Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.
Lead Institution: London Metropolitan University.
Learner Provider Type: Higher Education
Project Duration: January 2012 - March 2013
Key Words: Course Data
Case study tags: course data, process improvement, course information, london metropolitan university
Note: This is an abridged version of this project's final report. The full version is available here.
Integrated Course Data Management project
Project Summary
The University is committed to supporting the HE sector goal of providing greater transparency of course information by improving access for all stakeholders to information about the courses we offer, and by enabling meaningful comparisons with other institutions and informed choices. In line with this goal, the University is revamping the University website and improving our online presence generally, including how we present our course offer to current and prospective students and other stakeholders. We are also committed to streamlining and automating our curriculum management processes to drive down costs and improve data quality.
To support this intent, the ICDM project has achieved the following:
- Implemented an application to maintain course and module information in a centralised database that is integrated with other enterprise systems and the University Website. The database is known as the Integrated Course Data Management System (ICDMS) or more informally as the Course Offer Database (COD).
- Redesigned our course planning processes around the ICDMS.
- Developed a feed to make the course data available to third parties in an industry standard format (XCRI-CAP) that will enable it to be aggregated with course information provided by other HE and FE institutions.
What did you learn?
Purpose built solutions can save time in the longer term
Before the start of the project we considered three broad options for achieving the objectives of the project:
- Implementing an off the shelf, purpose designed course information management system
- Developing and implementing our own purpose designed system
- Utilising existing systems, in particular the student records and content management systems.
An off the shelf solution would have been preferred, but initial investigations found that the only suitable products would have been more expensive and taken longer to deliver, taking procurement and the lead time on vendor consultancy into account, than an in-house solution.
The development, though non-trivial, went more or less to plan. Once implemented, using the new database to drive the University website and produce feeds for different purposes was reasonably straight forward and quick to achieve. For example the specification and development of the XCRI CAP feed took less than 15 work days to achieve. So the first lesson learned is that purpose built systems, based on a robust design and a good flexible data structure, can save effort in the longer term when making use of the data.
Business change is more difficult than system development
Although the technical issues we faced were not trivial, they were straight forward relative to agreeing requirements and new business processes, and getting commitment to new ways of working. Agreeing and implementing changes to business processes can take longer than you think as people find it hard to visualise and agree to new methods of working. It can also be difficult to get commitment from the person at a sufficiently senior level to agree the changes, particularly where there are conflicting views.
The world doesn’t stand still whilst you are implementing change
Most change projects with duration of more than 6 months will be aiming at a moving target. In particular the ICDM Project had to cater for a review of UG / PG provision that was running in parallel with the project which meant that some of the requirements (e.g. course coding rules, course architecture) were not clear and the application needed to support new and old style courses. Also the University entered into a new collaborative venture with a partner institution which had a different approach to the relationship between a course and its pathways, and which had UG/PG course start points that are not tied to the academic year.
Curriculum management impacts on more areas of the University than one might think
Virtually every department in the University has some interest in the curriculum management processes, and they have different interests and perspectives on what really matters. For example the focus of Marketing (presenting an attractive view of our course offer at a time to attract potential students), Registry (maintaining accurate records of the courses and modules actually offered), Faculties (delivering a relevant, high quality curriculum), Estates (providing the required teaching rooms whilst maximizing utilisation of space), Finance (ensure costs effectiveness of the courses we offer).
Operational issues take precedence over business change
It is vital to assess the risks of possible project delays and include appropriate budget and schedule contingency into planning. The University faced a number of challenges over the period the project was running which deflected key stakeholders and project resource away from the ICDM project.
Benefits estimation and agreement is a discrete project activity. It needs to be correctly resourced and responsibility needs to be clearly defined
Detailed estimation, planning and agreement of project benefits can be a significant undertaking. It is important for projects to resource this as a discrete activity and to make sure that responsibility for achieving this is clearly defined. If this task is given to project team members fully committed to delivering the solution there is a high risk the benefits work will be sacrificed in favour of ensuring that the required project outputs are delivered.
Benefits realisation must be owned by business owners
Project benefits will only be realised through staff actively engaging with and maintaining use of new ways of working and new systems long after a project has completed. It is important that the business managers and staff feel a sense of ownership of the proposed changes and a commitment to achieve the benefits that have been agreed in their ongoing operational activity.
