We have continued to listen to feedback, engage with colleagues, and design system improvements to ensure that KentVision improves a variety of processes as its implementation continues.

We have confirmed the immediate and future SITS features and functionality required with diverse stakeholder groups. The KentVision Delivery team has continued delivering the agreed enhancements, features, and functionality to meet the short-term academic calendar timelines.

Functional Area Working Groups

To ensure colleagues views and recommendations are fully considered, the KentVision Board established six Functional Area Working Groups to enable and track feedback from a variety of teams across the University. This has enabled the team to best prioritise future improvements to the system.

Functional Group members represent a mixture of colleagues from Divisions, professional services and central teams and are split across the following operational areas:

• Statutory and Core student record
• Admissions, Clearing and Recruitment
• Assessment
• Finance
• PGR
• Student Activity and Experience

The work of the Functional Groups, with the support of an independent SITS consultant, has enabled us to fully assess and prioritise the requirements of future improvements to help move forward key areas of work, reprioritising our plan where required in response to our changing circumstances. We will be updating colleagues on this delivery schedule for 2022 during June.

Our technology teams have been very busy in the background working to enhance various pieces of functionality, via a series of technology improvements, throughout the last year and we would like to share an update on our most recent deployment:

Assessments – Board of Examiners Meetings

The KV delivery team have worked hard with colleagues to gather as much feedback as possible to improve the Board of Examiners Meetings functionality – we have taken this feedback and held extensive discussions with staff through a series of workshops facilitated by our business analysts and developers.

The improvements that were recently deployed to live functionality have been widely praised by staff – with positive feedback received from our Show and Tell sessions. The improvements will help enhance processes – and deliver a better experience for our staff and our students. This year, we will gather live feedback during Boards so we can make fixes and enhance the functionality to prepare for future improvements in this area.

• Significant development across all aspects of the board process following detailed user feedback. Functionality deployed to the live environment with a read-only version of board to be released.
• Reconfigured board screens to ensure faster processing times for Divisions – enabling a smoother user experience.
• A detailed results letter review was conducted with divisions and central teams; new templates created for agreed progression outcomes.
• Significant changes to post-board processing functionality for central teams enabling a defined process and wider use by team members.
• New end-to-end process in KentVision from mitigation committee through to internal, main, and post-board changes. All note recordings (module actions and outcome recommendations) are now recorded within the system.

These improvements are the culmination of months of hard work behind the scenes, and we commend everyone involved for their work -especially the users of the system dedicating time to ensure improvements are realised.

Next Steps?

• Technology and process improvements are to continue with deployments scheduled through June and July.
• A staged approach and timeline for delivery during 2022, of the far-ranging and numerous improvements, will be shared in June.
• Detailed business readiness activities, including transition plans and training and communication.
• Continuous updates on how our improvements, plans and communications are informed by feedback from our students and staff.

Article from Josh Turner, Community Life Officer:

This year we are working to communicate with our students early to ensure when they leave their privately rented homes, they have as little negative impact on the local community as possible.

We are working with local charitable partners including British Heart Foundation, to encourage our students to donate and avoid unnecessary waste.

Furthermore, Kent Union provide fantastic services including Freecycle and Student Food Bank, supporting the current and future students studying at Kent.

Canterbury City Council is also running a two week Bin Amnesty, where additional black bags of general waste will be collected with the usual collections. To communicate this we will be holding two Neighbourhood Days where we door-knock in areas which are highly populated by students to ensure students and residents are ready, as well as communicating through blogs and social media.

We appreciate that when moving out, extra rubbish can be generated but we want to work to reduce any impact on the local community.

Working in partnerships, we are helping making it easy to get rid of unwanted items through:

• Bin Amnesty: In central Canterbury, thanks to the Canterbury City Council and Canenco, there will be a bin amnesty from Monday the 20 June to Friday 1 July where all rubbish left out in key areas will be picked up as part of a weekly collection.
• We are teaming up with the British Heart Foundation to make it easy for students to donate unwanted possessions to this fantastic cause.
• Promoting the central donation services provided by Kent Union, including the Foodbank and Freecycle service.
• Promoting local removal and disposal services in Kent.
• Planning local litter picking volunteering opportunities for students on Monday 6 June and Monday 13 June.

