Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.

Lead Institution: University of Bradford.

Learner Provider Type: Higher Education

Project Duration: January 2012 - March 2013

Key Words: Course Data

Case study tags: course data, process improvement, stakeholder engagement, enterprise architecture (ea), kis, hear, course information, university of bradford

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

 

 

 

Project Summary

The University applied for Jisc funding to advertise its hard to find courses through the standardised XCRI-CAP 1.2 profile.  It has successfully managed to deliver its XCRI-CAP feed.  However, along the way it has unearthed various data issues that, whilst always existed, have now come to the forefront.  This project has been both about delivering our XCRI-CAP feed and also trying to develop a longer term solution to our course data problems.

 

Whilst an XCRI-CAP feed can be generated easily, the focus has been on sustainability; concluding in an effort to build a Course Data Management system founded on sustainable enterprise architecture, and best practices.  We realize that it is a long process to a sustainable solution, something that we cannot achieve within the time frame set by XCRI-CAP deadline.  The technology and the technical ability to deliver a solution is there, but impact on aligning our business processes needed more work.

 

A number of subject matter experts were commissioned to understand the core issues and find technically sound solutions.  This has helped the university to understand the core factors at the heart of the problem and what it can do to solve the longer term issues.  Course data does not sit in isolation, but constantly interacts with other major systems within our institution, like student data (SITS), Finance, Timetabling, prospectus and website, Library Systems and many other smaller systems.  Whether the university develops an in-house capability to create such a diverse system, or buys one off the shelf, or develops in conjunction with a third party, it must be able to co-exist and interact with all of its other systems, as well as produce output in XCRI-CAP 1.2 and a host of other formats.

 

Hence, this project has been about a journey, along which we have discovered many facets of the problem.  At one level, it has been about fulfilling our immediate goals; that of syndicating our courses in XCRI-CAP compliant format. But it has been much more than that; it has been about discovering how our course information is developed, how various stakeholders are engaged at various processes, how it is quality checked, approved and signed off, how amendments and versioning are managed or not, how we interact with other systems, how communication is managed and finally how we publish this across various formats.  Processes for some of this are quite extensive, for others, only a rudimentary acknowledgement, and it has been the remit of this project to flush out the requirements that would take much of the manual pain away and replace it with a [set of] system[s].

 

What did we learn?

For us, getting engagement has been easy, but we have spent a great deal of effort in ensuring that stakeholders buy into the course approval framework, they are aware of their roles and responsibility within the greater framework and are willing to accept a curbed and in some cases a greater role in ensuring that the process works flawlessly.  As such, this has been the bigger hurdle to cross; not that people were not amenable to a degree of change; the pain points were obvious to warrant and welcome a change, but to model that new ‘single unified consistent business process’ through quality discussions and the use of Enterprise Architecture and process modelling tools has been a challenging task.

 

From the onset, it had become clear that if we were to ‘syndicate’ our course information in a consistent (automated) way; we need to capture our course metadata in a single place.  With input from over 70 staff, all pain points were gathered and categorised. These have been documented in various documents and a sustained drive was made to make the senior management aware of these.  In short these were;

• No single course data repository exists and a single point of truth is required.
• The process of creating a new course needs clarification for the academics at the one end, and complete visibility as it flows through the hands of various stakeholders on the other.  In between, complete transparency, a consistent format to gather and distribute information, alerts, reports and any other mechanism to ensure that the whole process is visible at all times.
• All course data must reside in one place, and we must be able to syndicate it across the board.
• We must hold a detailed record for all correspondence.
• We must have the ability to keep multiple versions of our data and documents.

 

This led to two sets of realisations;

1. We need a Course Data Management System that can store all course related data, which may be required for any of our stakeholders. This data must have full audit trail and versioning.
2. We need the richness of information that captures the process of ‘development of that data’.  This includes interaction between various stakeholders, notes from meetings, the workflow and the approval process, comments at various stages, any other communication, and the supporting market research, composition of various committees and roles of each member within and so on. 

