NUS IT Report Card 2024 (Provost)

Contents

CITO’s Foreword 1

Graduate Admission 3 (GDA3) 4 - 5

NUSHub 2

uNivUS Product Roadmap 2024 4 - 5

NUS Lifelong Learning Application Portal (L3AP) 3

MFA for Students 6 - 7

No more Password Expiry (Pepetual Password) for Alumni 6 - 7

Teaching Workload Management System 11

Student Engagement 8 - 9

CDMS (Class Data Management System) 12

AI-Know 10

“Hopper” HPC-AI System Rollout + Green “Vanda” A Sustainable System 12 - 13

CITO’s Foreword

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Perfect Harmony Hitting the High Notes in

We have curated these pages from our Annual Report specially for our academic colleagues, showcasing the many solutions we have developed together to transform the student-learner lifecycle and advance academic excellence. This year, we made significant progress toward our vision of building lasting connections with learners through NUSHub , our comprehensive CRM system that enhances student engagement from the admissions process all the way through to alumni relations, fostering a seamless, lifelong bond with NUS. In tandem with the NUS Lifelong Learning Application Portal (L3AP) , our new training management platform, and the enhanced Graduate Admission 3 (GDA3) system, we are creating a more seamless and supportive experience for students, guiding them from their initial steps at NUS through to their professional development and beyond. We are equally proud of the initiatives we have introduced to support our academic staff. Among these, the Teaching Workload Management System (TWMS) stands out, streamlining workload planning across faculties and fostering a more organised, efficient academic environment. Additionally, we launched AI-Know , a transformative initiative that empowers staff with a suite of essential AI tools and training, driving greater efficiency and innovation. Looking ahead, we aspire to extend these capabilities to students, revolutionising the way they learn and engage with technology. Certainly, what is highlighted here represents only a glimpse of our work. In this report, you will discover a more in-depth look at the many other initiatives we have undertaken, each one a testament to our collective achievements. These milestones reflect a true spirit of collaboration and a shared commitment to enhancing the NUS academic landscape. This is made possible by the unwavering support of senior management, including Prof. Aaron Thean, and

the dedication of colleagues in the academic cluster. We are proud to be part of the team and look forward to a closer partnership to achieve even more for NUS in 2025! Shui-Min Chief IT Officer (CITO)

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Under the NextGeneSIS programme, NUSHub is a university-wide CRM system dedicated to enhancing student engagement from prospective students to alumni and lifelong learners. It enriches NUS’s digital presence through standardised marketing tools, ensuring a seamless and holistic experience for learners throughout their academic journey. The system offers personalised content and integrated omnichannel communication tools, creating

unified learner and FAQ portals. This fosters lasting connections with students, alumni, and prospects. Enhanced marketing capabilities will boost conversion and retention rates, thereby strengthening the NUS community and maximising ROI for substantial financial growth. NUSHub provides a comprehensive view by capturing and integrating students’ digital footprints, communications, and academic histories into a single platform. This holistic approach enhances inter-department collaboration, automates workflows, and elevates the overall customer experience. The NUSHub project represents a transformative leap towards a unified, efficient, and engaging NUS experience.

NUS will benefit from enhanced staff productivity in serving over 45,000 students and 250,000 alumni.

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We anticipate securing up to $250,000 a year through compliance and grant payments from SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG).

L3AP is a comprehensive Training Management System designed to meet the operational needs of CET, Finance, and IT teams. This platform enhances learning and administration efficiency while offering a seamless experience for learners, faculty, and corporate partners. By automating tasks such as enrollment,

Additionally, L3AP ensures compliance with regulatory requirements through accurate and timely reporting to government bodies and accreditation agencies. Its scalable design accommodates the evolving needs of CET Units as programmes expand. As demand for workforce upskilling grows, L3AP improves productivity through streamlined processes, enhancing operational effectiveness across NUS and key external agencies. This system positions CET Units to better meet the changing needs of students and the broader workforce.

L3AP Lifelong Learning ation Portal) scheduling, and financial processing, L3AP reduces administrative burdens, allowing staff to focus on strategic initiatives. It empowers CET Units to make informed decisions about course offerings, resource allocation, and student engagement strategies.

