JISC

Overview

The project is a joint venture between the Lifelong Learning Network of Herefordshire and Worcestershire (HWLLN), the University of Worcester and Kidderminster College. The project will trial the XCRI –CAP standard across course advertising data held at both institutions. A specific requirement of HWLLN is for its users to be able to identify which courses are linked together through progression routes - and how these might be combined into higher awards. The project will experiment with the XCRI outputs and create a course catalogue that meets these aims and is made available to users of Wider Horizons (the HWLLN online environment). The findings will be disseminated to partner colleges of HWLLN and, if the results are encouraging, the XCRI standard may be adopted by these institutions in the future.

Aims and Objectives

The aims of the project are:

• Research and document the XCRI readiness of University of Worcester and Kidderminster College.
• Review the XCRI schema and document the transformation mapping of XCRI elements to the course information data extracted from two existing databases at the University of Worcester and data held at Kidderminster College.
• Research and investigate methods of aggregating the data from the above, and develop a course catalogue which will be made available to users of the LLN Wider Horizons web service. 
• Disseminate the findings to the wider community, including the LLN partner colleges and report on the appropriateness of the schema
  

Overall approach

The project will be run by a project team of key stakeholders who are all responsible for the processes that produce course information at the University of Worcester and Kidderminster College from validation to enrolment. The project manager will coordinate the outputs and arrange regular meetings. The team will take advice from Alan Paull at each stage to make sure they remain on course. Alan has a wealth of experience around XCRI implementation and will be a major influence on the approach the project adopts. The project will be divided into 5 discrete workpackages (see below).

Technical services teams at both institutions will be key contributors as the project relies on their expertise. The approach of the project will be to include technical staff in all the decision making processes and to ask their advice on the best ways to implement the prototype systems and make provision for full implementation in the future.

The project manager will be responsible for coordinating the project, arranging the meetings, and document the outputs.

The project team will make regular contributions to the XCRI Wiki.

A main output of the project will be a prototype system based on real data and to investigate how this might be developed in the future to include data from other partners. Production of this prototype will be a measure of how successful the project is. Other success factors will include a willingness by both institutions to consider changes to the ways they currently produce, store and manage course advertising data.

One of the aims of the project is to make recommendations for widening the scope of the work to include other colleges in the Network, but it is out of the scope of the project to implement the XCRI schema outside of University of Worcester and Kidderminster College at this stage.

Lead Institution

    University of Worcester

Partner Institutions

    Kidderminster College
    Herefordshire and Worcestershire Lifelong Learning Network