In 2005 the University of Bolton had 8500 enrolments. By 2009 the number of enrolments had increased to 11,500. The growth was facilitated by an online enrolment process which reduced the need for registry staff to enter data, capturing more directly from the student. However, to use the online enrolment for the first time, the student has to be provisioned with a login ID and a password. The process by which they receive these is triggered by the establishment of the student record and the change of status on the student record system to 'unconditional confirmed'. In 2009, the University opened an overseas campus in the United Arab Emirates operated by a partner. The online enrolment process became an obvious way to facilitate the enrolment of students overseas. However, whereas in the UK campus students apply for courses directly to the University or through UCAS, the UAE partner was marketing and recruiting their own students so there was no student admission data on the student records system, SITS. A manual process has been improvised to collect basic data using a spreadsheet in the UAE campus, which is emailed each day to Bolton. The data is rekeyed to set up the student record against which an online enrolment can be made. In the first year of operation, 70% of the overseas campus enrolment resulted in problems for the students: problems with login credentials, incorrect names and incorrect date of birth. The problems were dealt with by both the Registry and the IT help desk. The University intends to grow the overseas provision from 150 students to 1500 over the next four years with further campuses coming online. It is therefore essential to make a process improvement that will reduce errors, remove the need to rekey data, enable a more rapid and seamless enrolment for students and allow for an expansion in enrolment without increasing the administrative and support overhead. The business case The business case is made on the need to improve the performance of overseas enrolments processes, in order to facilitate further growth, without needing to increase administration. The evidence for the business case is based on the support records around the UAE enrolment in 2009. On the original 150 enrolments, the estimated number of hours of support and data entry to create the student record and correct the login access problems amounted to an extra cost of 840 (or 5.52 per student) to correct errors. Without resolving the problems, any scaling of growth to 1500 overseas students (@500 new enrolments per year) would lead to a raw cost of 2,760 per year, plus the opportunity costs and poor student experience. But because all enrolment and 3 re-enrolment is concentrated into a few weeks, the staffing issues would be magnified requiring extra staff, who would need to be trained and competent in the enrolment and remote user support. The uncertainties are around the sophistication and endurance of the partner administration arrangements. It is unclear at the beginning of the project how the partner recruits and carries out a local enrolment and whether this is supported by a student record system. The partner has limited technology and administrative support capability. Key drivers The University has established a number of partnerships including an international campus and online course delivery operated by a partner. The initial setup of such collaborative arrangements, including administration, have been rapid, but also very much effort driven. We have found that quick initiatives may try to force or circumvent established processes, people or systems, often because of a perception, or reality, that these will be an inhibitor to rapid development. The danger of this is that process variety is increased, along with additional complexity and cost, and a poor student experience. The project is looking to creating a shared understanding of the interrelationships in functions and processes within the University as a first step to simplifying the emerging complexity. So our drivers are: 1. to be able to respond to further rapid developments in partnerships 2. to reduce or contain cost growth arising from process variety 3. to improve the student experience of administrative processes wherever they access the processes.

Questions :

Q3. Emerging Technologies Give a solution using Interactive Systems that will enable the university to solve the problem of student enrolment in its international campus in UAE. (3 marks)

Q4. Sustainability The universitys partner in the UAE would like to develop a sustainable outreach program aiming at societal impact where the students reach out to low-income families. Based on the drivers listed in the case study, state whether the proposed sustainability effort will be accepted by the University of Bolton in the current stage of development or not. Give two reasons for supporting your answer.