Exclusive: Interactive support system dubbed ‘ELITE’ appears to buckle under the weight of student demand
The University of Law’s (ULaw) online hand-in system has crashed this morning, just minutes before a vital coursework submission deadline.
It would appear ULaw’s interactive learning support system known as ‘ELITE’ was unable to cope with the number of students attempting to submit work at the same time, crashing at around 11:50am today.
It’s understandable students were anxious to make the 12pm deadline because, as one ULaw insider told Legal Cheek, the coursework in question was worth a whopping 75% of the elective mark.
Reacting quickly to the problem, ULaw’s IT team sent an email (pictured below) to students informing them that they now had until 1pm to submit their coursework via email.
When Legal Cheek approached ULaw for comment, a spokesperson from the university said:
Over the course of the last few days we have successfully received over 33,000 submissions for the coursework for electives due by 12pm today, Friday, 10 June. Unfortunately at 11.50am this morning (10 June) there was a system failure which resulted in us having to revert to a contingency plan whereby the small number of students affected were contacted and asked to submit their coursework via email instead. We are looking into what caused the system to fail and we apologise for any stress and inconvenience this has caused to the students affected.
Earlier this week BPP Law School students fell foul to IT problems after they were left unable to access legal resource website LexisNexis.
Legal Practice Course (LPC) students at BPP’s Holborn branch were in the middle of their practical legal research (PLR) assessment when the site ran into “technical difficulties”. Providing emergency login details as a interim measure, one BPP student told Legal Cheek:
I just hope this isn’t a choreographed stunt to teach us a lesson about not leaving things until the last minute.