What’s new from our Digital Portfolios this term?

Running across two days every term, the Termly Increment (TI) Planning event brings staff from across UCL together to review priorities, discuss and plan work, and make sure that our digital services continue to effectively support research, education, and professional services.  

Our latest event, held on Wednesday 16 July and Thursday 17 July, set the direction for an exciting term ahead.  

Here are eight key improvements that you can look forward to: 

Migrating all remaining faculty websites to our new web platform Drupal 10 

The UCL website is hosted on Drupal, our content management system. We are currently moving all our web content to the latest version - Drupal 10. This term we will migrate content for all remaining faculty websites, and develop the new brand portal and UCL200 features. 

This will enhance user experience and website functionality. You can visit some of the newly launched websites here.  

• UCL Institute of Education 
• UCL Bartlett and Faculty of the Built Environment 

Replacing old and out of warranty computers 

This term we will be replacing and upgrading 300 old PCs in areas like the Student Centre. This will improve our students’ learning experience with more reliable technology. Additionally, this will also reduce maintenance workload for staff. 

Developing a Key Performance Indicator tracking solution for Report + Support 

We want to create an inclusive and safe space for our community and tackling misconduct is a top priority. 

We want to enable institutional oversight of Report + Support data to improve UCL-wide visibility of alleged bullying, harassment and misconduct cases. This will help us understand patterns and behaviours related to misconduct and inform decision making.

Improving EASE services for several faculties 

We are always looking for ways to improve services for staff and students. The Education Administration and Student Experience (EASE) project supports faculties to review and improve their EASE structures and services and introduce greater clarity and consistency in ways of working. 

This term we will continue to work with FBS, Engineering, SHS, A&H, FLS, MAPS and LAWS to review their EASE structures and reduce administrative workload for departments. 

Cutting down the time between Award set up and start of research activity 

As part of our Award set-up project, we are making it easier to manage externally funded research and support the competitiveness of UCL recruitment. We are aiming to cut down the wait time between Award set-up and start of research activities by eight weeks.  

Launching Panopto, our new lecture capture and video management platform  

This term, we are launching Panopto, which will replace Lecturecast, to improve staff and student experience. With improved video functionality and accessibility, Panopto will reduce staff workload with streamlined scheduling and better integration with our learning environment, Moodle. 

Piloting a Unified AI platform for UCL researchers 

Supporting and empowering our research community is a priority, so that they can continue to develop world-leading expertise.  

We are developing a pilot of a central Unified AI platform, reducing dependency on the public cloud, that will allow researchers to access AI tools more easily. They will be able to conduct tasks like machine learning in a more flexible and standardised manner.

Simplifying and modernising our student support services 

As part of our continued efforts to enhance the student experience, we are transforming our student enquiry and case management system. We will be moving key services to a Microsoft Dynamics platform to improve reliability, increase efficiency and enable more informed decision-making.