User guide

RAP is where research projects — undergraduate projects, dissertations and theses — are proposed, supervised, reviewed and completed. Students, supervisors and administrators each see only the records they are entitled to. Everything you do is kept as a dated record on the project timeline.

Signing in and your account

• Getting an account. Accounts are created by the administrators (individually or by import) or, where allowed, by your supervisor. You may receive an invitation e-mail; its link is valid for 72 hours and lets you choose your password. If your account was imported, ask the administrator for your starting password; you will be asked to choose your own password at the first sign-in.
• Signing in. Use your e-mail address (or your Matriculation Number / Staff ID) and password on the sign-in page. After 5 failed attempts the account is locked for 15 minutes.
• Remember me. Tick Remember me on a personal device to stay signed in for 30 days from your last activity. Do not use it on shared computers. Signing out ends it.
• Forgotten password. Choose Forgot password? on the sign-in page. The reset link in the e-mail works once and for 60 minutes.
• Security check. The sign-in and password pages are protected by Google reCAPTCHA. The check usually runs invisibly when you press the button; now and then you may be asked to pick matching pictures. JavaScript must be on, and ad blockers that block google.com can stop the check.
• Idle time-out. You are signed out after 30 minutes without activity. If a form says your session has expired, sign in again and repeat the last step.

Dashboard and navigation

• After signing in you land on your Dashboard: your projects, what needs your attention (deadlines, reviews, decisions) and recent activity.
• The sidebar on the left lists everything you can open. On a phone or small tablet, open it with the menu button at the top left.
• A project has tabs: Overview, Topic proposals, Submissions & reviews, Discussions, Files and Timeline (plus Grade and AI report for completed projects, where available).
• Drop-down lists are searchable: click and start typing. Tables can be sorted by clicking a column heading.
• All times are shown in Africa/Lagos time.
• The icon next to some page titles opens the matching part of this guide.

Notifications and e-mail

The bell at the top shows new events — a new submission, a review decision, a reply, an approaching deadline. Most events are also e-mailed. Choose which e-mails you receive under Notifications → Preferences. Deadline reminders are sent a few days before a milestone or correction deadline.

Your profile and password

Open My profile to see your details and change your password. Depending on the institution's rules you may also edit your name or phone number; details marked with a lock are managed by the administrator — use the Send mail link shown there to request a change. Your Matriculation Number or Staff ID can only be changed by the administrators.

Guidelines & templates

Research guidelines and manuscript templates (for example a thesis formatting guide or a chapter template) are published for each research workflow. Open Guidelines & templates in the sidebar, or the Guidelines & templates card on a project's overview. PDFs open in the built-in viewer with View; every document can be downloaded. Students see the documents of the workflow their project follows; supervisors and administrators see all of them. Administrators publish and manage the documents (see Guidelines & templates library). Some items are videos (for example a recorded briefing on chapter one): they play directly on the page.

Videos in the portal

Paste a link to a video in a discussion, comment, review, topic decision or broadcast and it plays on the page — nobody has to leave the portal. Supported: YouTube (including Shorts and youtu.be links), Vimeo, Dailymotion, Loom, TED, Google Drive files shared with “anyone with the link”, and direct links to .mp4, .webm or .ogg files. Put the link on its own or inside your text; up to 3 videos play per message and the link always stays visible as Open the original.

• YouTube videos play in privacy-enhanced mode (no YouTube cookies until you press play). A YouTube time such as &t=1m30s starts the video at that point.
• Private videos only play for people who have access on the video site itself; choose “unlisted” on YouTube or Vimeo to share a video with your students only.
• Videos posted by students appear as ordinary links; those posted by supervisors and administrators play on the page.
• Other links (any website that is not a supported video service) stay ordinary links.

Signing in from another system

Your institution may connect RAP to its student portal, learning management system (LMS) or staff portal. If so, a link or button there such as Research Assessment Portal signs you straight in to RAP with no second password. The link is valid for a few minutes and only once: if it says the link is invalid or expired, go back to the other system and click it again. You can always also sign in on the RAP sign-in page with your own password.

