Online Placement University System (OPUS) pilot

The OPUS software was developed by the University of Ulster, and it manages the entire placement process for companies, students and academic staff. Companies can promote placement vacancies and monitor applications for each vacancy, contact students for interviews and appoint. Students can create their CV and make it available to their selection of vacancies. Academic Staff can manage their visits to students on placement, complete reports, allocate marks and provide assessment feedback. Industrial Placement Coordinators can manage the entire placement process and provide detailed resources on-line.

OPUS is free and open-source within the terms of the GPL (v2) license, and endorsed by ASET (Association for Sandwich Education and Training). The system incorporates an interactive website which has levels of access for all stakeholders and which enables full integration of databases onto the website.

It would improve the efficiency and effectiveness of managing the placement system and monitoring and supporting students for placement staff; it would make the system much easier to use for students and companies, and there would be better monitoring, making the system more effective for both groups. It would also be much easier for academic tutors to maintain contact with their students and monitor their progress, as well as incorporating the facility to log marks and assessed work via the website.

The proposed project is to run the OPUS software in the Wolfson School as a pilot project. There are clear instructions for installing, and there is also support from the creators at Ulster who are looking to develop a community of users and developers who will share good practice (the systems meet the recommendations for the QAA code of practice).

Progress: 100%

The February OPUS trial was abandoned as staff found the software problematic, and the workflows were a poor match for the Wolfson school.

After reviewing a simpler, commercial desktop system in use at the Business School, Wolfson have decided to trial that instead.

The OPUS project has now ended.