If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.
You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

Course Data - UCLan

Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.

Lead Institution: University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).

Learner Provider Type: Higher Education

Project Duration: January 2012 - March 2013

Key Words: Course Data

Case study tags: course data, process improvement, enterprise architecture (ea), course information, stakeholder engagement
change management university of central lancashire
Note: This is an abridged version of this project's final report. The full version is available here.

Project Summary

The Course Data @ UCLan project strived to review the current practices with regard to managing course related data from conception of a course to award. The project aimed to develop a system that would produce the XCRi-CAP feed, striving towards a single source of course information that would meet the needs of the stages of the course information life cycle including; conception of a course, course approval, advertising, delivery and award. In addition to this, the system would also enable the university to produce the XCRi-CAP XML feed from the single source to ensure consistent, accurate and up to date information The project strived to take an Enterprise Architecture (EA) approach to ensure it was business led and the project outcomes were efficient, met the business need and cost effective. The business analysis approach was based on the Service Design Approach, involving stakeholders from all aspects of the course information life cycle.

It was identified at an early stage of the project that there were significant differences between the course information required for advertising and the course information required for course approval, in addition while the data mapping identified there was cross over between the KIS and HEAR data requirements, there were also significant differences, which meant that the “single source” approach needed to be re-considered and discussions focused around a record of a course, with different groups of data from the relevant purposes, sharing data where possible. The “ideal” processes, identified through the business analysis, to meet the needs of the business and resolve the issues identified across the course information lifecycle, will require significant development and therefore it was recommended that further phases of the project be introduced. This phase, phase two, developed the ideal solution and worked towards developing outputs that aligned with the ideal so this project could be further developed upon. Towards the end of 2012 an internal bid was submitted to the UCLan Information Strategy Panel to fund phase three. This has been approved and project initiation began in Jan 2013.

This project focused on improving elements of the business process from the development of a course through, advertising, delivery and award, to make it more transparent and effective across the university. The project saw the development of an extension to the current course information system to include a repository for course advertising information to produce the XCRi-CAP feed and provide a single source of data for course advertising information, linked to the master course data. In addition the course approval process was reviewed to formalise and align the marketing elements of the process – including adding the course to UCAS – and addressed issues such as transparency of progress and suggested courses for development. The new process has also been facilitated on SharePoint which is the platform for the intranet

What did we learn?

The key lessons learned from this project were;

The value of facilitating discussion between all stakeholders in the same room
The value of looking at the bigger picture
The value of developing the “ideal” for future proofing
The benefits of Service Design
Not to underestimate the complexities of the data and its usage and to consider all requirements before using data in a certain way
The importance of assessing and aligning other projects within the university and good communication
The benefits of Enterprise Architecture
The value of having the right stakeholders on the project board and the project team

Immediate Impact

The impact has been segregated into two sections; the impact of the project and the impact of the deliverables.

Impact of project

The impact of the project will not yet be fully known until the internal completion process, which also captures the lesson learnt. As a point of interest this project and the Jisc funded Business Upgrade project are complementary as this project has been able to validate many of the recommendations of the Business Upgrade Project.

The impact of the project was;

It was able to demonstrate the advantages of a business led approach
It was able to demonstrate the advantages of having a suitable member of the business as the owner of the project
It was able to demonstrate the value of looking at the bigger picture to future proof deliverables and ensure alignment with future developments
It was able to identify and highlight issues to senior managers, i.e. the approach for courses with multiple options
It was able to highlight the benefits of a EA approach
An enhanced relationship between the stakeholders of the processes effected and a better understanding of how the different stages of the process impact on each other

Deliverables

While it is still too early in the project to assess the full impact of the project, the immediate benefits of the deliverables of the project are;

A refined course approval process, which formally includes Admissions and Advancement processes
A more transparent course approval process, which will better enable tracking of courses progressing through the process
A master source of course advertising data resulting in consistency in the data published
Improved access to course information for prospective students, which should enable them to make more informed and ultimately better course choices - we are expecting to see the impact of this reflected in our retention and progression figures, student satisfaction, results and conversions.
More efficient business process which we expect to result in a reduction in resources to undertake tasks and reduced data entry
A reduction in the reliance on individuals to send emails or chase for information as the system automatically prompts tasks and stakeholders can check on the progress through the system. This is not intended to reduce communication between stakeholders, more to help them identify who to communicate with and when i.e. if the Schools Marketing Team in Advancement can see that a course has been approved but the course information form has not been completed they will know they need to liaise with that staff member. In addition they no longer have to rely on academic staff telling them a course has been approved – they can check for themselves.
The information collection process has made the University re-think who the information is collected from. For example, academics were often asked to provide information such as cost of the course UCAS code, etc. for which they were not the creator nor the best source. As a result academics were providing information that was being amended or corrected and subsequently wasting their time. There has now been a reduction in the amount of data the academics are asked to provide for course marketing purposes.

Future Impact

While the project has not discussed on the printed prospectus, the impact of course information being published in this way, it is expect to further speed up the move to marketing of courses to digital media. UCLan has already removed course information from the prospectus and through the Jisc Elevator Programme has developed mobile apps to enable the students to access course information on their mobile. The search functionality on the website has also been enhanced significantly. The prospectus is not a cost effective approach to providing this amount of information. It has been noted that there is still a demand for something physical to take away from events such as UCAS Fairs and Open Days. How this data can be converted into something physical that can be given to prospective students will have to be considered.

As there are so many initiatives taking place that will impact on the same measures/KPIs as this project, it will be difficult to pinpoint the extent of impact it has had. However, as noted above, with the release of this data we are expecting to see an increase in conversions, retention and progression rates, student satisfaction and results (2.1s and above), ultimately leading to an improved position in the league tables. This will be monitored through student data, internal student satisfaction surveys and the NSS. In addition we are hoping to see an improvement in staff satisfaction with the course approval and advertising process assessed though feedback from staff. However, it is anticipated that this impact will not be identifiable until next year and the next set of results are released.

