Revolutionising student wellbeing management
About University of Nottingham
Organisation type:
- University
Challenges solved:
- Concerns over the safe sharing of data between the university and the designated purpose-built student accommodation provider (UPP) have been resolved.
- Lack of central student wellbeing data overview for the university staff has now been replaced with a central solution that is being updated in real-time.
- Outdated reporting processes have been replaced with digital logging of disciplinary and welfare concerns directly against students’ records.
- Time management issues have been resolved for the admin team who previously had to input information into spreadsheets from emailed reports.
- The inefficiency of escalation processes improved by a quick assignment of tasks and reports to a particular team or team member.
Size of operation:
- Nearly 35,000 students, 2,000 at Broadgate Park accommodation.
- Over 70 staff members using Student Life.
- 870 incidents recorded using Student Life in October 2020 alone.
Client since:
- 2001
Product suites:
- Student Wellbeing Management
- Student Accommodation Management
- Conferencing & Event Management
- Residential Management
What makes the University of Nottingham special?
One of the first
Student Life clients, pioneering improved student wellbeing management across the HE sector.
Great student wellbeing management relationship between the University and its designated PBSA, UPP.
Ability to identify changes in students’ behaviour, raise concerns, create cases and prioritise students in need.
The University of Nottingham has implemented Student Life, Kinetic’s solution for managing student wellbeing, for their accommodation team at Broadgate Park which houses over 2,000 Students. The Broadgate Park halls are operated by University Partnership Programme (UPP). The University operates with Kinetic’s KxStudent solution, whereas UPP operates Kinetic’s Room Service to manage its student accommodation. This collaboration is an amazing example of how universities and PBSAs can overcome challenges in order to work together for a greater good!
Vikki Welch, Head of Accommodation at the University of Nottingham, says: “This is a big step forward, demonstrating to the rest of the sector how it is possible to work together to promote and support student wellbeing”.
David Wilkes, Chief Products Officer at Kinetic, comments: “I believe this is a unique example of a university working so close with a private provider on implementing a software project. It’s fantastic to see such collaboration – well done to the University of Nottingham and UPP for innovating in this way”.
The way forward
One of the first hurdles to overcome before commencing the project was the issue of data privacy between the university and UPP.
This was quickly resolved by reviewing the existing data-sharing agreement. This enabled a single Student Life system to be implemented and shared between both parties giving immediate benefits in the form of a single shared view of student wellbeing.
The project kicked off in September 2020 by onboarding a much wider range of staff than those who currently use Kx and Room Service. An additional 70 staff including tutors, wardens, administration & conduct and investigation teams, are actively using Student life, to record and review interactions and incidents.
Data is key
Student Life has enabled the University of Nottingham to pick up on early warning signs regarding students’ welfare, with visibility of any incidents or interactions involving a student stored against their student profile and highlighted in the triage screen.
For example, during November, 25% of incidents recorded related to anxiety, which is running at a similar rate to those recorded in October. Anyone with access to the system can quickly see each student’s history detailing any incidents or potential support they have in place, enabling them to make informed interventions.
The team uses ‘tasks’ to escalate incidents to wardens, which they find especially useful. It has enabled wardens to manage situations without reliance on the admin team, saving time and ensuring that priority is given to students who potentially need the support of specialists like counselling or mental health advisory service.
The University of Nottingham is now able to accurately report on activity levels across their halls using the dashboards and report builder. Kinetic listens to feedback from its customers, adding additional features such as risk management, user-defined tags and wellbeing scorecards in recent months.
Exciting future ahead
Kinetic took care of all the heavy lifting and added the students into Student Life. The University of Nottingham is moving their Kx database from on-premise to Kinetic’s hosted service, aiming to go live in January 2021. Once complete, Student Life and Kx will be connected to share student information, including room bookings.
The university is rolling out Student Life to other halls. They found that each hall had different operating practices and so Student Life is helping to unify their approach to managing wellbeing.
Student Life runs in the cloud, and connects to Kx via Pulse, Kinetic’s new cloud-based platform. For Room Service customers who use Enterprise Edition the connection is embedded.