Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.

Lead Institution: Loughborough 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, stakeholder engagement, change management, loughborough college

Note: This is an abridged version of this project's final report.  The full version is available here.

 

 

Project Summary

Background

As funding for higher education is reduced, and the cost to individuals rises, we see a move towards a consumer-led market for education and increased student expectations. Nowadays, information about a college or university is more likely found via a laptop than in a prospectus. In this competitive climate publicising courses while embracing new technologies is ever more important for institutions.

 

There are three main drivers for making it easier for people to find and compare courses:

• prospective fee-paying students want to know more about the academic experience a course will provide and be able to compare this with other courses
• better informed students are more likely to choose a course that they will complete and be more motivated to achieve better results
• better scrutiny by quality assurance agencies and the Government’s requirement for transparency of publicly funded bodies.

Jisc has made it easier for prospective students to decide which course to study by creating an internationally recognised data standard for course information, known as XCRI-CAP. This will make transferring and advertising information about courses between institutions and organisations, more efficient and effective. The Information Standards Board recognises this sector standard for electronic publishing and collecting of prospectus information.

 

The focus of this new programme is to enable institutions to publish electronic prospectus information in a standard format for all types of courses, especially online, distance, part time, post graduate and continuing professional development. This standard data could then be shared with many different aggregator agencies (such as UCAS, the National Learning Directory, 14-19 Prospectus websites, or new services yet to be developed) to collect and share with prospective students.   (Jisc, n.d.)

Insufficient and inaccurate course marketing information

Loughborough College considered the project an ideal opportunity to improve their own course marketing information. At the start of the project, the data was both insufficient and in some cases inaccurate. This situation could not provide the appropriate calibre of course information to potential applicants or students. Work had to be commissioned to look at this area in more detail and the project call was very timely for the college. The project funding enabled Loughborough College to appoint a project officer dedicated to this work who could work across many teams of the college.

Opportunity to work cross-college

Any work relating to course data had been much partitioned with different teams across the college working on their area of interest relating to courses data. The areas included management information services (MIS), finance, quality, curriculum teams and of course, marketing & communications.

 

Compulsory KIS

The requirement for the college to provide Key Information Set (KIS) data was unavoidable as it was deemed mandatory for all institutions offering Higher Education provision. The KIS data feed had a deadline to meet and so this requirement was seen as a launch pad for the XCRI strand of the project.

 

Mapping of process and events

Within the college, there were a number of existing processes and practices relating to course data. In most instances, these were separate activities fulfilling the needs of a single functional area and very few had any form of documentation. There were practices that had developed over the years and the knowledge was held by individuals.  As part of the project, each of these areas of work was investigated and documented.

 

All of these processes were placed onto a Microsoft Project plan and a timeline produced. This gave an overview of the annual activities across the college and clearly showed peaks and troughs in activity.

 

In particular, curriculum teams were approached many times through the year for information and data about their provision. Frequently, this information request was repeated by another team. In order to eradicate this and to bring about efficiencies, the project looked at how this information could be collected in a timely way and used by multiple areas. This collaborative approach gave greater transparency across the college of how and when requests for information were made.

 

Improved collaboration and cooperation

The project facilitated improved working between the different teams and stakeholders across the college. This has removed duplication of effort, brought greater transparency and introduced efficiencies and savings for the college.

 

Savings and efficiencies

The savings relate to the removal of duplication of effort and therefore freeing staff time for other activities. Efficiencies have been brought about in the way that data is collected, checked and confirmed throughout the year. Greater use is made of the central Management Information System which brings increased return on investment (At the time of writing the management Information System for Student and Curriculum Records is ProSolution supplied by Compass Computer Consultants ltd).

 

What did we learn?

Like many other projects in this Jisc programme, getting the course data ready for KIS and XCRI was not a straight forward task. We were not alone in our task.

 

In the early stages of the project, it was important to identify and meet with all of the departments and people who used course data in any way. The initial project team included a high number of staff of differing grades/levels from across a number of teams. Whilst this was not the first time that this style of project management had been used at the college, it was unusual.

 

We decided early on that the central MIS would be the repository for all of our course data. The software from Compass Computer Consultants Ltd was flexible enough to allow us to add a number of additional attributes to satisfy the XCRI-CAP standard and also our own needs.

 

By holding all data in a central repository, we have been able to service both internal and external requirements in a consistent and accurate way.

“Changes we made to course marketing information have meant we have been able to manipulate data much easier within our own website. This has led to improved navigation options and the ability to apply filters. We haven’t had a complaint from Admissions or Curriculum teams regarding the ability to find courses since these changes were made. These complaints were usually as a result of frustrated students.”   Senior Marketing Officer, Digital Communication team

Working more collaboratively across the teams had led to savings and efficiencies. Whilst, this cannot be quantified at this time, the staff acknowledges that the new processes have removed some of the checking and re-checking activities, the data manipulation activities and that we can respond to data requests much faster.

 

There is now an appetite for change and we are testing revised processes for our commercial teams and their courses. Currently, they have separate systems and web sites to promote and advertise their provision. Once their portfolio of courses has been included in the central repository system, the college will be able to derive many additional benefits. These include mapping and monitoring conversions from enquiries to application, and from application to enrolment. In addition, they will also be able to look at progression from one level of provision to another and to report and analyse destination information relating to course data.

 

In this way, we are still improving the processes and extending the range of stakeholders.

 

Immediate Impact

 

“The KIS widget is an obvious one. Having relevant lifestyle information and other statistics alongside courses helps students in the decision making process and gives them a standard way to compare like for like courses.” Senior Marketing Officer

The collaboration and cooperation of teams has increased productivity, improved working relationships and given greater transparency to the work of all teams involved.

From an institutional perspective we are happier with the information which we publish.

 

Future Impact

In the future, the XCRI data feed may well be consumed internally to produce our own web site information. At this stage, this is not scheduled as we currently hold all of our course data in a central system. 

 

As part of this work involved compiling a cross-college calendar of course data related events, we are going to extend this to include many more business and other key processes. We shall be surfacing this information as a web part on our staff portal with an option to view the information for the week or month ahead. Different categories of information are colour –coded for ease of recognition.

 

The collaborative work practices will continue as this has had a significant impact on our culture and productivity.

 

We can see how course related information can now be taken down to module level and this will improve student choice, registrations and certification.

 

Conclusions

Our conclusions are that this project has delivered the outcomes as required. However, there has been much more added value derived from the project. The establishment of a formalised project team with a structured approach to the tasks has been well regarded by the college.

 

As well as working on course related data and information , the project boundaries were extended to look at other adjacent processes such as curriculum planning , financial modelling and budgeting and general processes and procedures. The disciplines that the project has used have shown how work can be planned and documented during the life of the project.

 

The general view from project team members and consumers of our course data has been favourable.

 

“Actual tangibles are quite a difficult thing to demonstrate. These changes have offered big improvement in the customer experience and yet customers are blissfully unaware of the work that has gone in the background. For me, this is as it should be.”

Senior Marketing Officer, Feb 2013

 

The processes for managing course data for both marketing and student administration purposes are evolving. This project has enabled the college to make significant changes to their working practices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further details: email and contact names etc

Project Manager               Liz Butterworth

Contact email                   Liz.Butterworth@loucoll.ac.uk

Project Webpage URL      http://blogs.loucoll.ac.uk/loucodap/

Project video available on YouTube.