A rich portfolio of experience for students, researchers and staff

With a highly automated mobile and desktop app, Inkpath will collate a rich portfolio of a user’s career and skill development activities and experiences. This is not limited to those provided by their university or organisation: the Inkpath portfolio includes past, future, internal and external experience, supported by evidence and verification where appropriate. All activities are mapped to the organisation’s skills framework to ensure that users can articulate their progress in tangible terms.

Mapped to your skills and competency framework

Activities are mapped to the university/organisation skills and competency framework throughout Inkpath – one of the recognised frameworks or a framework of your own design – it’s up to you which tags you would like to add and map with. Reporting is therefore mapped against the skills you are looking to develop and so directly relevant to your institution’s objectives.

Clever automated event booking developed by people who know the challenges

Inkpath’s in-app booking makes things incredibly easy for users and administrators alike. You can set up activities with just a few clicks, or go into detail and specify cancellation policies and windows, pre-event questionnaires, resource links, joining links to online sessions and venues visible only after booking, and more. Inkpath also handles event confirmations with calendar entries, event reminder emails and sharing key information online and joining links – all sent automatically at the right time to help support engagement with your event or training programme.

Every type of event covered

Run single events, recurring activities, multiple-activity courses with optional and mandatory elements, and more. You can even book individuals or whole cohorts on to events and activities with a few clicks – perfect for inductions and mandatory training.

Modern experience for end users

For users, it’s as simple as clicking ‘book a place’ in the Inkpath app – no need to enter details, no fuss. Automated waiting lists and reminder notifications take the stress out of running events, and our no-show management system ensure strong engagement and
attendance.

Automate attendance monitoring and feedback

Inkpath users can simply scan their training into the Inkpath app and verify their attendance, providing feedback while they do so. No more attendance registers! No more lost feedback forms! And no need to enter attendance into other systems manually – Inkpath takes care of all of this for you, leaving you with more time for design and delivery of your provision.

Or take control

If you prefer, event facilitators can use Inkpath’s facilitator portal to manage their own events and mark attendance, and you have complete control over booking and attendance tracking as an Inkpath Administrator.

To integrate or not to integrate?

Comprehensive reporting for a strategic approach

Inkpath’s incredibly detailed and quick-to-use reporting provides all the information required to monitor progress and development from an individual to an institution level. As an Inkpath administrator you gain rich insights into student, researcher and staff engagement and how your people are developing. Anonymous, instant, timely feedback on provision also helps Inkpath administrators to react effectively and efficiently to improve their provision, measure impact and adopt a strategic approach. Inkpath data are perfect for exercises like Athena SWAN and other equality charters, internal reporting at the click of a button, HR Excellent in Research submissions, and funding applications and reports.

Working with you to gain specific insights

If you have a data insight in mind which is specific to your organisation or project, then be sure to talk with us about it. We love working closely with our clients to build new tools, new reports and new angles on Inkpath’s big data. Many of our clients can now click one button to gain the data they need for committee reports and funding applications, and are able to spend more time on what matters – that is, providing fantastic professional development programmes and opportunities – as a result.

Make managing multi-partner arrangements a breeze

Inkpath provides a unified portal for training and development opportunities, bringing together training from home institutions, partner institutions and the partnership itself into one consistent interface. Provide all the information students need to locate and attend the training they need, even across complicated multi-institution arrangements. Track activity discovery, allow students and researchers to register interest, and monitor attendance at activities across all providers.

Take the pain – and the paper – out of Training Needs Analysis

A fully automated system asking questions you define from the skills and competencies framework you set. All responses are returned automatically to the Inkpath admin portal, exportable in a fully formatted spreadsheet. Multiple questionnaires can be recorded and tracked over time. No paper, no fuss.

Collate evidence for impact case studies at the touch of a button

Students can use Inkpath to collect evidence of their activities with an easy in-app upload: a copy of a certificate, a selfie from a conference, a CV, and so on. Monitor the submission of evidence and view and export from the administration interface.

”Inkpath opened up new opportunities to build a central picture of all researcher development for the first time at UCL, and with it new insights as we reimagine researcher development for a new decade.” – Head of Innovation & Consultancy, University College London

About

University College London (UCL) is London’s leading multidisciplinary university, with more than 13,000 staff and 42,000 students from over 150 countries.

The challenge

The unprecedented shift to online learning in response to COVID-19 necessitated rapid, wider implementation of Inkpath at UCL. Inkpath rolled out a participation tracking solution scaled to all 12,000 of their research community, integrated with Single-Sign-On. Inkpath worked closely with the UCL team to understand their evolving needs, while evolving the Inkpath platform to meet them, through a tailored, innovative booking solution.