Accounts created from the student records system can start as pending: the first sign-in from the connected portal activates them. Names, IDs, programmes and similar details may be kept up to date automatically from that system, so ask the records office to correct them there.

Your research project

Your project is created by an administrator or your supervisor and follows a research workflow — usually your programme's, unless an administrator or your supervisor chose another one for you — an ordered list of stages such as Topic proposal, Chapter One … Chapter Five and Final submission. Open it from My research. The Overview shows your supervisory team, your milestones with due dates, your latest submissions and the guidelines for your workflow. The Timeline lists every step with who did it and when.

Proposing a research topic

1. Open your project → Topic proposals → Propose topics.
2. Enter one to 3 topics. For each, give a clear title and, ideally, the background, problem statement, objectives and methodology. You can attach a supporting document.
3. Submit. Your supervisors are notified and decide on the round: they approve one topic, ask for a revision, or reject all of them with comments.
4. If a revision is requested, start a new round with improved proposals. Once a topic is approved it becomes your project title and the next stage opens.

Your supervisor may also assign a topic to you directly; it then appears as approved.

Submitting work and corrections

1. Open Submissions & reviews → New submission, choose the stage (for example Chapter Two), add a short summary and upload your document(s). Allowed types are listed on the form; the maximum size is 25 MB per file.
2. A submitted version cannot be changed or deleted. This protects you and your supervisors: everyone sees exactly what was reviewed.
3. When corrections are requested, open the submission and choose Submit corrected version. Explain what you changed in the comments. Use Compare to see two versions side by side.
4. Watch the correction deadline shown on the submission; reminders are sent before it.

Reading feedback and decisions

You are notified when a review is released. The possible decisions are: Approved for Next Stage, Corrections Required, Major Revision Required, Resubmission Required, Final Approval and, where the institution allows it, Rejected. Open the submission to read the general comments, the list of required corrections and any annotated files your supervisors attached. Supervisors' work-in-progress is not visible to you until the outcome is released.

Discussions with supervisors

Use Discussions to ask questions or talk about your work. Start a conversation, attach files if needed and reply to individual messages. General conversations are visible to you and all your supervisors; Feedback threads contain formal feedback from supervisors. You can edit your own message for a short time after posting. A conversation marked resolved can be reopened.

Sharing files

The Files tab collects documents shared on the project that are not formal submissions — data sets, forms, references. Files are private to the project team and are checked when uploaded.

Group projects

If your institution uses group projects, several students share one project. One student is the group leader. Depending on the rules, all members or only some may submit work and start discussions — the project page tells you what you can do. Groups can also hold private group discussions that only the students of the group can see; supervisors and administrators do not take part in them.

Completion and grades

After Final Approval and the remaining milestones, your project is marked completed. Each supervisor may record an overall score; the final grade is the average of the scores recorded (A 70–100, B 60–69, C 50–59, D 45–49, E 40–44, F below 40). Whether you can see your grade in the portal depends on the institution's settings.

Your dashboard and supervisees

• Your Dashboard shows only your own students: pending reviews, topic decisions, overdue milestones and recent activity.
• My supervisees lists your projects; Supervisee list is a sortable table of your students with their stage, topic and supervisors, which you can export to Excel or PDF.
• Review queue lists submissions waiting for your review; the badge shows how many.
• A project can have up to three supervisors with one lead supervisor. Some actions (for example managing milestones) are for the lead supervisor.

Adding your own students

Where the institution allows it, My students lets you create accounts for your students, edit them and start their projects (New project). Students you add are managed by you; the administrators can see and manage them too.

To add many students at once, use Import CSV on My students: download the template, fill one student per row (the programme code is required) and upload it. New students get the default password student and must choose their own at the first sign-in; no project is created yet. You can put them into your categories in the same step (see Student categories).

Student categories

Student categories lets administrators and supervisors group students under a name of their choice — for example Final year 2026, Part-time or Lab group A — and then work with the whole group at once. (They are different from group projects, where several students share one research project.) Students never see the categories they are in.

