staffresources.uhi.ac.ukstaffresources.uhi.ac.uk/pat/PAT_training_transcript.docx · Web viewThank you very much, and thanks for asking me to come along today. I’m more than happy

Personal Academic Tutor Pack

PAT Training

PATs provide advice and in some instances signpost students on matters relating to the programme of study, including the selection of modules and options. In this video clip Lorna Robb, UHI’s Student Records Officer, talks through the process of module selection for students and the PAT approval tool.

Thank you very much, and thanks for asking me to come along today. I’m more than happy to do these sessions, so please spread the word if there are other groups, particularly PATs or even students at this stage who would benefit from a session like this – then please just get in touch with me.

Before I go into the actual demo of the system, I’ll just give you a wee background to where we’ve come from in getting this process set up. In 2013/14 we had 20 programmes that piloted the online module selections system. It worked fantastically well and as a result of that, we rolled out to all degree and post-graduate programmes in this academic year. The majority of students will have been registered on their modules in SITS using this online tool. It works on the basis that each year, the structure, the core and optional elements of each level of study within each programme are reviewed and updated via the Programme Leader, Subject Network Leader and Faculty Office. Any future developments, any new programmes that are coming online now are required to develop this online module selection as part of that validation. So as each validation comes through, I’m notified of the curriculum structure, again all the core and optional elements, and I build a structure in SITS. Again we have that kind of communication with Faculty and Programme Leaders to make sure it is accurate as it can get it.

In April of each year, we will launch module selection for our continuing students. By continuing students I mean students who are continuing on in the same programme of study in the next academic year. Those students who are coming in from a HN into a degree, or those students who are transferring their degree over the summer, they may be transferring into a different subject area, those guys will not have access to the tool in April. These need to be students who are continuing on the same programme of study in the next year. We have opened that system to continuing students in April this year. Students at that stage will be able to log in to UHI Records, (which I will show you in a minute) and make their choices for the next year of study. Once they’ve made those choices, those will downline to the PAT, and the PAT can view the choices, and they can also view the academic history of the student. Again, I’ll show you all this on the demo. They will make a decision about whether or not those choices are appropriate for that student.

Just a couple of things that I wanted to mention before we go into the demo; I know that I have queries quite a lot raised about students who then are presented at exam boards and are perhaps not

Web: http://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/educational-development-unit Email: [email protected]

Page 1 of 15

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/educational-development-unit

PAT Training Transcript

eligible for progression, but have already registered on their next year of study. It’s just to give assurance that the outcome of exam boards come to the Student Records Office in the first instance once those results are agreed. If there are students that have been noted as not eligible for progression, we will remove their next year choices at that stage. So that will happen over the next couple of weeks. The idea is that we start getting those student registrations into the system early – it helps with the kind of planning, the viability of modules running, we can make those early decisions far earlier in the process.

There are a couple of extra developments that we now have. The information that we have in SITS for what modules are running each year will also be used by the VLE team. Students that are registered on modules will quickly be able to get an idea of room size requirements. In addition to that, the system will also drive the VLE. Now that happened this year – the system worked fine but I think we just need to have a couple of years where people put their faith in the fact that the system will do the job it’s intended to do. We did still have quite a lot of manual registration in the VLE this year which we really do want to move away from. It’s really important that SITS accurately reflects who you’re teaching, because ultimately, that’s where you are going to enter your results. So if you start manually registering students in the VLE and forget about the SITS side, you suddenly get to the week before exam boards when you’re trying to get results in and realise that these students have never been registered on the module. So provided the system is used properly, and the student makes their module choices using the tool I’m just going to show you, those registrations will be put into SITS and they will be put into the VLE over the summer, so it’s a completely seamless process.

So what I’ll do now is switch over to my PC view and just go through a quick demo with you. I would like to say that I’m using the test system today. We have had some significant system issues here today. I don’t think that this demo will be affected, but it may be slightly slower, it’s not that slow in real life. Please just bear with me if it is a bit clunky. Now, can everyone see my PC view? Can you please shout now if you’re not able to see that, and I’ll just get logged in.

Several voices are heard confirming that they can see the PC View on screen.

