The Office for Human Resources Management & Development in collaboration with the SIMS Office and the Doctoral School will be providing the following training workshop for UM administrative staff.
The Office of the Registrar is looking into the promotion of the active use of a Research Support Module within SITS: Vision Software across the UM. This module is aimed at providing a more effective management of Research Degree students by creating an improved business process relying on software, rather than physical records that are used to date in the academic administration of Doctoral Degree programmes.
The Research Support Module will facilitate a better management of the approval of the research proposal and the supervisory team, and any changes that need to be made both to the dissertation/thesis title and the composition of the supervisory team. It is further envisaged that this will also prove to be an effective progression tool that prompts administrators and Principal Supervisors/Co-Supervisors, and, in turn, structures both at FICS level (such as Faculty Doctoral Committees, Master by Research Committees, Panels of Supervision, as well as Boards of Study) and at central administration level (such as the Doctoral Academic Committee) to look into, evaluate and/or follow up on student progress. It will also help students to reflect on their progress.
Such systems will result in an improved monitoring of student progress and will effectively translate into more effective support that FICS and the University as a whole provide to Doctoral students. It will also help and facilitate interaction between student and supervisory team.
This module will be rolled out in phases.
The first phase of the project includes the development of e-SIMS tasks for administrators: such as inputting of dissertation/thesis titles and names of members of supervisory teams into SIMS, and which can be updated when changes are affected to dissertation/thesis titles and to the composition of supervisory teams.
This will complement the e-Sims task already utilised in the approval process of the relevant Boards of Examiners for Dissertations/Theses and Transfer Assessment Boards appointed by Senate to examine work submitted by students registered for the M.Phil. Degree, in their bid to transfer to the Ph.D. Degree.