• Creating, renaming and deleting: choose New category, give it a name, a colour and an optional description. Open a category to Edit or Delete it; deleting a category does not change the students or their projects.
• Who sees what: categories created by administrators are shared — every administrator and supervisor can see and filter by them, but only administrators change them. Categories created by a supervisor are private to that supervisor (administrators can see and manage them too). Supervisors only ever see their own students inside any category.
• Adding and removing students: on the category page use Add students (search by name or matriculation number and pick several), or tick students in the list and choose Remove. You can also use the Categories box on a student's page. Supervisors can add their own students only — students on projects they supervise and students they manage. Administrators can also tick students in Students and choose Category… to add or remove many at once.
• Using categories elsewhere: filter by category in the project lists, the Supervisee list (including its Excel and PDF downloads), My students and the administrators' Students list; find categories with the search box at the top of every page; choose categories as recipients in Broadcast e-mail (or use E-mail students on the category page); and download a category's student list with Excel or PDF.
• Importing students into categories: use Import students (CSV) on Student categories or Import CSV on a category page. Choose one or more categories and/or type a new category name; these apply to every student in the file. For per-student categories add a categories column with names separated by ; — names that do not exist yet become new categories (shared when an administrator imports, private when a supervisor does). Students who already have an account are matched by e-mail or matriculation number and added to the categories without being created again; supervisors can only include their own students. Supervisors can also create new students this way when the institution allows them to add students. As always, the whole file is checked first and nothing is saved if any row has a problem.
• Creating projects: when creating a project, Filter the student list by category narrows the student picker. To start projects for many students at once, open the category, tick the students and choose Create projects…: one individual project is created per student. Administrators choose the lead supervisor, optional co-supervisors, the programme (which decides the research workflow), session and deadline. Supervisors become the lead supervisor themselves; this works for students they manage under My students. Students who already have an active project, or whose account is suspended or deactivated, are skipped and listed.

Research workflows for students and projects

A research workflow is the ordered list of stages a project goes through (for example Topic proposal → Chapter One … Chapter Five → Final submission, or an article-based route with papers). Every programme has a default workflow, set by the administrators. Administrators and supervisors can choose a different workflow for selected students, a whole student category or a single project; the programme's workflow is then no longer applied to them.

• For selected students or a category: on a category page choose Research workflow… (every student in the category) or tick students and choose Set workflow…. Administrators can also tick students in the Students list and choose Workflow…, and every student's page has a Research workflow card. The choice is stored on the student and is used for all of their new projects. Choose Programme's workflow to go back to the default.
• Switching existing projects: keep Also switch their active projects to this workflow now ticked to move their current projects too, or use Change workflow in the Research workflow card on a project page. Past submissions, reviews, feedback and history are kept. The project moves to the equivalent stage — topic stays topic, the n-th chapter stage becomes the n-th stage of the new workflow, final stays final — or to a stage you pick. Approved milestones stay; the new workflow's milestones before the current stage are marked as covered, and new due dates are calculated from today (never after the project deadline). Completed and archived projects are never changed, and a project with a submission that is still submitted, under review or awaiting corrections must finish that review first. Students and the other supervisors are notified, and the change appears in the project timeline and the audit log.
• When creating projects: the project form, My students → New project and the category's Create projects… offer a Research workflow field. Leave it on the default to use the student's own workflow (or, if none, the programme's), or choose a workflow for these projects only. When adding a single student you can also set their workflow straight away.
• Who may change it: administrators — for any student and any active project. Supervisors — for students they manage under My students and students whose project they lead; they can switch only projects they lead. Co-supervisors cannot change a project's workflow. Workflows themselves (their stages and guidelines) are configured by administrators under Research workflows.
• Guidelines: students see the guidelines and templates of their own workflow and of their projects' workflows.

Topic proposals and assigning topics

• When a student submits topics, open the round from the notification or the project's Topic proposals tab. Choose Approve (pick one topic), Request revision or Reject all, and add comments. Depending on the approval rule, the lead supervisor, all supervisors or a set number must agree.
• To give a student a topic directly, use Assign a topic on the Topic proposals tab. You can start from one of your topic-bank entries or an AI suggestion, edit it, and confirm.
• Where enabled, Critique with AI gives a second opinion on a topic round (see AI critique).