Brilliant. If we look at the student perspective to start with, what effectively happens is, as I mentioned, continuing students will be asked to complete this in April. We have had over 1000 students through the system already. We do have some that have still to complete the process, and that’s fine – we just try to get as many through as we can – it just eases the burden a wee bit after the summer when we reopen the system for all our new entrants. The system will remain open through the summer, so by all means you can be advising your students to log in and make their choices at this stage. I appreciate academics will be on leave over the summer, so there is the chance that those choices will remain in limbo in the system until staff are back from holidays – but it’s just trying to get the engagement as soon as we can with the students.

So a student will receive an email from SRO, advising that the system is open, and they click into the student hub in UHI Records. Now, the guidance that John has circulated to you all is basically a step by


Page 2 of 15




step guide through this. What I will say is, I think probably you’ll have noticed that there have been some design changes to the student and staff hub with all these funky new colours that we’re seeing. I’m not entirely sure that we’ve updated that in the guidance, so the appearance of the screenshots I’ve got in there might be slightly different, but the process is completely the same – it’s just the look of the webpages that are different. We do have a very similar set of guidelines from a student point of view which will be attached to the email that goes to students advising them to log in and make these choices.

So you can see when the student logs in to the hub, they have this toolbar down the left hand side and all the various tools that they have access to. On the right side they have a “to do” list – so in here will be a list of the things that they are required to complete each year as a student. It’s their responsibilities if you like. It will include things like online enrolment, it will include information like applying for bursaries or SAAS funding, and as you can see, there is also a link for picking your modules for 15/16.

We’ve changed the title of this, this year. It was originally labelled as module registration, but we changed it because it became apparent that students had the impression that if they picked their modules and registered, that was them enrolled for next year. They are still required to enrol on their programme and check all their contact details, how they are paying for their studies, and all that kind of jazz. They’ll still be required to do that, this is simply just getting them on their modules for next year. So we’ve simplified how we’re labelling it – just to “Pick your modules 2015/16”.

So if I click into there, you’ll see the structure that the students are presented with. Another design element we’ve added this year is that students who are having difficulties or not really understanding what they have to do, there’s a “send email” button here. You might want to note this down but we do have a dedicated email service for this which is [email protected] so students will be advised that they can contact us directly. Equally staff can contact us there, it is manned all the time during office hours by myself and my colleague Kirsty. I think the idea behind that was that we wanted to make sure we were as visible as possible – I understand that this is a fairly radical and new development, so rather than having to go through the process of raising helpdesk jobs, that is effectively a direct line to either myself or to my colleague Kirsty for any issues, and we’ll get those resolved very quickly.

The student, as you can see, is presented with the core modules. In this example that I’m showing you, this is an Adventure Tourism student. This student is currently a second year and they are looking at their level 9 modules for next year. They’re full time, they are presented with four core modules and they’re really just there for information. The system will automatically register the students on core modules – they don’t have to actually pick those, but they are there for information. Further down then you’ll see we’ve got a guidance section, and the guidelines we’ve got in here have been created in close liaison with the programme leaders, so they are tailored to each programme and to each level of study and can be as specific or as general as you want really.


Page 3 of 15




A couple of things to note here: You’ll notice that there is a reference to a ‘uelective’ module and that has been built into the system, because very often, at each level of study, the student has the option to either pick an entirely free elective, so something that isn’t presented as part of the core curriculum for that programme, or to pick a module up or down a level, which we do have in some cases. That ‘u elective’ module is just a dummy module that allows the student to progress their selections, but to give the PAT the indication that they want to select something for next year that’s a wee bit different that’s not been presented to them. I can talk about that a bit more in a minute.

Below that, you’ll see the guidance that they are given, so this student has obviously got four core modules. They are being asked to pick two more modules from these options and that will make up their 120 full time load for the year.

If you just click in the view list button, and they immediately get a drop down of the options that are available within that semester. Another handy little function that we’ve got is if I click on “financial management”, you’ll see that we are able to build pre-requisites into the system – so say there is a modular pre-requisite for selecting financial management, I have to have taken this module here before I can pick that. You have to use them quite carefully, we have had instances where we’ve built these pre-requisites in, and then suddenly a student appears who doesn’t quite fit the rule, or has comparable experience that gets them off having to do the actual module itself, but they can’t progress that, there’s no way to record that in SITS. So we do have to be quite careful about how we use them, but where there is a very clear line, a student must have achieved this module in order to pick this – it can be built into the system. I’ll just click out of that again.

