Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After The Arts University at An internal review was carried out which considered the information flow for short The project provided opportunities and resources to enable staff to carry out Bournemouth (AUB) course and MA information: it identified certain shortcomings in our processes and improvements to our data management and infrastructure which would not otherwise work flows which had tended to develop organically. have happened. It has saved considerable staff time and created clear and transparent processes enabling us to develop a feed which is of use internally and ready for external aggregators to use.

Aston University The project created a repository of course information to address issues in Aston’s For the first time the course database provides the University with the means to current course data processes. create and maintain a definitive list of its courses across undergraduate,  Varying data sources in central departments and Academic Schools postgraduate taught and professional development offerings.  A long, manual and resource-intensive process for gathering and For producing the 2015 prospectuses, the ability to query course data directly will  verifying course information driven by the production cycles of the printed replace a manual, e-mail-driven stage of information collation, reducing workloads undergraduate and postgraduate prospectuses and (hopefully) errors.  The manual transfer of data from the printed prospectus to the University During the course of the project we have raised the importance of course data within website the institution. Through collaborations begun as a result of the course data initiative  Limited version control of the collated data we have started the process of linking it to other related initiatives internally. Key  Limited access to data once it has been collated stakeholders are now referring to ‘a managed data environment’ that will combine and expose information from various systems. The project has provided a valuable first step on a journey within the University to improve course data quality and course-related systems.

Bath Spa University SITS was introduced at BSU in the early 1990’s. Since that time, both the SITS The project outcome we are most proud of is the sense of collegiate engagement database and the institution’s portfolio of courses have broadened and diversified so and willingness to work together for the longer term benefits that are now the shared that we are no longer utilising the functionality to best reflect what we now deliver vision of a wider range of stakeholders and not just the ‘data geeks’ in the project (and what we plan to deliver in the future). The issues include the following: [editor's team. This sense of engagement is not confined to BSU, but also embraces the note BSU goes on to describe issues with the current management of courses that project team’s sense of inclusion in a wider community across the sector. make reporting/querying difficult and impact on the production of statutory returns]

University of We had, previously purchased the Institutional Programme Publishing (IPP) module The project work resulted in a valid feed in XCRI format detailing 499 courses. Bedfordshire from Tribal and implemented this in 2010 as part of a large scale project which The project work also enabled us to clearly identify a road map for future included the re-engineering of the commensurate business processes. improvements to our end-to-end course data information processes. In the original bid for the XCRI project, the objective was to make: 'Further significant The project also enabled us to clearly acknowledge the benefit of the work done on developments to manage the flow of course and associated data and improve the IPP [Institutional Programme Publishing module from Tribal] project in creating a course material, external expectations and course data flows within institution'. consistent centralised data source and clearly identified that it was a marked improvement from its original baseline of an entirely paper-based, disjointed and disparate business process.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Birkbeck, University Something else we have realised is just how critical this project is for the institution – We believe this project is going to have a critical impact on Birkbeck, particularly in of London not only because of the efficiencies to be gained by using the XCRI-CAP system, but relation to access to and promotion of our course data (although, as we haven’t yet also because of the vulnerabilities intrinsic to our current system. rolled out the new system, we don’t have the evidence to support this). We expect A vulnerability in our current course publishing system is the lack of documentation the following: relating to how we currently publish our course catalogue online (most of the  Improved quality assurance: In the past, we have relied a great deal on information is held in the heads of critical course staff). free-text fields in Collage [CRM system] for inputting course data. This [Following process review]: means a possibility exists whereby, without rigorous checking, we could publish information that might not be compliant with quality-assured  It became apparent that the various players in the system weren’t entirely programme information. aware of what the other players in the system did and how it all fitted  Improved course quality: our school colleagues sometimes feel a together (namely, who did what and when, and how did our information get ‘disconnect’ with our published course information, and believe that it is published?). ‘owned’ by External Relations, rather than them. This has proven unhelpful  It enabled us to identify both inefficiencies in our system (e.g. processes in the past and has led to the situation where our Schools have wanted to that duplicated other data entry points and therefore could lead to publish duplicate course information on their local School / department inaccuracies in our published content) and processes that could allow microsites, simply so they get immediate access to it. This has also led to incorrect information to be published on our web site. the situation whereby Schools didn’t always check their course data throughout the year, but rather only when prompted.  Improved CMS experience: We are confident that Birkbeck staff, already familiar with Plone from their work elsewhere on the site, will find working on the new system an improvement over their experience of Collage.

University of The complexity of the project was demonstrated by the multiple uses of the same The project was of great value to the institution in terms of providing the resource Birmingham core curriculum data as shown in the Curriculum Information Map; along side the and mandate to begin to better co-ordinate its programme and module information need for the same information to be written / displayed in different ways depending across a range of central services and functions. It also however highlighted that, in on the audience and the purpose. For example module descriptions for QAA order for the benefits of the project to be fully realised, further support will be purposes versus those for marketing and recruitment purposes. The project set out required across the sector in subsequent phases. to determine how this could be better managed. It was not clear at the start of the The work undertaken by the project is now becoming fully adopted into the activities project how difficult it would be, particularly when the project refocused, to keep the of the Curriculum Management Team, who are responsible for overseeing right lines of communication in place. This was overcome by ‘discovery’ sessions so programme and module information stored within Banner. Over the next six months, that colleagues from different areas of the institution, with different responsibility and they will work closely with Schools to improve the quality of centrally held data, as access to the data could meet together, for example the central Curriculum well as liaise much more closely with the central Web and Marketing Team on Management Team and the Web Co-ordinators in Colleges. recruitment data. The issues of data quality; data efficiency and data effectiveness will all continue to be considered, now that their complexity has been more fully understood and will be part of a much wider project on how the institution engages with the QAA Code on Public Information.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Bishop Burton Before the project, course information was stored in a variety of formats and ‘owned’ The immediate impact has been the improvement of current systems for collecting, College within various departments. The College’s Website and Prospectus, although modifying and approving course data within a single, central repository. sharing the vast majority of information, were produced as separate entities with We propose to expand the scope of the project to the whole of the College and the much duplication. Similarly, documents such as Course Manuals were created development of course information. This will involve the dissemination of project independently by Course Managers, again with course information that had been findings and the improvements made in processes to other teams outside of HE. produced elsewhere, leading to further duplication of time and effort. We are particularly keen to reproduce the systems within Further Education course teams and to improve student records systems to make better use of generated course information. The College has learnt a considerable amount about project planning, time management and process review through taking part in the project and has had an excellent opportunity to involve key decision makers in the development of a new system.

Blackpool and The Before embarking on the Course Data project, the collection of course information at The Course Data project has supported Blackpool and The Fylde College in Fylde College Blackpool and The Fylde College consisted of separate business processes for each reviewing internal business processes to ensure that course data is collected in a public output (i.e. the prospectus, college website, course leaflets and UCAS entry more organised manner, at the right time to support the College publication profiles were all gathered separately, and sometimes by different departments within schedule. Additionally, systems have been developed to allow programme leaders the College). The source of all data was the programme leader who is responsible to update their public information in web-based forms which feed into a carefully for managing the delivery and development of their programme and handling the designed workflow to ensure that content is checked and moderated prior to multiple requests for similar information, in slightly different formats, at different publication. The creation of an XCRI-CAP compliant feed will also serve to support times. the future ability to share information with external parties in a more streamlined and less time-intensive manner.

University of Bolton The key lesson learned from this early work was that challenges faced through the There are clear and tangible benefits from having data sources in order: more implementation process were not generally associated with the technology, but effective and efficient marketing, better data quality, and improved institutional rather the pre-conceptions, competing ideas, priorities and working practices of staff. systems and associated costs savings. XCRI-CAP has an important role to play in ... although we knew there would be some data integrity issues this has proved a this alongside better institutional governance of data and the development of new much more significant issue than first thought. tools and technology for handling and making the most of complex sets of ‘messy’ unstructured data.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Bournemouth & Poole We wanted to explore to what extent some institutions might be able to ‘bypass’ the This project has shown that it can be quite a simple task to take existing data and College onerous culture change that would be required in more complex organisations and transform it using tools such MapForce. One can see how this could be extremely effectively implement XCRI-CAP with minimal interference in the decision making useful in providing aggregators with standardised information contained in the right processes and leadership structures of the institution. The reason we wanted to do format. this was to discover if less complex organisations may be able to implement XCRI- Employer Engagement: This project has shown that that businesses search for CAP standards quickly, without the need for additional funding, and in a way which training in a completely different way to students. This has implications for the way has no impact on existing processes and structures. in which HEIs and FE colleges engage with employers and their workforce. We felt this would be of immense importance to HE establishments who may be reluctant to change existing working structures but happy to integrate XCRI-CAP into a current functional environment. The key point to show here was to show that XCRi-CAP does not have to revolutionise the way decision making is done in an institution.