Fast implementation

Rapidly scaled and implemented to meet evolving needs, with new features developed and delivered to specification.

Automated participation tracking

Substantial time saving through automatic attendance logging and feedback collation via QR codes, used across all learning platforms, online and offline.

Unified catalogue

Seamless discovery and navigation of activities, unifying training provision across the institution.

Detailed reporting

Influenced strategic discussion and opened up opportunities across the wider UCL community for departmental engagement in researcher development.

”We were pleasantly surprised by how easily and quickly Inkpath could be deployed. The friendly team supported our project remotely and the few meetings we did need took place online on Australia time which made the international aspect easy. We ran a live induction session hosted by the Inkpath team which ran smoothly and users found the app easy to use. When it came to supporting our users, the Inkpath team delivered their induction session remotely over video link to our seminar room. Our users loved the introductory talk and we were really pleased to see so many up and running straight away.” – Manager Policy and Programs, Graduate Research, University of Canberra

About

The University of Canberra in South-Eastern Australia is among the world’s top 50 ‘young’ universities. Founded in 1967 and gaining university status in 1990, they provide high quality research programmes across a range of disciplines.

The challenge

To design, implement and launch an Inkpath solution, entirely remotely, for an institution on the other side of the world with an 11-hour time difference.

High standards for data protection

Inkpath has always upheld the highest standards of data protection – with our UK and AWS data centres, we meet legislative requirements for the UK, EU and the rest of the world.

Remote user induction

The University of Canberra received the same standard of user induction as all other clients – a seminar room full of new users in Canberra with the Inkpath induction delivered from the UK by the Inkpath team.

Custom integration and development

Despite being remote and in the opposite timezone, not only was a ‘basic’ setup achieved, but the University of Canberra also benefit from custom integration with their events calendar, as well as working with Inkpath to develop one of our first Single-Sign-On integrations.

Minimal effort for the Canberra team

Thanks to the intuitive nature of both the user app and the administration interface and thanks to the minimal setup time and effort required, only a handful of meetings and email exchanges were required to bring the project to launch day.

The Graduate School at Imperial College London hosts Professional Skills Development courses for all Postgraduate students at the College. It has two separate programmes, one for taught Master’s students and one for Doctoral students. In the 2020-21 academic session the overall student attendances for both programmes was over 11,000.

The challenge:

In Spring 2021, Imperial College London’s Graduate School began looking for a more efficient and effective course and attendance booking system to cater to its postgraduate students.

The Graduate School’s PhD students have a requirement to attend a certain number of courses before their early-stage assessment and their late-stage review, and the Graduate School has a requirement to report student attendances at such courses to all departments across the College. Up until October 2021, the Professional Development Programmes team was using an Access database which was not fit for purpose. All processes were time consuming and outdated. A large proportion of data was input manually, and processes had become long-winded.

Information just a few clicks away

“One of the main benefits to us as administrators is that we can now easily book students onto a course and remove them when needed, with just a few clicks. We previously had no admin function to do this. This means no more attendance registers, and there is no need to enter attendance into other systems manually.” – Kelly Hayes, Professional Development Coordinator

The implementation began with Inkpath, the Graduate School and Imperial’s ICT team working together to ensure all necessary student data was imported into the system e.g. programme name, code and department information. Another major requirement was the import of five years’ worth of backdated attendance data. It was imperative that this was available via the system to ensure that when it came to reporting we had all of the necessary information to hand so that our departmental reports were accurate.

The Graduate School went live with Inkpath in September 2021, and today, the simple and easy to use in-app bookings allows administrators to quickly set up activities or go into detail and specify segmented places. They can also create and manage cancellation policies, pre-event questionnaires, resource links, and joining links to online sessions and venues.

Rapidly scaled in just a few months

The platform was rapidly scaled and implemented to meet the evolving needs of the Imperial team. New features developed and delivered to specification.

For students, it is as simple as clicking ‘book a place’ in the Inkpath app – there is no need to re-enter their details.

Booking benefits

Benefits the Imperial team saw immediately included: no manual course bookings; waiting lists were easy to manage; students can cancel their own courses; registers are easy to download; administrators can easily keep track of course booking numbers.

“The Inkpath team are really responsive, approachable, problem solvers and very friendly.  We have received such a dedicated and bespoke service. If any problems arose, they would always find a solution to suit our needs.  We have provided our feedback on the system and they have always come up with resolutions.” – Kelly Hayes, Professional Development Coordinator

“At Brunel, we recognise the importance and potential of edtech advancements, and we are keen to harness them. As part of these efforts, we are using Inkpath, an intuitive app that automates a large proportion of our training management, making it easier to collate training provision, facilitate bookings, attendance, feedback and reporting.” – Director of the
Graduate School, Brunel University London

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