Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.
Lead Institution: University of Salford.
Learner Provider Type: Higher Education
Project Duration: January 2012 - March 2013
Key Words: Course Data
Case study tags: course data, process improvement, course information, university of salford
Note: This is an abridged version of this project's final report. The full version is available here.
CDUS Course Data at University of Salford
Project Summary
The Jisc Course data project aimed to make course data more consistent and more accessible to learners to enable them to make better choices and gain more benefit from the courses. The University of Salford project scope has been non credit bearing CPD courses. The main aims for the project were:
- Increase the knowledge of XCRI-CAP
- Review and where necessary update the business processes
- Produce an XCRI-CAP feed
- Disseminate the information gained to other HR/FE institutions
At the start of the project the University were already looking at a system to store course data and it was felt that it would be possible to work with the supplier of that system to produce a feed within the first few months of the project.
Part way through the project the University business model for CPD was completely changed from a situation where CPD was managed locally in the Colleges and Schools to a centralised model where all CPD is controlled and managed by a central team. In August of 2012 a subsidiary company (Salford Professional Development) was launched to manage all non credit bearing CPD.
As a result of the new model it became clear that the system initially selected was no longer going to meet the requirements. The team reworked the business processes and defined a new approval process. Once this was completed, potentially suitable replacement systems were identified and a selection exercise was undertaken.
A new system was selected and implemented in a very short timescale and was integrated with the University website. This work has enabled the project to achieve one of the main objectives of the Jisc programme, namely making CPD course information more accessible to learners. Course details and a booking option are now available in 2 clicks from the University home page
Work then recommenced on the production of an XCRI-CAP feed.
A range of significant benefits have been achieved for all stakeholders with the change of direction…
What could have been improved? What lessons have been learned?
At the start of the project the University was already planning to implement a system to support the creation and approval of short courses. The intention was to produce an XCRI-CAP feed from this system and it was expected that this would be possible within the first 6 months. At the time CPD provision at the University was managed locally in Schools. The new system was intended to be used mainly by the CPD administrators in the Schools and the approval workflow would cover the academic and financial approval process.
During the course of the project the business model for CPD provision at the University changed from the previous distributed approach to one where a central team would manage all non credit bearing CPD courses offered by the University. In August 2012 a subsidiary company (Salford Professional Development Ltd) was established which was wholly owned by the University of Salford. As part of the work to define the processes and operating procedures for the new company, concerns started to be raised over whether the curriculum management system being implemented was still suitable for the revised operating model.
The system had been designed to provide curriculum management functionality for undergraduate and post graduate courses. The intention was to use a subset of the functionality to capture the information required for CPD courses. A considerable amount of work was put into configuring the system, defining an interface in to the system to be used for managing the delivery of courses and mapping the data fields to the XCRI-CAP specification. The concerns being raised centred on the complexity of the system and the amount of work involved in setting up base data. Another issue was the functionality around the structure of the courses. Whilst it was very easy to copy and amend a course, the data structures didn’t easily support the model of a course being offered multiple times in one year. The requirement was to separate out the common information about the course such as aims, objectives, leaning outcomes etc from the date specific data such as start dates, venue and trainer information.
For the project this meant a considerable amount of rework, but the result was a new requirements document, new business model documents, a revised approval process for courses and a definite decision that a new system was required.
From there the team worked hard to identify potential systems, invited proposals, arranged demonstrations and made a selection. The system chosen was Course Manager from Accessplanit. The system is a hosted solution which was an important factor in the decision as it enabled a rapid implementation and also provided a reliable solution as the university had issues with the current servers ‘crashing’ which has lead to periods of down time with the current system. The mechanism for integrating the course data with the Salford Professional Development website was agreed and some amendments to support the production of the XCRI-CAP were defined.
Immediate Impact
The project has addressed the key programme objective of making course information more easily accessible to prospective learners. At present this is just at University level as the XCRI-CAP feed is still in development but the systems and processes are now in place to enable this to be completed shortly. The review of the end to processes across the whole lifecycle of CPD course provision has had a number of benefits outside of the scope of the project too.
