Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.

Lead Institution: University of Cambridge.

Learner Provider Type: Higher Education

Project Duration: January 2012 - March 2013

Key Words: Course Data

Case study tags:  course data, process improvement, stakeholder engagement, change management, hear,hear,kis, hear, course information, university of cambridge

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project Summary

The project started with the aim of developing a XML feed for marketing the University of Cambridge Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses in a standard XML format called XCRI-CAP (eXchanging Course Related Information, Course Advertising Profile), but lead to far greater, wider-reaching improvements in terms of:

• Investigating and documenting the course management processes.
• Reducing the number of paper documents being emailed around.
• Introducing online forms for capturing new and updated course information.
• Decreasing the number of requests that Departments receive from the central administration division, for the same information in different formats.
• Introducing a central course data repository to be the definitive source of courses and programme specifications.

 

The project initially seemed straightforward: harvest course marketing information into a standard XML feed and publish the data. After a long investigation it turned out that data was stored in numerous formats in a variety of places, and that different pieces of the data were ‘owned’ by various administrators, who didn’t know how their information fitted into the bigger picture, or that their small request for information was overburdening Departmental Administrators, who were receiving numerous emails and phone calls from the various administrators in the central administration team requesting the same information over and over again.

 

This led the project team to document the Course Management business processes, from initial course concept through registering students and annually updating the course, programme specification and related websites. A report was written about the processes, with recommendations for improving the processes, reducing the number of documents and introducing a central course data repository for storing course information to feed marketing websites, KIS and XCRI-CAP and produce reports for the central administration division. The project’s key stakeholder is taking these recommendations forward. The team also manually harvested the undergraduate and postgraduate courses into a central course data store, and published the XCRI-CAP feed.

 

What did we learn?

Data sources

Trying to find the data sources was a time consuming and confusing process, which led us into mapping the course journey lifecycle to understand where course data originates, the many forms and documents it starts in, and the forms and places it ends up in. The data was fragmented, distributed and duplicated across sections, spreadsheets, documents and websites, with each section having their ‘view’ of the data and not realising that others held the same data in different formats. Seeing the overall picture of the fragmentation and duplication led to being able to make recommendations for improving the processes.

 

Using the process maps developed by the business analysts, the team were more easily able to communicate and illustrate the Course Data journey, which in turn helped engage the people who can make change happen: “I didn't realise it was that bad”. Having a visual picture of the processes helped to quickly convey the processes to senior administrative staff, who are short on time to read lengthy reports, and helped gain their buy in.

 

Engaging stakeholders

Engaging the stakeholders was sometimes difficult, sometimes easy. Some people were very willing to share their knowledge, while others were more reticent and unable to see the bigger picture. Using a bottom up approach, while quoting the sponsorship of senior administrative staff helped with gaining access to data holders, while others had to be worked around and colleagues spoken to before gaining access to the less accessible data holders. The Project Manager had previously worked with the Head of Teaching and Learning at the Institute of Continuing Education and as there was an existing relationship it was easy to obtain buy in to the project and to gain access to their course database to prove the centralised courses data concept.

 

There is still a change management journey to undergo along in some areas: Undergraduate Admissions are concerned about the potential of other people changing the wording of the outward facing marketing descriptions and want to make sure there is a logical hierarchy between this and the course information provided by departments. While other areas are engaged and actively embracing changes to forms and ways of working.

 

Finding solutions

The project team identified the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education as having a central course data store, which feeds relevant systems, and receives input from the student record system. Alongside that, the Jisc report Feast or famine: progress in implementing standardised course data feeds, written by Dr Gill Ferrell, was also a great help in identifying other institutions, who have developed, or were working towards developing a broader curriculum management solution in tandem with their XCRI-CAP feed.

 

These solutions were all investigated and discussed, and used to develop thinking around a solution that would best work at the University of Cambridge. 

 

Having an existing course data system, albeit for one specialised department, proved that this database was useful for capturing the XCRI-CAP data and helped sell the case for an institution-wide database for course data. The fragmented, distributed and duplicated nature of course data information, the difficulty in harvesting course marketing information into the XCRI-CAP feed and the As-Is course data maps helped to identify that a central course database, managed by the central administrative division, would reduce the duplication of data and effort, and lead to automatically harvesting course data into an XCRI-CAP feed.

