Open Course Collection and Aggregation Model
The aim of the project was to extend, enhance and standardise the existing methods through which the Open University supplies its courses data to third party aggregators, in order to provide the wider community with a model of good practice using the XCRI-CAP schema.
Project Outputs
Requirements and deliverables were:
- A web service giving access to the whole live course catalogue of the OU in XCRI-CAP format.
- Evaluation of the new system, in terms of cost, quality of provision, flexibility in relation to aggregators and extensibility.
- Organisational and technical issues, including a ‘forward plan’ for future development with the aggregators.
- Evaluation of the success of the XCRI-CAP schema and its usability.
- Recommendations for future JISC activity.
The project addressed the topics through 5 work packages:
WP1, Process Review: Analyse existing systems and business processes to confirm actions for development.
WP2, Mapping: Map XCRI-CAP to OU course data structures.
WP3, Data Publishing: Design and implement the web service; convert outputs to bespoke formats for aggregators where necessary.
WP4, Testing: System, user and live testing of the new system to enable comparisons with the old.
WP5, Evaluation and reporting: New system evaluated against the old, communication of lessons learned to the XCRI support project, recommendations for future JISC activity.
The project outputs are detailed below.