If I click “Visitor Behaviour” you’ll see when I make a choice, it pops over to this selected modules container on the right hand side, and again, if I click on that, you’ll see down at the bottom of the screen here – there is some extra information about the module. It gives an idea of the tutor, and right at the very very bottom, there’s a link in there. I’m not going to click it, I’m a bit scared of breaking the system if I do too much. There is a link at the bottom here which takes the student to the module database, so within that, it’s a different view to what you guys will see, but it is basically any information about assessments, a brief module description, reading lists – that kind of information. The student can get in and have a real look at the module before they make a decision on what they want to pick, and we’ve found that to be quite well-received last year, we’ll continue with that and build on that this year.

I need to pick my semester two option from here, you can see that I only have two that I can select from on this side. So you can see now I’ve got my two options selected here, I can at this stage delete one out if I’ve changed my mind, I can hit the little recycle button there, put it in the bin and make a different choice.

There’s also a ‘View/Add comments” button here. So the student may have made a choice, and they may want to ask you a question, they want some clarification on some of the aspects of the module content, or they’re a bit unclear on assessments. They can opt to add a little comment in there, and


Page 4 of 15




that will come to the PAT along with their selections. Again, I’ll talk about that further when we get to the PAT’s screen.

Similarly we do advise students that have taken that uelective module I described, where they are basically saying “I want to pick something that isn’t listed here” - it may be a module up or down a level, or it may be something that they’ve seen in another programme that they are entitled to pick as a free elective. Again we’d ask students to detail that in the comments button so when you receive their choices as a PAT, you’re not then blind as to what the students intentions are, they’ve given you a wee bit more information about what they’d like to do.

Once they’re happy with the choices they’ve made, they just click “submit selections”. [brief pause while screen loads] You can see now a little pop-up at the top to say that they’ve entered and that they should now wait for their PAT to approve or reject their programme of study. Now this is instant, this system. You could be sitting beside a student and the minute they’ve hit the submit button, you will see the modules for approval.

Can I just ask if anyone has any questions on the student side of things before I move onto the PAT approval tool? No? Ok.

A couple of things to point out with the staff approval tool; a lot of people get in touch with me and ask “do I get an email when a student makes choices?” and in the first year of us running this, you did. However, we did get overwhelmed with requests to turn it off, because some people felt they were bombarded with emails clogging up their inbox all the time, so the email facility was turned off. Unfortunately it’s one of these situations where it either has to be off for everybody or on for everybody. So as a middle ground, if you click on the home screen, you see you get your in-tray messages here. What we’ve done as a meet in the middle measure, is you will get an in-tray message from UHI Records, which indicates to you that you have selections to approve. What I would recommend is that you make regular checks in here, just to see if you’ve got anybody that’s awaiting approval, or has maybe submitted a question and it’s something you need to have a look at.

So, if I click into the staff hub now, and again, I don’t know if you’ve had a look round here since the layouts been changed, it does look a little bit different to how it did before, with the little buttons with the picture icons, but the buttons are exactly the same. Click into the PAT area here. Again, you get all of the normal tools that you would expect, and we also have the Student Module Diet Approval Tool – a bit of a mouthful, I think we’ll probably rename that to something a bit more straightforward, but it is what it is at the minute. So that’s what we want to click into - view your students.

Again, this section catches quite a few folk out. There are a lot of selection criteria that you can use. You can use any of these fields here really, you could retrieve students by their ID number, their name, by the programme that they are on. What I would suggest is that you just use this reg status box. It automatically defaults to “entered” which will bring back any students who have entered modules that are awaiting your approval. It will default to that, and that’s probably the easiest one that you want to keep an eye on. The other one I would suggest is, you’ll see this one here called “query” and that will


Page 5 of 15




bring back any students that have used the ‘add a comment or question’ button, they will come through as queries. So it’s quite handy to retrieve them as well, just in case those slip through.

So once you’ve set your registration status that you want to retrieve, just click on the retrieve button. The other thing to mention is to make sure you scroll right down the screen, because quite a lot of PATs contact me to say “I’ve clicked retrieve, but nothing’s happened”. I think the expectation is that a new screen will open, but actually the students appear at the bottom, so you just need to make sure you scroll right down to the bottom of the screen.

