Sisu has been the key system for teaching and studying at Aalto for three academic years now. Far from being only a student information system, Sisu contains information and functions that are used for planning studies as well as implementing teaching and providing e-services. The fundamental goal of Sisu is to cover the whole life cycle of studying in a single system.

Over the past three academic years, Sisu has become an established element in the day-to-day life of students, teachers and Learning Services staff. Thanks to its integration into many other systems, Sisu communicates its information reliably and is updated based on the data in other Aalto information systems.

After a lengthy implementation project, Sisu has found its place

The project aimed at Sisu implementation began in Aalto as early as in 2012, when it became apparent that the previous study information system would be discontinued at the end of its life cycle. The inter-university cooperation, which later led to the establishment of the company Funidata Oy, began to be visible to Aalto students in 2018, when Sisu's functionalities were presented to different user groups. In the autumn of 2019, personal study plans were introduced to Sisu, and during the academic year 2020–2021, the personal study plan function was extended to cover all degree programmes, while Sisu also became the only channel for submitting graduation requests for all Aalto students. 

The introduction of Sisu as a fully-fledged student information system took place on 1 August 2021 and in the months that followed, different user groups began using Sisu for all their study and learning-related activities. After its implementation, a number of new functionalities have been introduced to Sisu related to credit transfer, Open University studies and cross-institutional studies. 

As some Sisu functionalities were still incomplete at the time of its deployment, significant improvements to usability and accessibility were made during a usability improvement project in 2022–2023. While it was not possible to meet everyone’s wishes concerning Sisu’s development, we have been able to overcome the most significant and pressing challenges.

The accessibility of Sisu has been developed actively and the development was done in the form of a designated development project until the end of 2023. Currently, accessibility is taken into account in all development work, and we will keep correcting the remaining accessibility limitations in connection with other changes to the user interface in the future.

Sisu developed based on user feedback 

During the implementation of Sisu, we have received feedback from students, teachers and Learning Services staff, especially as regards personal study plans, registration for course implementations, and credit transfer. 

For students, the entire process of registering for a course implementation has been clarified and simplified and features guiding students in the registration process have been added.

The credit transfer process has been clarified by making the distinction between the inclusion of studies and substitution of courses clearer with the help of instructions in Sisu. It is now easier for the student to understand what they should apply for, which reduces unnecessary applications. The possibility of returning credit transfer applications for further processing or for completion helps both students and the Learning Services staff.

New feedback questionnaire for Sisu users at Aalto

In the future, feedback on Sisu use will be collected in the form of an anonymous questionnaire, to which each user responds in accordance with their user role. The questionnaire will give us more detailed and comparable information on Sisu's use than has been available so far. We will continue to develop the key functions based on our users’ requests.

Link to the survey (Webropol)

Figures on the use of Sisu

The extent to which Sisu is used may be observed through statistics on the use of the different functions of Sisu. 

Since 2021, more than 30 000 personal study plans have been made in Sisu. The numbers of primary personal study plans made in Sisu by academic year are as follows:

2021–2022: 10 724

2022–2023: 8 788

2023–2024: 8 839

The total number of course implementations in Sisu since 2021 is over 15 000, and the number of course implementations per academic year has stabilised to about 4 400:

2021–2022: 4 633

2022–2023: 4 431

2023–2024: 4 439

Since 2021, more than 500 000 registrations for course implementations have been done in Sisu.  Number of registrations per academic year: 

2021–2022: 162 473

2022–2023: 173 067

2023–2024: 177 424

The total number of course implementations completed in Sisu since 2021 is over 350 000. The number of completed implementations has significantly increased each academic year:

2021–2022: 107 083

2022–2023: 113 788

2023–2024: 128 559

Sisu has also been used to process more than 100 000 applications of different types. In addition to these, more than 99 000 applications related to the approval of either study module contents or parts of study plans have been processed.

There has been a total of 25 992 credit transfer applications, of which 2 907 concerned custom course credit, while 7 026 were related to course substitution and 16 059 to the inclusion of studies completed elsewhere.

Furthermore, Sisu has been used to process a total of 13,005 graduation requests and 3 158 applications for an extension to the right to study.