JISC

Overview 

This projects seeks to review, redesign, implement, upskill and evaluate a new administrative system to manage room bookings and timetabling creation in a bid to:

1. Enable more efficient and appropriate use of teaching and learning space on campus (estate utilization)
2. Reduce academic and administration staff time spent on room bookings and timetable creation by introducing streamlined and standardised processes and managing the administration aspects of timetabling by central services
3. Support student experience by allowing them to access their timetabling information at all times, sufficient to make informed work/life/study decisions
4. Increase the professionalism with which the university engages with students
5. Reduce wastage of paper used to print and re-print timetables; reduce wastage of energy used to heat and light unused rooms
6. Generate new income opportunities by managing certain spaces for other events

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 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.

Aims and objectives

The project has two main objectives:

• Making timetable information available (online) to students in a timely fashion to allow students to make informed work/life/study decisions, with a particular focus on part time students.
• To maximise room utilisation across the university, providing efficient use of the university’s estate In the event of a conflict between these objectives, the first will take precedence.

Project methodology

The LIS Development team will lead the project, producing the ‘as is’ and the ‘to be’ business process models with support from staff currently involved in timetabling.  The team will write the code that will integrate the corporate systems used (student record system, Banner, and Trent, the HR system). Facilities Management will operate the system once completed and will work with the LIS team to test the features and run “what if” tests. 

Staff at Head of School and SMT level will lead on the development of the timetabling policy with input from stakeholders and final sign off from directorate.

The project as a whole will use PRINCE2 to manage the process.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

The Deliverables from the STOP project will be:

• JISC Project Plan
• Project website (pages on UCLan site) to be maintained for at least three years following completion of the project.
• Road map to move from the “as is” to the “to be” state.
• Details of the business process and the system design documentation.
• A system that can be demonstrated to others in the sector (we will explore how we can capture this)
• The code we write that allows the integration of our corporate systems.
• A summary of possible output, limitations and issues following system tests.
• The policy we create for the timetabling system.
• Evaluation of the system best practice / guidance for others - potentially case studies / best practice guidelines.
• A communications strategy for disseminating the project around the university to secure buy-in from staff. To be of value to other interested instittions and wider sector.
• JISC reports, notably the STOP FSD Case Study
• Publications - papers presentations at conferences / relevant events

Technology / Standards used

CMIS is currently used for room bookings and will be used for timetable scheduling as well. It uses a SQL Server database and runs on a Windows 2003 operating system. The publication mechanism will be a web site under IIS and used LDAP authentication.

Interface software between corporate systems will be written in C# in .Net.