JISC

Wigan and Leigh College is a General FE College delivering HE courses, in a number of curriculum areas, to over 500 Full Time Equivalent students. The college recognises the importance of producing comprehensive up to date information to allow students to make an informed choice, as to their course of study. In these days of increased fees and competition, we understand that the student expectation is that information should be available on-line, embracing new technology.

The three main drivers for this are:

• prospective fee paying students want to know more about the academic experience a course will provide and be able to compare this with other courses
• better informed students are more likely to choose a course that they will complete and be more motivated to achieve better results
• increased scrutiny by quality assurance agencies and the Government’s requirement for transparency of publicly funded bodies.

JISC has made it easier for prospective students to decide which course to study by creating an internationally recognised data standard for course information, known as XCRI-CAP. This will make transferring and advertising information about courses between institutions and organisations, more efficient and effective.

This project aims to bring together course information and to enable the institution to publish electronic prospectus information in the standard format for all types of courses. Specifically for our College this is to address a gap in Part Time HE Programmes. The feed will include all courses, not just the Part Time HE programmes.

Objectives

• Review the current course marketing information identifying gaps and whether the current information can be mapped and built upon to transform readily to the XCRI information model.
• Review the current business processes, with regard to collection, maintenance and publishing of such information. Establish ownership and control of data.
• Define a policy for course marketing information, specifying what needs to be captured, by whom and when.
• Evaluate the current systems and develop a centralised course marketing application, with XCRI-CAP compliant templates.

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

• Course Marketing  Data Policy
• Course Marketing  Application specification
• Course Marketing Application
• XCRI-CAP Knowledge
• XCRI-CAP Feed with COOL URI