14-19 prospectus pilot in the East Midlands
Download the full report
This project investigated issues for 14-19 Area Prospectus organisations and the wider information management community in the implementation of data aggregation using the eXchanging Course Related Information model
Executive Summary
The project aggregated 14-19 Area Prospectus course information from five different areas in the East Midlands into Aimhigher in the East Midlands’ Progression Pathways database, as part of a wider project to amalgamate regional courses information. The project demonstrated that courses information can be supplied by many providers and Area Prospectus organisations using eXchanging Course Related Information – Course Advertising Profile (XCRi-CAP) and can be aggregated into a single repository, the Progression Pathways database. The data is soon to be published on the live Progression Pathways service to show that the 14-19 course advertising information can be aggregated via XCRi-CAP and searched.
The project concentrated on co-ordinating the organisations involved to produce XCRi-CAP outputs and to aggregate them. It looked at the management of the processes to produce the course information feeds, as well as technical issues related to the compatibility of information models, data content and structures across the partners. It also touched upon data maintenance issues. It has produced a case study of XCRi-CAP implementation in the 14-19 sector that can be used as a source of good practice guidance for the sector as it pursues the LSC’s 14-19 vision of interoperability and orienting data around learners.
The project achieved its central objective of aggregating data from Area Prospectuses into the Progression Pathways repository using XCRi-CAP 1.1 Processes for producing the data feeds were documented and are supplied in the report in diagrammatic form.
As part of the work of the project, the data issues that were encountered in the process of mapping and transforming the data into XCRi-CAP were noted, and solutions were suggested. Major data issues included a lack of standard vocabularies in use in the sector, the variability in the types and comparability of the data held across the multiple data sets, and in some cases relatively poor quality of data in terms of the use of HTML and XHTML markup and consistency across the records. Use of the UKPRN to identify providers uniquely was problematic in 10% to 20% of cases, owing to name changes, mergers, federations or partnerships, and national providers with a local presence.
The project recommended that a set of clear, simple, and preferably national, interoperability guidelines in respect of good practice in information management be developed, covering in particular vocabularies, data entry standards and the re-use of existing resources, so that Area Prospectus organisations and other interested parties can share their courses data, building on the XCRi-CAP information model.