DSTS Staff update

New staff

• We would like to extend a warm welcome to Dan Addington. Dan has joined the Project Team as a Technical Lead and brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience both technically and in the higher education sector. Dan will be working on the Compass Program.

Farewells

• Ali Potter, Senior Training Specialist, moved on in November. Ali worked as part of the Business Improvement team before moving to DSTS. Ali developed some fantastic material to support staff and students as part of the MD Timetable Project as well as worked closely with teams around the University to improve their knowledge and use of the technology tools available to them.
• Brendan White, Business Analyst, left the Student Systems team after 15 years at Flinders University. Brendan has accepted a role with Technology One, and will no doubt cross paths with us again in this line of work. If you have any outstanding requests with Brendan, please direct them to the Student Systems Manager, Jane Dong.
• Brian Fleming, Senior Project Manager, has finished up at Flinders. Brian has played an instrumental role on a number of projects, including Parking, Online Invigilation, led the LMS review, and recently worked on Program Compass.
• Gaia Ricci, Senior Business Analyst, has also left the Project Team. Gaia joined the Project team at the onset of the LMS review as part of Brian’s team. Gaia was fundamental in the LMS review and the Compass Program. Gaia also imparted a wealth of knowledge through the numerous workshops and sessions she ran on lean principles and minimising waste.
• Wei Ren has moved to Sydney with her family. Wei worked at Flinders University for many years across CUT, CeDICT, CILT and most recently in Online Learning Systems. During this time, she has worked on web development, the rollout of the REX (Research Excellence) platform, implementation and growth of the Kaltura Video platform, and most recently she worked on the Education Technology Alignment Program of work.

We would like to sincerely thank the above-mentioned staff for their contributions to DSTS, and the wider University. We wish them all the best with their future endeavours.

Staff movements

• Andrew Hill is taking 12 months parental leave and will be back early 2021. We hope you enjoy your time off with your new addition to the family, Andrew.
• Austin Law, Senior Business Analyst, is moving from the Student Systems team to Planning and Analytical Services from Monday 17 February. We wish Austin well with his new role.
• Matt Woodward, Senior Business Analyst, has accepted a role with Digital Research Services. Matt will be joining DRS on 4 February. All the best, Matt.
• Brad Bone has re-joined the Student Systems team after completing a secondment with the Work Integrated Learning team. Welcome back, Brad.
• Bec Baulch, is returning from maternity leave 2 days a week from 28 January. Bec will be working from home. Welcome back to you too, Bec.

Long Service Leave

• Cathryn Wyers, Senior Training Specialist, is on long service leave until April 2020. Face-to-face training on the Technology One, Student Management will be on-hold until her return, but system users are encouraged to use the following reference materials in her absence:
  • Online Help
    • TechnologyOne Student Management
    • Student Management Web
    • InPlace

• • • Online Training Modules

• Student Management
• InPlace

DSTS Projects

DSTS 2020 CIP

DSTS has prepared business cases for the 2020 CIP funded projects, including Compass Program, Curriculum Management Program and Enabling Short (non-award) Courses. The business cases have been reviewed by key project stakeholders and will be presented at the next DSTS Governance Board for review and approval.

LMS Uplift

We are currently in the process of recruiting a new Project Manager (PM) to lead the LMS uplift. Once appointed, the PM will commence the procurement process to secure a new LMS platform. At this stage, implementation is planned for the second half of 2020.

Compass Program

The Compass Program have been consulting with students and staff to evaluate and prioritise key features for a digital solution to be launched this year. The overall aim of the program is to help streamline and improve the student experience by providing students with a single view of the support services and information relevant to them at the right time. To support this objective, the team have reached out to other Australian universities to learn of their journeys, as well as conducted market research for possible products/ solutions and looked internally at existing systems for suitability.

The initial phase will focus on providing clear direction for first year students to help them to effectively start their university journey and on consolidating information that exists across multiple systems.

The project team continue to work towards delivering valuable outcomes against all the five identified themes.

Curriculum Management Program

The Curriculum Management Program has moved rapidly since contract signing with Factor5 last October to implement CourseLoop, a curriculum management system for managing curriculum information at Flinders. Seven weeks of Planning, Scoping and Design workshops for the configuration of CourseLoop was completed in December 2019. The first round of user acceptance testing is planned for February to test the workbook configurations being set up in CourseLoop. The planning for migration of existing curriculum data into CourseLoop has been completed.  Curriculum data migration activity is currently scheduled for later this year.

