As part of the University’s Digital Transformation programme, a project is currently underway to deliver a new app for students to give them a single, consolidated point of entry to navigate their relevant University and college systems, services and view key information more effectively.
We are working closely with the Transforming Oxford's Digital Communications programme to ensure alignment between the student app and the new Oxford-wide intranet and web platforms that are being developed.
What is the Student Hub?
The student app is a cloud-based platform that aims to provide a greatly simplified way for students to access their systems and key information that they require to digitally navigate Oxford.
It is both a mobile app and a web-portal and displays tiles that integrate seamlessly through the student's Single Sign-On (SSO) to key systems such as Student Self-Service (eVision), the Canvas VLE (Virtual Learning Environment), the library system (SOLO), email, maps of Oxford, the Careers Service, and newsfeeds from their colleges.
The student app is called 'MyOxford' and is based on a well-established SaaS (Software as a Service) platform used by over 700 educational institutions that reaches more than 7 million students worldwide.
We are working closely with our partner, Ready Education, to help develop and configure the platform in readiness for a planned launch in Michaelmas Term 2024.
What is our approach?
Our objective is to deliver an initial, useful solution quickly in readiness for the start of the new academic year so that our students can use it and get early benefits. We will continue to develop the MyOxford hub iteratively and will be releasing enhanced functionality regularly once it has been rolled-out.
In preparation for the large-scale roll-out, we ran a limited number of pilots with colleges and departments in Trinity term 2024 so that we could configure it as a more clearly defined offering for release to the wider collegiate university in Michaelmas Term 2024.
The aim of the pilots was to provide a small amount of working functionality to students, enabling the project to gain feedback on design and layout. We have also been working to design the support approach and understand any technical challenges that arise.
Amongst our early pilots in Trinity term were Merton and Kellogg Colleges, Department of Politics and International Relations, Continuing Education (subset of students) and MSc in Digital Scholarship and Maths (PG programme). We also invited feedback from students from across Oxford to contribute comments and feedback.
For more detail about the MyOxford app, please see the MyOxford - Information for Staff page.