Further benefits delivered with the new assessment tool for MBChB
Project MVM118 closes having delivered a new assessment tool for MBChB
As a recent news item indicated https://www.edweb.ed.ac.uk/information-services/about/organisation/applications-directorate/apps-directorate-news-events/more-success-with-practique-in-the-medical-school MBChB have delivered Practique, a new assessment tool, successfully over the last year. However, the technical implementation was merely part of the project scope.
The core Project team (academics, admin and PM) have developed a collaborative approach enabling them to respond quickly to new demands, embed a level of support to all new users and create the basis of a very positive engagement with the supplier, Fry-IT. From a PM perspective, it’s often meant taking an approach of ignoring traditional lines of responsibility and instead doing what was necessary to support the team embedding and expanding the support and engagement processes surrounding Practique.
The following items hopefully demonstrate this:-
· The question bank now has over 5000 items, with new questions now being created and added regularly
· The school has executed over 80+ exams, including formative assessments to students on their own devices - we trialed it on a number of devices, wrote a technical support paper which the supplier reviewed and then rolled out successfully with zero technical issues, we were the first client to perform this
· Last week the first assessment abroad was executed successfully in Canada (Alberta University) - with local academic and IT support, the tool was assessed, pilot exams created and tested from UoE and locally in Alberta, through to formal approval that they would support the use of Practique
· The vast majority of academic and administrative staff have attended training sessions and now use Practique
· Defined and created Practique user roles - access permission rights for Live and Test environments
- Managed the rollout of single sign on via Ease - worked with supplier and IS development, tested, deployed and user id's all updated
- Added a time out - functionality to lock the user out of Practique, particularly required for NHS users
- Created training for LTW and assessment team for exam day support - the supplier have excellent support procedures for exam events, however, there was a need to quickly establish some checks for the assessment team and LTW before the supplier were to be contacted
- Handled all the GDPR and contract discussions surrounding Canada with Legal Services
- Managed the relationship for the project with the supplier - extended this to monthly meetings, brought in assessment team - this will continue on into MVM129 and during that project, departure from this role will be executed
- Ran a strategy and planning meeting with the assessment team to consider the next three years planning requirements - this will continue to be developed as part of MVM129
- Part of the University Practique user group - this group meet twice a year consisting of representatives from all of the supplier clients within the UK, such as Imperial, Leeds, Brighton etc
- Submission to and presentations for UoE learning and teaching conference on June 20 https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/cpd/workshops/learning-teaching-conference
- Negotiated the removal of LTW support and development for assessment tool from 2018-19
- Tested and deployed several release upgrades to test and live
- Managed the procurement change for MVM129 - contract update which will ultimately be signed off as part of that project, all the preparation work has already taken place within this project
Further significant changes are likely to be 'anthropological rather than technological’, so we may introduce technological change, but we need humans to execute it, hopefully, we will determine what we want the technology to do, not the other way round!