Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14

NAME External Examiner Online Reporting SystemSponsor Dr Tina Harrison, Assistant Principal Academic Standards & Quality

AssurancePortfolio SASGProgramme Student ServicesProgramme Owner Jim McGeorgeIS Programme Manager James ThinAuthors (Business) Anne Marie O’Mullane (Academic Services)

Linda Bruce (Academic Services)Authors (IS) Craig Middlemass (Project Services)Date 19/12/2012

Section One – PROPOSAL OVERVIEWIt is proposed that the external examiner processes for undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes from nomination of the external examiner to analysis of the external reports would be processed electronically. The proposal allows for an integrated approach to quality assurance and quality enhancement by facilitating effective qualitative and quantitative analysis of the external examiner reports.

This proposal is made up of three key elements:1. Online submission and tracking of examiner reports and outcomes (2013/14 - Compliance)

[Large]2. Management of External Examiners (2014/15 - Discretionary)[Medium]3. Business Intelligence/Analytics for both (2015/16 or earlier - Compliance)[Medium]

Why do this work at all?

The University’s next Enhancement-Led Institutional Review by the QAA in 2015/16 will explore the extent to which the University complies with the SFC guidance and the extent to which the University has systematic arrangements in place for identifying changes to the UK Quality Code and updating policy and, specifically, practice accordingly. The recently revised UK Quality Code Chapter B7 on External Examining states, “At both institutional and subject/programme level, institutions give full and serious consideration to the comments and recommendations contained in external examiners' reports”, and “At institutional level the general issues and themes arising from the reports are reviewed.” ELIR will examine the University’s compliance with these indicators

Delivering online submission, tracking and analytics of external examiner reports would ensure that The University complies with the newly introduced Scottish Funding Council (SFC) guidance and UK Quality Code.

At present there is no robust institutional overview of issues arising from external examiner reports, which forces a reliance on colleges and schools to carry out the work on behalf of the institution as a whole. There is also no consistency in current approach to working with external examiners and assessing the outcome of their reports.

The existing manual process for tracking and analysing external examiner reports is known to break down and there is no overview of whether or not all reports have been assessed and actions taken on the outcomes of the external examiners findings. The mixed processes mean that effective

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14auditing is improbable and allows for the potential to fail an audit before getting to the point of assessing how the institution has handled the outcomes from external examiner reports.

If the University does not progress with this proposal Schools will devise their own local systems for gathering reports. This will result in fragmented information, duplication of effort, and inhibit the development of an analytical tool at university wide level with the consequent loss of quantitative and qualitative data, again contributing to the potential to fail an audit.

What is in scope and what is not?

The proposal is split into three phases for delivery of the complete end to end solution:

Online submission and tracking of examiner reports and outcomes (2013/14 - Compliance)

This phase would seek to deliver a new process and system to allow the collection and management of external examiner reports.

It would allow external examiners to submit their external examiner report and access documentation relevant to their duties online (e.g. training material and online resources relating to duties).

The external examiner record would be linked to EUCLID in order to tie the external examiner to the course or programme to facilitate populating the online report with information on the course/programme which the external examiner is appointed for (please note that external examiners can be associated to multiple reports at school, programme and course level).

Tracking of responses by Schools to external examiners regarding issues raised in external examiner reports, including assignment of these issues to users and escalation of the issues to programme, School, College and Institutional levels.

Central repository for external examiner reports which could be viewed by relevant members of staff at School, College or Institutional level. The online reporting system would populate the system facing the University.

The ability to draw off of reports relating to information captured either as part of the external examiners reports or from the issues arising from them at School, College and Institutional level.

Management of External Examiners (2014/15 - Discretionary)

This phase would enhance the central repository for external examiner with details which Colleges and Schools could access as appropriate for a variety of purposes e.g. management of external examiners relationship with the University, expiration of appointments, payments to external examiners for completed work, UKBA requirements, pre-population of elements of the external examiner report.

