Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.
Lead Institution: Bishop Burton College.
Learner Provider Type: Further Education
Project Duration: January 2012 - March 2013
Key Words: Course Data
Case study tags: course data, process improvement kis, course information, bishop burton college
Note: This is an abridged version of this project's final report. The full version is available here.
Project Summary
The Project was designed to produce an XCRI-CAP feed which is the UK standard for describing course marketing information. It defines how to structure the information; defines and names the data components and specifies the types of data permitted within each component. Its purpose is to enable information about courses and other kinds of learning opportunity to be shared efficiently between computerised information systems used by learning providers and organisations collecting, aggregating and publishing information about courses. It is recommended by the UK government and is generally applicable across all sectors of UK education and training.
The Project was also designed to improve processes within the College and provide an opportunity for the College to consider ownership of course information; the frequency and control of updates; interoperability between systems holding course information; and the ability to provide a common source of course information at all levels from single units to entire qualifications.
The main output of the project was the creation of a system generated XCRI-CAP feed through a central repository, the HE Course Data Portal, of course information. Using JISC funding, the College has used the XCRI expertise of an external consultant, to look at existing sources of information and recommend potential solutions for creating the XCRI-CAP feed. The main source of marketing information held electronically is currently the College website and this information was used to populate the HE Course Data Portal.
The portal provides a single source of Course Information that can be used to provide the required XCRI output for the project, but it is designed to become a single source of course information that could be used to generate KIS data; Course Manuals; core information for Prospectuses and the Website; and external websites such as UCAS and Hot Courses.
What did we learn?
The Project was behind schedule throughout due to a number of staffing issues and a major change of plan regarding the source of course information. Further time pressures were placed on the project throughout August and September 2012 due to the involvement of the Project Director and Project Manager in the takeover of a new College campus and students from another provider. This also involved considerable IT resources which further limited the time available for systems development. The Project Director moved to a part-time role within the College in September 2012 which considerably reduced the amount of time he could spend on the project. The College also lost a Senior Developer at the end of August 2012 that was difficult to replace.
The use of external consultancy to help with process design and evaluation of potential data sources helped to take the pressure away from the Project Manager, but could not make up for all the time delays. We used our website developers, Strawberry, to help with the design of the system once we decided to use the College website as the source of course information rather than the student records system. If we had taken that decision earlier them the project would probably have been completed on time.
The prototype system was fully tested by members of the project team, but there has not been sufficient time within the project timescale to fully test the completed system using ‘live’ course information and the new process for course approval. Staff development is to take place within the next month to ensure all potential users of the system are aware of and can use the new system.
The main lessons learned relate to underestimating the time and the expertise needed to complete the project. Nobody in the organisation had knowledge of XCRI-CAP and it takes time to find someone and recruit them. Replacing key systems staff is also very time-consuming. We did not expect at the start of the project that many of the key internal staff involved would be involved in a major project involving the takeover of another provider’s allocation. There is also a diversity of information sources to bring together, even in a small organisation such as ours. A number of different systems, both paper-based and electronic, are used and different departments of the College have responsibility for different sources of information. The biggest advantage of the system will be to unify this and bring the data together under one system which will be used by all departments.
Despite issues with time and staff availability, the project has been a very useful platform to assist in the evaluation of current system and sources of information. It has given us the opportunity to engage external experts in the evaluation and refinement of current processes, summarising the requirements and improvements required by HE course managers, Marketing, Administrative staff and the Senior Leadership Team.
Immediate Impact
The immediate impact has been the improvement of current systems for collecting, modifying and approving course data within a single, central repository. Before the project, course information was stored in a variety of formats and ‘owned’ within various departments. The College’s Website and Prospectus, although sharing the vast majority of information, were produced as separate entities with much duplication. Similarly, documents such as Course Manuals were created independently by Course Managers, again with course information that had been produces elsewhere, leading to further duplication of time and effort.
Due to the lack of time, we have had little opportunity to work with colleagues at other institutions. We have developed a product that could be used by others and could possibly be a benefit to the wider community once it has been fully tested and implemented.
Future Impact
We propose to expand the scope of the project to the whole of the College and the development of course information. This will involve the dissemination of project findings and the improvements made in processes to other teams outside of HE. We are particularly keen to reproduce the systems within Further Education course teams and to improve student records systems to make better use of generated course information.
Conclusions
As previously mentioned, the project was generally successful. We did not achieve all the objectives outlined in the initial submission, but the main aims of refining processes and producing a central repository were achieved. The College had learnt a considerable amount about project planning, time management and process review through taking part in the project and has had an excellent opportunity to involve key decision makers in the development of a new system.
Recommendations
We would recommend that consideration be made within projects for time delays due to changes or loss of staff, potential changes in key objectives, lack of expertise and general project drift. Time needs to be made available for key members of staff to attend project meetings and reviews internally and externally to get full involvement. A clear vision of the use and scope of existing systems would be desirable before starting a project such as this to reduce the time taken to evaluate and choose the appropriate methodology. The use of external expertise to supplement internal staff is highly recommended to cut down on research time and getting key staff ‘up to speed’
Further details: email and contact names etc
Project Director, Kevin Kendall
Project Manager, Paul Brown, Paul.brown@bishopburton.ac.uk
