Paperless Processing – Case Study 4
University of Oxford
18 March 2010
Following agreement at the UCAS Change User Group (CUG) that a series of case studies
demonstrating progress with paperless processing would be published on the SPA website,
Richard Little, Head of Admissions Operations and Richard Dunnaway, Information Services
Officer have provided a case study on Oxford’s paperless admissions system. Thanks are
extended to Richard and Richard for their work on this important area.
The University of Oxford – the story so far...
Admissions recording system in use
Volume of applications dealt with
without paper
Are all courses covered by paperless
system?
Do the above include competitive and
less competitive courses?
Is any printed record used?
Are courses involving interviews
included in the paperless system?
What additional support (development
time, staff, funds) are required?
Is there buy-in/ support for the
development from senior
management?
Has any quantitative statistical
analysis of improved turnaround been
produced?
Oracle Student System (used by back office staff for
final decision recording)
In-House System: Admissions Decisions Support
System - ADSS (used by academics and support
staff during the decision-making process)
17000 (not GTTR)
Yes.
All courses are highly competitive.
Yes, colleges and departments have the facility to
print a customised UCAS Application Form.
Yes, all courses include interviews.
Development was undertaken within the central
Admissions team, who benefited from having the
required skills in-house.
No formal approval at senior management level was
required. Extensive consultation occurred with
users.
No, but all users reported significant time saving
and no temporary staff were required in the central
admissions office to sort and distribute copy forms.
Introduction to the University of Oxford and its collegiate structure
The University of Oxford operates a collegiate system, with over 30 independent colleges
admitting undergraduate students. This influences the manner in which the undergraduate
admissions process occurs. Significantly, the decision-making lies with the college, as they are
the body admitting the student. Within the college each subject tutor will consider applicants for
their course(s), thus devolving the decision-making further. This evaluation will include
interviewing those applicants invited to Oxford in December.
Until 2009, the distributed nature of the Oxford process above created substantial administrative
overheads. UCAS delivered forms to the central Admissions Office where staff sorted, copied
and delivered the forms to the appropriate colleges and departments. The Admissions Officer
at each college performed further sorting and copying to ensure each relevant tutor received a
copy of the form. In the 2009 admissions cycle, this process underwent a radical overhaul.
The University of Oxford uses an in-house system to support the admissions process. The
software is a web-based application - the Admissions Decisions Support System (ADSS).
ADSS allows tutors to view information about their subject’s applicants, including both those
who have applied to the college as well as those under consideration at other colleges. This
includes a detailed view of each applicant, presenting the UCAS form data as a web page.
Features have been added to the software since its inception in 2003, including presentation of
customised summary data in tables with the option of exporting data to Excel, or to a PDF for
the purpose of creating a mark sheet.
Setting the scene for change
Tutors had expressed concerns about the incomplete nature of qualification data on UCAS copy
forms, as opposed to the fuller information that was sometimes displayed on the web-link
version. In particular, key examination results could be lost if they were not at the top of the list
on the form.
The University was aware of the long-term goal of UCAS to abolish the copy form. The sooner
a solution was found that did not rely upon copy forms, the easier it would be to focus on
delivering other systems functionality.
Not all subjects use ADSS, and in 2008 Physiology were moving from an Access database to
the ADSS system. This was with a view to the migration of Medicine to ADSS in subsequent
years. Both subjects employ a system of college-blind interviewing; at the time of the interview,
tutors do not know if the applicant before them applied to their college. In previous years,
withholding this information from tutors was achieved through judicious use of Tipp-Ex to hide
the Oxford college (campus code) on the copy form - no small task when applicants numbered
over 1000. The Physiology co-ordinators asked whether ADSS might be able to provide a
smarter, more efficient solution.
These combined issues suggested that the rewards for producing a new delivery mechanism for
UCAS forms would be many and the ADSS developer was tasked with identifying a solution.
Consultation
It was important for the ADSS development team to consult with the two key user groups
affected by the changes - the Admissions Officers in the colleges (who would be printing the
forms instead of sorting, collating and photocopying them) and the admissions tutors.
The Admissions Officers hold termly meetings with the central Admissions Office staff. The idea
was discussed in the summer term meeting in 2008 and the reaction was generally positive,
although some concerns were raised. Some colleges were worried that they did not have
double sided printing facilities. Others were concerned about the detail of how this would work:
unfortunately no system demo was available at the time of the meeting. However, the prospect
of eliminating the need for huge amounts of sorting and photocopying was appealing.
The primary point of contact between the central Admissions Office and subject tutors is the
Admissions Coordinator for each discipline. These staff were approached to identify any
concerns regarding the proposed changes. There was little enthusiasm for complete elimination
of the paper form, but strong support for a move to a clearer, dynamic form that could be
customised according to the needs of tutors.
Admissions tutors highlighted a benefit of the existing copy form that they were keen to see
retained; staff knew where to look for a given item of information. This was particularly useful
when reviewing large numbers of forms and the continuous flow of the web-link PDFs lacked
the benefit of this predictability.
Having accepted that paper forms would continue to be produced, priorities were established as
follows: to ensure that forms could be printed in batches, but would not roll into each other; and
to ensure that each form was also easy to navigate.
To print a batch of forms, users select a group of applicants (e.g. all physics applicants). This
represents a step forward; users can now filter and sort applicant data electronically, the print
button functionality allows them to generate paper forms in the required order and ADSS then
dynamically generates a single PDF of all the forms. For performance purposes, if the list is
particularly long, these are generated in smaller groups of no more than 100.
Individual applicant’s forms are separated by ensuring that a new form always begins on the
first page of a sequence of four (i.e. page 1, 5, 9, 13… etc.). This allows double sided printing
as well as recreating the existing copy form by using single sided A3. Further formatting control
guarantees that key data always appears on a new page e.g. Qualifications, Personal
Statement and the Referee Information and Statement. If the previous section overruns, this
simply results in a five-page form, whilst importantly maintaining a familiar layout.
Implementation, Outcomes and Benefits
A key advantage of the timing of this project was that it was not being forced upon the
University; UCAS could and would still supply copy forms. This provided a fallback position in a
worst-case scenario; ask UCAS to send the forms.
In the first year of implementation, colleges were offered the option of having forms printed
centrally and supplied to them. This allowed colleges without adequate printing technology an
extra year to source the equipment they needed, without holding up the overall progress of the
project. The University’s reprographics team performed the printing work, although only six of
the 30+ colleges elected to take advantage of this facility.
UCAS did not supply copy forms to the University for the 2009 cycle, nor were they required to
in 2010. During the 2010 cycle, all colleges produced any required forms in-house; no
centralised printing was required. The change has also encouraged tutors to engage with the
process earlier; in the 2010 cycle numerous tutors were eager to log on to ADSS from the
moment the October 15th deadline had passed.
The process is currently not paperless, but is at least paper-light. Very importantly, the process
uses one sheet of A4, rather than a sheet of A3 with a blank side, halving the overall amount of
paper used per applicant and making photocopying (when required) far easier. Furthermore,
some tutors elect to receive their forms as PDFs, while others still prefer to have the paper form.
However, the combination of online PDFs and data-capture provided by ADSS mean that an
applicant’s entire journey through the admissions process no longer requires a paper record.
The introduction of the new technology coincided with a revised policy on the use of contextual
data as part of the University’s widening participation strategy. A system of flagging applicants
on five indicators is used to highlight those to be recommended for interview. The new ADSS
forms are customised to achieve uniformity in the publication of this contextual information. The
flags appear in a new section on the forms, ensuring all staff involved in the admissions process
are aware of which applicants have been flagged.
A further benefit and example of increased transparency which has been provided by the
dynamic electronic forms is the complete anonymisation of “Open” Applications. The term
“Open” refers to applicants who do not choose a specific college on their UCAS application. An
allocation algorithm assigns these applicants to a college just after the October 15th deadline.
Previously, the UCAS copy form would indicate this because the Campus Code would be
displayed as “9”. Now selectors are unable to tell whether an applicant has chosen a college or
been assigned to one.
Future Opportunities
Much of the information on the UCAS form is only relevant at specific points, or to specific
audiences, in the application process. For example, the address and LEA details are largely
unimportant during interview. A future development could be to produce lightweight processfocused versions of forms that include only the key information required at a given time.
The University gathers additional applicant data. Some will submit written work samples - some
will sit admissions tests. A customised form allows this additional data to be presented on a
single sheet of paper, rather than having to cross-reference the various pieces of information.
The customisation could be expanded to offer greater user choice (resources permitting). At
present, there are only two courses that have requested subject-specific forms, and changes to
customisations require programmatic change to the software. Ultimately, this could be userconfigured, offering each user their own specially formatted forms, presenting the required
information in the order they choose.
Some issues:

