What's new
July 2022
Open SAP applications in new tab
The SAP applications for course registration, special course request and change of specialisation will now open in a new tab of your browser. This prevents some issues we experienced with opening the application in a pop-up window inside the student portal.
Technical upgrade
Not something you might notice, but we did a technical upgrade to the student portal pages. We use React as a front end library and we upgraded to the currently latest version to be prepared for the future.
January 2022
Course details linked moved to course
The course details link to Canvas has been moved to the course itself instead of a seperate link beneath the course. This was a remnant of the way the old Learning Management System (Blackboard) operated, but with Canvas this has been simplified.
Fixed formatting of announcements
The formatting of announcements was sometimes hard to read, because a proper formatting was ignored. This has been fixed to apply a correct formatting to the text that we receive from Canvas to make it easier to read.
August 2020
Canvas is the new learning management system
Canvas will replace Blackboard as the learning management system of Maastricht University. You probably heard this already or read about in newsletters or even participated in one of the many pilot courses in the academic year 2019-2020. Also check out the website about Canvas within Maastricht University.
June 2020
Software updated
We updated the software that the student portal is build on to the latest version. This was quite a large project because of the many developments that were made in the software. The entire student portal had to be reviewed before the upgrade could take place. We also implemented a new technology for the frontend. This will give us more opportunities to develop new functionality.
March 2019
Employability Portal
Maastricht University supports its students in setting goals and making effective plans for their future. We offer career counseling, internships and practice-based learning environments, giving them ample opportunity to develop employability competencies. And we work with businesses to attract the right talent for their positions.
The UM Student Portal offers personalised information, advice and support to students. A My Employability tab was introduced on the Student Portal to further boost the employability of UM students. This includes help in setting goals and developing success skills, as well as personal support.
November 2018
Course Details
The 'Course Details' link will open in a new tab. This solves an issue with the underlying Learning Management System (Blackboard). The theme for Blackboard has also been changed, to be more user friendly. And both teachers and student now use the same Blackboard theme for easier reference.
May 2018
Update
In 'My Settings' (click the cogwheel icon in the upper right corner) the option has been added for you to give or revoke consent to the UM to give the UM Alumni Office your contact details so they can contact you after graduation. Initially this setting is set not to give consent.
What also changed is that information about the complaints procedure has been added to the results overview on the My Courses page. In case of considering to file an appeal to a result, you need to be informed about the procedure that is applicable.
March 2018
Update
A section called ‘Staff picks’ has become available on the My Links page. Here SSC will, in consultation with the Student Project Team, place links in the spotlight that are considered to require particular attention.
The new section is only visible in case at least one link is published.
February 2018
Update|
Students often remarked that it takes quite some clicks to get deep into their Course materials or the Grade Center. We responded to this demand by copying the Current Courses, that can be found on the My Courses page, on the Home page. Also the Course Details, Tutorials and Practicals are directly accessible via the depicted corresponding icons, if they have been made available by the course instructor.
January 9th 2018
Update
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Menu item UM Launchpad has got a major make-over while sessions with students made it clear that UM Launchpad was not used very much and users considered the functionality to be cumbersome.
To reflect its function more clearly UM Launchpad has been renamed into ‘My links’. It has two sections. The first one is called ‘Most used' and contains the six links you have used the most so far (initially it is empty). In the second section ‘All’ five categories of links are shown:
- The students’ faculty
- General
- ICTS
- Library
- SSC
Each category shows a list of links, sorted on their general popularity by students. There is also an ‘Add/remove link’ function where you can manually add links from other faculties if you want to.
While in the past you had to select a link from a link store and mark it as your favourite, your link overview will fill itself automatically from now on.
- Another change is that pop-ups have been made movable. Sometimes pop-ups can block a part of the screen where information is shown which is needed to take the proper actions in the pop-up. By making the pop-ups movable this inconvenience has been solved.
November 17th 2017
Update
- A new tab has been introduced in My Timetable. The tab can show a calendar view on day, week and month format and contains all timetable events of the student, including deadlines for assignments. This view was available in the ‘classic’ Timetable (though there without deadlines for assignments) via the link Week & month views and is per this change integrated in the Student Portal. You can easily switch to the previous or next period by clicking the related '<' '>' buttons.
