JISC

In an era of increased competition and fees it is key that prospective students are given as much detailed course information as possible, that they may make informed decisions as to which course they study.  This informed decision will aid retention and completion and ensure that the student has chosen the right course for them.

In order for this informed choice to be possible, prospective students needs to be able to compare courses with each other and to an increased level of detail, either using institutional websites or aggregator sites.

The HE sector is also open to external scrutiny from the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and so timely, up to date, high quality course information and sound processes are required to ensure compliancy and adherence with standards.

At the moment the University of Bradford doesn’t have a course database (a single point of truth for course information), or portfolio manager, but sees the benefits of this approach to prevent duplication of effort and information, as well as establish ownership of content and enable error-free, timely publication.

In order to make this change the University needs to assess its current processes, procedures and staffing around course information, its management and publication and make plans to improve them.

Stage 1 of this project enabled the University of Bradford to determine its maturity in terms of course information management using the XCRI Self Assessment Framework.  Stage 2 aims to build on this work through a series of business process and technical changes and will deliver detailed course information to both the University and aggregator websites through an XCRI-CAP 1.2 feed of our course information hosted at a cool URI to be determined.

This project will enable the University of Bradford to develop robust and effective processes and procedures around the management of its course information in order to support the e-Strategy aim of using web-based systems to improve administration, enabling a ‘write once, use many’ approach.

Objectives

• Publish an agreed institutional view of our course information management process and systems (human and technical).
• Develop an Enterprise Architecture of the current and ideal business, application and technology layers related to our current course information management (‘as is’ and ‘to be’ states).
• Investigate potential architectures for the development, storage, maintenance and publication of course information at Bradford.
• Pilot architectures and related processes and procedures with some of the ‘hard to reach’ courses.
• Create an XCRI-CAP 1.2 feed and modify as necessary following testing with the JISC Aggregator Tool.
• Share learnings and/or findings across the University of Bradford and sector.

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

• A shared, understanding across the institution of our current IT and human processes and systems pertaining to course information management and their interoperability
• A diagrammatical overview of the University’s enterprise architecture pertaining to course information management
• A report to Learning and Teaching Committee recommending new approaches to the development, maintenance, storage and publication of course information

Better understanding of:

• how XCRI-CAP fits in with KIS
• the need for up to date, detailed course information delivered in a timely manner
• Policies and guidelines pertaining to course information management including its ownership, maintenance and retention
• An XCRI-CAP1.2 feed of our course information