Student Web Services

Tender description

The student web service, known as the \"stweb service\", used by the School of Media, Art and Design and Computing in the School of Law, Criminal Justice and Computing, is hosted on university servers. The service is a teaching tool that allows students to host and manage their own web content for their courses. Both Schools have requested improvements to the service. The solutions proposed to address these changes have been discussed at the IT Technical Design Authority (TDA), with the recommendation made for subscription to an externally hosted web service. The student web service was originally designed as in in-house IT service for students and has been available for many years. It is no longer fit for the purposes the programmes require a student web service to fulfil. The changes requested are needed to: • Improve the student experience • Facilitate teaching and learning strategies • Improve student learning outcomes • Improve student satisfaction • Permit the programme's external examiner access to student assessments • Provide an improved resource that reflects the programme's and the University's professional and employability agendas While working to establish the full requirements for a new Student Web Service, it became clear that we also have a requirement for a student managed virtual private server (VPS) service. This would allow students full control of a virtual server giving a Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate (CDIO) solution. This Request for Quotation (RFQ) is therefore split into two lots, the first for a replacement student web service, the second for a student virtual private server service. The University reserves the right to award just the web service to one bidder, or both lots to one bidder. It is unlikely we would award the VPS service lot separately from the student web service lot.