Introducing a central attendance system that supports student success and wellbeing

UCL is planning to introduce a central attendance system at UCL for the start of the next academic year, 2019-20. 

In a series of Town Halls, project champion Wendy Appleby, UCL Registrar and Head of Student and Registry Services will explain the benefits of the Here to Succeed project for staff and for students and answer questions about the planned approach.

This is a long running project, which has been revamped this year with a new title and vision, to create an emphasis on student success and student wellbeing instead of compliance.

Sign up for a Town Hall on one of the following dates:

Thursday 20 June, 1:15–2pm
Tuesday 25 June, 4–5pm
Thursday 4 July, 2–3pm

Part of a broader programme

The central attendance system (name tbc) is part of a broader programme to transform the outcomes and experiences of our students. The ambition is to provide individually tailored support and more personalised learning for our students at every point on their UCL journey.

This means introducing systems that enable connected and responsive student support, to complement the systems (such as Portico, currently being fixed by the Academic Model Project) around the student lifecycle.

We have just launched askUCL, our new student enquiry system and self-help centre that streamlines the way we handle our students’ enquiries, allowing students to raise, track and reopen enquiries in one place.

This Autumn several departments are piloting the new Personal Tutoring platform, that will help tutors and tutees to arrange and manage their meetings.

Our vision is that the enquiries, case management and personal tutoring functionality of the student success platform will be rolled out to all UCL academic departments in the next year or so.

No mandatory requirement for departments in 2019-20

The central attendance system will launch in First Term 2019-20, but there is no mandatory requirement for Departments to use it in the first year. At this point, it will just provide a consistent UCL-wide means of recording the information that you already collect.

As we move into the second year of the project, we will be creating the infrastructure that allows that data to be collected by swiping UCL ID cards in teaching spaces and developing the policy around the use of the system.