The Robert Gordon University Proposal to ITSG

Student Portal Version: 4.0

IT SERVICES
Project Planning Date: 12-Jan-04

Student Portal - PROPOSAL

1 Background
Most Universities have now either implemented or are considering the implementation of a Student
Portal. There is a broad range of technology in use, such as: U-Portal or Campus Pipeline, SITS E-
Vision, Black Board, Oracle Portal and bespoke developments. A portal is simply a way of exploiting
web technology to provide a method of access to diverse systems and information through a single path
or gateway that is personalised and customisable by users.

The Department of E-Learning has been very successful in developing two award winning E-learning
environments in the RGUiNet and the Virtual Campus and IT Services has delivered an excellent
University Web Site, including some intranet facilities. We now want to build on these successes and
deliver a Student Portal that provides a ‘one-stop shop’ for all services and facilities required by
students. This is a view supported by the outcomes of Student Portal Workshops with Students and
Staff.

These Workshops have identified high level requirements in all area of the Student Portal. These have
been grouped as follows: Learning, Records and Admin, Support Services, Email and Interaction and
Social. Clearly, the Department of E-Learning will be taking ownership of the Learning area and there
are on-going discussions to try to identify the level of integration that can be achieved. This ranges
from a link to the existing E-Learning environments, a link to a re-developed E-Learning environment
or complete integration so that E-Learning is an integral part of the Student Portal.

As a starting point, IT Services have developed a prototype from the output of the Workshops and
informal discussions with likely Stakeholders who did not attend the Workshops. The Web Strategy
Group has also been kept informed and the final design will comply with the University Branding
Strategy.

Investigations into technology have shown that the Student Portal could be developed using Oracle
Portal or could be developed using Cold Fusion as for the University Web Site, the Virtual Campus and
the RGUiNets. Costs have been estimated for both options, investigations have been done to establish
whether Cold Fusion can provide the same functionality as Oracle Portal is known to provide and a
risks and benefits of both options are documented in section 6. In addition, there are requirements of
the Student Portal that look like they could be provided by the SITS E-Vision Portal that is to be
implemented as part of the CAMS Project and further investigations are on-going to see what use could
be made of this to ensure that the Student Portal makes the best use of technology already available
where appropriate to reduce costs.

It is anticipated that delivery of a Student Portal will increase student satisfaction and enhance the
‘Student Journey’ while at the same time delivering excellence in administration and e-learning
provision.

2 Objectives
The high level objectives of this Project are:

• To deliver a Student Portal for use by all current students, off-site and on-site, that is
personalised and customisable, with a consistent look and feel and that allows Students to
login once to obtain access to all the information and services provide by the Portal.
• To achieve external recognition and accreditation for the Student Portal once delivered.
• To develop a frame work that can be re-utilised to develop Portals for other groups such as
Applicants, Alumni and University Staff and that allows for flexibility in changing the
University Branding as required.

However, each area of the Student Portal will have specific objectives relevant to that area. For
example in the Learning area the objectives will include the objectives that apply to the Virtual Campus
and RGUiNet and objectives will be identified for all other areas of the Student Portal.
 The Robert Gordon University Proposal to ITSG
Student Portal Version: 4.0
IT SERVICES
Project Planning Date: 12-Jan-04

3 High Level Scope

This project will go through the following phases as shown in the Indicative Project Plan in section 5.
The scope of each phase will be as follows:

3.1 Project Initiation

This will involve:

• Forming Project Board and Project Team.

• Confirming hardware and software configuration for approval by the Project Board and to
allow the procurement process to start.
• Completion and approval of the Project Quality Plan.

3.2 Design

This stage has already commenced in that Workshops with Staff and Students have allowed for an
initial Portal hierarchy and prototype to be developed. This stage will build on this as follows:

• Student Portal stakeholders will be involved in mapping out the portal and
contributing ideas on design, look and feel – completed during November 2003.
• Confirm the design with Stakeholders and have this ratified by the Project Board.
• Confirm ownership for each area in the Portal.
• Write detailed functional specifications for sign off by area owners.
• Develop options for corporate branding and themes.
• Agree technical standards for the Portal Build and on-going maintenance.

3.3 Build Portal

This will include:

• Installation and configuration of a Portal Development environment.

• Implementation of security and administration.
• Build Portal to deliver the functionality, information and services as detailed at a high level in
the Project Quality Plan and in a detailed way in the functional specifications.

3.4 Build Production Environment

This will include:

• Installation and configuration of the Portal hardware and software production environment.
This will deliver a hardware configuration that will allow for consolidation of the existing
Web environment, providing reasonable failover, expectation of 24x7 operations with
downtime at the levels experienced by the current Web environment and future scalability
options. This will adhere to the defined Strategy for Servers and Oracle databases.
• Testing of the hardware and software configuration to ensure that backups and failover plans
actually work.

This environment will be used for Acceptance testing.

3.5 Acceptance Testing

This will include:

• Writing of test plans.

• Full end-to-end testing by the Project Team and testing by business users who own the
information and services being provided.
 The Robert Gordon University Proposal to ITSG
Student Portal Version: 4.0
IT SERVICES
Project Planning Date: 12-Jan-04

3.6 Build Test Environment

After the Portal is delivered for production use there will be a need for a test environment that mirrors
the configuration of the Production environment. This will be set-up and tested just before the ‘Go-
live’ point, and will be provided by the Server Strategy Project.

3.7 Deliver Portal

This will be the final point of delivery when the Portal is made available for students to login to.

4 High Level Requirements

The estimates detailed in this proposal are based upon the delivery of a Student Portal that will provide
the following excluding Learning requirements and as shown in the Portal Prototype.

4.1 General requirements

• Login once to all Portal facilities, applications and information.

