Stakeholder Analysis

I imagine you’re wondering where we’ve got to with the Student Dashboard, aren’t you? In my plan of action last blog, I mentioned the stakeholder analysis we are performing, which is an initial part of the agile co-design process we are following.

Our first step was to identify the stakeholders of the Student Dashboard. Any job role in the university that interacts directly with students, or inputs or processes data about students were considered. The result was as follows:

Primary

  • Academic Tutors
  • Central Student Services
  • Faculty Student Services
  • Senior Tutors
  • Module Leaders
  • Students

Secondary

  • Finance
  • Accommodation
  • iSolutions
  • Librarians

Tertiary

  • Alumni Office

Next, we set about interviewing these stakeholders, with the aim of determining who they are and the nature of their interactions with students. We also asked them what student information they draw on, and whether lack of access to any data is a hindrance to providing the best possible student experience.

The discussions with stakeholders will enable us construct personas and scenarios, which are an integral part of the agile co-design process and derived from human-computer interaction design theory. These personas and scenarios will be validated by the stakeholders in the next stage of the process.

Through the analysis of these interviews and the data identified by the stakeholders, we have constructed a table of the data required in the Student Dashboard, ordered by how many stakeholders require it. This has enabled us to shortlist the data that is important to the most people, and begin the process of negotiating access to the sources of these data.

I am a teaching fellow in Electronics and Computer Science, teaching modules on the Computer Science degree, Information Technology in Organisations degree and Engineering Foundation Year. I studied my undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of Southampton, and loved it enough to stick around :-) My research is in the area of Technology Enhanced Learning, including methods of adapting teaching resources to the student and novel approaches to teaching programming.

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