Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.
Lead Institution: London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE)
Learner Provider Type: Higher Education
Project Duration: January 2012 - March 2013
Key Words: Course Data
Case study tags: course data, process improvement, kis, hear,course information, lse, london school of economics
Note: This is an abridged version of this project's final report. The full version is available here.
Project Summary
The LSE approach was to implement a system that would facilitate the xcri-cap feed for some courses that fall within the remit of the Jisc programme scope, but in a manner that would enable easier adoption by other course provision at a later date – an extendable implementation.
The focus of the project was to provide an xcri-cap feed of:
- Summer School courses
- Selected postgraduate courses (‘e-MSc’ programmes as a minimum), and
- Widening Participation courses
The choice of these three is deliberate, as they cover the 3 broad categories of ‘systems’ currently in place for capturing and publishing ‘course’ information at LSE, namely:
- Core data held within SITS as ‘modules’
- Core data held within SITS as ‘courses’
- Core data handled in a bespoke ‘system’ in a manner similar to ‘events’
Most importantly, these three areas allowed the institution to focus on improving systems that had the most gain for LSE and its stakeholders, and therefore the greatest motivation for ensuring success of the project. In particular, improving processes, systems and data quality in an area we knew was problematic and causing inconsistency of data amidst inefficient processes.
This is where the Jisc programme overlapped with a project that the School had been struggling to commence – a project to replace our existing Teaching Quality Assurance and Review Office (TQARO) ‘Calendar’ system which published module information to the web and linked with the published programme regulations. These two elements combined provided the core information supplied to the prospectus team for publishing additional course marketing material, and other stakeholders and systems.
The aim of this project was to make information more readily available and searchable by our customers, and allow the institution to take advantage of future technologies in this area. Additionally the course provision selected also linked into other national initiatives, namely the HEAR and KIS; and our OFFA commitments to Widening Participation. For our response to the HEAR initiative this project approach will enable us to re-use and/or re-purpose the content for modules and additional courses/activity undertaken by our students.
What did we learn?
The course and programme proposal area is relatively complex once the details of the process are explored, which is mainly due to the number of people involved in the process and the number of elements that make up a course or programme. Something seemingly inherent in this activity given the similar messages from other projects.
That there were gaps in the original process. Particularly around the specification of local rules for programmes in the initial proposal stage, and that some of our programme regulations are “a little ad hoc”.
The benefits of a framework approach to development. We now have, effectively, a specialised content management via a workflow, which allows for rapid extension. This has been evident from the speed of developing the programme process on the framework built for courses (modules).
Immediate Impact
- A more efficient process for managing proposals and annual updates is expected.
- A reduction of risk from a previously single point of failure to a documented, automated, workflow.
- A single source of truth for course information able to disseminate new, and updates to, content to individuals and systems reducing the likelihood of inconsistent data/information.
- A better understanding of the processes entailed in this area.
- The final report - as one example of an approach to take to tackling issues in this area, from a business systems perspective.
Future Impact
- Consistent information for users of the data, internally and externally, should reduce the likelihood of misinformation and subsequent issues.
- Savings in staff time from re-keying information in disparate systems.
- Greater visibility of information and greater analysis potential.
- A review will take place in early 2013/14 to evaluate the impact.
Conclusions
The project has been a successful one at LSE. We had some slippage as we originally hoped to be Live by the date of this report, but there are no significant delays to the overall process by the developments going Live shortly. It was almost inevitable that as a first tranche of projects attempting to structure and systemise historically free form information that there were going to be challenges along the way, and it is hoped future projects can learn from the messages of the programme.
In hindsight, and given the work involved in developing a system to manage this information, collaboration around a generic system may have been a better use of collective resource. Notwithstanding the challenges of a one size fits all system, perhaps a more structured and controlled approach to the phases which did not involve such a challenging time frame, with a mid stage appreciation of the complexity involved, may have then engendered such a possibility. As it was, we had to commit early to some development in order to fulfil our ambitions and stated objectives. Additionally, the lack of consumers for the xcri-cap feed is an issue we hope is resolved soon.
Recommendations
As described in our conclusion, it was a challenging timeframe for a complex project, so equivalent programmes need to consider this in the future.
Further details: email and contact names etc
Project Manager Mike Page
Contact email m.page@lse.ac.uk