Reviewing submissions

1. Open the submission from your Review queue and start the review. Documents open in the browser; you can download them and upload annotated copies.
2. Write general comments, list the required corrections (needed for any decision that asks for changes), set a correction deadline if appropriate and choose a decision.
3. Save a draft at any time; submit when ready. The outcome is released to the student according to the review rule (for example once all supervisors have reviewed). Please aim to review within 14 days.

Discussions and confidential notes

Besides General and Feedback conversations, supervisors can start Confidential discussions that only the supervisory team can read — the student never sees them. Supervisors can change a conversation's visibility, mark it resolved and reopen it.

Milestones and deadlines

Milestones are generated from the workflow when a project is created. Stage milestones are approved automatically when a submission for the stage is approved. The lead supervisor (and administrators) can add milestones, change due dates and update their status on the project overview.

Grading completed projects

When a project is completed, open its Grade tab and record your overall score (0–100) for each student, with an optional comment for staff. The final grade is the average of the scores recorded so far (“graded by 2 of 3 supervisors”). Grades in the sidebar lists your students' grades with Excel and PDF export. Where enabled, Suggest a score asks the AI for advice — you always decide the score.

AI project reports

For a completed project, the AI report tab produces a one-page report on each student under four headings: Attendance, Diligence & Engagement; Research Progress & Timelines; Academic & Technical Competence; and Overall Assessment & Recommendation. Optionally add your own observations, then choose Generate report. Read the draft, use Edit to correct it (at most 200 words in total) and download the PDF for presentation. Details are in AI project reports.

Your research topic bank

My topic bank is your private collection of research topics, organised by programme. Add topics with their background, objectives and methodology; ask the AI to critique a topic or to review the whole bank and suggest new topics; save improved versions; and assign a topic to a supervisee in one step. Assigned topics are marked so you do not reuse them by mistake. Your bank is private: other people see a topic only if you share it with them.

Sharing topics with colleagues

• Share. In My topic bank, tick one or more topics and choose Share… (or open a topic and use Share). Pick the supervisors and administrators to share with — or tick Share with everyone — and add an optional note such as “suitable for MSc students”. They are notified.
• Shared with me. Topics others share with you appear on the Shared with me tab of your topic bank, with who shared them and their note. Open a topic to read it, and choose Copy to my bank to save your own copy that you can edit, critique with AI and assign to a supervisee.
• Stop sharing. Open your topic: the Shared with list shows everyone who can see it, and Stop sharing removes one person (or everyone). Copies already saved by colleagues stay in their banks.
• Administrators share topics from their own topic bank in the same way, with supervisors or other administrators. Changes you make to your topic are seen by the people you shared it with; their copies do not change.

Broadcast e-mails

Where your role is allowed to, Broadcast e-mail sends one message to many people. Supervisors can write to their supervisees and the students they manage; administrators to students and supervisors. Each person receives an individual e-mail (no one sees the other addresses). The e-mails are queued and delivered in the background; your sent broadcasts are listed with the number of recipients. Video links in the message play on the portal's copy of the broadcast.

• Send to — choose as many as you need. Whole groups (All students, All supervisors; supervisors: All my students, My supervisees, Projects where I am the lead supervisor, Students I manage), student categories, sessions, programmes, degree levels, departments and individual projects or groups. Everyone in any of the chosen options receives the message once.
• People. Add individuals by name, matriculation number or e-mail — on their own or on top of the groups.
• Narrow the students (optional). Keep only the students who also match, for example, a programme, a session, a level, a category or a project status (with an active project, completed, or without an active project).
• Use Check recipients to see the number of people and some names before sending.

Who can send, and approval. At this institution: administrators can send broadcasts without approval; supervisors can send broadcasts, approved first by an administrator or the institution admin. The institution admin's own broadcasts never need approval.

When approval is needed, the button reads Submit for approval and the message waits as Waiting for approval. The approver may correct the subject or text and approve it — it is then sent at once — or decline it with a reason. Nobody approves their own message. You are notified either way, and you can Withdraw a message while it is waiting.