 

Working together

• The project is most likely to stick and have an ongoing life if closely aligned with other internal projects such as the Holistic Admin project, currently underway to streamline and improve administrative processes within the University.
• In particular, we found that the Business Process Mapping Group were keen to work with our project team as they could use our process mapping output for other projects they had identified.

 

Lack of resources

It is hard to make room for a new system such as the proposed Course Data database when the central IT team, where this would logically be developed and embedded, is too busy to consider projects outside their usual remit.

 

Immediate Impact

Difference the project has made in our institution

Engagement, understanding and progress to better workflows

• Departments are communicating with each other to join up work and improve processes.
• Central administration are talking to the Department identified as having a central, successfully functioning course data store, as a potential solution for the central administrative division’s course data/programme specification management system.
• The Business Improvement team are joining up key process mapping initiatives so that departments don’t redo work that has already been done by another department.

Improved processes

• Processes are being streamlined to reduce duplication of effort and requests for data.
• Supporting documentation is being combined and reduced to match the streamlined processes.
• An online form has being set up to capture information into a central data source, making the data accessible for the future, rather than emailing around numerous documents to be updated and stored on hard drives where they are not available to others looking for the information.

Sustainability

• The project has input into the Holistic Admin project to take forward some of the recommended improvements that won’t be completed by the end of the Jisc funding.
• Internal staff have been involved in the project to make sure knowledge is kept within the department and carried forward when the contract project manager finishes up at the end of the project.
• The project has had sufficient impact on central administration staff that there is a desire, and understood need, to develop a central course data repository to manage:
• Programme specification creation and updating
• Course information creation and updating
• Automatic updating of the Student Record System and Undergraduate and Graduate marketing websites
• Automatic feeding of XCRI-CAP and KIS.
• Senior central administration staff have applied for central funding to buy a system or project team to define, develop and implement the central course data repository.

How the wider community has benefited from our project

• During the initial meetings with course data stakeholders it became apparent that it was difficult to talk to the data owners using the XCRI-CAP terminology, so one of our developers created a summary spreadsheet, containing the structure of the XCRI-CAP data items and some basic information about them. This enabled us to more easily communicate with the data owners as to what XCRI-CAP is, what fields were needed in the XCRI-CAP, which were Mandatory, Preferred or Optional, what format they should take, and a description to expand on what the content of the field should contain.
• We communicated this spreadsheet via the Course Data email list and other projects found it was useful to them to use in communicating with their data owners. Allan Paul also found it useful and loaded the spreadsheet to the ‘Data Definitions and Vocabulary Framework’ page on the XCRI Knowledge Base website:  http://www.xcri.co.uk/data-definitions-and-vocabulary-framework.html. The spreadsheet can now be accessed by future projects via the link: A summary spreadsheet giving the structure of the data items and some basic information can be found here.

 

How the project has changed the attitudes of our stakeholders

Appreciation within the central administrative services that it is possible to make improvements.

• Realisation of how bad the processes were, and wanting to improve them.
• Willingness to engage in cross-departmental collaboration to improve processes.
• Realisation of the wider impact that each person’s seemingly small request for information has on Departments, and the number of requests Departments receive for the same information in different formats.
• Appreciation of the potential need to provide XCRI-data in the future. This includes what data is needed and the potential difficulties and costs of continuing to collect this without improving the processes and places where the data is held.
• The Web Services team in MISD are more open to collaborative working with the CARET team, and the idea of a central Course Database for the central Administrative services team.

 

Future Impact

The meetings held by the project team, with the stakeholders and data holders, has introduced people in different departments to each other. It is anticipated that this will help foster future collaboration and reduce silo working.

 

Working collaboratively between CARET and MISD’s Web Services team to develop a central authoritative repository for course data and programme specifications will impact on:

 

• Central administration services as they will have fewer documents to email around, improved ways of working, and better communication between divisions within central admininstration.
• Departments by reducing the number of times they are contacted for the same information in different formats.
• Documentation: reduction in documents to be filled in by Departments, as the documents will be online and in a workflow.
• Accuracy and consistency of data as it is held in a single authoritative location.