Bradford College In the context of national policy changes the following drivers require us to review There has been a positive impact on our use of technology for the management of our current course database: prospective fee-paying students need to know more course information – more opportunities to use the course database have been about our courses, a growing appreciation that better informed students are likely to realised. ... be more motivated to achieve better results and an increase scrutiny of publicly The impact of the change agenda associated with, and necessary for, the XCRI funded bodies requires greater levels of transparency. project has been less than was anticipated. However some progress has been made In response to these policy shifts we have assessed our course information systems. and will continue relative to the immense size of the task which is fundamentally tied This exercise has indicated that our management of the course information lifecycle in to the overhaul of an out-moded systems architecture. The XCRI project has had and the marketing aspect of our course information lifecycle require a change. This the impact of focusing attention on the costs and efficiencies of processes project set out to transform processes and systems to accommodate new datasets associated with course data management – previously these had been pretty much and to integrate these systems into a wider enterprise architecture, in a large further invisible. It is too early to say whether this translates into a wider appreciation for the education college. need for transformational change. The wider community, in particular those who provide HE in FE, may benefit from an awareness of the issues we faced. On a positive note our deployment of the LAMP technical solution seems to have been initially effective and we will reap rewards of having developed our own open source bespoke system. One obvious lesson from our project which might be shared more widely is the need for strategic buy-in across a range of functions. This is extremely difficult to achieve where one can only offer the efficiencies of data management as a clear benefit. In essence the cost benefit of wider buy-in set against the benefits of improved data management and all that goes with this are difficult to communicate to all internal stakeholders. The realisation that excellent data management forms the foundation stone for improved systems and strategies across the whole organisation has not yet taken a full hold. Moreover the building of new technologies on top of old ones creates many layers and workarounds that become difficult to understand, challenging to work with and almost impossible to dismantle.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of Bradford The University applied for JISC funding to advertise its hard to find courses through For us, we measure success on many levels; the standardised XCRI-CAP 1.2 profile ... along the way it has unearthed various  The ability of key personnel to recognise the importance of our data. data issues that, whilst always existed, have now come to the forefront. This project  Cultural change; the recognition that we need to do something has resulted has been both about delivering our XCRI-CAP feed and also trying to develop a in our shared vision of what that something is and a recognition of a longer term solution to our course data problems. simplified process to achieve it. Hence, this project has been about a journey, along which we have discovered  Process simplification; we had multiple variants, now we have a single many facets of the problem. At one level, it has been about fulfilling our immediate unified process that all schools have bought into and understand the remit goals; that of syndicating our courses in XCRI-CAP compliant format. But it has of their roles within the bigger process. Furthermore, they have an acute been much more that that; it has been about discovering how our course information awareness of the importance of their role, fundamental to the success of is developed, how various stakeholders are engaged at various processes, how it is any process. quality checked, approved and signed off, how amendments and versioning are  A clarity of roles; All obscurities from the process are removed, the roles, managed or not, how we interact with other systems, how communication is groups, membership, flow, document formats, stakeholder communications managed and finally how we publish this across various formats. Processes for and expectations are all meticulously defined and agreed upon. some of this are quite extensive, for others, only a rudimentary acknowledgement,  A change in policy making and it has been the remit of this project to flush out the requirements that would take  A sustainable definition of course data within the bigger framework of much of the manual pain away and replace it with a [set of] system[s]. university data.

Brunel University Our implementation plan underestimated the complexity of the programme approval The project has begun to inform staff perceptions around digital collection of data process in terms of the quantity of data that needs to be captured, its versioning, and the benefits associated with the capture, retention and visualisation of electronic how the data is used in other University processes, returns and systems, and also data. Brunel is committed to producing a suite of new facilities to manage the end-to- because of the number of organisational boundaries we had to cross. end processes associated with the University's programmes and their modules. Staff awareness, as a consequence of this project, is increasing of the enhancement opportunities available from moving to a full electronic workflow. The project has been a valuable exercise in developing our understanding of the uses of course data within Brunel and externally. As a result, Brunel has a more sophisticated understanding of course data and how technology can support the capture, re-use, and reporting of the data.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Burton and South Prior to this project the college’s course information was owned and managed by the The immediate impact of the project on Burton and South Derbyshire College has Derbyshire College marketing department. In order to make it easier to update this course information in been the review and redevelopment of its course information workflow. From this the the prospectus and on the website it was necessary to open up the information to be course information workflow is being opened up to curriculum staff around the edited by representatives from curriculum. This information could then be checked college and this is in turn empowering more staff to keep their information more and edited by Marketing before being authorised for publication to the prospectus. relevant and better quality. This [project] marks a shift away from the old schedule which was driven by The project has pulled representatives from all of the departments involved in the marketing and focused on the printed prospectus. The change is primarily a cultural process and given them an opportunity to explore new solutions to how course one which sees curriculum staff being empowered and given responsibility for information is gathered, as well as the new opportunities that this work enables. information relating to their own courses. This has helped the college to achieve the Working in this way has enabled the college to tackle significant issues with cross- goals of improved accuracy and continual updates for course information. college impact and it is likely that this model with be utilised again in the future for other challenges. With the experience which has been gained through this project the college has a better understanding of the challenges that exist around maintaining continually-up- to-date course information and making it available to third parties. At Burton and South Derbyshire College, the project has highlighted many new issues as well as new opportunities. To achieve the goals of the project the college has taken a journey to restructure its course information workflow, unchaining it from the printed prospectus schedule and allowing updates to course information whenever they are needed. Internally the workflow for updating course information has been opened to a wide group of staff which incorporates representatives from each curriculum area. This in turn has highlighted new issues around consistency and curriculum planning which will have to be resolved in the future. The XCRI CAP format itself has many advantages over previous methods of sharing course information; making it possible to expose relevant course information to external partners and other third parties without security concerns. Doing this in a standards-compliant way makes the resource even more useful and relevant for various uses.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of The project initially seemed straightforward: harvest course marketing information The project started with the aim of developing a XML feed for marketing the Cambridge into a standard XML feed and publish the data. After a long investigation it turned University of Cambridge Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses in a standard out that data was stored in numerous formats in a variety of places, and that XML format called XCRI-CAP, but lead to far greater, wider-reaching improvements different pieces of the data were ‘owned’ by various administrators, who didn’t know in terms of: how their information fitted into the bigger picture, or that their small request for  Investigating and documenting the course management processes. information was overburdening Departmental Administrators, who were receiving  Reducing the number of paper documents being emailed around. numerous emails and phone calls from the various administrators in the central  Introducing online forms for capturing new and updated course information. administration team requesting the same information over and over again.  Decreasing the number of requests that Departments receive from the central administration division, for the same information in different formats.  Introducing a central course data repository to be the definitive source of courses and programme specifications.

City of Bristol College The XCRI CAP SAF (Self Assessment Framework) was used to conduct an initial Implementing the XCRI Course Advertising Profile has facilitated the sharing of self-assessment of the college’s state of readiness to provide aggregated accurate and consistent information about the full range of HE level courses information to stakeholders and potential customers. This demonstrated that there delivered at the college, supplying the computerised information systems used by are robust systems in place but that there were issues: learning providers and organisations that collect, aggregate and publish information  Integrating data between systems. about HE courses. Current students will benefit by being able to reference what they  Providing additional data to meet the needs of KIS and HEAR. achieved at college to prospective employers and future students will benefit by being able to compare and contrast courses before making a choice. Employers  Providing course information at the module level. wishing to find appropriate courses for their staff will have readily accessible and  Establishing a single ‘point of truth’ for course advertising information. relevant information. Internal staff, e.g. those engaged in advice and guidance, will Additionally some courses were inadequately promoted externally and internally. be able to supply learners with appropriate information. Provision of information on these ‘hard to find’ courses was reviewed in order to improve their presence in the market and hence sustainability. These ‘bite-sized’ courses are modules from a Foundation degree or an element of a Professional course. It is anticipated that in future more students will opt to acquire modules from HE courses on a part-time basis in order to gain their degree over a period of years whilst working and thereby reduce the cost impact.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Cornwall College Cornwall College has been actively refining and improving the management of The impact of this project will enable more rapid sharing of course information with course information over the last two years. It was expected that this project would partner organisations, as well as the reuse of course information for internal provide the basis of the next iteration delivering improvements in the quantity and purposes. The project has already provided the benefit of delivering course quality of data collected as well as formalising and improving the process for information to our new website, saving in the region of 200 hours of developer time. gathering and sharing the information. Refinements to the collection of course information, relating to the XCRI standard has resulted in an added flexibility with the way in which course information can be displayed to different client groups. The standard may further inform how programmes of study are configured in our Course Catalogue to further reduce the current processes around ‘rolling’ courses over from year to year.

