The Information Technology (IT) Team who helped to create our Student Portal has been recognised with a Vice-Chancellor’s Staff Excellence Award for Innovation Excellence.

The team, comprised of Maria Cindric, Melissa Iliadis and Vijesh Makanji, worked on the technical capabilities elements of the Student Portal, which was launched to students in December 2016.

The Student Portal is a new system implemented at ACU to provide a personalised hub for students. The portal brings together data from various ACU systems, including LEO, Tutorial Direct, Student Connect and OrgSync, to provide students with a one-stop shop for all of their needs,

The portal provides students with a personalized and consolidated view of events, schedules, announcements, course registrations and other information, without having to login to different systems.

The IT Team worked with Students, Learning and Teaching and Digital Strategies, within Marketing and External Relations, to deliver the student portal.

The IT Team’s role was to establish the technical foundation for the project and they’ve been recognised for the way they brought together multiple interdependent projects for a collective outcome and enabled new services, which previously didn’t exist at ACU, through their efforts and dedication.

"Our role was to establish single sign-on for the system, integrate the portal so it could extract data from other ACU applications and enable personalisation in order to provide an engaging platform,” Vijesh said.

"The three of us worked with many others within and outside of IT to work on the Student Portal and make it a reality.”

Maria said the Student Portal project was all about making students’ lives easier.

Ms Maria Cindric, Ms Melissa Iliadis and Mr Vijesh Makanji

"We didn’t have a Student Portal before this project, and we needed to find a way to present students with real-time data, to meet on-demand needs.”

"The Student Portal presents students with the information they want in real time and in a single place,” Maria said.

"The current portal is the starting point for further growth in this space, to help make students’ lives easier.”

Vijesh said the Student Portal project was all about delivering new capabilities to students.

"The single sign-on, enterprise integration and personalisation didn’t exist in our student systems before this project,” Vijesh said.

The team said they were surprised and excited to receive a Vice-Chancellor’s Staff Excellence Award.

"It was totally unexpected for us because we’re always behind the scenes in the engine room, so this award has really made us feel visible and recognised,” Maria said.