When browsing Oxford Groups (for programmes of study), you may see some that are prefixed with 'new starters only'. This is because, for some courses, following the annual SITS/eVision progression process that occurs in mid-August each year, overlapping cohorts may appear in the same group – that is, current students who have not yet completed, together with new incoming students. This is clearly undesirable; therefore additional 'new starters only' groups are available, containing only those students who start in a particular year.

Problem: Annual Progression before Course Completion

For some courses, e.g. postgraduate taught courses, students may not complete the final year of study before the SITS/eVision annual progression takes place (usually in mid/late August). As a result, students finishing the final year will be in the same year of study as those starting the final year.

Example

For a one-year course, after SITS/eVision annual progression takes place, both of the following may be in the "...Year 1 in 2023/24" Programme Group in Oxford Groups:

the 2022/23 students, who finish in 2023
the 2023/24 students, who start in 2023

Assuming the students have not completed their course when the annual progression happens, the 2022/23 students will still be active students in Year 1 after annual progression, when the academic year in SITS changes to 2023/24. Therefore, these 2022/23 students will be members of the Year 1 in 2023/24 group as well as the Year 1 in 2022/23 group. The Year 1 in 2023/24 group will also contain the new cohort who are starting in 2023/24.

Solution: "new starters only" Groups

The "new starters only, YYYY/ZZ" groups contain only the students who start in the year indicated. These should be used (instead of the "...Year X in YYYY/ZZ" groups) to ensure that the previous year's students are not also enrolled in the course for the coming academic year.

In the above example, the "new starters only, 2023/24" group should be used, to enrol only those students starting in 2023.

The diagram below shows an example of students progressing between different groups in the Oxford Groups tool. Note that the Applicants and Incoming Groups for 2022/23 may contain students who do not end up formally enrolling in the course.

Completion of enrolment

Note: Two steps need to be completed for incoming students before they will appear in the relevant Oxford Groups for their forthcoming programme of study (both "...Year 1 in YYYY/ZZ" and "new startes only, YYYY/ZZ"):

The student needs to activate their SSO
Formal course enrolment must go through in SITS/eVision.