The Courtauld Research has revealed workflows and work methods which were previously unclear The Course Data Project has been beneficial in that it has allowed The Courtauld to Institute of Art or not formally documented. take stock of its data and to consolidate, cleanse and standardise the information it publishes. The long-term benefits of the project will be the implementation of a system and workflow in which the University can catalogue and standardise its course data. The Courtauld has benefited from the opportunity to assess its data presentations and to consider the workflows relating to these. We have put in place a new platform to catalogue XCRI-CAP data that publishes information to our website, and also to an XML feed that can be harvested by data aggregators. The implementation of XCRI-CAP will have cost savings through the reduction of re- keying. Costs will also be reduced from maintenance of various systems which have now been amalgamated in to a single Drupal system/ The durability of our course data – now formatted to a widely supported standard – will remain usable for longer and will be simple to migrate to other systems. The Jisc project has established a platform for collaboration with other educational providers, where business plans and processes can be shared. This pooled experience is of great benefit to future developments of the system.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Coventry University Immediately it became clear that the process was both very manual and not Overall there have been a number immediate impacts from the project around both particularly well regulated and a ‘dummy’ run of an XML feed suggested that even the IT department and more specifically Project Management and Business for the meeting of the predefined statutory fields we couldn’t guarantee the quality of Analysis, these would include: our data.  Our continuing use of Enterprise Architecture was shown to benefit this As the project progressed it became clear that the organisation should, in fact, be project and allowed us to train others in the concept. In addition, for the first looking at the whole issue of ‘data’ and hence a much larger initiative has been time, the term EA has been used by our VC, at a staff road-show, who has ‘born’ from the initial project i.e. How Coventry University manages all of its key data advised that she is beginning to see the benefits to the organisation of this sets and not just those linked to the course creation process. ‘tool’.  The project has been mostly well received by those who have been previously involved in the manual creation of new courses and modules. This has led to a positive impact on how the ITS, as project leader, is perceived within the organisation especially being seen to assist in ‘lessening the workload’ on academics.  Through both of the projects (above) working alongside one another the university was able to reduce its course related web marketing sites from 30,000 to 1,800 (+/-)  This project was the first time that the IT department had employed student interns to assist. This proved such a success, mainly from offering a new perspective, that the arrangement has been extended to other projects  The biggest single impact was the realisation that as an organisation there is a real need to understand and manage our key data more effectively; hence the VC group have invited a PVC to begin the process of putting together a ‘Big Data’ project within the University that will review and address this issue.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Cranfield University During the analysis of the current system and processes for this project and during The course data with integrated validation, advertising and approval processes will other projects taking place, it was confirmed the student records system was not have an enormous impact on both the staff proposing the course and on the system robust especially in the course, module and award area. data integrity which in turn has an impact on course publication; student registration and statutory reporting. The staff will be informed of what is required and automated workflow through approval will ensure all courses are approved through the formal approval process in the correct manner with the correct and required data being input with immediate validation. There have already been many benefits:  Course data cleansing in order to issue the XCRI-CAP file  Course data structure rationalised in order to issue the XCRI-CAP file  University as a whole informed of course and module approval and data issues which has encouraged support of this project  Diet Generation automated and rolled out (June 2013) to the course administrators thus releasing resource within the student records systems team  Module Approval solution shared from another institution proving that the concept works in reality  Module Approval solution rolled out (June 2013) to the course administrators thus releasing resource within the student records systems team University of East During stage one of the project, we took the opportunity to examine our current Although the project is not completed, the greatest impact has been in a shared London procedures using the XCRI-CAP self assessment framework and identified some understanding of the immediate need to transform our processes for course weaknesses in our procedures. approval from a largely paper-based exercise to one that makes more effective use As a consequence, the project team agreed to contract an independent business of technology. In some ways, this has been helped by the realisation that HEIs now analyst and the results of the process review clearly indicated that the existing operate in a more market-driven environment and institutions that can respond methods for producing course specification and marketing material was quickly by bringing new and innovative courses are more likely to prosper. The cumbersome, inefficient and difficult to repurpose for other uses. process review highlighted some of the inefficiencies in the way we validate programmes and the generation of course information. The opportunity to embrace The process for developing new programmes was relatively linear, with limited an IT based solution has already evidenced by the number of new programmes version control, no evidence of logging changes and manual workflow procedures. A developed using our new programme application. This web-based application significant component of the course validation process involved producing detailed replaces the creation of numerous word documents that are circulated amongst programme specifications in a Microsoft Word document which was than manually peers by email for comments and amendments with a limited concept of version uploaded to the CMS by the Web Team. Although the overall process was control or logging of changes. Because the production of the documentation is so understood by colleagues in Quality Assurance, it was clear that no one individual visible, this has meant that comments can be made more quickly and scheduling of had a completely comprehensive understanding of the process from start to finish. priorities easier for colleagues in Quality Assurance. The development of an interactive and visible programme costing model has served to highlight the financial outlay in developing and delivering courses. Previously, this was calculated by Finance and there was some uncertainty in how this worked. In most cases, the financial viability analysis was carried out at the end of the process. Deploying the programme costing model has demystified the process, although there is a requirement for an enhanced staff training session in how to accurately calculate programme development and running costs.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Edge Hill University [Comparison of processes in 3 faculties] The development of the Course Management Framework within the Faculty of All Faculty of Health and Social Care (FoHSC) postgraduate provision is Health and Social Care has improved the quality of course information for CPD, administered by the FoHSC Enterprise & Partnerships Team and therefore the same online and PG provision. Information is more consistent and changes can be make procedures of gathering course information and marketing activity are followed for more quickly ensuring prospective students always have access to the latest details. each postgraduate course. The course data has a range of marketing uses including improved website, printable PDF course leaflets and better course search. In general, within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, course leaders do not keep course data sources from which to draw marketing information. The primary sources ‘We now have a robust, structured system for managing diverse course information of information are the course validation documents and the course leaders own including short course and CPD provision. This will underpin expansion of this type knowledge. Marketing is largely confined to the online prospective and in this sense of work, facilitating standardised presentation of quality-assured information and the the form required for advertising a course online is the only secondary data source mediation of a pan-University product range.’ Director of Corporate for course information. If creating marketing material for a specific event / publication Communications, Roy Bayfield. the course leader would provide relevant information to marketing on a case by case ‘It’s now easier for our CPD students to access all the course information they need, basis rather than using a generic data source. when they need it. This is essential for busy health and social care professionals The Faculty of Education has a wide variety of modules and CPD programmes on balancing the demands of work with their professional development needs.’ Faculty going at any one time and this makes identifying them and establishing their of Health and Social Care Marketing & Enterprises Officer, Rachel Knowles. eligibility a complex task. Data is kept in a variety of ways and this differs between There is an increased awareness in the Faculties of Education and Arts and departments and programmes. There was difficulty finding the necessary details Sciences about CPD/Online/PG course marketing. They are beginning to identify required for the data gathering template and this may need to be more generic for areas of activity that can be promoted and adopting the framework used by FoHSC future work. for their own courses. The framework provides a solid foundation on which to build workflow and technical solutions that fit the individual needs of Faculties and Departments.

