Sisu roll-out – The University of Helsinki is switching to a new academic administration system at the end of May

Sisu will provide students with a visual user interface that will make it easier to plan studies and monitor progress. The accessibility of the interface still requires further development.

On 31 May 2021, the University of Helsinki will deploy a new student information system called Sisu, to replace Oodi, the previous system. Sisu has already been in partial use, but now it will be expanded further to make it the primary system for academic administration.

Initially, Sisu will only offer the necessary features to enable the discontinuation of the Oodi system and the launch of the next stage in the development process. In the next stage, a central goal is to add features that will improve the accessibility of the system.

The following figures are illustrative of the scope of the system switch: some 10 million completed credits, 2.3 million study rights and the data of 450,000 individuals will be transferred from Oodi to Sisu.

Sisu supports students throughout their studies

The focus in Sisu’s development has been on students. In the system, students create a study plan, select their courses, receive their grades and, finally, apply for a degree certificate after completing their degree. Sisu’s visual user interface helps students understand how their degree is structured, its progress and which studies can be included in it.

“The visual interface is a great help and delight to many, but there are challenges with its accessibility. For the time being, Sisu is not accessible to all user groups, such as visually impaired students,” says Director of Development Susanna Niinistö-Sivuranta from the University of Helsinki.

The accessibility challenges have been identified and they are taken seriously. Improvements have already been made and solutions are actively sought at Funidata Oy, the company responsible for the Sisu system and its development. Funidata is jointly owned by Finnish universities and other higher education institutions.

“Sisu has been in development for years, and not all of its features meet current accessibility requirements. That Sisu has to be accessible is clear to Funidata, and fixes are being implemented constantly. The biggest accessibility problems have to be addressed more quickly than originally planned, as the opportunities for visually impaired people to use a system central to studies are currently poor,” says Funidata CEO Mika Peura. 

In addition, the universities and higher education institutions that own Funidata have decided to allocate additional funding to the company to speed up the development efforts. 

The staff of Student Services at the University of Helsinki will provide personal assistance to students with accessibility-related challenges in using Sisu. The support available to students has been enhanced in the period after the initial deployment of the system.

Sisu links to dozens of other programs and systems

Sisu is an extremely extensive system that supports a number of processes relating to studying and teaching, and it is linked to dozens of other programs and systems. The University of Helsinki has been preparing for the expansion of Sisu’s deployment as effectively as possible: in the last few years, various systems have been remodelled to make them compatible with Sisu.

“That some elements do not immediately work as planned is to be expected in connection with major system redesigns. We have made preparations, and we have the resources to deal with malfunctions, should any arise,” Niinistö-Sivuranta says.

In many respects, the further development and utilisation of Sisu requires that it functions as the primary system, as it will do after the system switch on 31 May.

Read also:

Further information for teachers

Further information for students

 

Background:
  • Sisu is a Student Information System (SIS) jointly used by students, teachers and academic administration. Together with six other higher education institutions, the University of Helsinki owns Funidata Oy, which develops Sisu on the basis of feedback provided by its owner institutions and user experience. In developing Sisu, Funidata takes into consideration the needs of all seven higher education institutions. 
  • Sisu will be deployed at the University of Helsinki on 31 May 2021. Oodi, the old system, has reached the end of its technical lifespan, and its maintenance will end at the end of 2021.

     
  • Sisu was previously introduced at Tampere University, the University of Jyväskylä and LUT University. After the University of Helsinki, the next institutions to deploy Sisu will be Aalto University and the Hanken School of Economics.

     
  • Sisu enables increasingly agile teaching collaboration within the University in the first instance and, later on, with other higher education institutions that are using Sisu. As processes and concepts associated with academic administration are standardised, students will be able to more easily find and identify, through their personal study plans, courses that can be completed in other degree programmes or at other universities.

     
  • At the University of Helsinki, some 10 million completed credits, 2.3 million study rights and the data of 450,000 individuals will be transferred from the Oodi system to Sisu.

     
  • In accordance with the Act on the Provision of Digital Services (306/2019), institution-specific accessibility statements have been drawn up for Sisu, describing the challenges relating to the system's accessibility and the timetable for fixing them. The University of Helsinki’s accessibility statement for Sisu outlines serious accessibility issues, including the inaccessibility of some features by using keyboard commands as well as certain challenges and inconsistencies in using the system with the help of a screen reader. The challenges identified in terms of accessibility are in the process of being fixed.