Project going live in 2011/12

The project has reached a significant milestone in that it has been confirmed that the project will go live for the 2011/12 academic year!

The project will go live with 6 of the 16 schools at UCLan, with the remaining 10 manually inputting the data into the new system so all students have an online timetable.   The 6 schools that are going live will have the timetable scheduled by the system.  The project team are currently working with the 6 schools to collect the data required.  The team are also still working with the remaining schools to run more schedules in the test environment to continue testing.

The system has been reviewed by the team responsible for the security of the UCLan systems and although there are one or two minor issues the team are reviewing , the system has been given the all clear.

Our Room Bookings Unit are in the transition phase to become the Central Timetabling Unit (CTU) and are looking at resources available and the structure of the team.  The CTU staff are currently undertaking training to learn how to use the new system and the team are looking at asking Serco to provide some additional training days to ensure the CTU are ready for the go live.

The NSS survey results were released, with Organisation and Management coming out as UCLan’s third worst result.  The Students’ Union have carried out some investigation into this and the students feedback that this was due to Timetabling and timing issues.  Particularly highlighted were the cancellation of lectures at the last minute and lack of communication. The students confirmed that receiving a timetable earlier than induction week would enable them to better co-ordinate other elements of their lives with university such as employment and child care. 

This is hopefully a key area where the project will have an impact.

An early Christmas gift!

The STOP project had a nice Christmas present just before the holiday!  The project team were able to take one of the Schools all the way through the timetabling process; scheduling and rooming their semester 1 timetable and viewing it through ePortal.

This is a significant landmark for the project. The next steps are to look at it in more detail and see how 'good' a timetable it has produced, and of course there are 17 more schools to go...so there is still a lot of work to do.  A significant mile stone never the less!

The project is running on schedule.  There have been challenges in capturing the data from Schools, both in the way the proformas were developed and the timing of the data capture exercise.  However, the project team has managed to collect a large amount of data and have been given some food for thought about how data should be captured in the future.

The training on how to use the CMIS system has gone well.  The only area that the staff felt looked quite complex was student fitting.  The complexity isn’t with the programme necessarily but with the process of allocating students to groups and how this will work with the requirements of the course.  

An interesting transition for the project is developing the Room Bookings Unit to a Central Timetabling Unit.  This is interesting as is will lead to a different role for staff as well as planning how timetabling should work at UCLan with regards to the responsibility of the new CTU and Schools.

We have found the JISC InfoNet Impact Calculator very useful, particularly to create a baseline for the cost of room usage.  It has been more challenging to assess the cost of staff in relation to timetabling.  However we have enough data to allow us to develop educated estimates.

Update on activities

The ePortal system has been loaded on to the test environment and the team are UCLanafiying it! 

The system is looking good and as it is being branded with the UCLan logo its really starting to look great!  A presentation to the Senior Management Team and Heads of School from the suppliers went quite well.  There are of course some concerns with the system – it is a very big step, but generally the benefits can be seen and the hope is there that it will be a successful project.

The project is progressing well.  The data capture has been challenging but it’s all very new to everyone.  We plan to review our data capture method as the initial system did not cover all the idiosyncrasies and complex set up of programme delivery at UCLan.  It has certainly been an eye opener to see how challenging it is to create a timetable – especially without the assistance of software to do the actually scheduling for you!

So what has happened recently?

Create draft process for testing has now been completed and the draft To Be process is documented .

Review of data entry process has now been completed. Documents have been created capturing this activity ready to be transformed into  a useful output.

We have produced a road map of 'as is' to 'to be' that takes us from the 'as is' process, through a trial of the 'to be' process through to it's implementation as well as a road map for the building of a timetable through the year.

 We have decided to reschedule the activity of linking Banner and Trent for completion by March 2011. The system integration is being tested as part of the trials of the draft 'to be' process using manually processed data extraction and input routines. These will be automated during Jan - Mar 2011. Given the possibility of changes being required to these processes, it was felt that this two step approach to developing the interface software was preferable.

We have developed a series of possible scenarios the system will need to respond to.

The data capture exercise has started!

The project team have contacted schools to collect the data for the teaching events running in weeks 1-13 of the 2010/11 academic year.

Over the next few months we are capturing;

1. File #1 Resource Unavailability – specific rules on unavailability (precise week, day, time)
2. File #2 Resource Restriction – general rules on unavailability (any day/time)
3. File #3 Event Specification – general teaching rooms booked in weeks 1-13
4. File #4 Event Specification – specialist teaching rooms booked in weeks 1-13
5. File #5 Event Associations – relationships between events (same day, time)
6. File #6 Programme and Module Associations (Core and Optional modules)

What is STOP?

The Student Timetabling Online Project (STOP) was developed due to the identification of the need for the provision of a timetable in a sufficiently timely fashion allowing students to make informed work/life/study decisions, as one of a number of changes that not only benefited students, but also increased the professionalism with which the University engages with students. In addition, there is a requirement to improve the utilisation of the University’s estate. Over the last 6 years, 8 new building projects have enhanced the teaching provision of the university estate at a cost of over £70M. As demand for rooms increases, it is important that additional demand makes efficient use of existing space before there is a need for additional building work. The STOP project will use a business process review methodology to establish the current “as is” and roadmap the required development to achieve the “to be”. The project will utilise change management methodology to manage the introduction and engagement of this project across the institution.

Currently the method through which students receive their timetable varies considerably from school to school. Generally students receive a draft version of a timetable prior to arrival in either a paper copy or a word or excel document. They can access individual module information through their eLearn (VLE) accounts for each module or look up a room on the UCLan Module Catalogue. However, this system is not free from flaws and requires the students to have particular information such as module code, group numbers, staff names, etc and often the information on the system is not sufficient to respond to the students’ queries. They cannot however, access their full timetable through any of the university systems and it is only available in the format in which it was originally provided (paper based). Often students are frustrated with not receiving complete timetables before arrival as it causes them issues such as arranging suitable child care and fitting in employment. The frustration with timetables can cause undue stress to students and can have a significantly detrimental effect on a student on the brink of withdrawal.

UCLan recognises that the university needs to become more flexible to enable the students to juggle university around their lives and work. Therefore, they need a system, which will deliver their timetable in a timely manner and will be easy to access on an ongoing basis. The process will aid retention by encouraging staff to plan their modules in advance allowing students a clearer picture of their lesson times. Rooms are currently booked through the Room Bookings unit, who use the CMIS system however, the scheduling aspect of the software is not utilised. Academic staff create timetables for the courses they run and submit them to the Room Bookings Team who allocate the rooms. This means that rooms are allocated partly on a first come first served basis and partly on informal rules, which should not be applied. As a result the room allocated may not be the most suitable room for the purpose. For example a 500 capacity lecture theatre can be booked for a class with 40 students.

Overbooking often occurs by staff booking more rooms than required. STOP aims to develop a system to provide an online environment, through which timetables are automatically created. This system will be influenced by a policy that outlines considerations and constraints. The system will enable the production of timetables based on staff name, student name or module. STOP would create a variety of timetables from courses that run following the standard academic year to part time, evening and weekend courses and courses that do not follow the standard academic calendar.

The system will be designed to work with the current CMIS room booking system and other university systems such as the student record system, Banner, to enable the creation of these timetables. The new system will significantly improve the experience of students who require specialist support such as a signer to interpret their lecture. Currently these support staff often struggle to access information about the location of students’ classes, which can prevent the students receiving the support they require. The new system will enable these staff to search for the students and find their individual timetable.

Welcome to the STOP Blog

Welcome to the STOP - Student Online Timetabling Project blog. We will keep this blog up to date with the latest news and developments from the project.