Engagement Monitoring

Full-time PhD courses are residential. UKVI requires students to be based in the UK, on campus. Hybrid working is not the same as remote working. Monthly in-person meetings in Terms 1 and 2 help demonstrate that students are campus-based.

We would encourage Supervisors to continue monthly meeting face to face throughout the year, however, we also recognise that teaching has largely ended in Term 3 and Supervisors might be naturally away more during Term 3 and summer periods and won't necessarily all be physically on campus. Therefore, we are being less prescriptive for Term 3 and Summer Term, with the expectation that face-to-face meetings are expected to continue at regular intervals. For PGR students, monitoring points are usually monthly supervisory meeting and so online skills training may not be suitable monitoring points.

If you have an approved remote working arrangement, an alternative check-in (e.g. meeting another staff member or attending a campus event) can count as a face-to-face point and should be recorded on Tabula.

In such a case where due to Academic Supervisor’s availability, only a remote meeting is possible as a monitoring point – administrative check-in points need to be added once a month in accordance with the Student Engagement and Progress Monitoring Policy. An example of an administrative check-in point could be meeting a member of staff in a University building or the attendance of any face-to-face event at the University which can be documented and reflected on Tabula.

Monthly engagement with the employer must be recorded throughout the placement. Departments can evidence this in one of the following ways:

• The student’s employer sends an email to the department’s resource account confirming the student is actively engaged in their placement.
• The student completes a Placement Monitoring Form templateLink opens in a new window confirming their engagement with the employer.

Departments must ensure that all related monitoring points are accurately updated in Tabula or MyWBS.

Yes. Monthly monitoring points should be set up for the full duration of the placement, regardless of term dates. Monthly confirmation of engagement from employer for the duration of the work placement, (may be remote if in-person meeting is not feasible) should be recorded on Tabula.

If the student arrived within the permitted delay period (i.e., before their latest start date), missed points should be marked as ‘Missed (authorised)’. If a point was initially marked ‘Missed (unauthorised)’ but valid evidence (e.g., illness, late arrival) is later provided, it can be amended to ‘Missed (authorised)’ within 5 working days of the scheduled point.

Students should not be penalised for missed points due to industrial action. These should be marked as ‘Missed (authorised)’ and will not count towards absence warnings or affect visa compliance.

There is no need to create artificial monitoring points after submission of the thesis until their next natural engagement point which is the viva. It would be acceptable to have the submission of the thesis as a monitoring point and for the next one to be the viva. If a PGR student is required to extend their registration or undertake correction/resubmission, monthly monitoring should resume from the date of viva.

If the student takes up to 12 months of maternity leave, they are expected to take a temporary withdrawal and return home. For shorter leave (up to 120 days), they may request an extended authorised absence. This must be approved via the Student Records eVision workflow. Once approved, monitoring points during this period should be marked as ‘Missed (authorised)’.

• Missing face-to-face monitoring points.
• Monitoring points spaced too far apart — they should be roughly every two weeks.
• In-person points held remotely without proper documentation — these must be noted on Tabula/MyWBS.

Yes, they do, because following submission they will either pass with minor correction (3 months), major correction (6 months) or resubmission (12 months), or resubmission for lower award (uncertain timescale), in which case monthly monitoring points need to be setup until they submit final submission (after correction) (the end point of the above provision).

Yes- if a student and/or supervisor fails to update the record with a meeting, or if the meeting is logged by the student but not confirmed by the supervisor, it must be updated to missed unauthorised within 5 working days of the end of the expected contact period- This is to ensure there are no unrecorded points as points do not show on our engagement monitoring report unless they are marked attended or unattended.

If, after this point, the point has then been recorded, and confirmed by the supervisor, the point can be changed to attended, with an attendance note to say that the note has been changed following confirmation of attendance. This ensures an audit trail, so we know that the point had been marked as unattended previously but shows the true attendance of the student.