The data it would draw on is stored at School and College Level and a system would need to be developed to store external examiner records. This development would require Human Resources Input and Finance Office input.

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14The external examiner online report would be enhanced to automatically populate with external examiner details.

Business Intelligence/Analytics for both (2015/16 or earlier - Compliance)

This phase would introduce a system that facilitates the analysis of reports on a quantitative and qualitative basis and to facilitate the extraction of common themes/issues at a University, College and School level.

This must include the ability to search for and be presented with common themes from free text elements of the external examiner reports and allow the user to drill down through College, School, Programme and Course trends to view the individual reports.

Out of Scope

The following items are specifically out of scope of this proposal:

A Student view of information on all reports submitted In the event that external examiner reports should be made automatically available to

students, the system should enable summary comments from external examiners which would be held to be presented in other systems in use within the University.

Function to allow reports to made publically available FOI requests would be handled manually, as would any other external request to access or

summarise information from the system.

Rolling out to other areas: There is activity proposed in relation to external examiner reporting for research degrees.

How will success be measured?Compliance with the new 2012-16 SFC guidance and the UK Quality Code. The University’s next Enhancement-Led Institutional Review by the QAA in 2015/16 will explore the extent to which the University complies with the SFC guidance and the extent to which the University has systematic arrangements in place for identifying changes to the UK Quality Code and updating policy and, specifically, practice accordingly. The recently revised UK Quality Code Chapter B7 on External Examining states, “At both institutional and subject/programme level, institutions give full and serious consideration to the comments and recommendations contained in external examiners' reports”, and “At institutional level the general issues and themes arising from the reports are reviewed.” ELIR will examine the University’s compliance with these indicators.

Adoption of the system by the schools and colleges, for this project to be deemed a success all schools must engage with the new process. This will ensure a consistent approach to handling external examiner reports.

The ability to draw common themes out of reports at an institutional level. This will be managed under the auspices of Senate Quality Assurance Committee, which will consider all themes annually, as required by the SFC and QAA. The committee will have a particular interest in themes relating to quality assurance and academic standards, and will remit other themes to the other Senate committees as appropriate for action. Academic Services will be responsible for management of any

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14system on a day-to-day basis.

What benefits will the proposal deliver and how/when will these be realised?The majority of benefits associated with this proposal are intangible but with the potential to make a positive impact on the student learning experience by having consistency in approach and implementing best practice based on feedback from external examiners. The savings that could be made through the proposal would relate to the avoidance of work required to manage external examiners and their reports in a manner that would allow a consistent approach to gathering this information and reporting it at an Institutional level. The existing manual process often involves reports getting “stuck” in the paper process and since they are not tracked they may not be assessed or critical mass of issues identified along with a requirement for action.

Benefits/Meets needs of external examiners An online report form would result in a better experience for the external examiner as an

online service accessible via web browsers allows external examiners to complete the required reports and addresses issues and limitations of word documents which cannot always be accurately completed because of incompatible software.

Benefits/Meets needs of students Improved analysis of external examiner reports qualitative data will result in an improved

student learning experience in the long term.

Benefits/Meets needs of the University Allow the University to comply with Scottish Funding Council guidance and UK Quality Code Result in an integrated approach to the quality assurance and quality enhancement and a

systemised university wide approach to external examiner processes Provide professionalised service for external examiners and ensures consistency of

treatment of external examiners Result in a central repository of external examiner reports Improved strategic analysis of reports with a focus on enhancement, dissemination of good

practice at department, school and institutional level will improve the student experience. Maintain or improve our position in relation to other institutions, in addition to protecting

the University’s reputation as external examiners do work across institutions. This proposal is also in keeping with sector developments (eg. University of Glasgow, University of Aberdeen)

Benefits/Meets needs of the College/and or School Colleges and Schools would be able to track the responses of schools to external examiners

in an efficient and systemised manner which would be beneficial for the Colleges’ QA Report to Senatus Quality Assurance Committee and the Schools’ QA Report to the College.

