In 2002, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) introduced the concept of Performance Based Research Funding for the tertiary sector. The idea was to remove the degree top-up money from the direct student funding and move it progressively to the PBRF fund to encourage research excellence. (The top-up money is the amount that was paid for a student in a given course less the standard amount paid for a basic qualification.).
The PBRF monies are allocated to participating tertiary education organisations on the basis of three measures: Postgraduate Completions, External Research Income and Research Quality.
WebSol (in partnership with AUT) built ROMS to collate and report on performance of individual staff within the institutions and the combined weighted score inline with TEC requirements.
The main advantages of ROMS are:
- Webbased
- Able to be hosted internally or external to the university
- Assessible from anywhere
- Privacy of information
- Easy management of staff accounts
- Ability to upload bibliographic citations and allocate them to individual accounts
- Easy identification of which outputs were to be included in the final EP and selection of the best four.
- Automatic limitation of amount of information that could be entered
- Individual entry but also central accessibility
- Capture all the information required to produce EPs
- Ability to output xml files that would comply with TEC requirements.
- Ability to output word reports of EPs for individuals
Simple, straight forward
- Integrates with Netaca Online to create a powerful research library of resources and collaborative environment.
The ROMS system was used by AUT's 600 staff for the 2003 PBRF quality assessment and the portfolios submitted to TEC were accepted by their system without errors. The System was also used by Massey University for its staff. Waikato Institue of Technology is also using the system.
ROMS has been refined for the 2006 round to take account of changed requirements from TEC and to allow bulk uploads of Peer Esteem and Contributions to the Research Environment from the University's Research Management System. The system has also been changed to allow reporting of evidence portfolios by faculty grouping since the institution plans to have initial reviews of portfolios conducted at faculty level.
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