International Student Admissions Project

The International Student Admissions Project (ISA) is in full-flight as go-live approaches. Over the past couple of months, the Project team have completed the configuration of the application form for coursework, honours and HDR courses in StudyLink, the system being implemented for assessing international student applications. Considerable progress has been made to configure the business processes for assessing international applications, based on sector best practices and our current processes, with regular consultations being held with our stakeholders. Work is ongoing in the integration space to configure, enable and test interfaces in Student Management System to enable transaction of data between the two systems.

All the offer letters and associated email communications are ready to be configured in StudyLink. Conversations have also been initiated with the Digital Presence team to flag the changes that will be required to the Flinders website, specifically to the course information pages linking to the StudyLink portal.

Transforming the Collection of Student Information (TCSI) Project

The TCSI Project has reached a number of significant milestones. Underpinning our ability to access the new software was the upgrade to release 2019B of Student Management, which was successfully implemented late last year. In addition to the upgrade:

• We are currently developing strategies regarding how data will be collected for the new data elements that will be required as part of government reporting.
• The new SATAC file format and amended file conversion process has been tested and implemented, with the first SATAC files in the new format imported successfully.
• A review of all non-semester topic census dates has been completed and all census dates now occur on a Friday.
• Twenty-one higher education TCSI data analysers have been delivered. Configuration, documentation and testing of the data analysers is underway (17 documented to date) ​.

Online Learning Systems

Our current focus is on preparing for the start of Semester 1, with all the Semester 1 topics rolled over in FLO and Leganto and we have facilitated the preparation of Online Statement of Assessment Methods (SAM). We have been working closely with the College of Medicine and Public Health to create an OCF copy tool and developing a sustainable approach to programmatic assessment reporting.

Since the end of Semester 2, we have upgraded MapleTA and Mobius to the latest releases, and migrated iEnrol to new infrastructure. We have also decommissioned the Legacy Media Manager system and migrated all of the relevant data.

We are continuing our ongoing maintenance and patching of FLO, Library Systems, Equella and Kaltura and are supporting the related plugins to ensure the stability of these systems. We are also providing support to our colleagues in the eLearning Team, supporting the Student FLO Help Desk and assisting with the Curriculum Management Program. We also provided support to the ETAP program throughout 2019, which wrapped up at the end of last year.

AV Services

We start our update with hearty congratulations to Leigh Hoppenbrouwers, who has won the Audiovisual Education Technology Managers (ATEM) association of Australia and New Zealand AV Young Professional award at a recent dinner held in Melbourne. Congratulations, Leigh, we’re all very proud of you and your well-deserved award.

The AV team have been preparing for the commencement of Semester 1. We have been focussing on student and teaching spaces to ensure they are fully operational before the start of teaching. We have conducted site checks at Bedford Park, Tonsley, Victoria Square and Murray Bridge and remote checks have been completed for our regional sites.

Leigh Hoppenbrouwers and Warren Draffen were lucky enough to visit Kangaroo Island in the last weeks of 2019 to update video conferencing and PC hardware. The updates were completed to help support two of our 3^rd year medical students who will be completing their placements at the Kangaroo Island Clinic.

The Law & Commerce courtyard update is nearing completion and includes revitalised classrooms and a stock market trading room.  The AV team are putting the final touches on the trading room and the classrooms will be ready for classes to commence in early March. Make sure you come in and have a look at the amazing new teaching facilities.

Looking towards this year, we will be refurbishing at least 50 teaching spaces in 2020 as part of the Learning Space Plan project. We will also continue our presence at the IDS Service Desk throughout 2020 due to huge success and efficiencies it delivered in 2019.  Two staff will rotate fortnightly. Please come and visit us and ask us about our success and experience!

The team are also very excited about the new hot cross fruit Loaf – if you can’t find an AV staff member, they are probably heating some slices in the kitchen.

Student Systems

SATAC Loads – The Student Systems Team have been busy with both the Domestic and International enrolments and continue to ensure students are enrolled successfully during this period. For the first time, the main SATAC offer round was done before Christmas, with 3,358 offers made to domestic students on 20 December. Another major SATAC offer round was made on 10 January, with 648 offers made to domestic students. The Team will continue to load the weekly SATAC offer rounds until Semester 1 commences at the beginning of March.

The eStudent, eAcademic and eApp 2019B Upgrade was undertaken successfully during December ensuring the Student System is kept up to date, secure and functioning well. The upgrade was completed without any disruption to the University.

InPlace Azure Cloud migration was completed on 21 January 2020 successfully.

The Student Systems Team are currently reviewing their operational support, BAU and improvement processes to align with the Flinders Agile Transformation Project and ensure the team evolves to meet the needs of the University efficiently.