Overall the proposal would reduce the burden of staff resources at College and School level. The following is a non-exhaustive list:- reduce keying- reduce time spent on communications e.g. automated chasing reports for external reports that are outstanding- reduce time spent gathering documentation for various quality assurance processes, for example annual monitoring and internal subject review

The proposal should facilitate Colleges and Schools to reflect and act upon issues arising from external examiner reports that have implications at College and School level.

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14

Section Two – DETAILSAcademic Services would operate as the owner of the new service and be responsible for “best practice” and ensuring that the system continues to meet the needs of the SFC guidance and that any enhancements/bug fixes are prioritised with IS Application Support.

Given that Academic Services are not resourced to operate solely as support for a University wide system, it is proposed that Academic Services support model is made up from:

First line support via the IS Helpline Second Line support via Academic Services (for triage and prioritisation) IS Applications Support will manage system availability, patching and second line calls passed

from IS Helpline and Academic Services Service Management (or other appropriate section) assist in the provision of training for the

initial roll out and assist in the provision of online training materials

In terms of the analysis work to define the process for management external examiners and their reports, Academic Services will act as champion for the new system and will with support from IS Applications engage in a consultation with The University.

The security model for the system must respect the organisational hierarchy (i.e. staff would only be able to view information within their School (including programme and course level information), unless information was marked or escalated to the College or the Institution in which cases it would be available to all users in the College or all users in the Institution). The intention would be to allow school “administrators” to manage access to their own school users, by default school users would be able to view their own school’s information.

The assumption for this proposal is that the new service will be able to run on shared (or corporate) infrastructure and as such no cost is anticipated in terms of purchasing servers (although this should be reviewed at the estimation panel).

The existing processes in place must be integrated into the system or the processes introduced for managing external examiners. These are:

HSS UG ProcessExpenses Claim form filled in and returned to school with receipts. Finance reimburse through BACs.

Fees - Form 96 B is filled out and sent to Salaries for processing.

PG Process:Form 96 B is filled out and sent to Salaries for processing.

Paper forms are filled out for expenses and sent to Accounts Payable.

CSE UG and PGFees paid by College. Schools pay expenses - http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/science-engineering/staff/external-examiners

There are 2 appendices to this document covering the external examiner report itself and the nomination form for external examiners. These provide an insight into what the solution will need to contain.

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14

2.1 Business ObjectivesNo. Description How Measured?1 Provide an integrated approach to the quality assurance and

quality enhancement and a systemised university wide approach to external examiner process in 2013/14.

Compliance with Scottish Funding Council Guidance on Quality 2012-16 require from September 2012 that institutions reflect at the institutional level on strategic issues arising from regular monitoring, and make use of this information in its strategic approach to quality.

2 Provide a central repository of all external examiner reports in 2013/14.

Staff can view reports, issues and actions within their School and any action shared with the School, College or Institution.

3 Improved strategic analysis of reports with a focus on enhancement, dissemination and implementation of good practice at department, school and institutional level will improve the student experience by 2015/16.

The availability of analytical tools to analyse all external examiner reports and provide a basis to facilitate change within the Institution.

Ability to extract the themes and then implement best practice across the institution

4 Provide professional, consistent online tool for external examiners and ensures consistency of treatment of external examiners in 2015/16.

Offering a single process to manage external examiner engagement with any school within The University.

2.2 DeliverablesNo. Deliverable Scope Limitations

1 Specification and implementation of new processes and systems to drive the management of external examiners.

Specifically including the method of authenticating external examiners either through registration in a corporate system (HR or VRS) or using local authentication.

Engagement will be limited to schools.

Engagement with External examiners will need to occur although the group may change during the lifecycle of the project.

2 Development and implementation of new IT solution See details for each phase below.

3 Initial training and online training resources for end users. Academic Services will not be able to roll out training to

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14all staff, online resources or training provided by IS would be required.

