The University of Sheffield
Corporate Information and Computing Services

Sheffield HEAR Implementation Project

Latest News

  • A searchable HEARable activities web page was launched in April 13.
  • The batch upload of students to the activities they have completed went live at the beginning of June 13.
  • HEAR as a formative document will be delivered via MUSE to current 1st year UG students at 2pm on the 5 July 13.
  • Interim HEARs will be available, via the Digitary system, so that students can provide third parties (especially employers) with access to this document before graduation,
  • Exit HEARs will be produced for UG students on 2 year programmes in July 14
  • A HEAR website has been set up at www.sheffield.ac.uk/hear. This has been revamped into a staff-facing website; a second student-facing site has been created as part of SSiD’s web review project.

About the Project

The Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR), a formal degree transcript that lists students' curricular and extra-curricular achievements, will be a key resource for helping employers and others to appreciate the breadth of individual graduates' capabilities, in the face of an increasingly competitive environment.

The scope of this project includes:

  • The capture, centralised storage, and display of the additional student information required for the HEAR.
  • The inclusion and display of students' module/unit results and degree award information, i.e. the equivalent of the academic transcript, within the HEAR.
  • The building of a system to give UG students access to the HEAR while students are registered with the University.
  • Support to the JISC-funded project DARE (Digital Academic Records Exchange), which is tasked with building a shared, cloud-based system to enable the secure online distribution of electronic documents, including HEARs. The project is being led by Liverpool John Moores University in collaboration with the company Digitary. Sheffield is an active partner and will trial the shared service as a means of providing graduates and third parties secure access to the HEAR, in students’ final year at the University and after graduation.
  • The creation of a mechanism to display and distribute HEARs in an online electronic format, which adheres to the nationally agreed HEAR template in format and content.
  • Provision of a paper copy of the HEAR to the UG student on exiting the University.
  • The provision of long-term storage of information and publication of HEARs (in perpetuity in the case of some information, in line with University data retention policies).

Timescales

  • The aim is to deliver HEARs to all incoming undergraduates from 2012-13 onwards.
  • The HEAR has been identified as a key element in the delivery of aspects of both the University’s Project 2012 Proposition, and the University's new Learning and Teaching Strategy for 2011-16. In particular, the HEAR will assist undergraduate students in articulating and presenting a comprehensive view of their academic achievements and extra-curricular activities and awards gained during their time at Sheffield, and will thus help to evidence their attainment of 'Sheffield Graduate' attributes to employers and others.
  • Two further drivers have consolidated the project’s timescales:
    (i) the publication of the recent higher education White Paper (June 2011), in which the government announced its expectation that most institutions will develop HEARs for their undergraduate students from September 2012;
    (ii) an update from the national HEAR Implementation Steering Group on 8 November 2011, announcing that 78 higher education institutions have now declared their intention to implement the HEAR.

Project Documentation