Leiden’s student portal: a single place for organising your studies
Leiden University’s digital study environment is being expanded to include the Leiden student portal: a single place where as a student you can find all the information you need to organise your studies.
From 15 June, regular bachelor’s and master’s students can use the first version of this custom-made portal. You can plan your studies, view your study results and register for courses and exams. You can also see your personal timetable in in MyTimetable, directly from the portal. You will receive all kinds of important notifications via the message centre, such as registrations and deregistrations, notifications of new study results, and much more.
Planning
MyStudymap is the part of the portal where you can plan your studies for the coming semester and register for programme components. You can see here which subjects you have to take and when these are taught. Via a direct link with the prospectus you can retrieve more information and add (optional) courses to your planning. As soon as the registration period starts, you can register for all programme components (lectures, tutorials and exams) directly from this planning environment.
'You don’t need to go to so many different desks any more to get something organised.’
More user friendly
Students at the Faculty of Humanities and LUMC have been using the student portal for the past few months. One of them is Jaco Hollebrandse, a student of Law and Philosophy. He thinks it’s a good step forward that many systems have now been centralised. ‘Your grades, timetable, planning: you can find all of them here. You don’t need to go to so many different desks any more to get something organised. It’s all a lot clearer than it was before.’
Jaco also thinks the level of user friendliness is far better and more intuitive than uSis, which students are currently using to register for courses. ‘The first time I had to register via uSis for an optional subject, I had to call someone for help because I didn’t have a clue about how it worked. It took up a lot of time to actually register. I used to write out lists in advance with all my study activities and the reference numbers. When registration opened, I had to type in all those numbers and hope that there was still a place available for the subjects I wanted to take. And if there wasn’t, you had to start all over again looking up subjects and reference numbers in the prospectus to see which study activities you then needed. It’s still possible that a course is full, but at least now you can immediately click on a different activity.’
Queuing
The first time Jaco used the new student portal, it didn’t work perfectly. ‘It’s a system with a lot of potential, but because it’s completely new, there are still some teething problems.’ For him, the biggest drawback is the queue you get into when you want to register for study activities. ‘And once you are in the system and have indicated which subjects you want to take, you may have to wait a while to find out if you are actually registered.’
The student portal is not finished yet and improvements are continuously being made.
More functionality
The student portal is not finished yet and improvements are continuously being made. The experiences of Humanities students and LUMC have already led to adjustments in the student portal that will be available from 15 June.
Once the first version is in use, new functionalities will also be added. These too will be tailor-made for Leiden University, and that takes time. Priorities for further development are agreed with students and staff.
You can find more information about planning and registering via MyStudymap.
Photo: Marc de Haan