Synchronous and Asynchronous Online Academic Writing Support Service

Concepts

• higher education
• coleraine
• literacy support service
• support providers
• online academic writing
• asynchronous online academic writing support service
• service levels
• asynchronous academic writing
• literacy support
• ulster students

Location

Coleraine

Description

The requirement is for an online academic writing and literacy support service. The service should be equitably available to all Ulster students and will allow students to avail of both synchronous and asynchronous academic writing and literacy support. The service must connect students with adequately trained support providers to give Ulster confidence that the service is suitable for a UK Higher Education context. A quality assurance process must be in place to ensure that service levels are consistent and maintained. Technically, the service must be a proven hosted and managed solution in a scalable environment with the ability to enhance capacity when necessary. The system must be integrated with existing VLE systems in the University, currently Blackboard Learn. The service should be capable of integrating, through standards based methods, with other VLE solutions. The duration of the contract is for a period of 3 years initially, with the option to extend for up to 24 months.

Ammendments to Previous Notice

Award Detail

CPV Codes

• 80300000 - Higher education services

Indicators

• Contract modified due to additional needs.

Legal Justification

Additional services have become necessary and a change of service provider cannot be made for economic and technical reasons due to interchangeability of the existing services; and a change of contractor would cause significant inconvenience and substantial duplication of costs for the University for the reasons outlined above in Section Section VII.2.1). The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting unprecedented consequences of students learning from home instead of on-campus has rendered the modification necessary and this was unforeseen at the time of the original procurement exercise. The increase in estimated contract value following the proposed modifications is GBP 157 500 and does not exceed 50 percent of the original contract award value of GBP 1 250 000.