To summarise the current position:
- CPD management has been centralised and a subsidiary company created – Salford Professional Development Ltd
- CPD courses offered are focussing on higher level skills training on academic themes and strengths found within the University which meet market demand
- Detailed business processes and procedures are in place
- The approval process for new courses covers commercial viability as well as academic aspects
- Marketing activity is co-ordinated and much better targeted
- A new system for all CPD course data is in place, it is linked to the website and supports the end to end processes from course creation through to delivery and evaluation
- Course data is more accessible to learners via from home page of University website – Book Now option in 2 clicks
- Learners able to access course schedules, training history and course evaluations online
- A clear, consistent payment policy is in place for University academic staff delivering CPD courses
- Relationships are being built with external speakers to supplement academic resources
- Course data is centralised and consistent
- Accurate data is more readily available for HEBCIS reporting
- The XCRI-CAP feed being developed and staff are interested in taking advantage of some of the demonstrator services developed by other projects such as the Facebook app.
- Overall the provision of CPD courses is now much more organised and professional. The University has moved on from a position where there were pockets of good practice but this was not consistent across the institution, to a position where the same level of service is provided to all learners, staff and associates and customers.
- As well as an improved level and visibility of information about the courses they are interested in, learners also benefit from being able to see details of all courses they have attended and any awards gained. This is an advantage in itself but also makes booking new courses simpler as the system can already check that they have the required pre-requisites for the course and if so, won’t ask for proof. They also benefit from an improved service if they have queries about any aspect of a course or a booking. Whereas previously the contact for a course may have been an academic who would often not be available immediately due to teaching commitments, now a member of the SPD team will either answer a query themselves or will be able to find an answer quickly.
- From the University’s point of view, the improved costing and approval process reduces the financial risk of running CPD courses and the dedicated team are able to market the courses more successfully so increasing the revenue.
- The academics have benefitted too, not only from the consistently applied payment policy but also, once a course is approved they can just ‘turn up and teach’ as all the marketing and organising of the course delivery is done for them. Standardising the data through the 8 point model (see below) required when creating a course means that anyone proposing a course knows exactly what details they must provide and time is not wasted whilst missing information is requested.
- Course Title
- Date
- Background (2 to 3 paragraphs- c300 words)
- Learning Outcomes (8-10 bullets)
- Tutors
- Agenda
- Target Audience
- Venue (if specific to the course)
Future Impact
The experience of integrating the course data with the SPD website is already being shared with other potential customers of the Course Manager system and a case study on the use of the system and the production of the XCRI-CAP feed is being prepared. The knowledge gained by Accessplanit during the work to support the production of the XCRI-CAP feed will enable them to assist other institutions using the Course Manager system to develop their own feeds.
Conclusions
Having a standard for the data format and a centralised repository for course data provides benefits to all the stakeholders however the experience from the project has confirmed the previously held view that the set up and approval of CPD courses is very different to credit bearing main UG and PG programmes and the systems implemented to support one area are not necessarily suitable for the other. Systems supporting the creation of CPD course data for approval and advertising purposes need to be closely integrated with the booking system and must allow courses to be created with the minimum amount of ‘overhead’ activity such as the creation of static data. CPD course data is subject to more frequent updates than UG/PG data so again the system solution must be able to cope with things such as additional dates, cancellations etc without any delay. The approval process for the courses must also be much more responsive and flexible.
At the start of the project the aggregator services were viewed with some scepticism by some stakeholders as there wasn’t a clear view of who would provide the services and what they would really look like. Now, having now seen or read about some of the demonstrator projects, there is a greater understanding of what can be achieved and more enthusiasm for future work in this area.
Recommendations
For other institutions looking to provide a central source of CPD course data and use the XCRI-CAP standard for sharing data, the main recommendation is to ensure that the business model is firmly established before looking for a system solution. Although some systems may provide adequate support for all types of courses, this should not be assumed so time spent fully defining the operating model will help to ensure that the most appropriate system is selected.
Further details: email and contact names etc
Project Director George Baxter
Project Manager Sandra Macpherson
Contact email s.e.macpherson@salford.ac.uk
Project Web URL http://www.cdus.org.uk/main/
Guide to Evaluating Solutions to Support CPD Course Data and Processes