Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.
Lead Institution: Edge Hill University.
Learner Provider Type: Higher Education
Project Duration: January 2012 - March 2013
Key Words: Course Data
Case study tags: course data, course information, course information, stakeholder engagement
Note: This is an abridged version of this project's final report. The full version is available here.
Edge Hill Course Data
Project Summary
Edge Hill University’s Course Data project implemented a framework and system for managing marketing information for CPD, online and Postgraduate courses. The course management system is an extension of WordPress, the University’s Website Content Management System and is modelled around the XCRI-CAP (eXchanging Course Related Information, Course Advertising Profile) standard for course marketing information.
The framework for collecting course information is based around processes established in the Faculty of Health and Social Care who are also the first adopters of the course management system. The WordPress plugin designed to create XCRI-CAP feeds and use the data for publishing webpages, printable PDF course leaflets and an improved course search system.
Dissemination activity for the project included a workshop for key stakeholders from across the university including course tutors and representatives from central Corporate Communications and IT Services departments.
What did we learn?
Decision to park FAS/FoE
XCRI-CAP feed
Overall the project was successful in its objectives to improve the way course information is managed and presented and in generating XCRI feeds which can be used as the basis for internal services and published externally for third party aggregators.
Dissemination activity has led to broad buy-in from a range of stakeholders and feedback from staff in Faculties and the central marketing team has been very positive.
The decision early in the project to limit initial rollout of the system has ensured a successful deployment in those areas and provided a best-practice model for other parts of the university.
Stakeholder Feedback
Vital to the project’s success was to ensure key stakeholders were happy with how the new system functioned and that it produced the right outputs. Colleagues from Corporate Communications and the Faculty of Health and Social Care supplied feedback on relevant areas of the project.
For Corporate Communications, the major benefit has been in allowing Faculties to do more themselves as Web Content Editor, Steve Johnson explained:
A key benefit of the XCRI project has been how it has allowed the faculty to take full ownership of CPD health and social care module content. The content has been quality controlled within the faculty for around 18 months but with the new system they're now able to action any updates themselves.
The new system also allows module dates and times to be presented in a much slicker manner, with dropdowns showing a preview of the start date and campus of each intake, making the presentation of modules with multiple intakes much easier to browse and digest. The faculty will also be able to link related modules through tags and keywords in ways they haven't been able to before.
The potential to generate course leaflets from the website information will remove the need for the faculty to store two versions of the same information (in Word and on the website) and allow a more professional looking documents be printed and disseminated to prospective students.
Director of Corporate Communications, Roy Bayfield sees further benefits as XCRI is adopted by other organisations:
We now have a robust, structured system for managing diverse course information including short course and CPD provision. This will underpin expansion of this type of work, facilitating standardised presentation of quality-assured information and the mediation of a pan-University product range. The possibility of the XCRI feed providing partners/clients with current information to use in their own web pages is particularly appealing.
The Faculty of Health and Social Care’s Marketing & Enterprises Officer Rachel Knowles has identified benefits to both the Faculty and potential students:
It’s now easier for our CPD students to access all the course information they need, when they need it. This is essential for busy health and social care professionals balancing the demands of work with their professional development needs.
The Faculty has embraced the opportunity to promote the vast choice of professional development courses it offers. Improved presentation of information and better search facilities allow us to really showcase our courses to prospective students.
Scope of deployment
Mid-way through the project we made the decision to limit the scope of the initial roll-out of the course management system to a single Faculty. This was based on the findings of the early work on identifying sources of course information in each faculty and the ways that information was managed. The Faculty of Health and Social Care (FoHSC) was best placed to take advantage of the developments made in phase 2 of the project and in the best position to implement the course management framework with staff already in place who could take on administrative roles in uploading information to the course database.
The rollout in the FoHSC has shown the other faculties a best practice model for managing course information and given them a clearer idea of the resources they need to allocate to ensure a successful adoption of the framework and system.
Development User Testing
With a short timescale for development and deployment of the course management database following the decision to build a central system rather than aggregate data, it was vital that users were closely involved in the project. We took an agile approach to software development, iterating functionality and design frequently rather than undertaking a long scoping exercise at the start of the build phase.