Immediate Impact
Current curriculum management processes are defined and better understood. This understanding has made departments more aware of the impact of their own work on that of others. For example a number of Faculty staff commented that they had not previously understood the prospectus maintenance and publication process, and deadlines, and as a result information is often incomplete and provided late.
The process of loading course and module data to the Course Offer Database identified many issues with data quality that have been resolved. Going forward, course and module data is now defined, better understood, and better managed so data quality will be further enhanced.
Future Impact
The main benefits of the project will be realised following project closure, when we devolve responsibility for maintaining course data to the faculties and the new database is fully integrated with other enterprise systems and the website.
Impact area against anticipated impact description
Prospective students -
More accessible, better quality information about courses and modules, will lead to better choices about which courses to apply for.
Current students -
More accessible, better quality information about courses and modules, will lead to better programme planning.
Marketing -
Better quality and more accessible course information available for marketing. Easier to maintain and change and manage different copy for different purposes
Faculties and other departments -
Better quality and more accessible data will lead to better decisions within faculties and other departments
University efficiency -
Simpler processes, less effort to maintain data in multiple sources, less effort to correct errors and resolve issues created by errors, less effort to publish details of the offer, will improve and to end processing times and drive down costs. Main impacted functions:
- Academic Registry
- Quality Enhancement Unit
- Marketing
- Course / Module Leaders
- Recruitment Co-ordinators
University reputation -
Better quality and more accessible data will improve the University’s reputation
IT Systems -
Simpler interfaces and better quality systems will reduce the effort to maintain systems and reduce the risk of system failure.
Prospective Students -
Beneficiary - Easier access to improved info on course offer
Government Agencies -
Beneficiary - Easier access to improved info on course offer
Aggregators -
Beneficiary - Recipients of course data via XCRI-CAP feed
Conclusions
This was a very worthwhile project which has involved many areas of the University. There is now a much better appreciation of the value of accurate and well managed information about the course offer, and a much better understanding of the curriculum management processes. Our UG / PG course and module data has been cleansed and loaded to the ICDM, where it is now managed. Short course data will be loaded shortly after. When the ICDM is fully operational and the redesigned processes implemented, later this year, there will be very significant benefit to the University.
More specific conclusions are covered in the 'What Did You Learn?' section above
Recommendations
- A purpose built (off the shelf or in-house) course information management system, at the hub of curriculum management processes to manage course data from business case to deletion, is the easiest way to get course data under control, simplify processes, and improve marketing. (We are well on the way to doing this).
- Flexibility in application and data design of the course information management system is essential to future proof the solution (We did this).
- Establish an effective Project Board at the right level in the organisation, and from the right departments, to provide the required Leadership and to balance conflicting interests and resolve cross departmental / faculty issues (We didn’t do this as well as should have)
- Establish a joint project team from the departments who need to make a significant contribution to the project: Registry / Marketing / ISS (We tried to do this but with limited success)
- Use of facilitated workshops to get input from other stakeholders: Course leaders/Recruitment Co-ordinators/Quality Unit/Academic advisors/ Library staff (We held workshops but not enough as it was difficult to get the right people to commit the time).
- Good communication is vital so that all stakeholders know what you are doing and why (We could have done more of this – we could particularly have made better use of our Project Website).
- Implement change in manageable steps (We are doing this – the current project is second of three phases).
- Plan with plenty of contingency to allow for change and unavailability of key staff due to fire-fighting (We did this – the initial project plan had an end date of December 2012).
- Ensure that responsibility for benefits estimation and agreement on realisation plans is clearly defined and that this task is correctly resourced. Although the project will in large part deliver the intended benefits, it was not possible to perform a detailed quantitative estimation of the benefits or produce a detailed plan for benefits realisation. This is because the efforts of the project team were devoted to ensuring the delivery of a high quality solution. (We didn’t do this).
Further details: email and contact names etc
Project Director Raghu Vydyanath, Director ISS
Project Manager Peter Short, Lead Business Analyst
Contact email p.short@londonmet.ac.uk
Project Web URL http://blogs.londonmet.ac.uk/jisc-icdm/
