University of St Andrews wins Jisc-sponsored Herald Education Award for digital innovation
The university’s Common Extension Request System simply and cost-effectively reduces admin for staff and enhances the student experience.
Congratulations to the University of St Andrews, the 2025 winner of the Jisc-sponsored innovative use of technology category at The Herald Education Awards.
The winning project, the Common Extension Request System, caught the judge's attention for being an impactful application of relatively straightforward technology to solve a common and often contentious issue – consistency of processes and decision making around assessment extension requests.
The judging panel was impressed that the system uses readily available technology through the university’s Microsoft licensing, representing a cost effective and easy-to-maintain approach.
Jason Miles-Campbell, director of Scotland and Northern Ireland at Jisc, and Herald Education Award judge, said:
"Congratulations to all the winners at The Herald Education Awards 2025, and in particular, to the University of St Andrews in the Jisc-sponsored innovative use of technology category. Their winning project streamlines requests for coursework deadline extensions via an easy to use and cost-effective system.
“When students are already faced with extenuating circumstances such as illness or bereavement, it’s important they have a straightforward and fair system available to request an extended deadline to submit coursework.
“For staff, the system also makes the administration of student extension requests less complex, allowing them more time to provide student support at times of high academic workload.
“This project is a fantastic example of simple, high impact innovation that has the potential to be replicated across the tertiary education sector – great work!”
Congratulations also to all the other finalists in the Jisc sponsored category:
- City of Glasgow College: College Local Innovation Centre Project
- Edinburgh College: the Dolby Atmos Studio
- Edinburgh Napier University: Active Learning Spaces
- Glasgow Clyde College: Schools Information Portal
- West College Scotland: Care Reality Virtual Reality Learning
Further Information
Jisc has recently collaborated with the University of St Andrews in a research pilot to discover how our digital transformation toolkit can support the development of new learning and teaching programmes. The findings have been published in the how to approach digital transformation in higher education report.