4 New support route for issue with the solution via IS Helpline, Academic Services and IS Application Management.

Academic Services cannot fully resource support and must be supplemented by IS Applications.

5 Communications and engagement with Schools and external examiners relating to the roll out of the solution.

Academic Services will provide content, however, would require assistance in distribution of communication material and engagement with the wider community. (e.g. Project Services will carry out organisation of meetings, take notes and carry out analysis work, while Academic Services will lead the meetings and provide the direction for the consultation).

6 Online submission and tracking of examiner reports and outcomes phase deliverables: Interface with IDM (for population of staff details -

potentially including external examiners) Interface with Organisational Hierarchy (for population

of College, School and Department information) Interface with EUCLID (for population of programme and

course information) The ability to record assignments for External Examiners

(effectively tagging them to reports for course, programmes or schools)

External Examiner service itself allowing an External Examiner to view the information captured (ease authenticated - assuming External Examiners are registered in VRS or HR)

Online entry point for completing External Examiner Reports

Tracking of submission of External Examiner Reports Assignment of received report for assessment Issue creation following assessment Tracking, assignment, escalation and resolution of issues Potentially Action generation (again with tracking,

assignment, escalation and resolution) Simple Business Objects Universe to allow local creation

of reports

No analytics will be provided during this phase only simple reporting to allow information to be reported on in bulk from external examiner reports across the institution, college, school, programme and course.

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-147 Management of External Examiners phase deliverables:

The ability to create External Examiners (either based on Staff/VRS data or manually keyed)

The ability to manage an External Examiners assignments (contracts - possible could be pulled from HR if contracts are set up but possible have to be manual process with letter generation and tracking inside the new system)

Interface with Finance to make payment to External Examiners (could be costly depending on approach - probably cheaper to link to a payments channel in finance if there is such a thing)

Interface with Finance to track payments to External Examiners (again costly unless you want to embed the staff finance channel into the system so that you can view individual staff members payments - although there is a security/data protection concern about opening this up to the wider school community)

Ability to track UKBA information Security model to allow schools to view their own data

and to assign from a central pool of External Examiners Email integration to allow communications to be sent to

External Examiners (potential for standard comms and custom one off emails)

The phase is not responsible for determining the process by which external examiners are entered into HR or VRS.

The project must consider using existing HR processes to manage the contracts with external examiners, in case this can be used in place of building a bespoke system just for external examiners.

8 BI/Analytics phase deliverables include: Ability to extract thematic themes from external

examiner reports. Full text indexing service, allowing visualisation of the

themes across colleges, schools, courses and possible subjects. This may include management of the indexing (search engine) to allow for mis-spellings, synonyms, etc, to be managed to enhance the ability for the indexing service to pull out relevant information

Business Intelligence tools that can incorporate statistical analysis on both the full text indexing and reporting on the validated fields (i.e. questions on the external examiner forms) to produce trend analysis of validated and full text data. This will enable the University to prove that analysis is being carried out at an institutional level

It must to be able to capture these themes from the free text comment sections from the report. (potentially using oracle full indexing or equivalent based on existing software to avoid the need for procurement)

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14

2.3 Timescales – Milestones and Multi Year ProposalsMilestoneDate

Description (including reason if Milestone Date is hard) Hard (Y/N)

1 August 2014

Phase 1 implementation should coincide with the start of the academic year.

N

November 2013

Milestone for single agreed process agreed with School in order to allow time for development of the system in advance of deployment.

N

For info Schools prepare their annual quality report to College during Semester 1 each year. Colleges then prepare their annual report to Senate Quality Assurance Committee for the April meeting of the committee.

-

FinancialYear

Breakdown of Work By Financial Year

2013/14 Online submission and tracking of examiner reports and outcomes [Large]2014/15 Management of External Examiners [Medium]2015/16 Business Intelligence/Analytics for both (2015/16 or earlier)[Medium]

2.4 StakeholdersStakeholder Name and Role Concerns / Required Actions Informed

Y/NDr Tina Harrison Project Sponsor - must be engaged with the project and

provide sponsorship of the project, championing the changes to the institution.

