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Excel Upgrade for Imperial College London
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Spreadsheets: Transforming Data Management at Imperial College London
Imperial College London established a new department designed to span all disciplines, offering enrichment courses to all students.
During the initial stages, spreadsheets were used to model data management requirements, with the goal of developing a professional system that could efficiently handle their needs.
Terrabase provided a cost-effective, bespoke solution, developed through in-depth discussions with the team and detailed analysis of their existing spreadsheets. The web-based system now enables attendance tracking and records management across all of Imperial College London’s campuses and beyond.
Streamlining Course Management
The department’s courses are now managed within a single system, offering the flexibility to create courses from multiple sub-courses. The system also facilitates the management of attendance and grades for thousands of students.
Simplicity & Accessibility
The system needed to be user-friendly for a diverse range of staff, including administrators, managers, and lecturers, each with different responsibilities.
Real-Time Attendance Tracking:
Lecturers can take registers in real-time as students enter lecture theatres. The registration process is designed to be quick, reliable, and optimised for use on tablets. For large groups of over 300 students, the system also supports swipe card registrations.Flexible Marking System:
The solution accommodates various marking schemes, allowing for different weightings across assessments, including oral exams, assignments, practical work, and more. The system presents this data in a clear and accessible way, ensuring that departmental auditors can review it effortlessly.
Powerful Insights & Reporting
The system is used by hundreds of staff daily, providing essential reports for the department’s key performance indicators required by university authorities and external auditors.
Automated Student Alerts:
The system automatically identifies students with attendance issues and sends them email notifications requesting further information.Customised Reporting:
Managers can generate bespoke reports to extract and analyse any necessary data in Excel or other formats. The system also supports advanced, pre-designed reports for deeper insights.
A Secure & Scalable Solution
This robust and secure system effectively meets the department’s needs and has served as a foundation for similar solutions developed for other departments at Imperial College London.