-months newsletters to departments to update them on the project progress and to
highlight upcoming activities and events such as training.
A regular series of workshops were run to inform departmental administrators of the numerous changes
being implemented fro the new scheme.
In June the project team were very conscious that departments were relying on them to make sure that
compensation and recommended progression decisions were calculated before they could print there
new-style Board reports. They worked hard to reassure the departments that the team would not let
them down. The team worked long hours including a weekend to ensure the records were processed in
time for the June Board meetings.
At the feedback gather session held with departments the project team received overwhelming feedback
applauding their communication efforts. Seven post-it notes where placed on the feedback boards in
these session that praised the communications and support they received from the project team. These
notes specifically mentioned that the project team were very quick to respond to requests and solving
problems as they arose. A number of notes also mentioned that the found the bi-months newsletters
which the project team sent to communicate the project activities very useful.
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3. Specific Review Findings and Actions
3.1
Marks-ready checklist
From a record keeping perspective, the most significant issue we encountered with the processing of the
marks for the 2011/12 year was that departments changed some marks after the project team had run the
processes to calculate stage averages, compensation and reassessments. For obvious reason, it’s
important that all marks are entered and checked before compensation eligibility and progression
decisions are calculated. Changing the marks after the calculations invalidates the progression decision
calculations.
Next year we will ask departments to complete a “marks-ready checklist” to request the systems to team
run the progression calculations for a cohort. The questions in the checklist are based on the scenarios we
encountered this year which led to marks needing to change after the calculations were run. So, for
example the checklist will include questions asking whether the marks for modules where the assessment
is managed by another department or by LFA have also been completed and checked and whether all late
penalties mark adjustment have been applied.
A report has been developed to link the audit records to the progression records and notify the project
team if any changes are made to the marks after the compensation calculations have been applied.
Actions:



3.2
Develop a new questionnaire task in evision for staff to complete before the calculations are
processed.
Communicate to departments via the Newsletter and end of year progression memo the new
process for making these requests
A check will be added into the progression rules and automations to check that the
compensation and reassessment calculations have been run before students with HOLD*
students are processed
Reports for pre-board meetings
Many departments hold finalist/progression pre-board meetings to bring to a conclusion any unresolved
issues relating to assessment records and to check the accuracy of the marks before the Board meting.
Some of the departments who held these meeting this year reported confusion over the purpose of the
meetings and the appropriate reports to review at these meetings. The confusion was around whether or
not the meeting should reviewing the compensation, reassessment and outcomes now calculated by SITS
before the Board meetings.
The problem is a bit chicken and egg. In the past it has been common for these pre-board meeting to
review both module marks and overall outcomes. Under the new scheme these types of meeting can do
only one of these two things. Before the SITS processes to calculate compensation, reassessment and
outcome are run all penalties reductions and module mark corrections must be entered against the
relevant module result. For obvious reason you can’t calculate compensation and outcomes until all the
module marks are finalised.
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This means that if the intention of the pre-board meeting is to correct errors in module marks or to apply
late penalties then the reports reviewed at these pre-board meeting can NOT include the recommended
decisions and compensation/re-assessment. The processes to calculate these won’t be run until after the
module marks are all confirmed as correct and any late penalties have been applied.
This means that unless the meeting is held at a stage where the department is confident that module
marks won’t need to change, then the reports used for pre-board meeting will not include the SITS
calculations for compensation and a recommended decision. This would mean for example that under
the new scheme the pre-board meeting for finalists won’t be able to review the final board report.
Instead there are a number of Business Objects reports that provide summaries of the module marks that
could be used for the pre-board meetings to review the marks and make any corrections or apply any
penalties needed before the degree classification and over award marks are calculated for the final board
meeting.
Actions:
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
3.3
Project team to consult with departments to clarify the role of pre-board meetings under the new
modular scheme.
Write an article for the project newsletter highlighting the changed roles of the pre-boards
Include item in March/April 2012 briefing sessions to highlight these changes to the work of
pre-board meetings
New evision screens for devolved management of module availability and diets
To check the accuracy of the modules and compulsory modules (diets) 2011/2 each department was sent
a bundle of reports from the project team asking then to check the setup of the Modules, Availability,
Diet and Assessment setup and return the reports with any corrections noted on them.
The project team identified that this could be done more efficiently if departments made these changes
directly via evision. Development work was undertaken to build new evision screens that will support the
devolved management of module availability and diet updates.
In November this year we will be asking departments to use the new screen in evision to let us know
which modules are running in the 2012/13 year. There will also be a new screen in evision from
November to amend the list of compulsory modules assigned to a programme (Diets).
For this year we will continue using a paper process for checking the assessment component setup, but
we will explore possibilities for also delivering this through evision for the 2013/4 modules. At this point
we think it’s unlikely that we will allow changes to assessment setup through evision because of the
complexity and high stake risks of making a mistake.
Actions:
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
Development of an evision task to allow department to add/delete and modify module
availability records, and training to support rollout.
Development of an evision task to allow department to manage module diets, and training to
support rollout.
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3.4
Improve awareness of resit eligibility rules
Under the new scheme, students can NOT choose to resit an assessment if they have achieved a
“compensatable” mark for the module. At the feedback gathering sessions, administrators and academics
alike reported a lack of clarity on this aspect of the new scheme rules. A student friendly guide was
developed by the ASO and a link to this document included in the email sent to all students with a resit
opportunity. However departments felt that academic supervisors do not yet have an awareness of the
subtleties of this aspect of the new scheme.
Actions:


3.5
Project team to work with the ASO to raise awareness of this aspect of the new rules
Student Progress Office to review the Guide to Assessment to provide more clarity on this
aspect of the regulations
Clearer date for degree classifications release to student in evision
One of the pilot departments experienced confusion around the precise date that student would be able
to view their degree classification in evision. There was also an issue with students being able to view their
degree classification from the award confirmation letter request screen before it was released through the
award viewer.
With hindsight the cause of this problem was that we continued to impose the old-scheme data entry
checking lag into the award release process in evision. This is not needed for new scheme awards. To
prevent this happening again, next year we will simply release finalist outcomes including the
classifications in exactly the same way that we release progression decisions.
Action:
 Change outcome notification letters, automated jobs and access control rules to include Block 3
students for the Pilot departments for next year
 Communicate this change of process through the project newsletter and the Exams Office
communications for finalist processing.
3.6
Failed students to receive immediate notification of board decision
Students who failed to meet the progression requirements for the June Board meeting were sent an email
directing them to their academic department for further information. At the feedback gathering session
held with departmental administrators in August it was agreed that this should be changed so that failed
students are advised of the outcome and able to view the full decision in evision at the same level of detail
as student who passed.
Actions:


Extend the processes developed to notify students of the Board decisions to include students
who failed to meet the progression requirements.
Communicate this change to departments via the project newsletter
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3.7
No more paper copies of notification of board decisions on departmental files
For new scheme students, electronic copies of the board decision notification letters that are sent to the
student are kept on the student record in SITS. Academic staff can view a copy of the notification at any
time from the evision screens they already use to view students academic results. Administration staff can
also access copies from evision on demand at any time.
This means it shouldn’t be necessary for departments to keep a hard copy of the notification letters on
departmental files and for this reason we haven’t developed a batch printing process.
A number of departments have indicated a reluctance to move away from storing paper copies of the
letters and have requested a way to batch print copies of the letters.
Actions:



3.8
Develop a one page “academic friendly” guide to looking up student marks in evision
Consider providing this to academic staff in the form of a mouse-pad
Unless the pressure becomes overwhelming, continue to discourage the printing of paper copies
of these letters
Attendance confirmation in eVision for non exam type re-assessments
This year a new screen was developed for evision to allow students to indicate which of their exam reassessment opportunities they intended to attend. At the feedback gathering session held with
departmental administrators in August it was agreed that from 2011/2 this process should be extended to
include coursework reassessment as well as examinations.
Actions:


Further develop the reassessment choice screen in evision to include coursework reassessments
Communicate this change to departments via the project newsletter
3.9
Explore opportunities to simplify any overly complex re-assessment setups.
In some departments, the reassessments for a module are quite fundamentally different to the original
assessments. This made understanding and processing the reassessments very challenging. Where there
is not a one-to-one relationship between an assessment and a re-assessment it’s not possible to create a
marks scheme that will automatically create the reassessment records appropriately, so a very manual
intervention process is needed to create the reassessment records in these cases.
In some cases it may be possible to make the reassessments requirements more understandable and
simpler if the relationships between the original assessment and the reassessment reassessments were
simplified.
Actions:

