Redesigning the SORA workflow on Portico

Overview 

The Current Student product team is partnering with Registry and SSWS to redesign the Reasonable Adjustments on Portico process: the new process will go live in September 2025. This work is one workstream on UCL’s the Beyond the SORA programme.  

We aim to minimise the SoRA manual administrative overhead so that time spent on this can be used more meaningfully to support our students. Our design and approach draws upon experience and lessons learnt from our ECs, DAPs and Change of Circumstances workflow redesign. We are consulting faculties throughout the design and development process via our Reasonable Adjustments on Portico Champions group.  

Recent progress and next steps 

Student workflow development and testing 

We have updated the student workflow to incorporate User Experience and Accessibility recommendations and have just completed User Acceptance Testing and student walkthroughs. Feedback from this will be incorporated into the next iteration of this workflow.  

Tiers of adjustment 

There will be three tiers of provisions to allow for standardisation where possible whilst still providing flexibility for students who need it. For tiers 1 and 2, a standard provision has been agreed for each assessment type (this has been agreed by SSWS and Registry with Faculty consultation). 

Departments have now reviewed the tier 1 / 2 provisions and requested exemptions for any instances where the standard provisions are not appropriate to the assessment. Over the coming weeks, we will review all requests for changes and will update Portico to reflect agreed exemptions where appropriate. We will discuss any requests for changes that cannot be accommodated with faculties.  

As part of this exercise, departments have identified a number of assessments where the assessment type is not correct and have updated these assessment types as part of the post Exam Board window to confirm assessments for the coming year. 

Note: Standard provisions will not be provided for groupwork. Instead, departments should implement best practice for groupwork with inclusive teaching and learning that supports all students to meet the groupwork objectives. SSWS are developing guidance and best practice examples - we will share a link to this in due course.  

SSWS and department / faculty workflows 

We now have initial designs and developments for the SSWS and department / faculty parts of the workflow. We will be reviewing, testing and refining these with SSWS and our RA on Portico Champions group over the coming weeks.    

Reasonable Adjustments on Portico Townhall 

Join us on 18 September, 2-3pm to find out more about the new process. Register your interest here.  

We will also be running staff briefings on using the new workflow in Portico in September: dates and sign-up links will follow.  

New webpage 

You can find out more about our work on our new webpage: Redesigning the Reasonable Adjustment process on Portico. 

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