 

Project team members have been trained in using Triaster and Visio and are carrying this knowledge forward into new and future process mapping projects.

 

Input into the Holistic Admin Project will reduce the amount of work they have to do as the Course Data project has already documented some of the processes for them.

 

Departments now have the knowledge as to where to find information about stored Programme Specifications and who owns the process, something that they didn’t know before and couldn’t find out where the documents went to after being approved.

 

Administrators have tacitly been given permission to ask for information and improvements, and look at the bigger picture in the future.

 

Conclusions

General conclusions

The project has been a great success in terms of delivering joined up working, improved business processes, data schemas and workflows to describe data sources and transformations, plus delivering the XCRI-CAP data feed.

 

The project started with the aim of developing an XCRI-CAP feed, but lead to far greater, wide reaching improvements in terms of:

• Investigating and documenting the course management processes
• Reducing the number of paper documents being emailed around
• Introducing online forms for capturing new and updated course information
• Decreasing the number of requests that Departments receive from the central administration division, for the same information in different formats.

 

Having a project champion from the central Administrative division meant that we were able to progress the project and carry it forward past the life of the Jisc funding.

 

Collaborative working across projects and Departments has opened up the way for future collaborative working.

 

Using Visio and Triaster to map the course management processes, and making sure the project used the Business Improvement (BI) team’s preferred process mapping tools, meant that we built strong working relationships with the BI team for the life of the project and going forward into the future.

 

Conclusions relevant to the wider community

Using a process mapping tool, or a way to visibly demonstrate the processes is a good way to communicate the processes quickly and succinctly, especially with senior stakeholders who have limited time to read long reports.

 

Collaborative working by the project team with the MISD Business Improvement team and with the support of a senior stakeholder in the administration division, has meant we were able to take an independent, cross institutional approach and cut across silos to produce a clear view of the course management process. This was achieved through having buy in from senior stakeholders, who granted their staff time out from their busy roles to look at the broader picture.

 

Conclusions relevant to Jisc

The Course Data Management programme started with the aim of supporting institutions to:

• Undertake an institutional review process, using the XCRI self assessment framework to document and quantify their understanding of internal systems course data information flows;
• To produce an XCRI-CAP feed with COOL URI for certain types of courses.

In reality the programme has led to significant improvements within institutions, over and above the publishing of XCRI-CAP feeds. The University of Cambridge’s project has been able to identify complicated workflows and streamline them, plus reduce requests for data from departments, and improve communication between Departments. The benefit to us has been incredible in terms of:

• Improved accuracy of data due to one source of the truth by using an online form and having a central course data system.
• Reduced duplication of effort as Departments are not constantly asked for the same information in numerous different formats. 
• Getting Departments and central administration to talk to each other.

 

Recommendations

General recommendations

• Find and engage a champion who can help open doors to decision makers.
• Improve institutional visibility of interdepartmental projects.

 

Recommendations relevant to the wider community

Start with finding where the data is and then map the processes. If you can, get the key players into one room and map it through together as this will reduce the time it takes to get the processes documented, and gets buy-in at an early stage to improving the processes. However, depending on your organisation it may be easier to go for the softly-softly approach, gathering the information piecemeal to then present it as an overall picture.

 

Recommendations relevant to Jisc

It would be good if Jisc could make available funding for Institutions to use to implement and embed the improvements and solutions identified by the overall Course Data Management Programme, and it would therefore be good to see a new Jisc funded project to assist institutions in embedding the changes prompted by the initial XCRI-CAP project.

 

Renaming XCRI-CAP to something more meaningful so that it makes it easier for Institutions to engage their stakeholders immediately without first having to explain what XCRI-CAP is.

 

 

Further details: email and contact names etc

Project Director John Norman 

Project Manager Katherine Stalham 

Contact email john@caret.cam.ac.uk and ks541@caret.cam.ac.uk 

Project Web URL http://coursedata.caret.cam.ac.uk/