So you can see here I’ve got two students here that are waiting for module approval. Quite handy wee thing here – you’ll see that there’s an updated date and time so you can quite easily see, I don’t know if anyone will be in the position where you deal with modules that are limited in numbers, so it may be appropriate for you to deal with student selections on a first come first served basis if you like. That date and time section allows you to see, to pinpoint exactly when the student made their choices. Equally it’s been quite handy once or twice this year when we’ve had PATs get in touch with us to say “my student assures me that they have made their choices, and is jumping up and down about the fact that I can’t see them” and when we log into the system they actually made them three minutes before they spoke to their PAT, so it can be a very handy little tool to have. Once you’ve retrieved the student you want to look at, you just go along to the right hand side, and click into the details button. So, within here, you will get a little bit more information about your student at the top, their mode of attendance, and then below that, the modules that they are presenting for next year. So it will list the core modules plus the options that they plan to do. For those that you’ve pulled through that have a query status, you can click on the view/add comments button here, and you’ll be presented with the text that the student entered at that stage. You can use this system to reply to the student, so you can add a comment back to them, and all of this happens through the UHI email account, so the student would get an automatic email to their student outlook box, and be advised that you’ve made a comment and they can click in and view it in the same way you would do here.

There’s also a “View Academic History” button, again I’m a bit reluctant to click on that right now because I’m not entirely sure how things are working right now, in terms of the system problems we’ve been having but basically what happens with this button is that you can click on this, it will take you into the bones of the student record, so directly into the data that’s held in SITS. It will have any information about pending applications, all their enrolment information, all their results information –so particularly helpful perhaps for continuing students, you can get a picture of their previous academic history, whether or not they’ve achieved core modules, pre-requisites, that kind of thing. And then we’ve got the ‘reject’ and ‘approve’ buttons. So the reject button, if you’re not happy with what’s been presented to you here, you can click the reject button, the student will get an automatic email sent to them to say “I’m sorry, your selections have been rejected, you need to log in and make alternative choices”. What I would recommend if you are in the position to do that, is to maybe add a comment, just so that the student is aware of what steps they need to take to correct the situation. We have had a couple of instances where students get a wee bit anxious because they’ve had an email


Page 6 of 15




to say that their PAT has rejected their programme of study and they think that’s because they’re not being allowed to continue, or something like that. So just a wee note in there, just give some reassurance, and also helps the student to log back in and make the correction that they need to.

Female 1: How would I know, whether I reject their choices or not? I don’t feel able to make that choice to reject them. Do you know what I mean? I’m probably not explaining it very well.

LR: You don’t feel that you have the knowledge about the student? Not about the course?

Female 1: Yeah, more probably about the course.

LR: To be honest, what I’ll do, is if I just finish off this section, I’ll go back to me and then we can have a chat about that, because it is something that’s been brought up elsewhere. Just to explain, those two last buttons do exactly what they say on the tin – the reject button tells the student they need to log back in, the approve button - the minute you hit that button – the student will be registered on all of their modules within SITS, and then, at a certain point in time in the summer, all of that information will then be transferred into the VLE. So by the time the student comes back in September, and they’re ready to start, everything should be up to date. And that’s the process.

So before I come away from that and we talk a wee bit about that question, does anyone have any other questions that are specific to what we’ve gone through here?

Female 2: Hi, sorry can I just ask if, I know there was technical issues with approving modules for some students, and I’ve got a student, and I’m not able to approve them because of the technical fault – Is that resolved, or when will it be?

LR: I’m pleased to say that it is resolved. What I’ll, I’ll switch back – I’ll come away from this PC view so we can talk properly. It has been a real headache and it came out of the blue for us. Just to give you a wee bit of explanation as to why it’s happened, we’ve got a really funny set up here in that staff have very different account permissions. Depending on your role within the institution, you might have access to a set of five screens here, and a set of two here. Somebody else might have these ten, and not these two. They are all very different, and since we had an upgrade a few months ago, the system’s got a wee bit confused with permissions, and it has caused a block with approvals. The software suppliers have been working on that for about three weeks now, and we have got a fix in place. So before I go off today, I’m pleased that you mentioned that actually because I need to get an email out to all PATs to confirm that is fixed now. So, if you do have any further problems with that, please do give us a shout. But, so far so good – everything’s gone through as it should, so it should be working ok now.