• Modern, consistent look and feel – with some customisation but with an easily reset default
look and feel.
• Must deliver a personalised view to each student.
• The default look and feel must reflect the University Branding Strategy.
• Must comply with SENDA legislation.
• Recent History of Portal Areas accessed.
• Items delivered should be accessible from more than one area of the Portal if this is
appropriate.
• Integrate items from SITS Student Vision Portal where possible.

4.2 Portal Home Page

• Login and customisation options.

• University, IT and Estates News applicable to all students.
• University advertising space applicable to all students.
• School news.
• Task list of things to do with links to run applications such as register for graduation or to
enrol when relevant.

4.3 Learning

To be defined by the Department of E-Learning to include facilities from the Virtual Campus,
RGUiNet and GraysNet and the Library. It is anticipated that this area will also contain course and
exam timetables.

4.4 Records

This area will contain everything associated with Records and Admin such as:

• Enrolment when relevant.

• Graduation Task list when relevant.
• View Financial Account.
• Make Payments.
• View GPAS Account.
• Update Personal details.
• Single Sign on set-up.
• Student Reports.
• Student Forms – such as absence forms.
• Exam Results.
 The Robert Gordon University Proposal to ITSG
Student Portal Version: 4.0
IT SERVICES
Project Planning Date: 12-Jan-04

In particular, it is hoped that this area will integrate in a seamless way with the SITS Portal.

4.5 Support

This will be all types of support services excluding support for Learning which will be in the Learning
area:

• Accommodation Information.
• Book welfare, debt, counselling, chaplaincy and careers appointments and see
information on the services provided in all these areas.
• Campus Maps.
• Careers Vacancies and part-time work.
• International Student Services.
• Student Handbook.

4.6 Interact

This will be everything to do with communicating:

• A-Z Index of the Portal.

• Outlook email, calendar and tasks.
• Fault reporting.
• Favourite links.
• Offsite H: drive access.
• Standard desktop links.
• University Telephone directory

4.7 Social

This will contain:

• Bus timetables and travel information.

• Classified Ads.
• Discounts/offers.
• Forth coming events.
• Groups and Clubs and registration.
• Local and national news.
• RGU Merchandise
• Sports weather reports – such as ski reports.
• Tourist Attractions/Local information
• Weather

5 Projected Benefits
• To provide a framework to support the ‘Student Journey’ and to enhance the relationship between
the University and students.
• Consolidate delivery of Student Services, E-Learning and IT Facilities both on-site and off-site.
• More time available for University support staff to spend with students when support is needed by
increased self-service delivery of standard information and services.
• Increased security in one user login to all facilities and services delivered through the portal.
• Compliance with legislation in the areas of Data Protection and Freedom of Information will be
achieved by quick and secure access to all information required by students.
• University Web site will be able to move towards having a clear marketing focus and purpose.
• The hardware and software configuration that will be implemented for Student Portal will provide
the environment required for future Portal developments.
 The Robert Gordon University Proposal to ITSG
Student Portal Version: 4.0
IT SERVICES
Project Planning Date: 12-Jan-04

6 Implementation Options
From the requirements that have been identified and considering the Project Objectives, there are a
number of potential development and implementation options. Skill sets and software are already
available to enable the Student Portal to be developed either using Oracle Portal, which is a part of the
Oracle Campus agreement, or in ColdFusion, as is the case for the University Web site and Web
Applications.

Some work has been done to evaluate and cost these options but further work is required before a firm
decision can be made, as there is also a dependency on the implementation of the server strategy.

7 Indicative Project Plan

The Project Plan for implementation is considered to be similar, regardless of the technical solution.

8 Indicative Resource Requirements

The table below shows the anticipated resource levels of IT resource required to support this project,
expressed in man-days. In addition, business resource will be required during the Project Initiation,
Design and Acceptance Testing phases of the Project.

2004 2005

Resources Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Total
Project Manager 24 36 36 36 36 36 12 216
Lead Technical/Web Developer 28 48 48 48 44 36 8 260
Web Developer 40 120 104 120 120 48 8 560
Web Developer/Graphics Design 5 25 10 0 0 0 0 40
DBA 32 30 30 60 30 15 0 197
Business Analyst 0 24 36 36 36 36 5 173
Infrastructure Engineer 16 16 8 24 16 0 0 80
External Portal Contractor-Oracle o 0 20 40 0 0 0 0 60
Total IT Resource 145 319 312 324 282 171 33 1586

9 Indicative Costs
It is anticipated that the solution will cost in the region of £100k but this is dependent upon the chosen
technical option.

10 Assumptions, Constraints and Exclusions

The following are known to apply to this project:
The Robert Gordon University Proposal to ITSG
Student Portal Version: 4.0
IT SERVICES
Project Planning Date: 12-Jan-04

• It is anticipated that items provided in the SITS E-vision portal can be integrated with the
Student Portal. It is hoped that this can be confirmed by the end of January 2004.

• Although single-sign on through the Student Portal is expected to be achieved for all
applications to be delivered through the Student Portal – it is the case that on-site students will
have to login once to the University network and then again to see secure items delivered by
the Student Portal.

• The hardware and software configuration of the Student Portal will align with the Server
Strategy and Oracle database consolidation strategy.

• To ensure 24 x 7 availability of services in the Student Portal that will come from the existing
Cold Fusion environment, such as Enrol Online. It is essential that the existing Cold Fusion
environment is upgraded at some point, to deal with the issue of the current Production Web
Server being a single point of failure. Hardware and software costs to achieve this will be
around £25k – this cost is not included as part of the costing for the Student Portal Project.

• The levels of integration of E-Leaning and Student Portal have not been agreed. It will be
necessary to resolve this before the start of the Project.