Intended audience: IDS staff
At the beginning of 2018, the Digital Student and Teaching Services (DSTS) stream was born from 3 groups that had previously been aligned very differently. The two software focussed teams, Student Systems and Online Learning Systems, had been part of their respective business units and the Audio Visual Services team had been much more strongly aligned to Infrastructure. The common mission we established for DSTS is;
‘to provide seamless, reliable, intuitive technology
that supports student learning
from application to graduation’
During the year, the stream was joined by a growing Project and Change Delivery group with a common desire to enable the students through use of technology.
Audio Visual Services is on track to refurbish or update over 100 audio visual spaces by EOY (this includes around 70 lecture capture enabled spaces). The team has started an ongoing rotation within the IDS Helpdesk to triage issues, share knowledge and improve service for all staff. There has been a strong focus on supporting the College of Nursing and Health Sciences with their simulation capability (manikins and simulation system support), as well as providing IDS technical support for major events across all campuses.
Online Learning Systems have successfully supported 9 rounds of patching for the Learning Management System (FLO). They have also transitioned the legacy REX system to SkillsForge, supported the implementation of new eReading system (Leganto), testing and integration with Ci Anywhere project, while providing critical support for the current curriculum management systems, simulation technologies and Kaltura (over 16,000 teaching videos this year).
Student Systems team members have been working collaboratively under pressure to keep the critical student services running smoothly (enrolment, course rules, placements, timetabling and government reporting). In 2018, the team have provided a significant contribution to the Ci Anywhere and My eQuals projects, while also implementing a new organisational unit restructure for the some of the Colleges. They have also been providing training for the student management and placement systems.
Our Project and Change Delivery team have been focusing on establishing the short and long-term roadmaps for 6 major programs (Educational Technology Alignment Program (ETAP), Learning Analytics, Compass (aka Student Portal), Learning Space Plan, Curriculum Management and International Student Admissions). There have been some key success stories, with the delivery of the My eQuals service to students and successful tender processes for our Curriculum Management and International Student Admissions and for the trial of an eProctoring solution, all on track for early 2019.
DSTS has undertaken significant work to understand the needs of our students. By partnering with the Student Experience team we’ve established a Student View Group to ultimately understand what success means to our students and ensure they can contribute to decision making for all our future initiatives. In addition, we’ve partnered with the Centre for Innovation, Learning and Teaching (CILT) to conduct a series of academic interviews to understand the needs of our teaching academics in relation to learning analytics and education technology. This has led to insights which have been collated into a series of personas and journey maps which can be utilised across DSTS. We’re continuing to build further partnerships between CILT with two new working groups focusing on exploring learning technologies to promote interactive learning, and innovation in training design.
For all teams in DSTS there has been a strong focus on our transformation to agile ways of working. We’ve been experimenting with how our projects and operational teams work together to deliver the most value to our students, academics and staff. We’ve seen the dividends of this hard work, through improvements to grade management, new examination support videos, and Leganto training. We’ve also taken on the challenge to improve the experience for our medicine students through enhancements to placement management and timetabling systems and processes.
We will finish the year with better alignment, a stronger delivery capability and clearer common direction. We look forward to delivering our 2019 program of work on the foundations we have built.