At the bottom of this tab a link is available which contains an instruction how to connect your calendar with the Timetable. This instruction was previously available via the link Week & month views.
On top of the My Timetable page a link Week & month views to access the calendar view of the ‘classic’ Timetable has now been replaced with the link General timetables (Courses, Locations & Buildings).
- In the past months the performance of the Student Portal suffered several times from the slow response of one of its backend systems. This was also due to a large amount of requests from the Student Portal. In this change an optimisation of these requests is realised. We do not expect the performance issues to be solved now but this change will contribute to a decrease of the impact of these performance issues.
October 10th 2017
Update
- The Print functionality at the bottom of the My Courses page has been replaced by a more user-friendly one. There is a new button ‘Print grade list’, behind which a pop-up is available where you can select what you want to print. You can select the program and also whether you want to print all courses or just the completed courses. You can print the created PDF-file directly or save it.
- Students often remarked that it was odd that grades could be found in the Student Portal but also in the Grade Center of the Course Details. Per this release those grades are also visible in the Student Portal.
After clicking on the button ‘Show results’ on the My Courses page and selecting the results of a specific course the pop-up ‘Official results’ is shown. It contains the academic scores of SAP-SLcM. Nothing has changed here. But if there are also results present in the Grade Center in Blackboard an extra link ‘Results course details’ will be displayed which leads to an overview of the results collected from the Grade Center of Blackboard.
September 19th 2017
Update
The menu items Feedback and Help have been integrated into one new menu item Help. This item now consists of a page where it is possible to send support requests to the ICT Servicedesk, besides the existing option to send your Student Portal feedback.
For study related questions is a separate page containing the contact information of the SSC and every faculty.
Another change is that per this release in the Current Courses section of the My Courses page the links to Course Details, Tutorial and Practical have been made directly available, which saves you an extra click.
The reason for not also displaying the links in the sections Failed Courses and Completed Courses directly is that it would make the loading of the page quite slow.
July 20st 2017
The way students are informed in the Student Portal via messages has been made more user-friendly. The change consists of the function ‘Portal messages’.
Different types of messages can be published for a given period of time:
Alert messages (yellow background) and Information messages (blue background).
When you log in on the Student Portal new messages are shown by default in a pop-up screen.
You have the possibility of closing the messages pop-up screen. Once you have closed the messages pop-up screen you can reopen the pop-up by clicking the notifications icon at the top right corner of the screen and selecting the wanted message from the list.
A Welcome message will only be shown to you at your first logon session (ever). Once a Welcome message has been clicked away by you it is not available anymore.
July 8st 2017
Update
The look and feel of the Course information pages (Course Details, Tutorials, Practicals) and the organisations in My Organisations have been updated to match closer to the design of the Student Portal.
Addendum Update May 16th 2017
We received some responses from students who were not very pleased with the new way to access Course Information. The reason for the change was that stricter security requirements did not allow the inframe presentation of the course information anymore. Given the circumstances we believe the current design, which was developed in close cooperation with the Student Project Team, is the best alternative.
Please keep sending us feedback, we really appreciate your opinion on the Student Portal!
June 13st 2017
Update
The following items have been improved or added in the latest release of the Student Portal
- In every announcement on the Home page a link ‘Visit source’ to the related information has been added.
- In case an announcement on the Home page contains a "course link" and/or images the following message will be shown: "The content of this announcement might not be shown correctly. You can visit the source of this announcement for a complete presentation." will be shown together with a link to the related course/organisation.
- On the My Courses page in the pop-up behind the ‘Add/remove course’ button an option ‘Don’t know what course to choose?’ has been added which leads to the Course Finder on Intranet.
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On the My Webmail page instead of a maximum of 10 latest unread emails up to 99 latest unread emails can be listed.
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For a better user experience in the Portal the buttons will change colour upon clicking or hovering over them.
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Menu option My Settings has moved to the upper right of the window in the form of an engineering-button next to the logout button. On mobile devices this has not changed because here the Portal has a different design for user interaction.