University of Essex ... early analysis, internally called ‘datascaping’, revealed that, with respect to core Overall, the SOFACX project has been extremely successful in delivering its core course provision at both UG and PG level, data integrity was good (though not technical requirements and has produced positive results in engaging a wide cross- perfect) and the match between data we were already drawing into these systems section of business stakeholders in discussions relating to the status, quality and and the XCRI-CAP definition was, in most areas, also good. It did, however, reveal origination of course data. that we routinely keep course data in three separate systems, each with their own set of users and data entry methods; this was something we flagged for further investigation in the process mapping and improvement stage. Initially it was noted that CPD courses did not have a presence in the online course finder environment, which meant it was no surprise that no relevant data appeared in the survey of underlying data sources. Whilst CPD courses do exist within our student records system, the data held there is insufficient for marketing purposes and would not project sufficient information to enable prospective students to make an informed choice regarding their study options.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of Exeter We found that data was of a much poorer quality than expected, or not as This project, and the internal project which it extends will have a lasting legacy at the consistently presented as the published regulations would have had us believe. University of Exeter. Countless hours are currently spent tracking approvals for While the University has, for quite a number of years, prescribed a format for course amendments to course information, all of which will be brought online. Colleges and information to be held, the application of this format has not been easy to enforce, central departments can start managing the processes by exception, such as seeing and has not been all that useful as the data has been stored in a number of systems, which teams are bypassing approval workflows and auditing the reasons given, or depending on the college/discipline. spending some time focussing on programmes with low numbers of Intended Learning Outcomes. Previously there was no possibility to do this as the data was .. simply the task of mapping out an existing manual process identifies gaps in not held centrally and actions on it were not recorded. procedures, or differences in local interpretations of rules that can make it difficult to map onto a computer-based system. There is clearly an opportunity for the sector to exploit to turn XCRI-CAP into a ubiquitous standard, which would maximise the return on investment put into the work done thus far. It is true, however that even if XCRI-CAP is not implemented, all institutions (certainly Exeter) who have participated in the programme will have improved their management of course information simply by having to align their descriptions to a common format. Business processes have been fixed, data quality improved and stakeholders engaged in course data like never before. However many of the anticipated benefits of better facilitation of course data sharing between providers and aggregators can only be realised through XCRI-CAP (or similar), and the opportunity must be seized.

Falmouth University The work completed under stage one of this funding stream enabled us to complete Once the CCMS system is rolled out past the pilot phase: a high level review of the effectiveness of our current course marketing data creation  The Quality office should see a reduction in administration effort through and reporting processes. This highlighted issues in relation to data inconsistencies the course creation and validation process which we estimate at 1.5 days and process inefficiencies. In addition the current processes and structures do not per course created. readily support inclusion in an automated information feed.  We believe the quality of course data will improve, by creating a user friendly interface with clear process and guidance notes academic teams will be able to complete course documentation in a more controlled and managed environment.  Academics will have online access to an online data repository of quality documents.  Reduction of effort, we have calculated that an average of 6 days effort per full course created should be saved in Academic time, by introducing a central data repository and by managing document versioning we will enable collaborative working on course documentation.  [CCMS should] Speed up the Course Validation process.  [CCMS should] Provide clarity on the status of courses moving through validation.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of By way of a general evaluation, work so far has not unearthed any critical pieces of Internally, the XCRI project has allowed us to understand better the processes in Greenwich information about programmes that are not available in either the student record use in the field of programme information, and to formalise these processes. system or the Marketing database. However, work is still in progress on mapping Although the use of an external Business Analyst was necessitated by internal staff when information becomes available about future presentations of programmes, as changes, this was actually helpful in giving us a broader perspective. We have the lead times for some end-users (such as the on-line prospectus) are very long. It developed a methodology for providing the XCRI-CAP feed which is transferable may be that this is in this area that we shall find the greatest challenges. elsewhere. When internal users demand programme or module data, we would now consider this as the methodology of choice for providing it.

Grimsby Institute of An initial review of the data held for higher education programmes indicated that the The greatest impact that the project has had on the organisation is improved Further & Higher information held was not consistent across provision. There were also issues communication between departments which had previously been seen as disparate. Education regarding the quality of the information held and whether this was up to date. This improved communication has led to a number of process improvements which would not have previously been possible. These included the change in the quality assurance process for website information, cross department communication and greater understanding of higher education data within a further education setting. The project has had an impact on students who have had the opportunity to provide suggestions for changes to the website. The buy in from the students and the suggestions ranged from simple changes to aspirational technically challenging suggestions. The Institute ensured that the feedback loop was closed by posting on the student wiki aspects of the changes made due to the input from the students. The organisation has learnt from the changes to the quality assurance of the higher education marketing data and the largest change planned for the future will be how this can be replicated within the further education element of the college. This will have a significant impact on the quality and consistency of the information provided for all prospective students and not just those interested in higher education.

University of Previously, Marketing manually listed modules on the website. If a member of staff Throughout the project the team applied ‘XCRI-like’ thinking to the systems involved Hertfordshire reviewed the modules on the website and thought they were wrong under the old in the creation and marketing of courses to ensure data was entered once only and system, they contacted their Marketing Officer, who changed them. This led to two used multiple times. This removed replication and enhanced accuracy. The opportunities for inaccuracy. Firstly, the change might have been misunderstood by application of this thinking has meant the University is now XCRI-ready, as well as the requesting staff member. Secondly, there are possible errors in the transcribing improving other processes and data flows beyond the XCRI-CAP remit. It has also of modules. Added to this, the Programme Specification is published on the course enhanced communication and understanding between the different areas involved in web page. If the requesting member of staff requested an update from their these processes. Marketing Officer, they might not also check the Programme Specification and ensure this is also up to date. The reverse could also happen – a change is made to the programme specification and not picked up quickly by Marketing and therefore be out of date. Processes were in place to review these, but changes outside of those processes might take time to be communicated. ... Similar issues exist around other data sets and have been dealt with on an ad hoc basis, but all the changes to processes in the last year have made the matter more obvious.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of Hull The project has raised awareness of the need for course data integrity across and In particular, the work of the project has contributed significantly to bringing together for the whole institution and not just for individual stakeholder departments relevant internal stakeholders from across the University for the detailed managing their own data for their own purpose. Members are committed to consideration of the business process changes necessary to improve the developing a single source of course data which will negate many of the current institutional management of course data. This has been an exciting and refreshing process inefficiencies and data integrity issues the current ‘mixed economy’ state of experience, confirming that we are all working towards a common purpose; the course data management produces. successful recruitment of students, effective and integrated course management and Meetings with professional service areas quickly reinforced the need for a single thriving longevity for the institution. authoritative source of course information; examples of inconsistent course titles The work of the project has also been timely in feeding directly into the new between UCAS, University webpages and approved courses for example were institution-wide ‘Core IT Systems Refresh Programme’, with key members of the identified. Course Data Project Team part of that team. It is hoped that the Programme will include delivering a single source of course data, accessible by a range of appropriate users, updatable by approved users for the purposes of programme development, approval and management, on-line and print production and publication, student management and administration, management of the VLE and the automatic provision of course data for the purposes of other national initiatives such as KIS and HEAR etc.

University of Kent It has long been acknowledged by most stakeholders involved with the collection, To summarise the work of the Kent XCRI project has produced a standards compilation, administration and publishing of course data at the University of Kent compliant open XML feed of the University’s course data accessible via Cool URIs. that the systems currently used to carry out these tasks were inefficient, autonomous In addition, the Programmes Plant application has provided staff in EMS and staff (for each school or department) and prone to duplication and that the data produced within schools and departments who have a responsibility for compiling and was not consistent or validated and was stored in various silos in various maintaining course data with a robust, well-designed, multi-user, web-based departments. application to help them manage these tasks. The application features automated year-on-year roll over, version control and well thought out workflows for the moderation of changes to the information held within it. The application facilitates rapid or scheduled updates to the published online information to expedite corrections, changes and new information which can be initiated by staff within the schools. Perhaps the most important anticipated benefit, though one which we cannot yet demonstrate, is the effect of improved information being available to students and prospective students. We are confident that our course pages present more comprehensive accurate information which is also better formatted and presented than previously. We hope this will lead to:  improved satisfaction levels for those using our webpages  increased and better targeted recruitment and  improved retention rates and  reduced demand for mid-course subject changes

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Lancaster University There are many courses available at Lancaster University that are not ordinarily New processes and procedures have been rolled out resulting in tighter control of advertised through the regular channels. Short Courses, optional modules that course changes, their approval, and ultimate delivery. This has already raised the students can opt-into after completing their first year, Foundation courses available profile of course changes that previously were actioned in an ad-hoc manner, and via international partnerships and research led postgraduate studies are examples of perhaps without proper regulation. some of these. In the main, entry to these courses is managed by the owning ... Every Lancaster University programme will now be reviewed annually as a result departments rather than the central admissions teams, and so detailed knowledge of this project. rests with the departments, and where there is no need to make this public, the consistency of this information may be weak.

