MyEd is a key part of the student experience at the University of Edinburgh, particularly at the beginning of a new academic year. Our analytics data can help us understand what services and actions are important to students at this crucial time.

How do students prepare for the new academic year?

Securing accommodation is a high priority for many on-campus students, and this is evidenced by the fact that the Accommodation Hub saw 110,000 logins through MyEd between 5 August and 29 September (end of week 2).

Similarly, students are eager to discover their timetables before the semester begins – there were 175,000 uses of the Timetables service in MyEd during the same period.

Getting a student card is another essential task for new students: students accessed Card Photo Submission portlet in MyEd 27,000 times.

In the month of August, MyEd saw £10.5 million paid through the My Finance portlet.

What services are important to students once teaching begins?

The greatest demand for MyEd occurs at the beginning of the academic year – the peak in 2024 occurred on the first day of teaching, with over 54,000 logins.

The recently-improved interface for Notifications in MyEd allows us to better understand how our users engage with the delivered content – for example, we can now estimate a click-through rate for notifications with a call-to-action link or button.

We are particularly interested in how many students click on the call-to-action after expanding the notification text. Here is that proportion for a selection of start-of-term notifications:

• Accommodation fees reminder – 79%
• Student/tuition fees reminder – 62%
• Reminder for international students to check in – 51%

A screenshot of the Notifications interface

How else do we help students find what they need?

During Welcome Week and week 1 of teaching, we display a welcome banner at the top of MyEd which directs students to general information about how to get started. This banner saw around 1,900 engagements from continuing students, and around 2,100 engagements from new students.

The Help and support portlet which displays on all students’ MyEd homepage also saw significant usage on and around the start of term:

• New student checklist – 3,200 engagements
• Accommodation support – 2,500 engagements
• EdHelp – 1,200 engagements