JISC

JISC invites tenders for the provision of a basic online XCRI-CAP 1.2 feed validator and feed aggregator service. The deadline for tenders is 12 noon UK time on 13th October 2011. The testing tools created under this contract should be completed by 5 March 2012 and maintained until 31 March 2013.

Background

1. There is an increasing course data demand on the English education system. This is driven in part by the Government transparency agenda which promotes the release of public data, and internally by a need to inform business planning. 

2. The recent Government White Paper: “Students at the Heart of the system” identifies a demand for more, easier to find, accurate comparative course data to enable informed choice. 

3. XCRI-CAP 1.2 (eXchanging Course Related Information - Course Advertising Profile) is an information model and Schema for marking up course descriptions for advertising purposes. It has been developed to enable learning providers to publish online prospectus information in a standard format that facilitates efficient collection by aggregator and broker agencies and systematic comparison of learning opportunities. 

4. The “Course data: making the most of course information” call will fund institutions to review their systems and make improvements for internal business intelligence use and/or external use. To exemplify this, institutions will be required to create an XCRI-CAP 1.2 feed. The programme will run from September 2011 to March 2013 and fund up to 80 institutions.