Just to come back about the question about PATs and knowing the course, knowing the student; it has been brought up before, and I know that in a lot of cases, the PAT is very close to the programme, and understands the pre-requisites and all that kind of thing. I appreciate that’s not the same across the


Page 7 of 15




board, in some cases PATs are allocated to students who they don’t see that regularly or are undertaking a programme that they don’t have expertise in, or any kind of host of things. It’s not something that I can really advise you on or to give guidance on because the PAT allocation, the PAT role and how those, how students are allocated PATs isn’t really something that I’m involved in. However, it is something that I’m trying to be involved in the discussion on. Ian Horne is going to be starting a PAT working group shortly and I’m hoping to be part of that. But the actual, some of the decisions about how PATs are allocated are outwith my remit and I can’t advise you further on that but I can certainly make note of people that raise this as an issue and feed it back to those people who do have those decision making powers and address it that way.

Female 3: Can I just say on behalf of all the centre managers in Argyll that we are all quite happy to provide the pastoral support to the students, it’s just that we are so far away from all. The module selection, we think it should be someone else that does that.

Male 1: I think it’s probably more a small partner issue, because the way our PATs are structured are by geographic location, rather than any kind of subject allocation. So PATs might have one student doing history, one doing archaeology, one doing sustainable development, and another doing hospitality management. Our PATs would have to have some kind of knowledge or access to the information, or have someone to speak to that can advise a bit more on whether to approve or reject modules on all these programmes.

LR: Yeah, I completely see that, since we took in HAPS and that kind of set up, it’s thrown things out of kilter a little bit because of module selection and I completely get that, I understand that. To be honest, the best I can do at this stage is just feed that up, and I don’t know what kind of communication we can get in place, whether that would be with programme leaders, or how that would work. I’ll certainly raise it, and bring it up with my manager and others. That’s the best I can say to you at the minute.

Female 1: Yeah, because we also actually need to know who the programme leaders are. I mean you can go on to the UHI records and there is stuff there, but I tried to phone someone who had left UHI – so it’s not up to date, do you know what I mean? We don’t have an updated list of “this is who you contact, this is the course leader for this course” so we know who to get in touch with, so we can get an answer as quick as possible.

LR: That has been raised and I don’t want to say this for definite but I’ve a feeling that there is something being worked on, a resource or a list somewhere that would be in UHI Records. One of the difficulties we have is that we can only… in SITS we register who the confirmed programme leader is. There have been instances where perhaps somebody has gone off quite quickly and there is an interim arrangement in place, but that records not updated until there is a permanent solution in place if you like. So sometimes there are wee glitches in there, I understand that as well. We do rely on the Faculty Office advising us when appointments are made, and they do tend to be permanent appointments that go into in the system, so I will raise that one, and see if there’s any progress on that list.


Page 8 of 15




Female 1: One of the other things I’ve found that had come up when I was speaking to somebody’s PAT about the modules selection – I went in and looked at the degree programme, the modules and the rest of it, and what was there, and when I actually spoke to the course leader, he said “oh no, we’re not doing that one now, that one’s not in it and that one’s not in it” so it doesn’t fill you with confidence, that you are giving that student the right information, if the module choices that are on there aren’t right?

LR: That doesn’t fill me with much confidence either, I’m quite disappointed to hear that’s happened. If something like that does happen, if you can drop me a line and let me know because we need to be kept in the loop – if there’s a decision taken that a module isn’t running, we need to take that out of circulation, because we also run the risk then of students going in at a later date and picking it, if it remains in the diet for the year. If you can report anything like that to us, we can certainly follow it up to the programme leader. We have had some instances where we’ve been advised, based on the numbers have had been into the system, say around this time, that module leaders have said “OK, we’re now into June, July and nobody’s picked my module, I’m not going to run it next year”, and maybe if there are one or two students on it, we then contact the students and get their alternative choices and get that work done over the summer. Anything that we can do to assist that, I’d like to know about.

Female 4: Can I ask something please? If you happen to approve a module that actually should have been rejected for a reason that we don’t know, is there a way of remedying that, and how does it affect the student?

LR: The easiest thing to do is to give me a shout, drop me a line, or give me a phone, at the study selections email address, and I can quite quickly roll that back. You probably would need to get in touch with the student, because they will have had an automatic email to say “your PAT has approved your choices”, so if they then subsequently get an email saying “your PAT has rejected your choices” it will be a bit confusing to them. So you would need to contact the student but just give me a shout and I can fix that for you, it’s an easy fix.