Leeds Metropolitan Developing an XCRI-CAP feed has been a learning experience for us – particularly The project has made a difference within the institution in terms of understanding the University in identifying consistent locations for the relevant elements of data, given that we need for longer-term consideration of integrated processes, for example around the have sought to develop a feed of both credit-bearing and non-credit-bearing management of a recruitment portfolio. In the past our marketing, admissions and provision. registry teams have approached this in separate exercises, but we are now working ... we were unduly optimistic about the fields that were not available in corporate together on a new and integrated approach to this – working towards a ‘single systems (specifically in Banner) and our ability to translate existing data or business conversation’ that allows one part of the journey to inform the next. The course data processes in a way that would allow us to develop these fields. In reality, some of project has allowed this, and facilitated the start of the new process. the fields that were not available in Banner were available elsewhere but not to a level of quality that allowed us to use them within the feed. there is a ‘chicken and egg’ effect here: until colleagues in the wider community see the data being used they will not understand the value of it, but until they see the value of it the data quality (for non-controlled fields, at least) will be an issue and the data cannot easily be used.

Leeds Trinity The majority of programmes at Leeds Trinity are aimed at the undergraduate market  Data flow is more efficient University and the process for collating this course data is well established. There are also a  There is a clear audit trail, showing who has changed what and when number of other courses aimed at the foundation degree, postgraduate degree and  There is one true source of course information the CPD market with less consistent course data.  There is synchronisation of web/print information

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Leicester College Whilst we were able to provide prospective learners with a vast quantity of The improvement in data quality has enabled us to confidently market our course information about most of our courses, we knew that the information did not always information to a wider audience. As an institution better quality information means easily compare with the data supplied by other competitor institutions.. The course that we have now focused on the end-user and can confidently offer advice and marketing database was, before the project start, underused and did not always guidance, and publish information on our courses. produce the information that our prospective learners required. The project has encouraged us to clean up our database, enabling us to market the It quickly became clear to us that whilst many curriculum team members believed correct courses. that their courses were being marketed via our database, they were not reaching The quality of the data supplied has been drastically improved; not only has all old external channels. information been checked and annotated where appropriate, but new information has been added in correct formats and in accordance with the college’s editorial style guide. Curriculum buy-in to course marketing has improved, but we would also like to improve this area further with global communications and more end-user market research, so that internal staff can see the positive impact of good quality information.

University of What was emerging from our trawl of course material, the systems thinking It has been useful to work collaboratively with others across the institution and the Leicester interventions and the fees flow project was that there was sometimes a mismatch project has prompted a number of University of Leicester staff to think about using between how we defined some of our distance learning courses within the course XML technologies and the data structures that they are putting in place to solve regulations and how we represented them in data on SITS. particular course data challenges that they may be facing. Examples include the Marketing & Communications/Web-team re-implementing our online PG prospectus, and the Registry/IT Services looking at how students should sign up for modules when they are on exchange or study abroad programmes. This project has helped us explore some of the issues that we are likely to face in the future and we have learnt a great deal from other institutions about some of the next steps that we need to take on our journey to better manage and share our course data. These next steps include investing in new SITS modules so that we can continue our work to better manage our fee information and standardising the way that we hold our course data, either within SITS or elsewhere.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of Lincoln On this latter point, [potential uses of data] early conversations were not fruitful. Staff For the first time, all of our course data is available in a database that offers a didn’t have a full grasp of the aggregate data that the APMS would make available to number of views and workflows for different staff. We are also publishing a valid them until later in the project when the APMS was populated. XCRI-CAP feed for the first time. While the development of the APMS was 'Take for instance, a module that contains an element of group work. 5 courses use undertaken by a third-party, ON Course has allowed developers at Lincoln to this module, 4 of which are run by one particular college, the 5th course is run by a understand the breadth and depth of programme, course and module information at completely separate college. 4 of the courses have far too much group work, it is Lincoln, as well as offer new methods of understanding and utilising the data. decided, so the decision is made to remove the group work element from the Course data in our Nucleus data warehouse is the single largest set of data we have module. Do those involved in the decision know that the module is used by a course accumulated so far and can now be effectively linked to other datasets such as in College B, and, that the module is the only element of group work within a year’s location data and timetable data. study on the course? Removing the group work element would mean that the course We hope that the wider community has benefited from our work on this project and doesn’t contain all of the required elements to be re-validated, obviously causing we are not aware of any other university that has undertaken visualisations on its problems further down the line.' course data to the extent that we have.

London Metropolitan Prior to the start of the project, a review of the curriculum management processes This was a very worthwhile project which has involved many areas of the University. University identified the following issues There is now a much better appreciation of the value of accurate and well managed  Data duplication / no master copy information about the course offer, and a much better understanding of the  Missed deadlines / info not provided curriculum management processes.  Process is dependent on a few individuals Current curriculum management processes are defined and better understood. This  Little automated data validation understanding has made departments more aware of the impact of their own work  Variable data quality on that of others. For example a number of Faculty staff commented that they had  Process and data not well understood not previously understood the prospectus maintenance and publication process, and  Poor Web presentation deadlines, and as a result information is often incomplete and provided late.  Process is complex The process of loading course and module data to the Course Offer Database  Duplicated effort identified many issues with data quality that have been resolved. Going forward,  Few controls course and module data is now defined, better understood, and better managed so  Difficult to report on data across systems data quality will be further enhanced.  Incompatible and inflexible data structures

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After London School of The previous process was very manual and heavily reliant on a key individual in The new process improves upon the previous situation by managing the workflow of Economics TQARO [Teaching Quality Assurance and Review Office] to manage the process, proposals through the committees, and annual update process automatically, the communication to other colleagues, and their manual replication of course requesting acceptance of changes and progression to the next stage at key points. information. Programme and Module data is held in numerous applications, It also allows for system to system updates, and automatic notification to key users spreadsheets and physical files, with varying points of input. of key changes to information. Over time we will seek to increase the number of Configuration management was an issue throughout the process, with changes system to system interfaces. being managed via the distribution of minutes, chairs actions, sticky notes on hard Below are the objectives we set out with, and following some additional ones that we copy prospectuses and future dated changes (>2 academic years) saved as have brought into the overarching project as we have progressed. All of them have minutes, the format of which can be confusing to the untrained eye and open to either been met or are on course to be met. individual interpretation. Historical data is only available in hard copy; and the  Initial Objectives current applications do not archive data. Improved data quality of course and programme information as evidenced In addition to the internal issues, a number of stakeholders derive data from central by repeating a data quality exercise; sources and hold the data/information locally in applications; ...This information  Rationalisation of systems involved in the current process for publishing varies in quality, content and once published can prove inconsistent across both the course content; service areas and academic departments. A number of data quality tests had taken  Decommissioning of the current TQARO Calendar system; place on core published programme/course and module data, and in the test cases  Reduction in administration and risk by a more streamlined, efficient and chosen 16% of this data was found to be incorrect. auditable process;  Production of a COOL URL feed from structured content for the ‘courses’ within the scope of the project.  Additional Objectives Incorporate the CIS data into the implementation of BusinessObjects Edge  Enable the refactoring of the course choice system by providing a means for academic departments to maintain programme regulations and reliable data  Easier integration for future systems consuming course information and programme data  Single source of truth for course and programme information  Management Information on the volume of change to the curriculum

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Loughborough At the start of the project, the data was both insufficient and in some cases The project facilitated improved working between the different teams and College inaccurate. This situation could not provide the appropriate calibre of course stakeholders across the college. This has removed duplication of effort, brought information to potential applicants or students. greater transparency and introduced efficiencies and savings for the college. Within the college, there were a number of existing processes and practices relating The savings relate to the removal of duplication of effort and therefore freeing staff to course data. In most instances, these were separate activities fulfilling the needs time for other activities. Efficiencies have been brought about in the way that data is of a single functional area and very few had any form of documentation. There were collected, checked and confirmed throughout the year. Greater use is made of the practices that had developed over the years and the knowledge was held by central Management Information System which brings increased return on individuals. investment. In particular, curriculum teams were approached many times through the year for information and data about their provision. Frequently, this information request was repeated by another team. In order to eradicate this and to bring about efficiencies, the project looked at how this information could be collected in a timely way and used by multiple areas. This collaborative approach gave greater transparency across the college of how and when requests for information were made.