3.10
Work with the departments to explore opportunities to simplify re-assessment setup
Withholding marks from students in eVision for shared modules
For joint programmes in particular, some departments were unclear how the release of marks to students
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via evision should be managed. There are two ways to withhold marks from evision by Programme or
Module. For shared modules it is possible to use a combination of these two methods to release marks
for the same module at different time dependent on the students programme.
Actions:


3.11
Project team to review training guide to highlight the processes for withholding marks from
evision using a combination of both module and programme level withholding.
Feature this item in project newsletters to raise awareness of processes for staged withholding
based on programme
Development of a workflow for course transfers
When students transfer onto a new programme of study, depending on the programmes, some module
records usually need to be transferred from the old programme record onto the new programme record.
This caused some confusion when departments went in to enter marks and they found two instances of a
module for the same student. To resolve this issue at the root cause a process manager and an
automation development is required to manage course transfers in a consistent way.
Actions:


3.12
Develop and communicate a clear policy for transfers, considering the implications for HESA
processes
Develop a process manager workflow and appropriate automations to manage modules changes
as part of a course transfer workflow
Implement LDAP Security on Business Objects Report Writing System
The Business Objects XI(BOXI) report writing tool was used to develop a suite of reports to support the
work of the Boards. This included a standard Board Report used by all departments.
The suite of Business Objects XI(BOXI) reports that the assessment project team developed to support
the assessment process have been very successful. The feedback on these has been overwhelmingly
positive.
Staff in academic departments need to be able to run these reports on-demands themselves, and for that
reason local accounts on BOXI were created for more than 150 members of staff. Unfortunately, the
processes currently in place for managing the individual user accounts on BOXI are not appropriate for
managing this number of users.
The current security model used to manage BOXI accounts does not support any role based access
provisioning nor does it support logging in from the IT Services LDAP passwords. This means that
accounts and permissions have been created on the BOXI system, are now not being appropriately
managed when user leave the institution or change their role and that the passwords are local to the
BOXI account.
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The solution to this problem is to change the security mechanism used for managing accounts on BOXI
to use LDAP instead of local created accounts. Workload in the Business System Group (BSG) section
in IT Services has meant that the reconfiguration of the report writing tool has not yet been possible.
Actions:


3.13
Work with the Business System Group (BSG) in IT Services to decommission the individual
local accounts and passwords created on Business Objects XI(BOXI) for departmental
administrators and configure BOXI to use LDAP accounts and passwords as the basis for
accessing the tool.
Work with BSG to use an LDAP role group as the basis for managing permissions to access the
assessment reports and folders in BOXI, the decommission the proliferation of locally assigned
individual personal permissions
Create a new standby instance of the SITS
We currently keep two copies of the SITS system, one for testing new versions and another for
developments, training, the annual HESES snapshot, and restoring a standby copy of live when necessary
to troubleshoot problems with the live system in and off-line environment. The Test system always has
the next version of the SITS installed and can only used for testing the next upgrade of the system. This
system can't be used for development or database copies because it is running a different version to the
Live system. And for this reason there are a number of conflicting uses of the Train system.
While developing the new assessment systems, we often found timing clashes between development
schedules and database copies to the Train system. Particularly in cases where we needed to take a
database copy to the Train environment at short notice to troubleshoot a pressing problem this disrupted
development activities. It's increasingly clear as we do more student systems development work on SITS
that we need a third off-line instance of SITS to keep a relatively up-to date standby copy of the SITS
live system. This needs to be separate from our development and test systems.
Actions:

3.14
Make a formal request to IT Services via the SITS Technical Operations Group (STOG) to
create and maintain a new standby instance of the SITS system.
Storing supporting documents for mitigation and alleged offences in SITS
Where cases of academic misconduct are alleged, it would be useful to store the documents and notes
relating to offences and any penalty that is applied in SITS. This penalty then needs to be coded into the
award mark calculation, so that penalty is automatically applied when the award mark is calculated.
Actions:

Develop new evision screens for departments to use to store notes and supporting documents
relating to mitigations and alleged offenses.
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
3.15
Identify a sensible location in SITS to store misconduct penalties and build this into the award
mark calculation processes, so that the award mark is automatically reduced by the amount of the
penalty.
Further refinements to the assessment bespokes and rules
The project team identified the following potential improvement to the bespoke processes:
- Report the students status(eg transferred) in the message buffer when the process is run so we
can quickly see the status without going to the SPR screen.
- Highlight student if they have taken less than 120 credits.
- For students who may have taken their modules over multiple years allow the scope of the
calculations to extend over more than one year (eg students returning from absences for
example)
- A check is needed to ensure that the bespoke calculations are run before the progression of
HOLD* students are processed
Actions:

3.16
Contact Tribal to discuss possible further developments to the bespoke processes.
Investigate the possibility of publishing of the Resit Timetable earlier
This year students had until 22 July 2011 to make their resit choices and the resit timetable was prepared
very shortly after this. Feedback has been received from departments asking whether this deadline could
be moved back by a week to allow the resit timetable to be published a week earlier. Departments felt
that publishing the resit timetable earlier would be helpful for students needing to make advance travel
and accommodation bookings for the day of their exam.
Actions:

3.17
In co-operation with the Exams Office, explore whether it’s feasible to shorten the amount of
time that students have to make their resit choices and then publish the resit timetable a week
earlier in 2012
Improvement to the re-assessment guidance and setup
The project team have identified a number of subtleties to processing reassessment that require some
consideration.
While it’s very unlikely to eventuate, in the case of a student for whom mitigating circumstances are
approved permitting a sit as if for the first time and lower mark is achieved at reassessment, the lower
marks should stand. The Board Report would in fact select the higher of the two marks. This is also an
issue at the mark scheme level.
If student has two assessment component marks one with an MD (mitigation) grade. and another with a
fail grade. the outcome will remain as first attempt.
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For students with both SIT and RESIT module results, two step processing is required. Any mitigation
grades for students need to be processed before processing of standard students. Clearer guidance is
needed for resits and sits-as-if-for-the-first-time to ensure we know the processing requirements.
The mark entry guide has now been extended into a full process manual covering all aspects of new
scheme processing. Included are step by step instructions for: mark entry, business objects,
progression/award processing and reassessment processing there is also a section on non-standard grades
with detailed scenarios to enable administrators to make an informed choice about which grades to use
when.
Actions:

3.18
The guide to assessment and progression will be revised and the section on processing nonstandard grades and reassessments will be significantly expanded to included these uncommon
but complex scenarios
Development of early exit award processes
The processes and guidance for processing lower exit awards, either at the end of Stage or for students
withdrawing midyear needs to be implemented into the Exams Office process manual.
The graduation component in SITS needs changes to work for students exiting on an award that differs
from their programme of study.
Actions:



3.19
Graduation systems and processes will be reviewed to identify what changes are needed to work
for cases were students are exiting on a lower award.
Year end record close down processes will also be reviewed and automation tasks developed to
improve the way that records are processed for students exiting on lower awards.
Mid-year Withdrawal process need to be reviewed and modified to ensure that students eligible
for a lower exit award are granted a certificate
Storing and managing Special Cases Committee decisions
A process is needed for managing decisions made by Special Cases Committee in SITS. If for example a
decision is made for a permission to undertake 100 credits instead of 120 in a year, this will impact on
many aspects of new scheme processing. We need a way to identify these cases and store this in SITS in
an appropriate way.
Actions:

Options will be explored to store the decision made by SCC that impact on new scheme
processes in SITS
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3.20
Accredited Prior Learning
The new modular schemes processes are built on the assumption that students will be undertake modules
totalling 120 credits per year. Where students are being admitted directly to second year or have module
credits from prior learning at a previous institution these credits need to stored on the students records as
prior learning credits.
Actions:



Implement processes for recording credits for direct entry to second year
Implement processes for recording module credits approved by departments
Implement processes storing prior learning credits for Health Sciences programmes
4 Conclusion and Next Steps
The first year of the implementation has successfully delivered a centrally supported assessment system
for new scheme undergraduate programmes across the University. The project team are proud of the
success of the first year of the implementation. The project proved to be far more complex than we had
anticipated, with a significant number of local and SITS bespoke developments needed to make the
process work. Despite these challenges the team managed to make the project a success because they
were agile and determined in their approach. The team have consistently received positive feedback from
departments and other sections remarking on the cohesion and effectiveness of the project team.
But the project is by no means over. The project ramps up significantly in the second year as
postgraduate taught programmes come online, Health Sciences have their first boards in October, and the
second cohort of undergraduate students join.
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