Woman 5: Ok, thank you.

Male 1: Lorna, could I ask as well, do you have any more information on the PAT working group that Ian Horne’s putting together, because it’s kind of crucial who’s represented at that.

LR: I don’t actually, I have been in touch with Ian and I believe that he was putting some kind of paper together that was going to QAEC - would that be right? And off the back of that, they were going to be setting up an initial meeting, and I don’t know who’s been invited to sit on that, I put myself forward and said I would be quite keen and I’m just waiting to hear about a date for that first meeting. It might be worth giving him a shout.

Male 1: I will do. And the other point that I think Jackie raised – is a concern of all our PATs is on the issue of approval or rejection. I know the system’s got the pre-requisites and core outputs built in but a


Page 9 of 15




few years ago we had a document called “Learning Centre Guide” which was in pre-app days, but I think what we need to have now is some kind of updated document that has the information from the individual programme handbooks that would help the module choice process. I think for the humanities scheme, and the business and management degree, we’ve got that information, but we don’t have that level of detail for some of the other programmes.

LR: Yeah, ok, I can certainly feed that back. I’ll see who I can get in touch with about progressing that. What I would say about the pre-requisites though is not to assume that they are there and I know that’s probably not what you want to hear but it’s just that, as I said, they are very strict. So if a programme leader says to us “this student needs to do…” say for example it’s financial management, “this student needs to do intro to financial accounting or have equivalent experience” we can’t really put that pre-requisite in because you’re going to block students from picking it who may have experience – you can’t put that into the system. So, it really is just for those modules where there is a strict modular pre-requisite – there is no get-out of that. So the pre-requisites do still pose a problem and I think those still need to be checked. So that makes the programme information all the more important. I’ll certainly raise that.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that, just the process of how we’ll be contacting students. So UHI SRO – so the Student Records Office centrally will be contacting all new entrants over the summer. I think we’ve got a provisional date of… just looking at my sheet here - I think its round about the 10th or 11th July. 10th July, yes. So at that point, we’ll issue a letter to all new entrants that are through the system and we will be asking them to complete course enrolment and module selection as one process if you like, so do it all at once. I appreciate for some students that are maybe coming into the university for the first time, that module selection may wait until induction - they maybe need a bit more support in making their choices, but it’s just to give you a heads up that communication will be going out in July. So they will be asked to make their module selections, plus their course enrolment, and that system will open for them in July. What we will do, the other issue we’ve had is the actual allocation of PATs in SITS, there are quite a few students coming through admissions just now who have no PAT in the system just yet, we’re trying our best to get that nailed down via Ian Horne and see if we can get that information in the system because you can see what will happen – if a student doesn’t have a PAT registered in SITS, they’ll go in and make their choices, and then those module choices float about in the system because there’s nobody there to approve them. It’s easy fixed, I mean once there’s a PAT recorded in SITS, it automatically bounces to that PAT account. It’s just quite difficult to keep on track if the data isn’t in there. So that’s something else we are looking at addressing.

Female 1: Sorry, I’m a pest, can I ask another wee one about approving the choices. Who has the authority to approve the choices? I’ll tell you what, it’s a bizarre one, I’ve got the thing, the wee in-tray that had somebody’s module choices to approve. When I went into it, it seemed as if someone had already done it. It didn’t say it had been done but it didn’t allow me to do it – it was as if it had already been approved, but I don’t know who did it – it wasn’t me!


Page 10 of 15




LR: I’m not sure. If you have an example like that, give me a shout and I’ll have a look at it, I can quite easily see the history of what’s happened with the student. The only thing I can think that might of happened is that if a student is going onto a level of study where there is no choice to make, if they have entirely mandatory modules, then we would just put them on. We wouldn’t ask you to approve that, because there’s no choice to approve if you like.

Female 1: That’s what it could be!

LR: It could have been something like that. But if you’ve got an example, fire it through to me and I’ll happily take a look for you.

Female 1: Thank you.