Loughborough The online and print versions of the prospectus had historically been treated as We feel that the new process for prospectus management is a huge improvement on University largely separate activities. We wanted to see if we could change that, improve our our old approach. This is specifically because it: efficiency and effectiveness, and create opportunities to re-use course information.  creates a single canonical source of course information that can be re-used and even embedded in School and Department websites,  replaces labour intensive and often paper based processes (freeing up staff time for more worthwhile activities),  gives us the opportunity to make time sensitive changes to the prospectus content which will be reflected immediately, and  through doing so, reduces the likelihood of incorrect or out-of-date information being presented to prospective students

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Middlesex University Middlesex University had in place an experienced team working in course data The MUSKET-ICIF project has produced outputs that can have a clear impact on the related projects funded by Jisc, with emphasis on algorithms for semantic analysis of following areas: course descriptions. The focus of previous work was to understand how XCRI-CAP  Admissions – it means that students are able to understand differences could help extracting meaningful data elements from semi-structured documents between similar courses and perhaps the impact of their decisions when such as programme handbooks and module handbooks. they wish to change modules or transfer to another programme. The obvious challenge was to deal with inconsistent practices, different templates  Curriculum design - it is possible to use the visualisation functions to and systems used for course data generation. assess the extent to which certain programmes are similar, making better- informed decisions when it comes to programme content.  Programme delivery. The use of XCRI-CAP can be also used to determine pathways including pre-requisites, possible module options and alternative programme structures.  Marketing. The use of the XCRI-CAP feed allows a consistent view of all programmes offered by the institution. Furthermore, the use of XCRI-CAP allows the generation of information that could be used for both KIS and HEAR initiatives.

Myerscough College Course fact sheets were word-processed, converted into a web format before Benefits of participating in the project have been numerous and outcomes will publishing. Manual intervention, duplication and re-keying were features of our impact positively on the alignment of our existing internal practices. Analysis of processes which on investigation were found to include errors, limited audit trails, processes and work flows to support technological innovations, and an introduction and a lack of quality assurance giving rise to inefficiency. to ‘Enterprise Architecture’ has helped us map processes, but more importantly opened our minds and given space to investigate the challenges and potential barriers of securing improved effectiveness and efficiency. Cross functional collaborative behaviour identified as a key ingredient to successful project management has been strengthened and formalised following the project. The improved quality and accessibility of information will ensure that the right students are placed on the right courses, resulting in improvements in student retention and success that impact not only on Myerscough College but across the sector.

New College Durham Whilst stakeholders believed they were aware of their – and others’ – contribution As a result of the project, there is now a more persistent, standardised, and course related information processes, on reflection there was concern about the therefore comparable, course information in a consistent location making discovery disparate nature of the information and the complexity of the business processes. within, and without, the institution easier.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After North Lindsey The process of defining, collating, distributing and maintaining course information Internally, the college will have improved management of the planning process for all College has always been time consuming and difficult for the college. Obtaining the its courses, HE and FE. Externally, the college will ultimately be able to generate just information from internal sources was inconsistent and “back of envelope” in some one XCRI-CAP data feed for third party aggregators of course information (eg: cases. Lincs2, SFA) automatically at an agreed frequency. North Lindsey College expended a great deal of effort in collating course information In addition, the college website will receive its own course information from an internally and then distributing this to potential learners both electronically, via extended XCRI-CAP data feed automatically. It will also provide potential learners several eProspectus systems, and manually, through printed leaflets and brochures. with the ability to generate course leaflets (produced using data in the extended data It was felt that “automating” these processes would bring reduced effort and feed) from the website without the college needing to hold large stocks of paper improved management of the whole course planning and marketing process. copies. This project will deliver the following (as yet unquantifiable) benefits within the college:  Improved management of the course planning process  Reduced effort necessary to generate course information for external dissemination  Reduced effort necessary to generate course publications for external distribution  Reduced effort to maintain course information on the college website

University of The project has been able to look at as-is and to-be processes in respect of the The Course Data Stage 2 project has delivered the following benefits: Nottingham wider curriculum management requirements to meet the needs of the University  Drawing together a wide range of stakeholders, whose roles encompass which has campuses in the UK, China and Malaysia and encourages student the development and delivery of course advertising information for mobility across its campuses. prospective students.  Production of the as-is processes for course advertising data management and a proposed to be process.  Producing an XCRI-CAP feed for the full range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses published on the UoN UK prospectus web sites.  Embedded deliverables and project learning into the internal curriculum management Workspace (intranet).

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After City College Norwich City College Norwich went into this project acknowledging the shortcomings of its The future impact of the project is adjudged to be wide and prolonged. processes and provision around course related marketing information … there was Internally, the outcomes from this project will no solid institutional approach to the creation and maintenance of course marketing data and, whilst this had been recognised, solving the problem was a task relegated  Reduce administration to the backburner as more pressing issues always superseded it. This programme Single input of data that can be utilised across multiple media will release gave CCN the impetus to solve a problem that was long overdue. many hours of administrative work. Currently the College is manually supplying data to a number of regional and national databases – most of this is being re-keyed on an individual basis.  Reduce academic administration time By freeing up completely or to some extent academics will be able to dedicate more time to areas that are more important to academic success  Reputation The production of clear, well ordered and useful course marketing information can only enhance the reputation of the College  Recruitment (internal and external) The College believes that it offers the right courses for its area. It has also come to understand that it is potentially losing recruits to other institutions through lack of the best course marketing information  Competition/Cooperation The institution will be able to make comparisons of its own courses against those of others in the area and nationally. This will give the opportunity to enhance both competition and cooperation between institutions.  Process flow As potential students will arrive in conversation with the institution better armed with information about what they want to do and what the institution offers the processes of course choice, enrolment etc should be eased.  Retention It is believed that, through having a better understanding of what a course entails before enrolling students are more likely to make correct decisions about course compatibility – and thus dropout rates should fall.  External stakeholder projected impact is: Potential students will be able to make more informed choices Aggregators will be able to fully utilise the institution’s up-to-date data without barriers All users of the CCN XCRI-CAP data feed will be assured that they have the latest available data.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of Oxford The driving force behind the project was to address the long-standing problem that The project has enabled the University to bring together and display in one place for graduate training information was hard to find as it was stored in disparate systems. the first time all of its extensive graduate training provision, which was previously This issue was drawn into focus by the Oxford University Student Union 2011 Report displayed separately on several different websites or else was not immediately on behalf of Post-Graduate Taught Students which also highlighted the need to visible. organise in one place information about the extensive and rich variety of training Collecting all graduate training information in one place in a common format is seen provided for graduate students by different parts of the University, to make it easier as a huge success and should make a very real difference to the academic life of for students to access information about training opportunities and to enrol for current and prospective students. places. 1. The public display of courses will show the academic world how much excellent graduate training is on offer, and will help Oxford to attract the best students 2. The VLE tool will allow students to locate and take full advantage of the training on offer leading to ‘better’ trained researchers and academics. As the initiative to display all graduate training opportunities in one place becomes embedded, it is expected that internally the provision of training itself will adjust as provision is rationalised and more clearly differentiated, and new opportunities and requirements are more readily identified. This will contribute to optimising the provision of training opportunities and the use of resources. Externally, this initiative will contribute to improving the availability information about graduate training opportunities, which may in turn lead to greater sharing of expertise and resources between institutions.

