A
massive thank you to everyone who has been involved either directly or
indirectly in the run up to A Level Results, Clearing and Confirmation.
It has been a great team effort. We can
now look forward to the start of a new term
and the enrolment of all our new and existing students. No time to breathe (yet
again!). I hope that in amongst you are finding time to take some well
deserved annual leave. I have had the good fortune of a mountain biking
trip to the French Alps with my youngest son (including visits to various
excellent hospitals!), and a fantastic week touring around the Lake District to
celebrate our Silver Wedding Anniversary.
A
Level Results, Clearing and Confirmation
Attached
to this newsletter is the technology status report produced for the second of
the daily management meetings which are reviewing the whole clearing and
confirmation process. You will see that there is a significant amount of
technology being used in lots of different ways to connect with potential
students and assist the information and administration involved in securing a
place at University. I have been here long enough to remember the days
when we used to have a motorbike courier drive down to Cheltenham to
pick up a “music paper” listing of A level results.
Overall
the University went into Clearing with places which it needed to
fill in order to meet its HEFCE targets. By lunchtime today, the
University had sent out 18% more offers compared with the same point in 2012,
and had received broadly the same number of telephone calls although a massive
increase in the number of visitors to websites, social media interactions
etc. Currently the top referrer on the marketing analysis is
Facebook. Academic Schools are currently positive about the final
out-turn - forecasting that we will be either on target or possibly above, and
this includes a current increase in the average tariff (grades) of incoming
students. We have also had a number of positive comments e.g. from Life Sciences: “It has been pretty stressful for
us and having the technology work well has made it much easier”, and from Head of Admissions “Particularly
wanted to thank the team for the outstanding work on the
telephony systems and service which appear to have made a significant
difference to operations this year”
Staffing
news
There
have been quite a few staff announcements in the last month. I hope you
are keeping track of the moves and changes which have now reached 55 in the
last five years (Staff Newsletter #1 was back in August 2008). There have
been an awful lot of staff changes over this period! The latest
organisation chart for IT Services is always available here.
We have continued to work with some great students in 2013
and as you know Kash and Dan have continued working full time with us over the
Summer. We have managed to make such a good job of Kash’s education and
career development that he has now landed a consultancy role with Microsoft
UK. Congratulations to Kash on a fantastic opportunity. We have
also enjoyed working with Alex who is nearing the end of his internship and
Salar who has just joined us for cluster checking. We have also
been pleased to work with Khaled who is a first year Pharmacy
undergraduate who has helped developed AboutUoB and assisted with our student
storage discussions. One of our highest priorities is to improve the
student experience, and getting input from students helps inform our future
direction. Khaled responded in an email: “It is a tremendous
pleasure to be able to work with people where the opinions of students are
valued and taken in to consideration.”
Wi-Fi
Update (The Cloud)
The
Cloud is the free Wi-Fi service we provide primarily for our visitors and
external guests to the University. It is the same service you will find
in some pubs (e.g. Weatherspoons), retail sites (e.g. Superdrug), leisure
facilities (e.g. Lords Cricket Ground) etc with thousands of hotspots and
millions of UK registered users already. We have a connection to the
service via the academic network JANET. The annual stats for Bradford
University for May 2012 to May 2013 have just been released.
There were a total of 21,000 Users who between them opened
up a total of 120,000 Sessions.
There were a total of 7.3 Million Mbytes used over a total
of almost 11 Million Minutes.
The average dwell time was 90 Minutes per Session.
User Activity in May 2013 was, on average, over 104% up when
compared to User activity in May 2012
iPhone and Smartphone users on average spend 80 minutes
online per session - Laptop users spend on average 134 minutes online per
session
Mobile
Phones accounted for 66% of all the sessions opened in May 2013
Wi-Fi
Update (Eduroam)
A team has been
reviewing the Eduroam documentation. A mobile web page has been designed with links to the new automatic configuration files (aka CAT files) which
will be available as well as the main web pages.
More detailed instructions have now been provided for
Windows 7 ( and we are in the process of doing windows 8). If you haven’t
already switched across to Eduroam for your Wi-Fi service on campus this would
be a good time to try out the documentation and provide feedback if you
encounter any issues. There are also various suggestions about updating
the Wi-Fi signage around campus to reflect Eduroam and so we will be looking at
replace the existing signage. In a related development we are working on
signage which incorporates both QR codes and Near Field Communications (NFC)
for our PC cluster facilities in the first instance, with a plan to roll-out
the new technology to a range of signage and facilities in due course once
we have a proven solution.
Wi-Fi
Update (New Wi-Fi Installations)
Here's
a roundup of various wireless installation jobs.
1) JBP Building: Installation of extra
units to take account of unexpected concentration of usage on floor 2 is
complete. There are now 31 basestations covering JBPB.
2) Pemberton Building: As a result of
survey work an extra five units have been procured and installed, taking the
total for that building to eight. There are no longer any known blank spots.
3) Heaton Mount: As a result of
survey work on both parts of Heaton Mount. The bedroom installation is
complete; we put 12 extra units in taking the overall total to 15. In the
other part of Heaton Mount (the 'house') there are five extra units.
4) Student Central: An extra nine
units which takes the overall total to 16.
5) Norcroft Conference Centre:
This will be the location of the latest Team Based Learning (TBL) room
and has taken the total to five basestations.
6) STEM and the re:centre: There
are 12 basestations to cover both of those buildings.
Microsoft
Office365 successfully upgraded
Blink
a few times and we find that the Microsoft service has been upgraded
again. This is becoming more “business as usual” as we also had an
upgrade in May. At the end of July the service was further enhanced
to the very latest software releases incorporating further Exchange 2013
features. Further details are posted here.
Re-implementation of the Student Information System
A SITS (Development) Programme Board has now been formed and
met for the first time to take forward the development and improvement
programme for the Student Information System (SAINT). The sponsor is
going to be me (at least until someone more worthy comes along). The
first meeting focused on the roles and responsibilities of the Board and
considered a comprehensive programme workbook which had been prepared for sign
off. We discussed the initial project activities
and setting in place a process to deal with pre-requisites and enablers
identified during the system review. It is likely that this project will
involve many of us in IT Services over its development cycle.
Hold
the Date - Microsoft Windows 8 Tour
Here
is a date for your 2014 diaries. We are jointly hosting with the Student
Union a week-long event on campus which is based around Microsoft
technologies. Microsoft will be on campus from Sunday February 9th
(setting up) and for the following week through February 14th in
both the Richmond Atrium and the Student Central where they will be showcasing
latest technology, software, games, tablets etc. branded bikes roaming campus
to publicise etc. We are investigating whether alongside this we can
promote and support/advise on a range of Microsoft technologies which IT
Services provide including Office365 and the Microsoft Academy learning
support. It may also be combined with a student-led GameJam which is a
week-long gaming development event that the students are organising in
conjunction with SCIM and the Video Games Society. One of the key mobile
development platforms which we use in SCIM (Unity) supports the Windows 8
platform.
Technology
Submissions to the Investment Plan
Thank
you to those of you who took time out to attend one of the three internal
briefings on our IT/Technology submissions to the investment plan. We
completed the necessary planning template and submitted into the process.
If you would like to see the latest version of the investment plan with respect
to technology or missed the briefings let me know and I will circulate.
And
finally….
As
usual, this is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity which
might be of interest. There is, as always, lots of other activity happening, so
apologies if your work wasn’t included – please let me know for the next
newsletter.
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