If you have any concerns throughout this busy move-out period, you can get in touch with our Community Life Officer for support.

For more information email Josh on communityliaison@kent.ac.uk

Calling all academics!

Join our workshop, ‘Generating and Capturing Impact Through Strong Stakeholder Relationships’, held on our Canterbury campus on Wednesday 22 June,  from 12.00 – 14.00.

This face-to-face workshop and is aimed at helping you understand why sustainable relationships with stakeholders are important for evidence gathering. We will identify how to build such relationships and speak about engaging with end users in order to extend your networks and to maximise your research impact.

The workshop will help you to:

• Understand the importance of strong relationships with stakeholders and how to maintain them
• Understand how to widen your impact network through key stakeholders and engage with end users
• Understand how to set out expectations with stakeholders from the onset to maximise impact capture
• Access support and resources, including the Research Impact KURIE Moodle

Pre-booking is essential as this is an interactive workshop with breakout sessions and places are limited.

Programme:

• Introduction – Claire Perera, Research Excellence Team
• On the evolution of strong, sustainable stakeholder networks and their importance for evidencing impact – Professor Darren Griffin, School of Biosciences
• Interactive Breakout Session: Extending networks and thinking about engaging with end users – Dr Ann Kinzer, Research Excellence Team
• Using Logframes for Measuring Impact and Embedding Evidence Capture into Collaborative Processes – Sunder Mahendra, Research Excellence Team
• Maintaining Stakeholder Relations – Simon Barnes, Knowledge Exchange and Innovation

Visit the Research Policy and Support webpage to book your place.

From Professor Georgina Randsley de Moura | Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Chair of the Lambeth Steering Group

This summer the University will host the Lambeth Conference from 26 July to 8 August. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, will convene senior figures from across the worldwide Anglican Communion to join for prayer, reflection, fellowship and dialogue.  

The Conference will have international prominence and is expected to attract widespread interest, with our Canterbury campus providing the platform for the Lambeth Conference’s wide-ranging programme of discussion and spiritual reflection on many of the key questions facing society including climate change, sustainable development, international collaboration, poverty, gender justice, and much more.

As a community of learning, our University is a place of debate and discussion. Sometimes that debate is lively, sometimes contentious, and sometimes challenging. Wherever possible we use our position of influence, the insights of our researchers, and the work of our students and staff to bring about progress and positive change.

In this spirit, we warmly welcome the gathering of voices from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and outlooks to the Lambeth Conference and, as a University, we intend to learn from and, where appropriate, add our voice to the discussion of the vital questions under discussion.

Alongside this we are clear that the position of the worldwide Anglican Communion on the place of LGBT+ people within the Church and wider society does not fit with our deeply held values of equality, inclusion, tolerance, and mutual respect. We say that openly and unambiguously.

Hosting the Lambeth Conference on our campus provides an opportunity to promote our fundamental values on an international stage – using this platform to influence debate and ensure unrepresented voices are heard at the conference. However, the Lambeth Conference Steering Group, which I lead, understands the serious and sincere concerns of many in our staff and student body, and we share those concerns. We also hope that there is more to be gained through engagement and dialogue than through disengagement. It is in that spirit of supporting the many people, within and beyond the Church, who are working hard for change that the University agreed to host the Lambeth Conference in 2022.

Ahead of the conference, we are working closely with the organisers, and our LGBTQ+ staff and student networks, to ensure there is a platform for LGBTQ+ voices to be heard ahead of and alongside the event. Through a joint statement of expected behaviours, there is assurance that the conference will be conducted in a way that accords with our fundamental values, ensuring the safety and rights of our community are fully respected. Throughout the process, we will reaffirm our commitment to LGBTQ+ people across the world, promoting the legal and civic safeguards which are required to underpin equality and safety for all, however differently experienced they may be even in our own country.

We are developing, with our LGBTQ+ groups, measures to support and ensure the safety and wellbeing of staff and students as well as a programme of activities that in the coming weeks will celebrate and promote equality, diversity and inclusivity and support continued progress towards a world free from prejudice and discrimination. This includes the University’s continued sponsorship and support of Canterbury Pride next week as well as our new sponsorship of Medway Pride later in the summer.

Further information on this full programme of activities will be available in the coming weeks.