Oxford Brookes We had not realised quite how widely spread the data is at the moment. The project This project has given Brookes a greater understanding of how to improve the way it University has highlighted this issue and given us an indication how to improve this situation. manages and uses course information. We have more understanding of how to Specific challenges that we face in keeping course information up to date are: adapt our internal processes to permit easier access to our course data.  Currently course data is updated using MS word templates. A validated set of course data has reduced the probability of data errors and  There is duplication of data entry as course data is transcribed from Word duplication. documents into the in-house Student administration system. The analysis of our current business processes has helped highlight the need for a  Marketing based course data used for prospectus etc. is held in our Web review of the current data architecture relating to course information. Content Management System.  Course data that is used for validation purposes is held in our in-house Student administration system.  There is no workflow for the update of course data. Subsequently the course approval process and update of course data in the central student administration system can be delayed as some parties may be unaware course data has been updated.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Plymouth College of With the increase in student fees and the Government focusing support on STEM The immediate impact of the project can be considered to have occurred in a Art (Science, Technology, engineering and maths) subjects, the need for the Art and number of key areas: Design sector to use its course advertising information to highlight the benefits of an  Greater understanding of the need for clear course advertising information Art and Design education is increasingly critical. This is especially true of the so- to be made available called ‘endangered’ art and design subjects that the College in fact views as having  Better course advertising information available for students relating to enormous creative, social and economic potential in, and as a consequence, is College courses investing in.  An awareness amongst students of the importance of their views and the manner in which the College is seeking to provide information to help them make better informed choices  Greater understanding of the benefits of automated information and the short term costs vs. the long term gains of investment within this area  Greater understanding of the XCRI-CAP standard and schema  Highlighting of importance of academic staff within the admissions process which has been widely appreciated by staff within the College  Awareness of the needs of students in relation to course advertising information  Experience of process redesign and cultural change programme  Experience of project work and planning  Greater commitment to engage with the wider sector on issues affecting the education sector  Understanding internally of benefits of full engagement within project work  Awareness of institutional profile raising as a result of this project  Greater understanding of the unique nature of the institution and its place within the wider sector  Greater understanding of working with a range of stakeholders and contractors and the need to managing relationships and workflows closely

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Royal Holloway At Royal Holloway there are many systems that store and use course information. Course data quality in Royal Holloway has been significantly enhanced by improving University of London These systems do excellent work in silos, preparing and using course data for their how course data is stored and managed. This ensures that accurate and timely data particular functions. is available for a range of internal and external services. Also sharing our course The analysis revealed; different levels of consistency in course data residing in data through XCRI-CAP has opened up more channels for advertising our courses, various repositories with the college, difficulty in identifying the authoritative source extends the range and reach of our course information and makes it easier for of course data, enormous manual effort required to maintain course data in various students and the wider community to access our harder to find courses. repositories in order to be fit for purpose of that repository, how little automated data  Data Quality: The project has enabled the college to take the quality of reuse there is across systems and how difficult it is to bring all relevant information course data more seriously. This led to the need to clean-up and develop together for a college wide advertising service. Some of the problems found were; data in Banner, so that it can be the authoritative source of course data for some courses that are no longer offered by the college were still open in our other system and requirements. A snap shot of the course data in Banner students’ record system (Banner) and for courses that are definitely offered, the now gives a true representation of the courses we offer and the correct course information recorded in Banner was not always consistent with the attributes of those courses. This is quite useful for other systems and information on the web based course finder directory and Embark. This mirrored the processes which rely on Banner for course information. experience of the KIS (Key Information Set) project team, where significant manual  Process Efficiency: The implementation of the new data warehouse and the effort was required to produce an accurate file. ESB now makes it possible to have a single authoritative view of course information. Therefore data requirements from any system can now be easily fulfilled through a web service connection to this view. This makes our course data reusable and eliminates the need for manual intervention in fulfilling data requirements.  Accessibility of data: Again course data is now easily accessible from the data warehouse through web services for both internal and external use.  EA /SOA: This project has enabled the college to embrace enterprise architecture as a useful tool for ensuring organisational and IT project alignment.  XCRI-CAP: Our XCRI-CAP feed is now available for consumption by external aggregators on data.rhul.ac.uk. This increases visibility of course data for comparison across institutions by aggregating and reusing open data.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of Salford Where we started: The project has addressed the key programme objective of making course  CPD was managed locally in Colleges and Schools. information more easily accessible to prospective learners. At present this is just at  There was no consistent quality processes for managing courses. University level as the XCRI-CAP feed as still in development but the systems and processes are now in place to enable this to be completed shortly. The review of the  Ideas for courses were not always driven by market need but by academic end to processes across the whole lifecycle of CPD course provision has had a passions. number of benefits outside of the scope of the project too:  There was no clear strategy for marketing CPD courses which had led to inconsistencies in messages. Overall the provision of CPD courses is now much more organised and professional.  Costs were often carried by, or shared with, credit bearing courses making The University has moved on from a position where there were pockets of good it difficult to identify commercial viability of CPD courses. practice but this was not consistent across the institution, to a position where the  There was no central repository of CPD course data, information was in same level of service is provided to all learners, staff and associates and customers. local spreadsheets and Access databases. As well as an improved level and visibility of information about the courses they are  There was no central CPD course website so information was very hard to interested in, learners also benefit from being able to see details of all courses they find for prospective delegates (17 different entry points!) have attended and any awards gained. This is an advantage in itself but also makes  The approval process timescales were inconsistent too long. booking new courses simpler as the system can already check that they have the  There was no consistent policy on staff payments across the institution and required pre-requisites for the course and if so, won’t ask for proof. different rules were applied to work out whether the teaching on CPD From the University’s point of view, the improved costing and approval process courses was considered in or above workload. reduces the financial risk of running CPD courses and the dedicated team are able  HEBCIS (Higher Education Business & Community Interaction Survey) to market the courses more successfully so increasing the revenue. reporting was difficult and time consuming. The academics have benefitted too, not only from the consistently applied payment  There was no knowledge of XCRI-CAP policy but also, once a course is approved they can just ‘turn up and teach’ as all the marketing and organising of the course delivery is done for them.

University of Sheffield At Sheffield, much commonly used information is not currently held on the central We can now report significant achievements due to our ‘joined-up’ approach. We Corporate Information System (CIS), but in an array of Word documents and have identified and addressed complex course data issues to enable successful spreadsheets, leading to issues with data integrity and user dissatisfaction with the local implementation of the Key Information Set (KIS) and the Higher Education associated processes. Process mapping and other work carried out by the Course Achievement Report (HEAR). We are building an online system that will provide a Data project spurred the initiation of OPMS [Online Programme Management common, intuitive user interface for the management of all types of course data, System] and its outputs continue to be used to inform planning and analysis. which is being developed via our OPMS [Online Programme Management System] project. We hope that this will support better course information management and ownership of information by academic departments, strengthen consistency across information sources for internal and external use, and reinforce the principle of ‘enter once, re-use many times’. We produced an XCRI-CAP feed and successfully proved the concept by submitting this to the test validator, but further improvements to our course data are essential if we are to make a feed available to any confirmed aggregators in the future.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After St George’s, Currently St George’s course data is managed by a number of departments and St George’s will now have information written for the prospectus and website at the University of London individuals. There is a lack of uniform process in collating, maintaining, sharing and time of validation. As a smaller institution St George’s do not create a high volume of publishing this data. new courses however this small change of process will have obvious benefits and Initially it was underestimated just how much resource and change of practice for can be credited to the project. academic staff as well as the recruitment team this would require. The Jisc course data project has led to closer working with our partners in the Joint Issues included but were not limited to: Faculty.  Clashing scheduling of elements of course data in production and editing. The wider community at St George’s benefitted from increased communication, For instance the prospectus and web content that followed a recruitment evaluation of internal processes to create and edit web and prospectus data, calendar. consideration of our current web technology and its scalability and evaluation of our  Lack of clarity on sources of data. One comment was ‘course information resources to address projects of this scale. can reach me and have no idea of where it came from.’ Outputs/outcomes included:  Multiple owners or editors of data could lead to diluted or distorted  Working XCRI- CAP feed. messages.  Secure audit of course advertising information creating transparency to the processes involved.  Shared resource for data storage with appropriate security.  Current process maps, protocols for update, management and scheduling of course data.  The shared knowledge of the project team meeting has proved a valuable experience for all involved.  The workshop events allowed the exact same forum to flourish with a focus on the recruitment/marketing and the admissions teams.  The capturing of new course data by targeting the existing course in validation process.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After St Mary’s University St Mary’s needs to replace manual sourcing of information to have an integrated Project outputs and outcomes include: College data collection at the point of course approval.  More standardised, and therefore comparable, course information in a consistent location making discovery easier, particularly for part-time, distance learning and hard to find courses.  More knowledge by the software company of the data requirements for XCRI-CAP, Student Loan Company (SLC) and Key Information Set (KIS) for institutions that can be shared across the sector  An application (ACMS) that is capable of storing course information for producing marketing information in the form of XCRI-CAP but also for use in the student records system and to feed other systems such as SLC and KIS which will be of use not only to St Mary’s but also the wider sector.  Making significant progress towards a more efficient and effective course approval process which collects the required data at the outset to provide a single authoritative source for all internal and external course requirements.  Better understanding of how to generate high quality marketing information as it is being taken through an objective validation process.  More informed applicants meaning, over time, more probability of good course choices and thereby enhancing retention and achievement – evidence will be gathered over the coming years.  A better in-house understanding of enterprise architecture technologies. These have been used to analyse and deliver business processes and improved potential to use these technologies and techniques in key processes in other areas of the University College. In turn this will lead to more effective and timely provision of services and responsiveness to external and internal change.  The opportunity to develop better designed processes and procedures through greater knowledge across the institution of process review methodology.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After Staffordshire Before the Course Data project, there was little awareness or open discussion about The immediate impact includes: University the way in which information and data was being managed – although frustrations  Greater awareness and willingness to understand more about why were voiced in pockets of the institution. inaccuracies occur and how they can be fixed. Generally the silo’ed approach to data management has meant that there has been  Greater level of cross departmental working to tackle challenges jointly little recognition between teams on the impact on colleagues elsewhere within the rather than in isolation. institution in terms of notification of change, withdrawal and the need to trigger/alert  Increased consideration of cross over and duplication of activity. other departments in a timely manner which has been impacting on the quality and  Senior stakeholder awareness and growing interest in how the accuracy of information being promoted. management of course data and the processes – and the use of technology A series of informal processes have culturally become accepted ways of working will enable the business to reach its key objectives. over longer periods of time – leading to error at various touch points internally and  Marketing and PR teams willingness to look for and trial new ways of for the customer. working.  Wider desire to use technology and interoperable systems to remove/reduce the manual processing of information.  UG 2014 prospectus production using a database to store content.  Desire of senior stakeholder to champion and support activities and projects such as this that will in turn benefit staff, customers and productivity to enable innovation to be the focus.  This project has created a core group of people within the central functions that are focusing on the way we manage data.  Up-skilling of Staff in BPMN standard Business Analysis techniques.  Up-skilling of staff in Change Management.