LR: One other thing to mention which has caused some confusion I think is that the module registration that a student sees is directly linked to their enrolment data. So, if you’re an applicant who’s Adventure Tourism, first year, full time – when you log in to enrol, you’ll enrol on first year full time, and you’ll see the level 7 full time options. If by accident, you’ve changed your mind and you’re actually going to start part time, we’ve no way of knowing that. The system will automatically look at what the student’s intended registration was, and will show them the modules that are relevant to that. Sometimes, I think for continuing students as well, we’ve had quite a lot of students who are studying on a full time basis this year and so the system has assumed that they are continuing full time, but they are actually going to go part time next year and we need to do a wee bit of manual work with that to adjust the selection screen for them. It’s just to be aware, if you are approving student choices. The student choices should be for the entire academic year, so if you’ve got a full time student that’s submitted three modules to you, there’s something not right there. They need to select the modules for the entire academic year. There might be something somewhere that says they should have been part time and we need to update that. It’s just something to be aware of. Similarly, the diet or module selection is set up that a part time student, a structured part time student, should be picking three modules. So, in SITS world, if a student is part time structured, they are half of a FTE. They are picking three modules. We do have some part time students that are permitted to take four, which in my head makes them unstructured, but if that happens, you’ll need to drop us a line and let us know that a student is taking an extra module, because the system will, if they are enrolled as structured part time, the system will only allow them to submit three. So again, that’s something to be aware of.

The other thing is about the ‘uelective’. Say you do have a student that says “I want to pick something wacky that’s not listed” to me, that’s fine - if you are in agreement with that, that’s ok, but you will need to drop us a line and let us know, so we can take that student off that dummy module and put them onto the correct module choice. The handy thing about the ‘uelective’ is that we can see where students are registered on a ‘uelective’, so there is that kind of failsafe that we will track that eventually’ and will get in touch with you to say “this student picked a ‘uelective’ and you’ve not told us what they’re actually doing”. If we can get that communication coming through, we will catch


Page 11 of 15




everyone eventually, but it’s just to make sure that they are swapped onto the correct module as early as possible.

Female 1: That’s right, I came across that and you’ve since sorted it out for me with a student, that very thing.

Female 5: Lorna, can I just ask a couple of questions from a registry perspective? Generally speaking, when a student makes an application or enrols, in most places, who would actually allocate the PAT? I’m fairly sure that with us, that’s done in the admissions bit, and I think that virtually all our students would come through PAT allocated now. Only ones that have perhaps transferred to us as HAP students that have somehow fallen between the transition.

LR: Yes, I have had meetings with Admissions staff recently, and we have agreed that where it is known at admissions stage, the PAT will be entered. And if the PAT is entered at admissions, it will automatically pull through the system and we’re good to go. But there are a lot of instances where that is not the case and we need to iron out the process there. I believe that there are PAT controllers at each partner, which are maybe not responsible for entering the data, but responsible for ensuring the data is entered, if that makes sense. So there are a couple of things that we need to iron out on the process side, but just be assured that SRO are aware and have a report that shows the students which are not allocated to a PAT, and we can highlight those to whoever we need to. But you are absolutely right, if they go in at admissions, they get pulled right through the system and that’s absolutely fine.

Female 5: Can I ask again, a couple more questions? First of all, is there a core report or a place within SITS, that within registry anyway that can run a quick report so we can see ourselves to try and pick up these problems earlier, if we’ve missed any? And also, is there anywhere that you can think of – as you know we have lots of different learning centres, it’s a nightmare for timetabling which is why the early selection of modules is really important. It’s still quite hard to get a report that I can hand to the timetabler to say which modules are anticipated in which centres.

LR: ok, so the first question there about anticipating problems, is it students that haven’t made choices, or PAT allocations?

Female 5: PAT allocation.

LR: There is a core report - I’m trying to remember off the top of my head where it is, I think if you go into the enrolment tab, in core reports. There should be a core report in there and I think it is called “Students with no PAT”.

Female 5: ok, thankyou, that’s fine, I’ll have a look for it.

LR: I’m pretty sure it’s on the enrolment tab, if you have difficulty locating it, then give me a shout, because I was looking at it the other day, I definitely know it’s there somewhere.

Female 5: Ok that’s fine.


