Research Student Administration Portico Enhancements

Academic Services is improving some Portico functionality to better automate processes for administering research students.  A working group with representation from academic departments, faculties, Academic Services, and the Doctoral School has been setup to help prioritise and design new features.  Initiatives include: 

• Automating the re-calculation of a student’s end date on their student record if they change their mode of study or interrupt.  The Research Degrees Team is currently manually calculating and entering the end date. 

• Sending reminder emails for actions.  Research Degree (RD) students have a series of events logged on their Portico record across the duration of their enrolment, beginning with their MPhil to PhD upgrade (if applicable), through their examination process, and culminating with their degree award. This workflow is intended to allow the system to automatically send reminder emails to research candidates at various stages of their programmes, based on events and deadlines logged by the Research Degrees team. The aim of having a series of automatic reminders is to reduce the time spent chasing departments, supervisors, and students, which will considerably improve the student experience.  Initially this workflow will concentrate on reminders related to the final examination (viva) process, but this could be expanded out to other key stages of the student lifecycle (eg. MPhil-PhD upgrade).  This improvement is being tested. 

• A Portico workflow for students to enter their viva date. Students will be able to add their viva date on their Portico page. There have been issues in the past collecting this date from departments and having this date earlier in the process from students will help the Research Degrees team make sure all other reports are completed on time.  This improvement is being tested. 

• Creating a Portico workflow to manage the notification of the upgrade from MPhil to PhD.  This workflow is intended to allow PGR Administrators to record the outcome of the upgrade in Portico, which will update the students’ record automatically and send the confirmation email. This task is not replacing the Panel Report which will be uploaded with the notification task and stored on Portico.   This workflow will reduce delays encountered by students in receiving this notification.  This improvement is currently being designed.   

Updates will be provided on the above developments in due course but if you have any questions, please contact academicmodelproject@ucl.ac.uk