University of SITS held a limited amount of information about programmes, particularly the Indications from wider stake-holder groups are encouraging: Sunderland programme ‘structures’ which show which modules are associated with each  academic staff are positive about the clearer structure of the revised programme, but no text fields such as programme learning outcomes or content. programme specification which will simplify the process of writing it, This sort of information was held mostly in Word documents such as programme allowing academics to focus on the academic content; specifications.  administrative staff, including SITS teams and quality management staff in central and faculty offices, are positive about being able to access up-to- date information at all times, reducing time-consuming ‘paper-chases’;  marketing staff are positive about being able to access current module information and programme specifications.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of Sussex The Self-assessment Framework exercise gave us a retrospective insight into the Taking part in this programme has been beneficial for the University. Some of these relative maturity of our data. However, we still found areas where we were able to benefits have been internal, such as work carried out to ensure the appropriate improve our data and processes. management of course and module data, and to generate a KIS feed. … we have had issues with missing data in data sources [for XCRI-CAP] – it has Other project outputs are readily accessible to other HEIs. We have used open sometimes been hard to work out whose job it is to fix these issues. The reasons for source tools to build a re-usable, scalable XCRI-CAP web service that could be this are complex. adopted by other institutions. The XCRI-CAP work package identified that there was It could be that the data is not yet being made available by the school, or it could be some missing data in our course descriptions, and has helped us to understand the that the data is fully available but contains incomplete records. Also, flags can be set ownership of data and the business processes associated with this. at various levels that prevent some of the data being made public via our prospectus system; in some cases this is to prevent duplication due to the structure of the data. Publications also have the ability to switch off courses or data fields depending on requests from departments. Working out the workflow and processes for all of these intersecting issues would require considerable painstaking effort and liaison between various University stakeholders. At the moment, these stakeholders take the view that our provision of data is not ‘broken’ as it is working satisfactorily for the purposes that they require of it.

Teesside University At the start of the project, Course data was held in multiple systems and linking of Overall, the project has had a positive impact on the way the Institution collects and information between those systems was partial in some cases and non-existent in maintains course data. The project has enabled disparate sources of data and others. processes acting on that data to be identified and in some cases improved. The Additionally, one of the key sources of course data held incomplete data. A number adoption of process changes, implementation of new systems and the introduction of of reasons existed for the information being incomplete, including poor adoption of additional quality checks will all contribute to improvements to the overall quality of the system and a lack of functionality in some areas. course data.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of Central While a considerable amount of work has been done to improve and refine course While it is still too early in the project to assess the full impact of the project, the Lancashire information within UCLan, it is still noted that many of the processes are still immediate benefits of the deliverables of the project are: inefficient and involve duplication of data and rely on the production of word  A refined course approval process, which formally includes Admissions and documents and manual data inputting. Advancement processes.  A more transparent course approval process, which will better enable tracking of courses progressing through the process.  A master source of course advertising data resulting in consistency in the data published.  Improved access to course information for prospective students, which should enable them to make more informed and ultimately better course choices .  More efficient business process which we expect to result in a reduction in resources to undertake tasks and reduced data entry.  A reduction in the reliance on individuals to send emails or chase for information as the system automatically prompts tasks and stakeholders can check on the progress through the system.  The information collection process has made the University re-think who the information is collected from. For example, academics were often asked to provide information such as cost of the course UCAS code, etc. for which they were not the creator nor the best source. As a result academics were providing information that was being amended or corrected and subsequently wasting their time. There has now been a reduction in the amount of data the academics are asked to provide for course marketing purposes.

University of West It has been relatively easy to ask for the adoption of the [XCRI-CAP] standard in our The main impact of the project is that XCRI is now an integral part of the information London institution. The marketing team knew already of the importance the standard and did system of the institution. Linked data has been evaluated for our university and there not implement it previously only because they did not have the resources to do so. is now a linked data source on which we can build. Challenges that we faced in the implementation of linked data can be summarised LUCI (Linked University Course Information) project has provided us with a start for as two main points: the building of our vision of a SMART university. We see a university as a platform  The first, main, challenge we faced was the availability of external sources; that delivers data to drive the analysis of teaching and learning environments. Our i.e. a number of sources were not maintained or were not open source. vision is that we should be working towards a platform that links the daily journey of  The second challenge that we faced is how to establish the relationship students and lecturer and makes the university experience explicit. We believe that between two sources; for example, how to relate a course’s title to that of a sharing and providing transparency are the basis for innovation and academic job’s title in a job opportunities advert. growth. Providing open linked data will contribute towards providing evidence-based view of suitability of a course.

Managing course information infoKit Project ‘before and after’ quotes

Organisation Before After University of the West A series of discussion with staff working with particular systems provided information The project has provided: of England to map the existing course information processes.  The coding and data quality for a data feed which provides valid data for a The discussions also showed that: number of UWE courses of different types.  teams knew there were problems with existing processes and with data  Better readiness to implement such a data feed sharing and wanted to improve this;  Improved course information processes in our admissions and marketing  teams had a fairly limited knowledge of other teams’ information needs, and teams of other systems, so no-one had a good overview; the project was helping  A better understanding of the importance and complexity of course build bridges; information systems in senior management  there was a significant amount of overlapping effort (and staff frustration) in  More transparency around the flow of course information collecting information from academic staff or checking it with them multiple times, by different teams and at different times in the admissions and course marketing processes;  current documentation of processes was limited;  some processes were unclear, and in some cases were failing e.g. when dealing with courses run by partner colleges.

Wigan and Leigh We then reviewed the current business processes, with regard to collection, The initial impact that the project is having on users/stakeholders within the College, College maintenance and publishing of such [course marketing] information. This proved far is during the Curriculum Planning process. In previous years the Marketing from consistent. We found that information was held in a myriad of formats, not all department have had to source relevant marketing information about the course at a electronic, and we had to establish ownership and control of data. This proved quite later date, whereas the process is now embedded within the planning process. The difficult, as obviously areas were precious about what they deemed as ‘their’ data, authorisation process will lead to more consistent data, which will be corrected at compared with what in our case was deemed institution data. source rather than marketing proofing the information for one publication, and then having to repeat the process further down the line after a subsequent request for information. The wider community will benefit from the project as it will lead to higher quality, consistent information, and a more comprehensive coverage as evidenced by the scope and number of courses appearing in the feed. This will enable stakeholders to make a more informed decision based on the data.