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Course Data - University of the West of England

Funded by the: Jisc e-Learning programme.

Lead Institution: University of the West of England.

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 the west of england

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

 

Course Data: making the most of UWE course data

 

UWE poster

Project Summary

UWE Bristol was one of the institutions to get funding on the Course Data programme, a two-stage programme to help prepare the sector for increasing demands on course data.  Stage 1 was an institutional self assessment and development of a plan for Stage 2 implementation.  Some 80 institutions were funded by Jisc in Stage 1 and 63 in Stage 2.  For UWE, Stage 2 of the project has been enlightening and helpful, but has been rather different in nature from the technologically focussed project we expected. It has been more of an exploration of our current systems, processes and data standards. However, there have been significant improvements in readiness for delivering a data feed.

 

The funding enabled us to better understand the complexity of our course information management, to improve related processes around admissions and marketing, to improve course data quality with a view to meeting the XCRI-CAP standard, and to identify priorities for future improvements.  The benefits from improvements in data and processes are wider than just the production of a data feed, and will improve our operations regardless of whether producing an XCRI-CAP data feed becomes a requirement for UWE in future.  

 

We have developed a course data feed to the XCRI-CAP standard, with data extracted from our SITS database and admissions system for five exemplar courses.  The code developed is tailored to the UWE implementation of SITS and any applicability to other SITS users is likely to be limited. The work to bring all course data up to the required standard will continue. Further work will be needed in UWE before an XCRI-CAP data feed could be fully implemented.  However, the benefits will only be justified when significant users of course data sign up to use the feed, which would provide an automated process to replace the existing labour intensive processes. 

 

What did we learn?

Evaluation

The business case for the project (August 2012) had identified a range of benefits, many of which were expected to come from the use of an XCRI-CAP data feed to improve course marketing and reduce effort needed to supply course data to bodies such as UCAS.  By January 2013, it was becoming clear that these

  1. would only be realised as and when a data feed is in place, so are currently not being measured, or
  2. are hard to measure – they may be qualitative, or relate to applicant experience where feedback is hard to come by, or be disproportionately difficult to measure. 

 

The project decided to measure three aspects

  1. Improvement on the readiness self-assessment originally used in October 2011 and re-used in March 2013
  2. Improved processes through 2 measures:
    1. Reduced staff effort as measured by: number of process touch-points  x number of courses  x  time spent per course
    2. Turnaround time between the date of course approval and the date the course is visible on the UWE web site
  3. The measures of the improved process are broad, covering multiple benefits, as the benefits could not easily be separated and we wanted to avoid double-counting.   The first indicates the volume of work reduction brought by the project and the second measures improved flexibility and responsiveness of the professional services.   Benefits estimates and baseline measures were carried out in March 2013 before the use of the new processes.  Benefits will be monitored in 2013/14.

 

The Marketing and Communications department will also have the option to monitor improved usability of the UWE web site course pages.

 

Lessons learned

The project collected lessons learned through a survey of the project board, project team and members of UWE’s Information Services Coordination Group, the strategic decision-making body to which the project board reported. Key lessons which may be applicable for other institutions developing a feed are listed below:

 

  • The overview of all systems dealing with course information was well received by senior managers. It makes clear the complexity of UWE Bristol’s set up of systems. It can be used in the University as a reference for recommendations to solve parts of this complexity in the future.
  • The mapping of the As Is processes and the recommendations for the future processes were well received. All the team members contributed to this part of the project. It was also good to have all stakeholders together in the room, working towards a joint goal. It made it easier for people to understand the problems of other staff in the end to end process. The recommendations were well received and people really wanted the changes to happen.
  • Working across departments meant a common understanding was gained. Meeting people in person, face-to-face, enabled us to have real-time discussions and come to valid and worthwhile conclusions about potential issues.
  • Having a full time business analyst was vital and proved valuable in  getting the work done, and particularly in supporting the  subject matter experts who under pressure to deliver on competing priorities.
  • Single point of failure:  the original project manager was also the subject expert and driver for the project and, at that stage, the only person who really understood the project objectives and deliverables. When she left the project, it lapsed.  We should have had succession planning in place – especially with external funding and a fixed end date and a project manager and a sponsor/Executive should both have been identified in the initial planning phase.
  • Resourcing proved difficult for a number of reasons, including competing priorities and the late start.  Additional support could have gone into (re-)planning resources as the project progressed.

 

Immediate Impact

The project has provided

  • The coding and data quality for a data feed which provides valid data for a number of UWE courses of different types.
  • Better readiness to implement such a data feed
  • Improved course information processes in our admissions and marketing teams
  • A better understanding of the importance and complexity of course information systems in senior management
  • more transparency around the flow of course information

 

  • The data feed only includes a small number of courses to date, but some of the necessary data changes on SITS have been made to all courses to support the data feed
  • the remaining data changes have been identified
  • the new processes for course information collection will be implemented from September 2013 and will ensure all new course information meets the necessary quality standards.

 

In the next few weeks we will develop business cases for two future developments to improve course information management.  (Written 22nd March 2013).

 

Future Impact

UWE’s improved processes will reduce workload and improve responsiveness for admissions and marketing for future years, beyond the timescale of the project. Monitoring the longer term impact of improved processes will be done by reviewing two measures in 2013/14 against baseline measurements for 2012/13. 

 

There are a number of other areas which UWE has identified as priorities to improve course information management and course marketing, which will improve our own web presentation of course information prior to any use of an XCRI-CAP feed:

  • Improved UWE course search based on new taxonomy
  • Improved course page roll over process

 

It seems unlikely that other bodies will be impacted by the UWE Course Data project.

 

UWE hopes that UCAS will take up the XCRI-CAP feed in the near future, as this will reduce staff effort sufficiently to justify providing the data feed for all courses, and setting up the ongoing management needed for the feed (eg maintaining quality, monitoring impact).  

 

Conclusions

The XCRI-CAP project has been valuable to UWE in improved processes, raised understanding and as preparation for an XCRI-CAP data feed.  The overt aim of the programme – to implement a feed – has been superseded by the need for improved processes and data, which will ensure that the feed is robust once implemented.

 

Recommendations

UWE would want to see the XCRI-CAP data standard, and the data feed, used by existing course data users, in particular UCAS, to provide an incentive for HE providers to build on the work of the programme.  This would allow UWE to gain further benefit from the Course Data project. 

 

The validation process, ie the cause of reported errors, was not transparent, and UWE could not replicate the quality checking process.  UWE would recommend that the validation definition was made open so that institutions can replicate the validation, as necessary, within the institutions own processes.

 

Further details: email and contact names etc

Project Director    Jo Midgley

Project Manager  Chris Little

Contact email        Christine2.little@uwe.ac.uk

Project Web URL http://www.uwe.ac.uk/aboutus/departmentsandservices/professionalservices/transformationservices/currentprojects/jisccoursedataproject.aspx