SITS PGR User Forum

Meeting Notes

Monday, 26th March 2012

Present: Rhiannon Thompson, Helena Tkalez, Linda Grant, Melissa Yeo, Kaye Yeung, Peter Smith, Sharon Bernor, Victoria Adrienne, Anne Donaldson, Josh Bronson, Linda Goodchild, Paul Allen, Maurice Elphick, Richard Kelly

  1. The group reviewed Helena’s draft online examinations process specification V.1 and suggested the following amendments:

Exam entry and notification of examiners

  1. (Pg.4) If the student submits the exam entry form too early, the supervisor can reject it but the form will be stored for the student to edit and re-submit later.
  2. (Pg.5) The spec currently outlines that we will hold information on connections between the external examiner, supervisor and student – ME suggested we hold the same information on the internal examiner. This will be a change to what we currently do.
  3. (Pg.5) ME suggested we allow a link to the examiner’s webpage and prioritise this above the CV upload facility.
  4. (Pg.8) The invitation email to external examiners inviting them to act will contain a link which will take them directly into the relevant MySIS page so they don’t need to log in.
  5. (Pg.8) When the examiner accepts or declines the invitation to act, there should be a dialogue box asking them to confirm their decision before it is accepted.
  6. (Pg.8) The external examiner will be asked to confirm their personal details and right to work in the UK (if they are not currently employed by a UK institution) – RT to think further about this process.

Action: RT

Submission of thesis

  1. (Pg.9) RT reported back on RDPEB’s decision on whether or not the supervisor needs to approve actual submission of the thesis: they recommended that the supervisor receives notification that the thesis has been submitted to the RDO, and that it will be dispatched to the examiners after 48 hours unless the supervisor intervenes. RT will think about an ‘unsubmit’ process to support this.

Action: RT

  1. There was some discussion over whether a pdf of the final thesis should be uploaded to SITS and be made available to examiners: HT will look into max file sizes that SITS can support, and consider video/audio etc. submissions. RT will think further about this issue (which date will be the official submission date, pdf or hard copy? How do we check that the hard copy is identical to the pdf? What happens in the case of re-entry?)

Action: RT/HT

  1. It was noted that if the student submits before the exam entry form is completed, the thesis will be accepted, held in the RDO and the process managed outside SITS. The thesis submission date will be recorded in SITS by the RDO as the date the thesis was handed in.

Exam outcome

  1. ME noted that examiners’ preliminary reports may not have been exchanged pre-viva. The group agreed we should test requesting the preliminary reports in advance on the examiners’ email.
  2. MAT research students can be awarded an MSc at any point in their programme: there was a question of who approves this award.

Action: Richard Kelly/RT

Re-entry

  1. HT will build a second field to hold the re-submission date.

Action: HT

  1. Timing and next steps
  1. Examination reports will be modelled on the progression reports so we can view current status.
  2. HT’s revised specifications document will be circulated to DGS (done 28/3/12), and is attached with these notes. Please send all comments and feedback to Helena () by Thursday April 5th. The target is to get this signed off within April so that Helena can start building. The aim is to do testing and communications/training in July/August, and have the process go live in October.
  3. The previous SITS priority list will be re-circulated and reviewed.

Action: comments by group, priority list by RT

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