Minutes – SER Advisory Board – 5 March 2015
ATTENDEES
Beth Shotton
Dean Drew
Daniel Farrell (Chair)
Elsie Johnstone
Deborah Smith
Samantha Lister
Chris Lusk
Stephen Evans
Lesley Thirkell
Eric Gillespie
Sunil Hutchin-Bellur (Minutes Secretary)
Ben Stride
Alison Sandeman
Marie-Noel Earley
Mike Johnson
Claire Doherty
1. CHAIR’S WELCOME
2. APOLOGIES

Ondrej Hajda
3. MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING – 13 FEBRUARY 2015
Accepted as distributed
No carried forward actions
4. CHAIR’S CALL FOR PROGRESS UPDATES
A. Summer interim projects
ACCOMMODATION AWARDS
1. AS - Number of awards has doubled for the new intake with 46 up to 92 for UG and total of 8 PG
awards. Amount set at £3k per year for 2 years.
2. DF –Programme Board has accepted recommendation that this project no longer needs upward
reporting as it has moved to the Service Desk as business as usual.
3. DF – students with Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo mail were having sign on issues when the e-Vision task
was first released. This was due to differences in encryption. DD advised that this issue has been
factored into future testing.
4. BS – Timeline for applying for accommodation and accommodation awards caused some upset
for some new entrants as they felt that they were able to apply for an award even if it was not
related to a successful accommodation application.
Actions
1. AS/BS/MNE to meet with Wendy Newton about accommodation/award timeline
2. BS to report back to Proctor and Verity
B. UKVI AUDIT
1. DF - Permission given to restart development on this project with proviso that overarching
principles are agreed by UKVI Compliance Group.
2. MNE – outlined light-touch approach to utilise existing systems wherever possible. Keen to meet
compliance requirements by tracking student contact through existing non-intrusive points of
engagement (use of the library, the ASC) and enforced passport/visa checking at two points.
3. DF is investigating the use of swipe card access for exam venues as part of this monitoring.
4. MNE walked group through draft version of UKVI Engagement Patterns document.
5. LT suggested that registers should be taken at pre-sessionals.
6. MJ expressed concern that there is no academic representation on the SER Advisory Board and
DF confirmed that a Pro Dean was a member but does not attend.
Actions
1. DF to look into lack of attendance of an academic staff member at SER Advisory Board.
C. DIRECT APPLICATION FORM (SL)
1. Now live
2. Online MS Word application is being kept for this session
3. Positive feedback from Arcadia to say that St Andrews is far ahead of other institutions in this
respect
4. Semester 1 applications will be going through Paperless with Semester 2 going through the PGT
system because Paperless parameters cannot accommodate two academic years at same time
5. AS advised that there was an issue with PGR document uploading. Required a number of
documents to be reattached. Suggested that taking the form down to resolve the issue might be
the best approach. Error has now been resolved. DD suggested that depending upon the severity
of the issue, there should be a trigger-level at which taking the form down is more appropriate
than a hot/quick fix. Agreement reached that if fix will require 1 day+ the form should be taken
down and the work to fix the error should be critical. BS expressed concern that expiring single
sign on login information sent during a period of downtime would cause issues.
6. DD/DF agreed that any issues such as this could be escalated directly to DD or Kevin Thomson for
coordination
7. DD talked about the slowness of online forms in China because of internet filtering in certain
provinces. This has been tested by Beth and others and it takes approx. 30 mins to load one page
at some locations. Steve suggested looking to Content Delivery Network as a potential solution.
DD suggested that a paper application download option may help to catch those Chinese
applicants having issues. SHB suggested that the link could be in Chinese to avoid other groups
using it.
Actions
1. Ops group to look at all forms to discuss potential issues if agreement above is used consistently.
2. BS/DD to investigate making a MS Word doc available through a link for Chinese applications.
D. Wave One Projects
1. ESD
1. 3 April is the deadline for Tribal’s transition from day-to-day to support role.
2. DF tabled discussion topics since we have been working to certain tacit agreements for some
time and Digital Communications are querying some of these:
o Should ESD be branded as ASC on web pages?
o Where it appears should the ASC logo be a click-through into ESD?
o SER Programme Board agreed on 3 March that the new Study At webpages will not have
ASC logo displayed throughout Phase One
o So also the Home page which will not have ASC logo throughout Phase One
o Which emails will be harvested?
o Which emails will be replaced by ESD?
o Which emails will be kept as vanity emails?
3. CD/DF explained in detail how the email harvesting process works
4. Steve raised concern that using the ASC branding for ESD does not address the issues of website
inconsistency and ESD branding should be function-based
5. DF advised that ESD will be upgraded in May but the exact date has not been announced by
Tribal. The delivery of ESD at St Andrews will wait until after the upgrade to allow for testing and
familiarisation by end users.
6. CD advised that if an enquiry comes into ESD for a non-Wave One user, the email will be
forwarded automatically and closed in ESD. Will not impact on SLAs as there is no delay involved.
Actions
1. Steve to produce a visual representation of how Digital Communications thinks ESD should be
branded. This will be circulated by DF to Board members for comment on Thursday 12 March
D. 2. STUDENT FUNDING ADMINISTRATION
1. AS asked if Fund is on schedule. DF advised that Fund is on track according to the PM and original
timeline.
2. EG advised that Karen Laing has fed back that timelines are tight for keeping work on track
Actions
1. DF to put together presentation on Fund and its objectives for delivery to the next Board
D. 4. C-VIEW
1. No discussion
Actions
5. FEEDBACK FROM PROGRAMME BOARD

Feedback positive from Programme Board
 Preliminary discussions re resourcing for Wave 2 will begin in April
6. REPORTING TOOLS
1. DF reported that MIG has not met since last Advisory Board.
2. DF said the “risk of reporting failing to meet SER needs” is to stay on the Risk Register.
7. RESOURCES AND TRAINING
1. DF advised that Mohammad has taken early retirement from the University. Steve Watt given
task to find external person to replace Mohammad but in interim an internal candidate could be
appointed if one is found/available. Backfill would be made available.
2. Michele Goodwin now in place as TL to support Gail Davidson. BA requirement for Fund now
needs to be shored up. DF hopes a SME will agree with line manager/Unit head to fill this need.
3. AS/DF spoke about need for resource to deal with volume of required for coding and subsequent
data input. DF said separation of data entry tasks from expert SME work was vital.
Actions
1. DF to propose a holding of Fund project-level work to look at revising specification.
2. DF to present dated timeline of training rollout
8. COMMUNICATIONS
Niall Scott is on board to help write success stories for SER as these become apparent.
No Actions
9. ANY OTHER BUSINESS
DD advised that transfer of data from Docman to Document Manager should take no more than
1-2 days
10. DATE OF NEXT MEETING
Thursday, 19 March 2015