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(Graduate Admission 3)

A very highly efficient app that contains access to many useful NUS apps, links and alumnus card

The uNivUS superapp is an ongoing product development initiative aimed at enhancing user experiences through community engagement, personalisation, and discovery. This year’s roadmap emphasises fostering a vibrant, inclusive community where users can connect, collaborate, and share via crowdsourcing on the integrated campus map. For department administrators, personalisation is a key focus, allowing customised profiles to tailor experiences with event notifications using a geofencing mechanism.

For students, the platform enhances convenience by integrating shuttle bus information into the campus map, syncing Canvas assignment due dates into the Calendar, and adding a timetable view for classes. Additionally, the app is expanding to include an undergraduate applicant persona, providing better engagement by tracking their application status and keeping them informed about relevant events. Sustainability remains a priority, with a marketplace feature encouraging resource reuse and resale.

Maps - Custom Location Marker

24K clicks in one month

Timetable View

Maps - Bus

Notable released features this year:

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The enhanced Graduate Admission 3 (GDA3) aims to streamline and enhance the current graduate admissions process. It covers the entire admission process to ensure both efficiency and accessibility for approximately 10,500 prospective students and 1,330 staff and administrators. GDA3 offers new features and capabilities such as: - Reviewers can assess applications based on predefined criteria, reducing manual workloads. - Applicants are kept informed about their application status and any additional requirements. The system is also integrated with internal platforms like EduRec,

facilitating timely data transfer once offers are accepted. - Management can obtain real-time insights into application trends, demographics, and key metrics, aiding strategic decision-making. The enhanced user interface and advanced functionalities streamline the process for both applicants and administrators, leading to increased engagement and satisfaction. Faculty administrators and reviewers can now process applications more efficiently, allowing them to focus on value-added

uNivUS Product Roadmap 2024 tasks such as enhancing targeted recruitment efforts to attract top-quality applicants to NUS. Approximate productivity gains of 33,000 man-hours and $1.6M

12K clicks in half a month

Calendar Sync - Canvas

Maps - Crowdsource

Marketplace

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for Students

To bolster protection against cyber attacks, we implemented Microsoft Multifactor Authentication (MFA) for all students before the new academic year in July 2024. MFA adds an extra layer of security if passwords are compromised. Currently, MFA is required for accessing Zoom, Microsoft 365 services (such as email, Teams, and SharePoint) and key NUS applications containing confidential information, including Canvas, myEduRec, and uNivUS. We will progressively extend MFA to other NUS services for enhanced security. This MFA implementation significantly strengthens NUS’ security posture, offering comprehensive protection against a wide range of cyber threats.

(Perpetual Password)

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Reduced Password Support Tickets by 43% compared to last year Our alumni no longer need to change their passwords every six months. The ‘No More Password Expiry’ project not only achieved a quantum leap in efficiency and security for NUS but also resulted in a significant reduction in password support tickets. With this simplified login process, our alumni just need to remember one password while enjoying a hassle-free experience and secure access. The adoption of a perpetual password underscores our commitment to a user-centric approach that balances security needs with user convenience.

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Internship It’s been five incredible years since we welcomed our first group of interns! Starting with a modest team of eight interns in 2019, we proudly brought 27 talented interns into NUS IT this year. These young talents have played crucial roles in various projects, from enhancing student systems to driving initiatives in transformative technologies, positively impacting the university. At NUS IT, we immerse our interns in projects that shape NUS’ digital landscape. Over these five years, we have successfully executed over 90 projects, fostering a culture of innovation and impactful solutions. Our

programme bridges the gap between theory and practice, equipping interns with the skills and mindset to excel in a dynamic IT environment. Through internship, some of our students go behind the scene where they are a part of developing a system that they get to use in their campus life! Here’s to many more years of nurturing bright minds and driving innovation! From 2019 to 2024: 142 interns, 93 projects, 67,200 man-hours of work done

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SLF This year, NUS focused on promoting our iconic mobile application, uNivUS to the new cohort of students. Since SLF is all about students, it was befitting that we enlisted the talents of our creative interns for the event.

Students who follow us on social media will also get first-hand information about potential engagements! Overall, our participation in SLF was a great success. We connected with nearly 1,400 students and collected invaluable feedback on how to further enhance the uNivUS app to better serve the student community.

our pool of over 40,000 talented students. This initiative offers students valuable work experience, the opportunity to sharpen their soft skills, and a chance to earn some extra pocket money! This innovative model enables us to seamlessly integrate students as a vital manpower resource throughout the year, beyond the confines of the typical internship calendar.

