30 | NEWS | HIGHER EDUCATION
UCAS improves clearing process
UCAS, has improved the clearing process for students applying for HE places with HP Performance Center SaaS. The Universities and Colleges
STUDENTS’ APP BREAKS INTO CHARTS
A team of students from The University of Notingham has now broken into the app store’s top 100 puzzle chart with their free app Bricks. The game involves breaking different
coloured bricks by redirecting a ball across the screen and racking up points in the process. The revamped classic is already proving popular having received 5,000 downloads. The app was devised by computer
science student Stephen Sowole, alongside Emmanuel Abiola, Dipo Areoye, Ipalibo Whyte and Tosin Afolabi. Abiola, a second year electronic
engineering student at the University, said: "There was a discussion about why Apple did not have a good brick breaker game within the app store. By noticing this gap in the market, this led to the development of Bricks." The team wanted to devise a game that
was easy to get to grips with but also challenging. Abiola added: “We owned BlackBerry smartphones and enjoyed playing the classic Brick Breaker game, and wanted to create a modified spin-off for the app store. "We developed a digital sketch and then came up with a simple form of the game, which received lots of positive feedback." But – even though they liked it – they didn’t know how many other people would too. Abiola added: "We are very amazed by the app’s success as it was only made for fun and just wanted to learn and gain exposure to the app industry." Bricks can be downloaded for free from
the Apple app store, and is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
Don’t give me coffee and TV
Connected students would prefer to give up coffee, TV, and eating out over their smartphones. The study by Aruba
Networks, which questioned nearly 1,500 students, showed that nearly two thirds (65%) of today’s students own three or more connected
devices; spend over five hours a day on their mobiles; often use more than five apps at any one time; and are regularly rejecting traditional lecture-hall based learning for digital working across campus – whenever it works for them. Around half said
they preferred to work outside of normal school hours, stating they worked more efficiently. Even the lecture hall
is going digital with 44% using mobile devices to take notes in lectures, while seven in 10 (71%) are using these devices to access college emails.
Admissions Service (UCAS) process the university and college applications of around 650,000 students each year. Nearly all British higher education institutions are members of UCAS, and anyone wishing to study for an undergraduate degree in the UK must submit an application via UCAS's website. The service is active all year round, but for one week in mid-August it must cope with a huge spike in demand, crunching 15 million transactions. More than 450,000 students found university places in
“UCAS needs a scalable performance testing solution that not only meets the demands for major spikes, but maintains cost efficiency throughout the year.”
2013 – up 6% on 2012. “We don’t need a large amount of
regular testing throughout the year, but we do need an exceptional amount over one very intense period when the load is estimated to be around 4,000 times greater than average days,” says James Munson, Director of IT, UCAS, adding: “HP Performance Center software ensured flawless performance, and the massive spike at around 5pm on exam results day was dealt with in just 30 minutes. To cope with the demands of
modern admissions, UCAS tested the system against anticipated loads with HP Performance Center on SaaS. For a three-month period, UCAS took 16,000 Virtual Users, scaling down to 1,000 for the remainder of the year to contain costs. Delivered via the cloud, HP Performance Center on SaaS provides a flexible, scalable testing environment, enabling UCAS to react quickly to emerging scenarios and accommodate
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