Managing students and supervisors

• Students and Supervisors list accounts with filters (status, department, programme, who manages them, supervision). Use Add to create one account.
• Tick several rows to activate, suspend, deactivate, send invitations, assign a supervisor to many students at once, or delete. Deleting always asks for a double confirmation; accounts with research history are archived instead of being erased.
• The student list can be exported to Excel or PDF with the current filters. Filter it by student category, or tick students and choose Category… to add them to (or remove them from) a category.

Bulk import (CSV)

Bulk import creates many students or supervisors from a CSV file. Download the template, fill one person per row and upload it. You see a preview with any problems before anything is saved. Imported accounts are active immediately: students sign in with the default password student and supervisors with Super#1234 (using their e-mail address or ID), and are asked to choose their own password at the first sign-in.

When importing students you can also put them straight into student categories: choose existing categories, type a new category name, and/or add a categories column (names separated by ;). Rows for students who already have an account are then not errors — those students are simply added to the categories.

Creating projects and assigning supervisors

All projects → New project creates a project for a student (or a group of students, where group projects are allowed) in a programme and session; the programme decides the workflow. On the project's administration page you can assign or remove supervisors, choose the lead supervisor and see the history of changes.

All projects, supervisee list and grades

All projects lists every project with filters; Supervisee lists shows every student with their supervisors, stage and topic, exportable to Excel/PDF. Administrators can open every project to follow its progress and can read grades and AI reports of completed projects. Only the project's supervisors record grades.

Guidelines & templates library

Administrators manage every research guideline and manuscript template on Guidelines & templates. A file is uploaded once and can then be used in as many research workflows as needed — there is no need to upload the same file again for another workflow.

• Upload. Click Upload document, choose the type (research guidelines, manuscript template or other), give it a title and pick every workflow that should show it under Use in workflows. Leave the workflows empty to keep it in the library for later.
• Videos. Instead of a file, paste a video link (YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Loom, TED, Google Drive or a direct .mp4/.webm link) in Upload document → Video link, choose the type Video and the workflows. Students watch it on the page. You can also attach a video link to a file, for example a template with a short walkthrough.
• Reuse an existing document. On the Library — all documents tab, click Use in workflows on a document and add the workflows. Or, on the By workflow tab, use Add an existing document… in a workflow's header. Shared documents show a Shared · N workflows badge.
• Stage and order. Within each workflow, the button sets the stage a document belongs to (or the whole workflow) and its position in the list.
• Edit or replace. Edit changes the title, type and description; Replace file uploads a new version. Both apply at once to every workflow that uses the document.
• Remove or delete. The button removes a document from one workflow only — it stays in the library and in other workflows. Delete (in the library) removes it everywhere.
• Duplicates. If you upload a file that is already in the library, the portal tells you which document it is so that you can reuse it instead. Documents not used in any workflow are visible to administrators only.

Reports and exports

Reports offers ready-made reports — for example supervisor workloads, pending reviews, overdue corrections, completion rates and average review turnaround — that you can filter and export. Most lists in the portal also offer Excel or PDF export.

Moderating content

Administrators can edit or remove submissions, discussions, comments and files when necessary — for example to take down inappropriate content. Removing asks for a reason, which is recorded in the audit log; removed content disappears for the project team.

E-mail queue and audit log

E-mail queue shows outgoing e-mails and lets you retry failed ones. Audit log records sensitive actions — sign-ins, account changes, decisions, deletions, downloads — with who did them and when.

Approving broadcast e-mails

Your institution decides whether administrators' and supervisors' broadcast e-mails need approval, and by whom (an administrator or the institution admin, or the institution admin only). Waiting messages you may decide on — never your own — are counted in a yellow badge next to Broadcast e-mail in the sidebar, listed under Waiting for approval, and announced in your notifications. Open one to see the message, its recipients and the estimated number of e-mails. You may correct the subject and text, then choose Approve and send (the e-mails are queued immediately), or write a reason and choose Decline. The supervisor is notified of your decision and the reviewer is recorded on the broadcast. Nothing is e-mailed until a message is approved.