User testing was a key part of this process in order to ensure administrative interfaces were usable and the correct level of technical detail was exposed.
Card Sort - UI Exercise
We did a card sort exercise which gave the structure for the CMS page. The result was an ordering of the input fields in the most logical way for the users. This adds efficiency and ease of use to the update process.
It involved a number of people from our department, including the people who would be using the system. The participants were given cards containing the different input fields (start date, module credits etc) and asked to group them in a logical way. This was to inform the interface, to order it in the best way. The six participants had different perspectives, giving different slants on the groupings of information. Seeing so many different and logically correct groupings helped us to understand the information better.
User Feedback and Questioning.
The goal is to give the user the most useful, efficient and simplest to use product. The presumption with gaining their feedback is that they have the best idea of what would work best for them.
We composed a set of questions before each meeting to find out what would be most useful and what functionality should be included. Key questions were: How do they want it doing? What’s best for them and how could it be better? We went through all the XCRI fields and other stored information asking if they were right and if they needed to be changed.
Some specific examples of questions involved:
- Whether to build in any potential in the presentation to override the course
- Possibility of extra hidden options for lesser used functionality, revealed when needed
- Content on the frontend
- Captions and form validation
At every stage the users opted for simplicity. Their feedback made the developing product better, as it became moulded to their way of doing things. It also gave them an understanding of the system before delivery, and allowed the solution of any major problems at a time when they could have been changed easily.
Immediate Impact
The development of the Course Management Framework within the Faculty of Health and Social Care has improved the quality of course information for CPD, online and PG provision. Information is more consistent and changes can be make more quickly ensuring prospective students always have access to the latest details. The course data has a range of marketing uses including improved website, printable PDF course leaflets and better course search.
There is an increased awareness in the Faculties of Education and Arts and Sciences about CPD/Online/PG course marketing. They are beginning to identify areas of activity that can be promoted and adopting the framework used by FoHSC for their own courses. The framework provides a solid foundation on which to build workflow and technical solutions that fit the individual needs of Faculties and Departments.
The implementation of the course management system as a WordPress plugin adds to the range of functionality available within the website content management system and has helped to drive engagement with the wider Faculty website. By placing course information directly alongside other content, courses have greater visibility than ever before.
Future Impact
Proposals to continue roll-out of course management system to other departments. Through implementation with the Faculty of Health and Social Care we have identified a model of managing course marketing information at a devolved level. While this may not be the only model it acts as a starting point for conversations with other Faculties and Departments.
Further integration with website including course listings within Faculty and Department website; enterprise website and fully merged course search.
Conclusions
Our experience in the project leads us to conclude that:
- It is possible to adapt course information that has been developed and maintained in diverse forms, into structured content
- This process is achievable with a reasonable level of resource
- The information can be output as an XCRI-CAP feed as well as delivering other desirable outputs
- Staff from a range of areas can appreciate the potential benefits for their areas
- Outputs can be readily explained in lay terms so that benefits are clearly identifiable
- Outputs can be used to support a range of marketing processes including relationship marketing, sales, CRM (eg matching individual and corporate 'purchasers' with 'products'), 'cross-selling', events, search marketing and possibly more
- The system itself could be an enhancement to the market offer of an HEI to a client organisation, as the latter could embed quality-assured, timely course information into their own online systems.
Recommendations
General recommendations:
- Adopting XCRI-CAP need not be particularly onerous. By making use of a lightweight website content management system it is possible to blend course management with existing workflows.
- Reuse of course data is an important aspect to gaining buy-in. When the institution can see internal benefits to course promotion then the case for adopting an XCRI-CAP based system is easier to make.
Recommendations for Jisc:
- Continue development of the XCRI specification and promote example uses of the data.
- Get XCRI adopted by key users – without active use it is hard to maintain a working feed.
Further details: email and contact names etc
Project Director Lesley Munro
Project Manager Ken Sumner and Michael Nolan
Contact email michael.nolan@edgehill.ac.uk
Project Web URL http://blogs.edgehill.ac.uk/coursedata