 

So, for us, it isn’t just about WHAT data we have (the static view of the data), but also the dynamic aspect of that data.  This is not simply HOW we arrive at that data, but managing the process of creation of that data with full Quality Assurance procedures adhered to.  This has been quite important for us. We believe, to meet our key business drivers, the ability to simply hold this data is not adequate.  Indeed there are a number of external products like SITS, AKARI software etc. that with a level of customization can do this for us, but our requirements MUST satisfy our Academic Quality Unit (AQU) and the procedures they have put in place.  All other stakeholders (Marketing, Library, IT, Timetabling, Estates etc.) must be consulted at key points and their views incorporated and fully audited.

 

We consider it a great success, and definitely a crossing-over of a big hurdle, that stakeholders recognize their place in the overall process.  However, the process of defining a unified business process, a single data dictionary that can be utilized across the schools for course metadata and across the various systems and various initiatives (XCRI, KIS, HEAR etc.) has helped evolve a ubiquitous language that all stakeholders can use.  We have held a number of workshop and presentations to flush out various entities like Route, Programme, Presentation, and so on.  The historical usage of these, across schools and within our student record system, SITS, tended to hamper a common vocabulary; the steps taken has helped improved the situation. In short, we have clearly defined processes based on an Enterprise Architecture, segregation of responsibilities with defined roles and workflows, and a common parlance to ensure universal understanding.

 

 

Immediate Impact

If we look at simply making the institution aware of its course data issues, then the desired result is already achieved. The awareness, across the board, from different schools to Vice-Chancellor is there.  We have data management issues that need attention.

 

During the initial phases, XCRI was seen as an isolated product with limited scope, a defined outcome and very limited impact to the overall processes of the university.  Only the project bidder had the vision to realise the bigger picture. With the efforts of the XCRI project team and the project board, most people that have engaged in the process have a firm understanding of its importance within the bigger context of university data.  Course data management in an effective way transcends the limited outcome of XCRI-CAP within the minds of the majority.  In an ideal situation you’d want the sustainable course data systems that have been spec’d out, and you’d also want a concerted effort to promote XCRI-CAP feeds.  Whether the latter happens remains to be seen, but there is no doubt efforts are underway to ensure course data management is tackled in a long-term sustainable way, bringing it under the umbrella of ‘core university data’

 

Furthermore there is a genuine desire to do something.  Whilst it is true to an extent that this is borne out of frustration with existing processes, that frustration has always existed.  The momentum and drive created by the XCRI project has given a common voice to that frustration.  The amount of workshops, refining business processes, interest from various groups and the like has enabled us to cultivate a real appetite for course management system that can do XCRI, KIS, HEAR, the online prospectus, the printed prospectus, replace the existing Module Catalogue and so on.

 

The university is reviewing its Student record systems, timetabling, assessment, exam scheduling and various other systems.  There is an overall drive at better quality and more consistent data, a drive to streamline processes, hold single versions of data, produce meaningful reports and a drive to ensure that discussion about our courses and modules takes a centre stage.  XCRI project has given the desired impact to ensure that course data, route and module management is adequately represented.

 

The SITS review is going ahead, irrespective of XCRI, but with XCRI, the review has an understanding of course data requirements; which in itself is a benefit. The interlinking of Student and Course data happens at many levels. The complexities of course data have been spelt out and fed into the Student data project. Thus the SITS review is in a much better position to engage with interests of course data alongside its own requirements.

 

Along with SITS, the process to migrate students to Office 365 is underway; the migration of staff accounts and data will follow shortly.  The opportunity to channel some of our data flow and integrate various approval processes and communication through full (or at least partial) use of SharePoint online is under discussion.

 

Future Impact

Whilst XCRI funding can be attributed to a momentum shift, a gear change, its longer term impact cannot be evaluated.  Indeed for XCRI to have a longer term impact, one of the following two need to have a successful outcome;

 

• Nationwide aggregation and ‘useful’ application of the XCRI-CAP feeds, resulting in clear and visible benefits for academic institutions.  These may be simple web statistics, an increase in application to the courses at the university, especially the hard to find courses, or any number of other parameters that can help gauge a realisable difference between the before and after states.
• An implementation of a course data management system, in its entirety as envisaged through the XCRI project, or in part, that leads to clear benefits.