Health and Safety. This is generally not applicable in the devolved application process
used by Oxford. The number of applicants considered by a single tutor rarely exceeds
100, consequently tutors are not required to view electronic applications for excessive
periods and VDU/laptop usage is not as intensive as it might be in a more centralised
decision-making model.

Resistance to Change. Other than the college Admissions Officers, there was very little
direct impact for users. Rather than being told they had to do things differently, they
were provided with new opportunities to allow them to change working practice. In this
way, the whole implementation was made easier and smoother than might have been
the case considering the large and varied user base.

Printing Resources. With a highly devolved admissions system it is important to
maintain a central printing resource to provide backup.

Technical Failure. An increased reliance upon technology means this must be even
more reliable. The Oxford interview timetable is such that severe peaks of activity occur
when tutors finish the day’s session. Fortunately, the system is hosted in an
environment that is easily manipulated to meet such demands. During critical periods,
the servers can be temporarily allocated additional resources to help avoid problems.
SPA is very keen to hear from HEIs on this matter and volunteers to provide case studies would
be extremely welcome – either from those of you who have already implemented a paperless/
paperlite system or from those of you who are experiencing any particular difficulties with this
significant change. We do not underestimate the scale of this change for HEIs and hope that in
the sharing of experiences and good practice it will become less of a challenge. Please contact
Annie Doyle, SPA Senior Project Officer.