SWIFT Launched in early 2024, SWIFT (Student Workforce @ IT) is NUS IT’s dynamic part time student workforce initiative designed to address our growing manpower crunch. With rapid advancements in AI and other technologies transforming teaching, research, and learning, the demand for IT solutions within the university skyrocketed. SWIFT capitalises on NUS’ unique advantage as a top university, leveraging

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AI-Minute alone saves about 9,479 man-hours annually by accelerating the drafting process.

how to do it now!

NUS is at the forefront of AI innovation with AI-Know, an initiative that empowers the NUS community through digital competencies and a centralised AI platform. Offering a suite of AI-powered tools, including AI-Chat, AI-Draw, AI-Minute, and AI-Guide, along with Digital Enablement training, AI-Know enhances AI literacy and skills across the university. By promoting citizen development and initiatives like AI-Create, AI-Know enables staff to create AI-driven solutions, fostering innovation. It has already empowered nearly 1,000 staff and engaged over 120 departments. A notable achievement is the transformation of the Office of Student Affairs Hostel Appeals system, which now automatically scores 6,500 student appeals, saving 540 hours annually. This reduces human error, streamlines decision-making, and enhances overall efficiency. AI-Know is proving instrumental in advancing NUS’ strategic goals by reducing administrative burdens and enabling a focus on high-impact work.

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The system can assist users to track all teaching and non-teaching workloads with ease and produce reports necessary for their reporting to their Deans and Vice Deans for the annual appraisals with their faculty members. To date, the users have been happy with the ease of using the system. - Florence Siew, PVO (System Owner)

The Teaching Workload Management System (TWMS) is a cloud-based solution that offers a unified and streamlined platform for faculties and departments to plan and track teaching workloads for the academic year. It also provides a single source of truth for academic staff teaching workload across the campus. With data retention for up to seven years, its built-in data analysis function provides insights into past staff utilisation trends and helps optimise future resource allocation. TWMS was launched in May 2024 to 2,000 staff across six faculties (including FoS, BIZ and FASS) and 13 departments, and will be progressively rolled out across the entire NUS campus over the next three years.

Teaching Workload Management System

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Approximately 14,000 hours in manpower savings per year.

(Class Data Management System) Overall, CDMS improves data management, enhances instructional flexibility, and promotes the seamless integration of educational resources, thereby elevating the quality of education. The Class Data Management System (CDMS) is a cutting-edge platform designed to assist faculty in collecting, organising, and managing teaching and learning data for specific classes throughout an academic year. By integrating with systems like CMIS, CMS, EduRec, TWMS, Canvas, and IMMS, CDMS significantly enhances the teaching and learning experience. CDMS provides faculties the flexibility to manage class-level data for instructor-controlled courses, allowing for adjustments to learning outcomes, syllabi, and non-final year exam components for a customised educational approach. Additionally, CDMS empowers administrators, course coordinators, and teaching staff to create unified course sites in Canvas by amalgamating information from multiple courses. This streamlines course management and fosters a cohesive learning environment.

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This year, two notable High Performance Computing (HPC) systems were deployed. The state-of-the-art “Hopper” HPC system significantly enhances the university’s capacity for compute-intensive scientific workloads. Its advanced infrastructure empowers researchers and students to perform complex computations and data analyses with unprecedented speed and accuracy. This capability is essential for cutting-edge AI research and applications, playing a crucial role in advancing NUS’s position as a leader in AI-driven teaching pedagogies and revolutionising the way students learn. Additionally, as part of a research collaboration with the Sustainable Tropical Data Center Testbed (STDCT) project at NUS, we deployed the “Vanda” HPC system, which incorporates advanced cooling technologies. This deployment demonstrates significant power and water savings, highlighting NUS’ commitment to sustainability goals.

The Hopper HPC system delivers a 400% increase in computing performance compared to the previous system.

PUBLISHED BY NUS IT Communications & Engagement Team

HEAD Caren Chua

Patty Woo

Ying May Ling Jay Wee Jun Yi Loh Yew Cheng

Gabriel Yong U-Ren

Logayashini D/O Ragumathan

Marilyn Tan Siew Hui Wong Chiaw Ding

Stella Ang

SPECIAL THANKS TO

NUS IT Team

NUS user community

NUS stakeholders

External partners & vendors

Irwin Wong and Duke-NUS IT Team