The Clearing Project Team is delighted to have won the Celebrating Innovation category at the Queen's University Staff Excellence Awards, held at the Mandella Hall on Friday, 22 March 2024. 

This award recognises where creativity and innovation have brought about significant improvement. Whether it's an individual or team who has come up with a new innovative idea, or who has adapted a new approach to how things are normally done; this award is all about people who have thought outside the box to find solutions to challenges and deliver the best outcomes.

The Digital Transformation Team didn't win but was delighted to have been shortlisted for the prestigious UCISA Transformation Award at the 2024 event.  This award celebrates ground-breaking digital innovation that has transformed and delivered for the institution and beyond.

The development of a strategic engagement platform that will form the foundation for improved processes and an enhanced student and staff experience is a key priority of the Digital Transformation Programme at Queen’s University Belfast.  Informed by service design workshops, the Digital Transformation Team embarked on the ambitious endeavour to reimagine interactions with students and staff, adopting an agile and low-code approach to allow flexibility and scalability while ensuring the resulting Queen’s Portal had the potential to address the needs of the diverse University community. 

During 2023 the Portal was launched as the platform for engaging with applicants to process Clearing and Admissions support enquiries and with current students for applications and approvals for mitigations and adjustments for assessments.

The team behind the recent launch of the new online Exceptional Circumstances processes has been highly commended at the recent Belfast Telegraph IT Awards 2023. While we missed out to HSC Business Services Organisation for the Best Public or Third Sector IT Project, the judges were still impressed by the efforts of the Exceptional Circumstances team.

Digital Transformation Architect, Rachael Tuaim, led the development of the user portal and backend processes and, following a pilot in May 2023, the new processes for exceptional circumstances and ISSA-related adjustments were launched across the University in September.  As well as streamlining tasks, the new system provides a central location for handling requests, allowing students to easily upload evidence and see the status of their application.

Claire Lindsay (Project Manager) and Marie Teague (Project Officer) worked closely with the Schools throughout user acceptance testing and the pilot, and supported users during the launch in September, with Graduate Trainee, Kiera McGill, helping with business process analysis. 

The new processes were launched along with the Assessment Support Hub developed by Education and Student Services.  This one-stop-shop for information and support was designed following a comprehensive review led by Jenny Brown (Quality Assurance and Regulations Manager). 

Working with business partners, Codec, the project team have delivered the following innovative improvements:

• A centralised portal that staff and students can access using their Queen’s credentials.
• The ability for students to submit requests and upload evidence and for staff to review and approve requests online.
• Automated notifications updating students of the progress of their request or informing them of any actions required.
• A dashboard providing authorised staff with real-time data.

Not only has the project team demonstrated creativity and innovation, they are an excellent example of collaboration, engaging with over 350 staff across Faculties and Directorates throughout the design, development, testing and launch of the new processes.  All 15 Schools have now been onboarded and over 2000 requests for mitigations and adjustments have already been submitted by students via the new system.  

The determination of the team in meeting the deadlines and objectives of the Exceptional Circumstances project was a significant factor in the positive outcome which will hopefully light the way for the digitisation of other administrative processes as part of the Digital Transformation Programme.

Well done to everyone who helped to make the project a success!