Student Update: Assessments and blended learning, Friday 23 February

The following Student Update was communicated to students by email on Friday 23 February. 

Please can I take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued patience as we endeavour to work through a period of intense recovery to restore our crucial University systems and services following the cyber security incident we experienced earlier this week.  

Our priority focus is to get our teaching and learning back up and running as quickly as possible and, although our investigation is now ongoing, please be mindful that it may take some time to restore and recover our systems safely and securely. 

Assessments 

Due to the lack of current access to key learning and studying systems, in particular, Kortext and Leganto, we have decided to pause assessments due from Monday 26 February through to Friday 8 March 2024.  

 Some on-campus assessments will take place during this period, particularly those that are related to our professional accreditation requirements and faculty and module leaders will be in touch with these students directly.  

For those of you due to undertake assessments, please rest assured that your overall grades won’t be affected by this pause and we will do everything we can to ensure that students are not disadvantaged due to these unprecedented circumstances.  

For background, the University will be undertaking a review of its extraordinary regulations to ensure they are relevant for this incident. Should the extraordinary regulations be required, we will provide a further update. Our aim is to ensure that students are not disadvantaged as a result of our academic operations having been disrupted by circumstances outside of our control.  

 Software Accessibility 

 We are aware that students are unable to access some software packages and are looking into this. We will provide a further update as soon as we can.  

Grades and Transcripts  

Alongside our key learning and studying systems, our student records management system, SITS, which generates your grades is also currently unavailable. As a result, we are unable to produce transcripts at this time. We are working on resolving these issues as quickly as possible.  

Teaching and Learning 

A mix of online and on-Campus teaching will continue until Friday 1 March 2024 and specific details will be sent to you by your module leaders, tutors and lecturers through Canvas. 

Best Wishes,

Professor Gill Knight

Pro Vice-Chancellor Academic Leadership and Student Experience

Student Support 

Student Life is still available to support you. Please contact the teams below to access support in the same way as usual:

• Disability and Inclusion - disability-inclusion@wlv.ac.uk.
• Mental Health and Wellbeing - MHWenquiries@wlv.ac.uk or complete a registration form via this webpage.
• Support to study - supporttostudy@wlv.ac.uk or complete a cause for concern form via this link.
• Dennis Turner Hardship Fund - Money@wlv.ac.uk or for new applications, please see the Hardship Fund webpage.

Safeguarding and PREVENT - safeguarding@wlv.ac.uk or to log a new safeguarding or PREVENT concern, please see the Safeguarding webpage.

Please do include your student number and a summary of how we can support, or an outline of your concern within any email you send to our teams.

24-hour support via phone or online: 

The University of Wolverhampton has invested in a newly developed student support platform in collaboration with Care First called WLV Student Life Connect. This is a counselling, information and advice service offering support for issues arising at university, home, or work.

This is a FREE, CONFIDENTIAL, INDEPENDENT, and IMPARTIAL source of support for you, as an undergraduate, postgraduate taught, postgraduate research student, or an apprentice learner. Here you can access advice, guidance, and support on a wide range of care issues, health issues, benefits and entitlements, relationships, childcare, anxiety, depression and more. 

Please see the WLV Student Life Connect webpage  to find out more.