Y

Academic Services Service owner - must carry out the execution of the project, ensuring that it delivers the service that Academic Services will ultimately own and be responsible for.

Y

Assistant Principal for Quality and Standards, Vice Principal Learning & Teaching, Senatus Quality Assurance Committee, Dean of Learning and Teaching, College of Science & Engineering (CSE), Dean of Undergraduate Studies, College of Humanities & Social Sciences (CHSS), Head of Undergraduate Medical Education, Director of Quality Assurance CMVM, Dean (Quality Assurance) CSE, Associate Dean (Quality Assurance) CHSS

These stakeholders will need to be engaged with the project and support the sponsor and champion for the change to University practices.

Y

Dean of Learning and Teaching, College of Science & Engineering (CSE), Dean of Undergraduate Studies, College of Humanities & Social Sciences (CHSS), Head

These stakeholders are interested parties and must be kept informed of progress and be able to feed into the project where appropriate.

Y

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14of Undergraduate Medical Education, Director of Quality Assurance CMVM, Dean (Quality Assurance) CSE, Associate Dean (Quality Assurance) CHSS, Academic ServicesSACS Data provider – the solution will be reliant on

information contained within EUCLID, this stakeholder must participate in the collection of requirements and testing of the solution.

Y

Human Resources Data provider – the solution will be reliant on information contained within HR, this stakeholder must participate in the collection of requirements and testing of the solution.

Y

Finance Offices Data provider – the solution will be reliant on information contained within eFin, this stakeholder must participate in the collection of requirements and testing of the solution.

Process provider – Finance will need to be engaged in the provision of a payment method for external examiners

Y

Schools Service user, schools must be engaged with the project and put in place measure to contribute to the development of the service and engage with the service once delivered. The will include an element of testing and acceptance of the service.

Y

ITI ITI are an interested party, they will be kept in the loop on the development of the service and any impact on infrastructure or security changes required.

N

Service Management Service provider – it is likely that this system will require information IDM and VRS, both of which require permission from Service Management.

N

IS Apps System and support provider, must be involved in the full lifecycle of the development, providing advice and development services to create the solution. As well as acting in a support capacity once the service is deployed.

Y

External Examiners End user, while this group may change throughout the project efforts should be made to engage with this community and seek their input into what the service should offer them as one of the main end users.

N

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14

2.5 RisksNo. Description Impact /

ProbabilityManagement Approach and Actions

1 Process for registering external examiners may not be consistent and may require adoption of registration process to ensure information on payments and authentication details are retrievable.

High / Medium

Reduce – engagement with Schools should push the point that in order to allow access external examiners must be registered via VRS or HR prior to the need to complete their reports.

2 Schools not engaging with project and ultimately the delivered central process

High / High Reduce – consultation with Schools on what the process should look like and cover early on should ensure their continued engagement. Clarity on when phases will be delivered will also set expectations in order to ensure schools don’t feel “let down” by the project.

3 Potentially SFC will require reports to be automatically available to students

Medium / Medium

Monitor – this ability has been marked as out of scope, however, should this become a requirement then a new process to summarise and present de-sensitised information to student will need to be made available.

4 Form for external examiner reports may change at the end of each academic year

Medium / High

Reduce - the solution must allow for flexibility in what information is captured, please note the format of the report will only change at the end of an academic year, although analytics would need the ability to cross reference consistent fields between academic years.

5 Risk of data protection breaches in terms of being able to identify an individual

Med / High Reduce – Cover data protection issues in training manuals and allow administrators to alter submitted reports to remove sensitive content.

6 School may want to have a pilot first to prove that it can work rather than big bang implementation

High / Low Remove – need to be compliant so there is no opportunity to run a pilot and deliver an institution wide solution.

Also make best use of sponsor to drive the uptake of the central solution.

