The University of Malta has been steadily working to establish and improve its approach to information collection, analysis, use and dissemination. Currently, UM has two effective information management systems through which staff and students’ data and information are managed. These include:
SIMS - the Student Information Management System is a comprehensive software suite used to record and manage student data which is relevant to the students’ study-period at the University.
AIMS - the Administrative Information Management System is an integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution designed for service-based organisations such as the University of Malta that need financial accounting and other back-office software integrated with a broader range of core business functions in a single unified system.
Information management is a critical function within the University of Malta and the management and maintenance of the students’ data is essential in order to ensure the smooth running of the institution. The Registrar is responsible for students’ data which is collected and stored in compliance with the GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and the Data Protection Act (Chapter 586, Laws of Malta). The Office of the Registrar ensures that all relevant information is accurately recorded, easily accessible, and secure.
The SIMS Office liaises closely with IT Services who are responsible for UM’s IT infrastructure. The SIMS Structured Query Language (SQL) is set up with Synchronous replication/High-Availability, at a Secondary Data Centre (SDC), running on compute/storage systems independent from the main cluster. Furthermore, UM’s SDC is located in a separate building on campus. It is fed from a different substation, has its own Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and generator, separate fibre links to the rest of the campus buildings, as well as backup connection to the internet. This ensures that there is no hardware that can be a single point of failure, and ensures the latest SQL data is always available. A username and private access password are given to each person who has access to the computer network, student information management systems, and email system.
Programme reviews are held periodically and are aimed at achieving a number of objectives including:
During this exercise the Board of Studies reviews and analyses student profiles including age, gender, full-time and part-time status. Furthermore, it considers progression and attrition rates, based on the percentage of those enrolled who are subsequently successful at each stage of the programme. In addition to this, alumni are contacted in order to identify:
The University aims to offer the best possible environment and learning experience to its students, in order to enable them to perform at their full potential. Students play a critical role in the evaluation, development and enhancement of the quality of this learning experience. Feedback from students allows the University to evaluate how its service provision is perceived by its most important group of stakeholders i.e. its students. Besides providing students with an opportunity to comment on the quality of the teaching and learning environment at the University, feedback ensures that academic members of staff and Boards of Studies are made aware of problems encountered by students, and provides an opportunity for self-evaluation and revision, where necessary.
The end-of-programme survey is a quality assurance tool that provides information about students’ learning experience throughout the programme. The data gathered feeds into the Annual and Periodic Programme Review and is used to improve existing programmes.
Through the end-of-programme survey, the University is able to assess the quality of the learning experience of the students and whether students feel prepared for the world of work.
Student representation on various boards and committees, both at FICS and institutional level also facilitate student input, feedback, and conversation.
Students join our alumni network after successfully completing their studies and receiving their final award classification. Our alumni network’s primary goal is to facilitate and sustain networking on a personal and professional level and to instil a personal and business long-lasting relation.
Aiming to continuously improve its services and activities, the Quality Assurance Committee explored a Business Intelligence (BI) solution initiative. BI was considered to be the key technology that would allow the University of Malta to understand, take decisions and act on the information received from, and stored in, several sources. The BI initiative is believed to consolidate and further enhance the University’s arrangements for the systematic collection, analysis and evaluation of key information about its students and staff. This smooth and robust process will inform the University’s decision-making in planning and managing academic and academic-support services related to students and staff.
After the successful completion of the pilot stage with seven FICS being involved in the BI information sessions and capacity-building programmes and based on the positive feedback, the BI project has been expanded to all the FICS at UM. It is believed that the implementation of the BI system will be a considerable improvement for the data and information management at the University.
