Fixing Portico Update: January/February 2020

Within Phase 4 of the Academic Model Project we have been continuing work on Programme Summaries from the initial collection which was completed in 2017/18. The summaries are the ‘single source of truth’ for programme information and will be used for feeding sources such as the prospectuses and public facing websites, thus removing the duplication of information and the current copy call by colleagues in the Communications and Marketing team.

For this phase of work, we have been focusing on introducing some new functionality for the online creation and maintenance of Programme Summaries.

New Functionality

We are making changes in Portico to enable:

1. Editing and amendment requests for existing programme summaries.
2. A revised Programme Withdrawal Form (replacing the Programme Withdrawal Questionnaire) has been updated to align with our new regulatory responsibilities.
3. Online completion of a Programme Summary for new programmes, rather than a word template.

We are also investigating what reporting tools could be provided to assist with this process.

Getting ready for 2021-22

The Programme Summaries will be used to provide the text for the 2021 Postgraduate prospectus. To help departments to prepare for this, Communications and Marketing and ISD Digital Presence are leading a project to improve the current programme summary text, to ensure that it is engaging and useful for students, an accurate portrayal of the programme and ensuring that we are compliant with Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) regulations.

Faculties will support with this work and we will require input from programme leads as well as teaching and learning professionals in departments.

Current timelines:

Term 2

• Development of the new functionality and tools, including thorough user testing. If you would like to be involved with testing, please contact Kerry Bivand.
• Go live and training on use of the new tools.
• Start of the project to use the programme summary data for the prospectus.

Term 3 and into the summer

• Continuation and conclusion of the project to use the programme summary data for the prospectus.

Plans to update summaries affecting current students are still under discussion

If you would like more details on the Communication and Marketing led project, please contact Samantha Fanning

If you have any questions around the new programme summary functionality, please contact Kerry Bivand