7 Resource in IS, Schools and timing of work and engagement

High / Med Reduce – Early engagement with all units involved in the project, setting out clear deadlines for work and engagement will

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14assist in the interruption to “normal operations” with the schools.

Advanced booking of IS resources and delivering requirements on time will reduce the chance of bookings not being met.

8 Schools own local solutions may want to be integrate rather than adopt the central process

Med / Med Reduce – early engagement with schools in respect of their local system and agree an approach to bringing schools into the central process or integration.

2.6 Other Relevant Information

Information relating to peak load of users and capacity of the system: Around 550 external examiners each year will use the system to submit reports The peak load will be around the summer and autumn exam boards where the external

examiners can submit their reports from the start to the end of the examination period (roughly 6 weeks)

Up to 3 users will interact with each of the external examiner reports to assess the information and manage the outcomes again the peak load will be during exam boards and up to 6 weeks afterwards

Some reports will have multiple owning units the system must be able to allow multiple units to own reports, issues and actions and for the security model to respect these multiple ownerships (with the ability to define a lead owner)

The solution must be at a minimum compatible with the UoE supported browsers (http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/services/computing/application-development/application-support/supported-web-browsers/browser-application) some external examiners may use other browsers and efforts should be made to ensure that is compatible with the majority of browsers potentially extending to Chrome and Safari, although no mobile compatibility is required.

The solution must conform to accessibility standards in particular screen readers.

The solution must be accessible outside of The University network, it is expected that ease authentication will be used to ensure only relevant information is displayed users.

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14

Section Three – CATEGORY and STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT3.1 Project CategoryCompliance (C) - must be done for regulatory compliance or technology obsolescenceDiscretionary (D) - delivers major benefits, important service improvements etc.

Project Category

C – Phases 1 and 3, Compliance with Scottish Funding Council Guidance on Quality 2012-16

D – Phase 2 is discretionary, however, management of external examiners in a central way will avoid the cost incurred by managing external examiners locally and in an inconsistent manner.

3.2 FundingIndicate the funding source. Options are:

Core Grant Funded (CF) – projects whose internal (UoE) costs are to be funded from the IS Apps core grant. Please note that any external costs, e.g. for hardware, software and consultancy, need to be met by the sponsoring unit (unless otherwise agreed with the Director of IS Apps) – these additional costs must be specified in Section 4.3 below.

Sponsor Funded (SF) – proposals whose full costs are to be met by the sponsoring unit. For these projects the project sponsor must also confirm that the services will be sustainable after the work is complete.

Ring Fenced Funding (RF) – projects whose internal (UoE) costs are to be funded from the IS Apps core grant with IS staff costs taken from a ring fenced resource allocation e.g. funds set aside for Colleges. Please note that any external costs, e.g for hardware, software and consultancy, need to be met by the sponsoring unit (unless otherwise agreed with the Director of IS Apps) – these additional costs must be specified in Section 4.3 below. The ring fenced allocation from which funding is to be drawn must also be stated.

For all projects, regardless of funding source, it is essential that UoE resource providers are made aware of any potential demands on their resources as part of the proposal development process and their agreement in principle is confirmed before the proposal is submitted.

Funding Source

CF

Section Four – PROJECT BENEFITS, COSTS AND PROCUREMENT REQUIREMENTS4.1 Benefits (over 5 years)Provide the estimated benefits and costs over a 5-year period on the basis of the information currently available. Benefits may be tangible (i.e. quantifiable in financial terms) or intangible (i.e. benefit is a perceived benefit that cannot be easily quantified e.g. enhanced student experience or reputational impacts of a solution). Tangible and intangible benefits of the proposed solution should be stated. For tangible benefits – describe the benefit and the method/assumptions used to calculate the value. For intangible benefits – describe the benefit and any associated assumptions. For each benefit provide details and timing of actions to ensure benefits are realised.

Tangible BenefitsDescription Value

(£)Calculation Method and Assumptions

Benefits Realisation – Required Actions and Timing

None defined – mostly cost

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14avoidance and introduction of unified university process.