Page 12 of 15




LR: That’s quite a handy report, it will detail everything. It will detail all your HN programmes as well. I don’t know how time critical it is to have your HN PATs recorded as quickly as your degrees. Obviously the module selection is only for degrees and post graduate students currently. That report will highlight all students at HE level which don’t have a PAT so it’s just to be aware of that. In terms of students who haven’t made choices, myself and Kirsty who is my colleague who works on this project, we do regular reports to PATs and to programme leaders, which will (a) identify students who have not completed module selection just yet, and need to be told to get it done, and (b) highlight students who have made choices, but their PAT hasn’t approved them. So we contact PATs in the first instance with that information, and if there’s no action taken on it, it will then go to the programme leader. In some cases we have found in the past that there is no PAT allocated, and that’s why there’s been no approval, or the PAT who has been allocated is on sick leave – those kind of things. We can then come up with an alternative solution to get those through the system. At any stage It is possible for myself to log in using a special ad-hoc screen where I can log in as a PAT, I don’t get access to any of your UHI Records stuff, but specifically for an approval, I can log in on behalf of a PAT, and see what you see – and make approvals if necessary. So if you are having difficulties, at any stage of the process, or if you’re not able to get logged in, and you want to make an approval, just let me know. Did I cover that, both of those questions?

Female 5: Yes, the other one is on trying to find a report which will show the student location, which is a problem that we’ve had. We can perhaps talk about that outside of here, I don’t think that’s a problem for PATs.

LR: Well, again it’s one of these things that I think module selection is having quite an important impact on PAT allocation, and it’s also having an important impact on VC timetabling, and room allocation, but both of those areas are not really within my remit. I can advise on them, and advise the right people that there’s an issue, but I don’t have any direct control on that. What I can say to you is that I am in contact with the VC timetabling team in Perth, and making sure that the curriculum that we set up, that they are aware of, and any new developments, and any changes to semester, all that kind of thing – it’s bound to happen, it always happens every year, that they’re communicated, and I advise on that. But the reporting that comes out of that side of things, I can let them know that there’s still a requirement - I think it was asked for last year as well – and I can feed that back to them. But I wouldn’t have any impact on that myself I’m afraid.

Female 5: That’s fine, thank you.

Female 4 : The list that we have of PAT students, when are they updated? When do the previous year’s students come off your PAT list?

LR: Students who have exited, do you mean?

Female 4: Yes


Page 13 of 15




LR: Again, another common issue which has been raised. The problem is when student records have not been closed off regularly. If the student records are closed directly, they should fall off your PAT list. But I think what happens is very often students who don’t return are just kind of left, their record isn’t continued for 15/16, but their record also isn’t closed off, and as a result, the PAT screen is still live for you. Again that’s something we are trying to take forward, with local registry teams and hopefully you’ll see a better quality data for this coming year. It does return back to getting the student record closed off.

Female 3: I was just going to say that you can email Lyn, that’s what I did and they just removed the students I knew had left for definite.

Female 4: Ok, that’s quite a few!

LR: There have been, and this is going back to the PATs, again this isn’t something that I can provide an answer to, but I know there have been some questions about where the student’s PAT changes between levels of study. I think child and youth studies might be an example, I’m not entirely sure. So you’ve got one PAT who looks after students at level 7 and they get a different PAT at level 8.There’s some kind of debate about who should be approving their choices – should it be a Level 7 PAT when they make their choices in April, or should it wait until after the summer. Again, it’s a bit of a bone of contention, it is ongoing and I can’t find an answer to that, but hopefully there will be one at some stage. Any other questions?

No? Well, what I would say is that the guidance notes are there, and they are pretty accurate step by step guide through the process, please just get in touch with us. Equally if you have students who are having difficulties using the tool, or are not getting access, they should just drop us a line, it saves having to raise a helpdesk job. Kirsty and I will be on the ball and ready to go with anything you’ve got to fire at us. The only other last plea I would make is, please any module leaders who are PATs, do not register students manually in the VLE, it becomes a bit of a mess to unpick at the end of the year, so if we just rely on SITS to get the registrations into the VLE, things will work a lot more smoothly. I’m actually going through to Moray College to the exam centre next week to meet with them about how exam lists are created at the minute, and whether module selection information in SITS can help with that process, as I think a lot of the time that comes from the VLE as well. So if we can get to a stage where the two should kind of match, we should still be able to do some reporting from SITS which would assist that, so that’s something else to look out for over the coming year as well, we’ll see if we can make any progress on that.


Page 14 of 15





Page 15 of 15



Documents

staffresources.uhi.ac.ukstaffresources.uhi.ac.uk/pat/PAT_training_transcript.docx · Web viewThank you very much, and thanks for asking me to come along today. I’m more than happy