Succeed Modules Opening Dates

A reminder about the new module opening dates in Succeed for the Autumn 2012/13 and subsequent semesters.

For Autumn 2012, the opening dates will be:

  • 2nd year students – Monday 3rd September
  • 3rd & 4th year students – Tuesday 4th September
  • Post-graduate students – Wednesday 5th September
  • 1st year students – Wednesday 12th September

Please note that for the autumn semester 1st years do not get allocated to their modules until the first Wednesday of semester itself.

 

If a module has students from more than one year on it, it will open on the date corresponding to the earlier year group. It will not be the case that some students gain access to a module earlier than others, otherwise they could gain advantages such as selecting all the ‘best’ slots on any sign-up times in the module.

 

The actual time of day that modules become available will vary. Roughly speaking, for every group except the 1st years (where an allocation process must be completed before students can be uploaded to their modules), modules should be available by 8am. For the 1st years it should be 2pm on the Wednesday (12th September).

6 thoughts to “Succeed Modules Opening Dates”

  1. Really? It took a year for you all to come up with a way of signing up that is still going to crash the system? I was fine with the assigned sign-up dates, that was a really good idea, but then you added that a module COULD open on the earliest date, because you want to be “fair” to all students. This is patently ridiculous. The order should be 4th year students sign up first, REGARDLESS of whether they might get “best” slots or not, THEN 3rd year, THEN 2nd year, THEN 1st year. PERIOD. What you have done is ensure that students will again be jamming the website and crashing it once again, trying to book the so-called “best” slots. Frankly, 4th, 3rd and 2nd year students have, in VARYING degrees, EARNED the right to whatever time slots they can get! They’ve already WORKED towards getting their degrees, according to how long they’ve been toiling at getting them. Your bid to make things “fair” is going to screw up the situation once again, and, mark my words, the system will crash again. What a shame.

  2. The University has also load-balanced Succeed making the system more robust and more-or-less doubled the power available to support Succeed. This alone though would not be sufficient to allow the system to survive the loads place on it with all modules opening on the same date.

    Having worked with the students union, Information Services proposed the scheme above to the University to move from a single opening date for all modules to an arrangement where opening dates were spread out over a few days in an attempt to manage the load on the system. The vast majority of modules are only offered to a single year cohort. These will open on the date indicated and so don’t have this ‘fairness’ issue that you allude to. Where a module does have more than a single year cohort it was felt that the best solution was to open on the same date to all students. Thus the only modules with the ‘earliest date’ rule are those that have more than one year cohort — these are actually rare but not unknown.

    We hope that the two changes noted above do mean that Succeed runs during these periods of heavy loading and we wish we could offer a guarantee that the system has the power to handle these short-term heavy loads but we cannot but we have made every effort to ensure a smoother start to semester than we have achieved in the previous two semesters.

    Simon Booth
    Succeed Administrator

  3. It is comforting to know that the system has been beefed up to handle the load more efficiently and halt some crashing aspects. That’s great.

    When you state the “fairness” issue, it was not I who alluded to that, but IS itself, “It will not be the case that some students gain access to a module earlier than others,otherwise they could gain advantages”.

    I admit I am not the most prolific in server/system-based knowledge. Perhaps you can tell me if, in those very few instances where there are cross year registrations, there are built-in methods of avoiding those that are concerned about registering from massing on the system and crashing it?

    Also, there should be, to my mind, a notification to students telling them which courses are likely to have cross year registering. That way, you won’t have students attempting to find out that morning and overloading the system, and things would flow more smoothly.

  4. These cross-year modules are rare and are usually 4th year and post-graduate. I know of none involving 1st, 2nd and 3rd years.

    In actual fact modules can open on any date given by the member of staff running the module. The dates given in this posting are when the vast majority open.

    I plan to look into whether we can publicise opening dates via some mechanism (email, ‘My student status’ on the Portal) before modules actually open to give some advance warning.

    Simon Booth
    Succeed Administrator

  5. I don’t understand this. The implication of the announcement is that if a module has students from more than one year on it, then it opens according to the “earlier” year. So for my module, which has both first and second year students, I took this to mean that it would open on Sept 12th (and accordingly did not prioritise updating the module pages). But it seems that all the second year students on my module got access to the Succeed pages on Monday 3rd. And hence accessed a bunch of out of date signup sheets. Much confusion all round.

    I think it’s quite common that so-called “first year” modules will involve both first and second years (because second year students have gaps to fill in their timetables, and may be interested to take subjects new to them, even if they’re not planning to pursue them as honours degrees).

  6. I received a “no-reply” email telling me that a module I’m taking has its seminars open, when in fact it doesn’t. This was the reply I was going to make to the email:

    You are WRONG about the FMS9C7 – Radio drama Production module’s seminars.
    We have an announcement from Suzy Angus that we will be signing up on first lecture, Sept 13 and there is NO listing for seminar sign-up under the “Groups” tab in the course area. Please don’t send out any more alerts like these, because they then drive everyone nuts trying to find something that isn’t there. Believe me, I spent 20 frustrating minutes looking for the seminar sign up until I re- read Suzy’s announcement.

    Thank you.

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