Intangible BenefitsDescription Assumptions Benefits Realisation –

Required Actions and TimingPotential to make a positive impact on the student learning experience by having consistency in approach and implementing best practice based on feedback from external examiners.

External Examiner reports do contain useful change for the University to change.

The University must act upon the recommendations coming out from the analysis of reports. Information available roughly 6 weeks following exam boards.

An online report form would result in a better experience for the external examiner as an online service accessible via web browsers allows external examiners to complete the required reports and addresses issues and limitations of word documents which cannot always be accurately completed because of incompatible software.

External Examiners want to use online services to submit information.

Immediate – External Examiner feedback and acceptance of solution.

Allow the University to comply with Scottish Funding Council guidance and UK Quality Code

The solution and its adoption will satisfy the SFC guidance.

Demonstrated by passing the Enhancement-Led Institutional Review by the QAA in 2015/16

Result in an integrated approach to the quality assurance and quality enhancement and a systemised university wide approach to external examiner processesProvide professionalised service for external examiners and ensures consistency of treatment of external examinersResult in a central repository of external examiner reportsImproved strategic analysis of reports with a focus on enhancement, dissemination of good practice at department, school and institutional level will improve the student experience.Maintain or improve our position in relation to other institutions, in addition to protecting the University’s reputation as external

The University engages with the solution and it meets the needs of the user base.

Immediate – capture feedback from users and ensure uptake of the system.

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14examiners do work across institutions. This proposal is also in keeping with sector developments (eg. University of Glasgow, University of Aberdeen)

Colleges and Schools would be able to track the responses of schools to external examiners in an efficient and systemised manner which would be beneficial for the Colleges’ QA Report to Senatus Quality Assurance Committee and the Schools’ QA Report to the College.Overall the proposal would reduce the burden of staff resources at College and School level. The following is a non-exhaustive list: reduce keying reduce time spent on

communications e.g. automated chasing reports for external reports that are outstanding

reduce time spent gathering documentation for various quality assurance processes, for example annual monitoring and internal subject review

The proposal should facilitate Colleges and Schools to reflect and act upon issues arising from external examiner reports that have implications at College and School level.

The savings that could be made through the proposal would relate to the avoidance of work required to manage external examiners and their reports in a manner that would allow a consistent approach to gathering this information and reporting it at an Institutional level.

In order to realise the benefits schools must adopt the central process. If the project needs to quantify the benefits then the project will need to gather this information.

4.2 Benefit and Cost Summary (over 5 years)This summary and should be taken from the Detailed Benefits and Costs Worksheet completed to accompany this proposal.

5 Year Summary ISG CSG SASG Colleges inc Students

External Costs

Total

Benefits £ £ £ £ £ £Costs £65,175 £ £12,788 £ £ £77,963

IS Apps DaysBenefit/Cost Ratio 0.0

Note: costs and benefits are estimated based on an assessment of the information available at the

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Applications Division Annual Planning Proposal 2013-14time this proposal is prepared. The actual costs and benefits of the resulting projects may vary from these estimates.

4.3 Funding/Resource RequirementsThe proposal may be dependent on additional funding or resources which have to be secured independently of the annual planning process. Where this is applicable provide details of any additional funding/resources required and confirm whether or not these have been secured.

Requirement Value (£) Funding Arrangements and Provider(s) Secured (Y/N)

Non funding has been sought N/A N/A N/A

4.4 Procurement RequirementsWhere there are no external costs this should stated as “Not Applicable”. Where procurement activity is required Procurement Office should be informed as early as possible so that they can assist with cost estimation and identify any assistance that may be required for procurement activities.

Total Cost of Goods & Services(over 4 yrs)

Description of Goods and Services to be procured(All procurement activity must be in accordance with the rules laid out Scottish Procurement Policy Handbook. Guidance on Procurement )

Procurement Office

Informed? Yes/No

< £50 k None N/A> £50 k None N/A

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