What is it?
The Student Enrolment System (SES) is a web-based tool that presents information about graduate training opportunities available across the departments in Social Science and MPLS to graduate students, supervisors and administrators and allows students to request places on training. SES consists of a ‘courses database’ DAISY as the source of information about teaching/training provision and an interface in WebLearn for students and others (https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/socsci/ses and https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/mpls/gap).
What’s it for?
SES enables students and supervisors to view in one place information about graduate training opportunities from the departments and divisional office and to search for courses, and allows students to enrol for places.
Context
Social Sciences ESRC Doctoral Training Centre and MPLS Graduate Academic Programme both aim to promote student access to training and greater sharing of training opportunities across departments and disciplines.
In the recent OUSU PGT review report, a key finding was the need to provide students with better access to information about training opportunities across departments and other parts of the University.
Benefits
For students: SES will provide easier access to information about training opportunities, in one place, and the facility to request a place online. The training information in SES is searchable.
For Supervisors: SES will provide information about training opportunities across departments, and help them to oversee the training of each of their supervisees.
For Departmental administrative staff: SES will help with providing information and handling student sign up for options, as well as course administration including registers for attendance, and charging.
Approval
SES has the facility to allow up to three approval points before a requested place is confirmed. Departments can decide which they want to use, and switch off others:
- Module/course administrator
- Supervisor
- Student’s home department approver (overview of all training, and budget)
The module/course administrator can accept or decline requests for places, subject to the specifications of the course such as eligibility criteria.
Supervisors can:
- Approve (or not) students’ requests for training places
- View the training records in SES of each of his/her students
Student’s home department approver
A department can choose to use this level of approval and nominate a person to oversee all training requests by its students, with a view to monitoring levels of requests, particularly where there may be a charge.
Information requirements
DAISY must be given a description for each module or course, including information such as the content, level, eligibility, any pre-requisites, the type and subject of the training, etc. Web links to a reading list and other course material can be included.
Other functionality
By Michaelmas Term 2011, the SES will have a waiting list facility that a department can choose to use. Also by MT, the system can send automated reminder emails to students, if required.
The SES provides a list of enrolled students. If departments collect attendance information, this can be entered in the system and reports on attendance by session can be retrieved for use for academic, administrative or financial purposes.
Reporting
The system can provide reports by module/course showing all the students enrolled and completed and their department, and reports on individual students. If attendance information is collected, reports on attendance by session can be provided.
