The magazine Ergo had an article on our work with the establishment of a new study administrative system at Uppsala University. The Health Technology and Organisations research group collaborate with the university administration and we have further developed our vision seminar method in this project which has resulted in a submitted application by Thomas Lind and will soon be the core of his PhD thesis work. We have also launched a usability coaching program, since our experiences are very positive when it comes to the effects of such a program.

My research group has a long tradition of doing action research, and we collaborate closely with different organisations. Action research has one goal to improve society in one way or the other, and one goal to spread knowledge about the change. Previously we have had projects together with the county council of Uppsala and a large number of government organisations such as CSN, Skatteverket, Försäkringskassan and Migrationsverket.

The New Ladok is the ICT system which is the heart of university study administration. And replacing it is like a difficult piece of heart surgery that requires skilled professionals and careful planning. The system will be introduced at 39 universities in Sweden. At Uppsala University the system will be introduced in 2018, and it will affect about 45 000 people in the roles of course administrator, teachers, director of studies, program managers, counselors, all our students and graduate students.

During the fall we will do a study where we investigate the existing digital work environment of study administrators. The study is run by Gerolf Nauwerck, and as a part of it we will look at and compare the existing methods for organisations to incorporate work with digital work environment in their routines.

We will also do a pilot at the Department of Information Technology regarding development of processes and procedures for study administration. These will work together with the common goal which has been developed in the vision seminars. The idea is that the department of information technology’s pilot work will serve as a support for other departments in the transition to the New Ladok system.
You find the Ergo article here