The improved university website should enhance the number of hits on course pages; however the team track where the web traffic comes from so we should be able to see if the traffic is coming from sites publishing our data. The number of hits on course information pages will be monitored and compared to hits during the same period last year so assess if there has been an increase in traffic.

Further benefits have been identified where this project can resolve other issues. For example there is a Marketing friendly title for a course, which was not previously stored on Banner and therefore manually uploaded to Achiever, the CRM system, which is used to engage with prospective students. Now this data is included on Banner it is expected that the extract uploading data from Banner to Achiever can be amended to include this additional data and subsequently removing the manual up load.

Finally the approach of this project - looking at the bigger picture and developing the ideal – has highlighted the need for more work to be undertaken. The University’s vision is that the ideal developed through this project will be what the other phases/projects under the course information programme work towards so they have a common goal. Phase three, which consists of two projects – module information and HEAR data for section 6.1 is now in start-up. Phase three is looking at the next level of course information - module level. It is expected that there might be further bids/requires for subsequent phases of the project, working towards the ideal. This approach has been successful in engaging customer buy-in as the project is able to deliver achievable benefits within the project cycle period (usually) a year for UCLan) while still working to a bigger picture which may take several years, but due to the approach of breaking it into phases, can be flexible to meet changing factors i.e. new external data demands, changes to the HE environment etc.

Conclusions

General conclusions

The project provided a useful platform to demonstrate the benefits of different approaches such as Enterprise Architecture, Service Design and Benefits realisation. In addition the project enabled the University to consider course information in a wider context than just course advertising and also allowed the identification of future benefits from the project. The cautious approach to build flexible deliverables that could be adapted to align with future changes resulted in the development of a relatively simple but effective solution, which is expected to have significant benefits. In addition this attitude was reflected throughout the project and the more complex solution for the course information repository was built with the ability to add more data and use addition fields not included at this stage in the project that UCLan may wish to include once the usage of the XML feeds was better understood.

Conclusions relevant to the wider community

Depending on how the data is used and presented by aggregators, it is anticipated that the provision of course information in this format will be beneficial to the HE community if it has the anticipated impact expected.

The project is likely to generate more benefits for the university in that it will allow others to make our course information available through other means and meet more user demands, which as individuals, universities may not be able to do in a cost effective way. It will also allow universities to monitor the methods that are most popular for our prospective students to access course information and this can inform further developments in their marketing strategies.

Conclusions relevant to Jisc

The conclusions above are relevant to Jisc, however, I think it is worth noting that the different releases of the data definitions document during the project caused frustration for the developers. It would have been better to have confirmed the definitions prior to the project starting.

One restraint that the project found was that the uncertainty of how the data was going to be used and what data items would be used by aggregators. Initially the project team hoped to develop a solution that included all data items in the XCRi-CAP data definitions document except the fax number. However, once the complexity of the project was fully understood, it was agreed that the focus needed to be on the data that was a priority for UCLan and to ensure the system could be enhanced to include additional data fields as there were either added to the data definitions or as usage of the data was understood.

Recommendations

General recommendations

Projects that seek to use data from core institutional systems should strive to use an Enterprise Architecture approach. They should consider not only the strategic benefits but also the benefits at an operational level as to enhance engagement with the stakeholders and give the project a more targeted scope. This also helps the developers understand what any technical solution is striving to achieve.

Arguably it would probably have been a lot quicker and easier to have delivered the XCRi-CAP feed as an entirely separate project, potentially just pulling the data from the website. However, UCLan felt it was important that this be aligned to the wider course information picture to improve efficiency within the business. If this approach is to be taken, it is recommended that a service design (or similar) approach is taken involving key stakeholders from all aspects of the course information processes as it is likely you will discover that there is activity going on in one area that others were not aware of that could impact the project.

While the project looked at the wider course information life cycle, some additional scoping exercises would have been beneficial to identify cross over with other processes and systems that were not picked up in the Service Design Approach.

The value of running workshops to undertake services design, scoping, benefits realisation, etc. with stakeholders should not be underestimated: Not only will they provide invaluable information for the project but they are also an excellent way to engage and communicate with stakeholders for change management.

Recommendations for the wider community

It is recommended that the wider community also engage in this programme and seek to release the course information to provide students with a consistent approach from all universities. If not then it may become confusing for students – or the universities who do not release data in this way may find the programme actually has a negative impact on them in that students don’t consider them.

Recommendations for Jisc

The impact of this programme across the sector needs to be considered and potentially a comparison undertaken between the universities who have participated and those that haven’t in order to get a good understanding of the benefits and aggregator and subsequently potential student use of the data. This will enable projects to understand where future developments need to be focused.

It is recommended that Jisc look at other ways the data released could be utilised I.e, by UCAS so it can have wider benefits to HEIs and ultimately the students. In addition it is recommended that Jisc categorise the projects from this programme into those who simply produced and XCRi-CAP feed up to those who have taken a holistic approach to course data. Once categories have been established it is recommended that Jisc produce benefits and dis benefits maps to help universities identify which approach would most suit them by mapping the issues they have to the benefits and dis-benefits.

Further details: email and contact names etc

Project Director      Alison Blackburn, as nominated by Deputy Vice Chancellor (Strategic Planning & Performance Management)

Project Manager     Lucy Nelson

Contact email          LPNelson@uclan.ac.uk

Project Web URL http://www.uclan.ac.uk/information/services/rustel/Making_the_most_of_your_course_data.php