Second Phase of Stakeholder Interviews

The second phase of stakeholder interviews is well under way, having begun at the beginning of April. This phase is concentrating on the student information management responsibilities of academic staff and the use of the student information management system by the students themselves.

A minimum of twelve members of staff will be interviewed, three from each of the four Faculties, and currently this is 50% complete (the Easter break causing a bit of a delay this month). Already, however, some interesting new messages are emerging.

The first of these is about the more diverse information management tools used by academic staff compared with registry and management staff. Quite understandably, the academic staff are using the institutional VLE, Moodle, to communicate with students and to guide their academic progress. The Agresso system is used to report on their achievements, but is not used to support academic delivery. This emphasises the fact that the system is an institutional management tool, not an academic delivery support tool.

A second message is that staff engage with the information management process in different ways and with different degrees of commitment. It is self evident that the effectiveness of any information management system is entirely dependent on the quality of the information it receives. There are three different staff attitudes emerging that impact on the quality of information input to the system:

1. Staff that recognise that student information management is an essential component of the student support system, as well as being required for effective institutional management;
2. Staff who regard student information management as an administrative task that should not be the responsibility of academics whose primary role is to teach;
3. Staff who largely comply with the student information management requirements but have no confidence in the value it delivers.

These are important messages that need to be considered along with the system usability improvements already reported. It is clear that the recommendations from this project will not only relate to informations systems design, but also to professional development activity that ensures consistency of information management across the institution.