The finish date of the DT2 project – an online project delivering a host of new features to facilitate the Trinity Education – has been extended to early 2021.
In a statement to The University Times, Catherine O’Mahony, a Trinity media relations officer said that the decision was made at a Capital Review Group meeting this month “to allow for the transition to the departments and units outside the project team that will be responsible for maintaining and the operation of these features”.
Trinity Education reconfigured Trinity’s curriculum, and the DT2 project was an online component of this, setting up the new “common architecture” on Student Information System (SITS).
SITS is a new administrative online portal. Its aim is to create a space where College can communicate with students. Students in single honour, joint honour and common entry programmes will be able to choose their pathway options via SITS, as well as their Trinity Electives and Core Optional and Open modules.
It also gives single honours students the chance to register their preferences for the minor subjects they are eligible for.
O’Mahony said that “all of these had to be delivered to defined timelines at the end of the last academic year and the start of the 2020/2021 academic year”.
“Some of these dates were adjusted to reflect the impact of Covid-19 on the academic year”, she added. “There are no significant elements related to the Trinity Education to be completed.”
However, modular billing – an important component of the Trinity Education – has yet to be introduced.
O’Mahony also said that the extension to early next year was “necessary for the project to be able to close or to free the project team to move onto the next programme of enhancement or strategic work. (The resources outside of the project have not confirmed before now for a number of reasons, primarily related to the exceptionally busy year we have just had in 2020)”.
The opening of online module enrollment caused a number of issues for students this year. After a number of delays, some students logged into the registration site at the allocated time and were erroneously told that registration would not open for another few days.
Registration did eventually open half an hour later, causing some students to miss out on enrollment, as they had logged out assuming that registration would not be for another few days.
In an email statement to The University Times, Patrick McGee, director of IT Services, said: “We very much regret that a number of students encountered issues in accessing the new Online Module Enrolment function in the first half hour this morning.”
McGee said that IT Services was “very sorry for the confusion and distress” that the incorrect messaging had caused, explaining that “the system had been scheduled in error to enable the function at 11:30 am”.
