ANNUAL REPORT 2021/22
AGILITY Restoration of the financial health of the University through innovation and entrepreneurship, and the digital transformation of Campus processes are key Agility issues for the St Augustine Campus. This section features updates to some key related projects. Digitalisation Updates There were some eight projects underway that are expected to radically transform customer interactions and student services on the campus through digitalisation of key processes. While all projects experienced significant progress during the review period, four projects related to recruitment, examinations, an update to the Banner Self-Service system and postgraduate thesis tracking were in a more advanced state than the others, and these are highlighted below.
student seats during the review period. An examinations helpdesk was established and calibrated to be hyper- responsive to student queries. Several discussions were held with the Academic Quality Assurance Committee (AQAC) and protocols for allowable examination windows were developed. Exam completion timeframes were extended to facilitate the typing of exam responses and for the uploading of handwritten and typed responses. Guidelines were issued to academic staff, and examiners were on standby to support exam candidates.
Improving Postgraduate Throughput with Thesis Tracker
The configuration of the first phase of the Thesis Tracker system was completed with the required alerts. The testing of the system and the operationalising of the email alerts to be sent to supervisors and other external parties have been somewhat challenging, as external user authentication remains a concern for the IT security team within CITS. As a compromise, it was agreed that stronger safeguards would be built into the access credentials for the system (by CITS) before the system is placed on the network for use by both internal and external parties. Significant progress is expected to be made in this area by July 2023. Better Banner Self-Service The ability to deploy the newest features of the Banner Self Service application to staff and students will allow the Campus to better track attendance, upload documents and allow for the syncing of information such as grades between the Moodle eLearning platform and Banner. It is estimated that a full upgrade plan and path would be finalised by the end of the 2022/2023 academic year.
Improving the Application Process through Customer Relationship Management
The new Ellucian CRM Recruit platform was integrated with the Banner Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and connected to the TouchNet online payment gateway. Extensive testing of the system has been completed and stakeholder training on the new system has also occurred. System tweaks continued to be made to ensure that the set configurations provide the best possible support to applicants, academic staff, administrators and support staff. Online Examinations Digitalisation of Examinations functionalities continued apace. Due to the need to continue operations remotely 1,324 virtual exams were successfully served up to some 63,862 virtual
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