Student and Institutional Information Management Systems

Below the top-level recording processes are the actions that the records trigger. These in themselves add to the information in the student records system and contribute metadata.

 

The map above shows the monitoring of both student academic attainment and attendance. The key feature of both is the combined outcome of Remedial Action. Discussions with all academic staff as part of the Smudie project had one very consistent feature: that all staff were focussed on student success and the support of them in their journey towards it.
Drilling down further takes the process towards the initiation of more formal University procedures:

Here the student record system is providing information that leads to follow-on action that both provides additional support for the students and provides essential data for the institutional management information system. It emphasises that the student information management system is only a sub-set (albeit a central one) to the overall institutional system.

An Enterprise Architecture Model of Attendance Monitoring

Enterprise Architecture modelling is being used by the JISC Smudie project to create process maps of student information management systems at SMU. These maps enable the system stakeholders to engage in informed conversations about the effectiveness of existing systems and to plan for improvements.
Often these maps present a picture of flexible and adaptable systems that recognise the different needs and contexts of the curriculum areas. This is no more apparent than in the top level systems map that emerged for student attendance monitoring.



It's a straightforward process involving the recording and reporting on students' engagement with their learning. However, this occurs in different ways ranging from formally and consistently timetabled lectures and practical classes to variable and negotiable sessions involving a high degree of student choice.
The University presently allows the curriculum areas to devise and manage their own attendance monitoring arrangements. The variation is illustrated in the systems map where the square white boxes are OR functions indicating choice. It can be seen that either the students or the tutor complete registers, that these registers are predominantly paper based (but not always), that the tutor transcribes these onto a spreadsheet (but not always) and that these are on common folders on the intranet (but not always).
The question that emerges from the analysis is whether the University is optimally served by this flexibility and can adequately meet its external reporting requirements. It is exactly this kind of question that the EA modelling is designed to invite.