 

With either of these there may not be a quantifiable measure, but qualitative measure is certainly possible. Any course management system that we implement will impact all staff, stakeholders and a number of other in house systems.  The direct impact of XCRI-CAP feed may be limited, but it is the indirect impact through the course data management system that will be profound.  The cultural change from a manual system, or one based on dated SITS screens to one supporting latest interactive Graphical Interface with intuitive workflow will be challenging.  However, speaking to various stakeholders who have engaged in the project during the specification phase, it will be a welcome change.  Most stakeholders have great enthusiasm and longing for a competent system, however whether the university wishes to support the immediate development of such a system remains to be seen.  Currently, the only impact we can quantify is a realisation that we need a system to manage our course data, a common vocabulary to describe our courses across all schools, a data repository that holds complete data and documents with full versioning and so on.  This realisation has thus far built a momentum that needs to be maintained through further investment. The fear is that this investment may not materialise and the impact is mere visual without realisation of any tangible benefits.

 

We, as the Project Team, have gone into great length to scope areas of functionality that any course data management system needs to fulfil.  In theory, if a system is developed along these lines, then it would not be difficult to quantity the results of a benefit realisation exercise.

 

Conclusions

For us, we measure success on many levels;

• The ability of key personnel to recognise the importance of our data.
• Cultural change; the recognition that we need to do something has resulted in our shared vision of what that something is and a recognition of a simplified process to achieve it.
• Process simplification; we had multiple variants, now we have a single unified process that all schools have bought into and understand the remit of their roles within the bigger process.  Furthermore, they have an acute awareness of the importance of their role, fundamental to the success of any process.
• A clarity of roles; All obscurities from the process are removed, the roles, groups, membership, flow, document formats, stakeholder communications and expectations are all meticulously defined and agreed upon.
• A change in policy making
• A sustainable definition of course data within the bigger framework of university data.

 

XCRI CAP project is best viewed as an ‘enabler’.  Without the funding provided by Jisc, it may not have gained the importance it has.  The next phase of the project that looks at the implementation of a course management system will, it is envisaged, capitalise further on the following benefits.

• Streamline processes.  To streamline and improve the current human and IT processes around course development, management and publication
• Save money.  Streamlined processes should lead to a decrease in the amount of time spent on certain processes leading to a cost benefit.  The ‘single point of truth’ course information will also save money in terms of not having to update external sites – they can aggregate our feed
• Consistency of course information.  Single point of truth for course information which can be used in a number of channels and for a number of purposes
• Wider dissemination of course information.  Using the XCRI-CAP feed we will be able to disseminate our course information through aggregator sites without having to rekey the information
• Better informed students.  Students will be getting an increased level of course information (both in terms of the quality of the information and the amount of information given) in a more timely and consistent manner.  They will be able to make decisions as to which course to study by comparing ‘like with like’ leading to better retention and completion
• Sector-wide improvements pertaining to course information.  Dissemination and sharing with other institutions will enable the sector as a whole to improve its course information management

 

Recommendations

The wider community needs to understand the benefits a shared Course Advertising Profile can bring.  It needs to consolidate efforts in ensuring that a set of common vocabulary is developed and maintained for their own benefit.

 

Jisc should not let the project slip under the radar.  We have made immense progress at the data production end; however, if data consumption does not take off, all hard-work carried out so far to convince various internal stakeholders can be undone quite easily.  There is a strong desire to see the benefits of XCRI-CAP at the senior level. If an open and transparent benefit realisation exercise does not happen at the Jisc level that provides an incentive, somehow, to carry out a similar exercise at the university level, then we will see little force behind the project in the longer term.

 

Further details: email and contact names etc

Project Director  Shirley Congdon

Project Manager Russell Allen

Contact email  r.m.allen@bradford.ac.uk