Current Student team update

There is currently a Portico “change freeze” in place (7  November – 7 January) so you will not have seen any system updates from the Current Student Product team this month.

Rest assured we have been working hard on system enhancements that will go-live on 8 January as well as planning some bigger change initiatives that we will continue to progress in the new year.  Find out more below….

SORA review

We are aware that the SORA process is time-consuming and has lots of pain points for many of you. We are working to identify how we can make Portico changes to improve this process, and also feeding into a wider SORA improvement programme. This term, we have spoken to a number of colleagues across faculties and departments to help us to identify the major pain points and we will use the information gathered to plan out next steps and enhancements. We will provide an update on these plans in the new year.

If you are a department member of staff involved in the SORA process, please have your say via this short SORA feedback survey .

Mark Entry and Results Release processes

Timely and accurate Mark Entry and Results Release administration processes are fundamental for Exam Boards to run and underpin our students’ progression and award outcomes. We are aware that these processes also carry huge administrative burden at key points in the year and this month we have conducted a series of cross-faculty and department workshops to review these processes and current pain points. We are also collaborating with several other institutions to understand how they manage these processes and to explore best practice.

We have identified opportunities to significantly improve and standardise these processes which we will take forward in the new year. These improvements will include:

• Ensuring all reporting has consistent student identifiers and formatting to make it easier for departments to manage data.
• Simplifying / standardising the mark sheet used to collate the marks.
• Enhancing Portico mark entry and mark release to enable students to have their marks on Portico throughout the year (Dec 2025 onwards).

There are some longer term policy and operational improvements that we will agree with Faculties and communicate in the New Year.

System enhancements to go live 8 Jan 

• Extenuating Circumstances: new View Student Overview button from within an EC claim will open the Individual Student Overview in a new browser. You will then be able to toggle between the Student Overview and EC claim. It will also be possible to open the Individual Student Overview from the Student Number hyperlink in the Claims List.
• Extenuating Circumstances: ability to search for EC claims by EC claim ID as well as by student ID.

Delayed Assessment Permits: currently staff can view details of any DAPs a student has used via the EC History tab on their EC claim. We will change the title of the tab to read EC & DAP History to signpost this more clearly to staff.

Contact details for further information: currentstudent@ucl.ac.uk