May 16st 2017
Update
The following items have been improved or added in the latest release of the Student Portal
- In My Courses and other locations where courses are presented you have the option to click on a course name to access Course Information (Course Details, Tutorial, Practical).
For instance at the Home page:
and at My Courses:
When you click on a Course Information link the requested information will be presented in the same window. Via the 'Back to overview' button in the upper left corner you can return to the previous page.
- In My Organisations a list of your organisations is presented with direct links to these organisations.
March 21st 2017
Update
The following items have been improved or added in the latest release of the Student Portal
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My Webmail: The option to integrate your email with the Student Portal has become available. Go to detailed instructions.
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My Courses: Show Exam and Exemption directly on the page
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My Courses: Show checkmark as a result for completed courses with exemption
- Display already submitted assignments differently in deadlines list
- Replace book-icons by links at timetable items and assignment due dates
December 10th 2016
Update
The following items have been improved or added in the latest release of the Student Portal
- My Courses: A print function of your grade list
- My Courses: Extra information for clinical rotation courses (period and location)
- My Courses: You can filter your courses per study
- My Courses: The sorting of the different courses has been improved
- My Courses: The upcoming courses of your next period are already shown in Current Courses
- My Courses: You can hide your failed courses with a more recent booking if they are less relevant
June 13th 2016
Release for all students
May 30th 2016
1.0 release for SBE and FHS students
May 30th we release the new Student Portal for the faculties of the School of Business and Economics and the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences. The other faculties will follow on June 13th.
March 2016
User feedback first release
We gather feedback during the first release for a small group and finetune the portal so we can release it to the entire student population.
February 2016
First 0.x release for small group beta testers
In this first release we will test the new UM student portal with a small group of students. The test phase is used to collect user feedback and find possible bugs. These will be used to prepare the 1.0 first release for all students. The kick-off meeting for the bèta test students will be held Tuesday 16 February. Bèta testers received an email with details. The bèta test will start in the week following the kick-off event.
March 2015
Third student panel meeting
In this student panel meeting we tested the new finetuning we did to the design of the student portal with a large group of students. We tested whether we were still on the right track and the choices we made were still in line with student needs. We also gathered new suggestions.
January 2015
Finetuning design
With the technical build also began a fundamental functional analysis of the design. The big lines and concept of the design was made in the form of a working prototype with real content, but not all interactions, clicks and screens were fully developed. The functional analysis required the further finetuning of the design to cover all interactions, content and screens.
January 2015
Start technical build
After the successful Proof of Concept phase we proceeded to build the first version of the new student portal.
November 2014
Second student panel meeting
The technical explorations in the Proof of Concept led us to make some new design choices for the student portal. In the second student panel meeting we tested the new choices and directions we took based on the information from the Proof of Concept with a large group of students.
August 2014
Proof of Concept (PoC)
After a period of public tender we selected Amplexor to do the technical build of the portal. We started with a Proof of Concept to test whether the functionalities, data handling and interface that was designed could actually be build within our technical IT infrastructure and other constraints.
November 2013
Adaptation of design
The design was adapted to incorporate the student input from the student panel and the members of the Student Project Team.
October 2013
First student panel meeting
The first green field design study was presented to a larger group of students and the concepts and thoughts were tested and discussed to further finetune the design. From this session we collected statistical data on the student opinions on the new design and suggestions for improvements.
August 2013
Start project
Feedback from students about the quality of the information provided by the UM led to the start of the new student portal project. UM contracted Zuiderlicht for the design of the portal.
September 2013
Green field design
Based on the student interviews and a study of the systems students currently in use, we made a first design that addressed the issues we found. A new visual en interaction design was proposed without taking constraints like time, money and technical obstacles into consideration: greenfield design. We immediately started with the development of a working prototype so we could experience the real interaction and content as soon as possible.
September 2013
Student interviews
We started the project by interviewing students from the newly formed Student Project Team. After that we decided that 2 members of the Student Project Team would be made project members and would attend design and development meetings to make sure the design stays in line with student needs.