SunGard Higher Education Helps the University of Nottingham Build a Unified Digital Campus
MALVERN, Pa. — June 13, 2005 — The University of Nottingham is an international research-led institution, offering an exceptional research and teaching environment. Ranked consistently in the top 10 UK universities for the quality of its teaching, research, and facilities, Nottingham remains the most popular university in the country for undergraduate applications with more than 36,000 applications for its 5,500 places.
The University has a student body of more than 32,770 (including overseas campuses), of which 6,500 are postgraduate students, including 2,400 postgraduate researchers. Around 6,000 staff are employed by the University, including 2,000 academic and research staff members. Nottingham aims to attract, retain, and motivate high-quality staff and undergraduates, recognising that its people are its most valuable asset. With a large student body and staff population, the need for effi cient record keeping, communication, and access to learning resources create ever-present challenges.
In 2000, Nottingham began an initiative to address these challenges. Dubbed eNottingham, the initiative centred on the strategic importance of portal technology to realise the University’s vision for a “Connected Campus”. A key objective for the initiative was to web-enable the University and provide access to all relevant services and information from a personalised web page.
In 2000, the University set up a project team to create a portal using the open-source JA-SIG uPortal technology. By 2002, a pilot was live, with 1,500 students on the system. However, the University wanted to scale the number of users signifi cantly and move the programme forward more quickly, and it set some ambitious targets for September 2003. A portal team was created which began looking for a solution that could provide extra functionality beyond that possible with uPortal.
Commenting on SunGard Higher Education’s Luminis product family, Alison Rothera, head of web services at Nottingham said, “We were excited by the possibilities that were offered by the Luminis Platform over and above those of uPortal. In particular, we liked the prospect of added functionality over and above what we had, for example, group functionality and the possibility of single sign on. All of this sat on top of uPortal, meaning that our previous work and effort would not be lost.”
The future capabilities of the portal were also a deciding factor according to Ms. Rothera, “At this time we expanded our thinking to adopt a cradle–to-grave approach to managing our relationships with students, from enquirers all the way through to alumni. Our prospective students’ portal is a fi rst step toward that. It guides applicants through what can be a complex admissions process, providing them with targeted information en route to commencing their studies with us. We also wanted the ability to scale the environment and to increase the value of our external and internal websites signifi cantly. We planned to do this by putting the control of our web content back into the hands of the content managers. We were happy that the Luminis Platform was the right tool to enable us to do these things.”
In 2003/2004 the University rolled out a comprehensive portal for students and staff using the Luminis Platform. The deployment was very rapid with a beta version in June 2003, a development version in place by July, and a production system for 75% of the student population live in September that year. Despite the aggressive timescales, the portal team met its challenging targets comfortably.
Some of the results were surprising according to Ms. Rothera, “The portal held a magnifying glass to existing institutional problems that had never been tackled. Certain things became more apparent and in particular the need for data cleaning. The new portal also fl agged other concerns including access and identity management issues, because some users had many identities rather than just one.”
About Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham Trent University is one of the largest in the UK. It attracts students from across the world and has a total student population of approximately 26,000 - made up of around 21,000 undergraduates and 5,000 postgraduates. Its entry standards are consistently high and it remains one of the most popular universities in the country in terms of applications received. It has become one of the UK’s top universities for graduate employment - with around 97 percent of full-time students graduating from the university gaining jobs or going on to further study within six months of completing their courses. For more information: www.ntu.ac.uk.
About SunGard SCT
SunGard SCT is a leading provider of software and services for higher education. SunGard SCT solutions help institutions create the Unified Digital Campus, an environment in which systems, individuals, and communities can interact seamlessly for learning, teaching, and administration. SunGard SCT supports more than 1,400 clients worldwide with administrative and academic solutions; portal, collaboration, and content management solutions; information access and business intelligence solutions; and integration solutions. For more information: www.sungardhe.com.
About SunGard
SunGard is a global leader in integrated software and processing solutions, primarily for financial services and higher education. SunGard also helps information-dependent enterprises of all types to ensure the continuity of their business. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 50 countries, including the world’s 50 largest financial services companies. SunGard (NYSE:SDS) is a member of the S&P 500 and has annual revenue of $3 billion. Visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.