Connected systems and the API

The portal can work together with the institution's student records (management) system, student portal and learning management system. The Super Admin sets up each connection — which fields of the other system correspond to the matriculation number, staff ID, names, e-mail, programme and department — and what happens to new people. Students and staff can then be created, updated and linked automatically, sign in from the other system, and the other system can be informed when, for example, a project is created or a stage approved.

• Accounts that came from a connected system are still ordinary accounts: you manage them as usual. If details are kept in sync, correct them in the source system, or they may be overwritten at the next synchronisation.
• Developers of other systems use the REST API with a key issued by the Super Admin. The developer documentation is linked as API documentation under Resources in the sidebar.

What the AI does — and does not do

Where the institution has switched them on, AI features give advice: they analyse topics, critique proposals, suggest a score or draft a report. The AI never decides anything. Supervisors and administrators remain responsible for every decision, grade and report, and AI output should always be checked. AI features may be unavailable when the daily limit has been reached.

AI topic review

AI topic review analyses research topics for originality, feasibility and publication potential and suggests new or improved topics. Students analyse only their own topics; supervisors those of their supervisees; administrators any. Saved analyses can be reopened or deleted.

AI critique of topic proposals

On a topic round, supervisors and administrators can choose Critique with AI for a structured critique of each proposed topic with an improved version. Critiques run only on request. Students see them only if the institution allows it.

AI grade suggestions

On the Grade tab, supervisors can ask for a suggested score with reasons, strengths, concerns and a confidence level. The AI has not read the thesis — it only sees the project record — so treat it as a second opinion.

AI project reports

• Who: administrators and the project's supervisors, for completed projects (when the feature is switched on).
• What: a concise report of at most 200 words, one A4 page, with a rating and a short paragraph under each of the four headings, ending with a recommendation.
• Header: the student's name, Matriculation Number, programme, department and session, the topic and the supervisors are filled in by the portal from its records — not by the AI.
• Editing: the lead supervisor, the person who generated it and administrators can edit or delete a report. The editor counts words as you type and will not save more than 200.
• PDF: PDF downloads a single-page A4 document with signature lines for presentation.

What is sent to the AI

Only what each feature needs, without names, Matriculation Numbers or contact details: topic texts for topic features; for grade suggestions and project reports, an anonymised record — stage history, number of versions and decisions, timeliness against milestones, sign-in, activity and discussion counts, the grade (if recorded), short excerpts of review comments and any observations you add. Do not type names into the observations box. See the Privacy Policy for details.

I uploaded the wrong file. Can I delete it?

No — submitted versions are permanent so that reviews always refer to exactly what was submitted. Tell your supervisors in a discussion and submit a corrected version when they ask for one; an administrator can remove a submission in exceptional cases.

Why can't I see a discussion my supervisor mentioned?

It may be a confidential supervisor discussion, which students never see, or it may have been removed by an administrator.

My supervisor changed. What happens to my work?

Nothing is lost. All submissions, reviews and discussions stay on the project; the new supervisor sees the full history, and the change is shown on the timeline.

I did not receive an e-mail.

Check your spam folder and your notification preferences. Everything you are e-mailed about also appears under the bell icon in the portal.

The page says “session expired” or “page expired”.

You were signed out after a period of inactivity, or the form was open too long. Sign in again and repeat the last step.

The sign-in page says the security check failed or could not load.

The page uses Google reCAPTCHA to keep automated attacks out. Reload the page and try again; make sure JavaScript is on and that an ad or script blocker is not blocking google.com, or try another browser or network. If it keeps failing, contact the research office: Send mail.

What does the version number in the footer mean?

It is the release of the portal you are using (currently 4.0.1), with three parts — for example 2.9.1, 2.9.2 … 2.9.9, then 3.0.1. The last number goes up with each update; the first two change with larger releases. Quote it when you report a problem.

A video does not play.

It may be private on the video site, removed, or blocked by your network. Use Open the original under the player to watch it on the video site, and ask the person who posted it to make it unlisted or public.

Can I use RAP on my phone?

Yes. RAP works on phones, tablets and computers; open the menu with the button at the top left.

Who do I contact for help?

Your supervisor for questions about your research, and the research office for accounts and access: Send mail.