Start date: 1 February 2008
End date: 1 August 2008
Funding programme: e-Learning Capital programme
JISC theme(s): e-Learning, e-Administration
Committees: JISC Learning and Teaching committee
Overview
West Cheshire College is a vocational college with three main campuses located in Chester, Ellesmere Port and Capenhurst. The learners are drawn from the West Cheshire and South Wirral regions. There are approximately 2000 full time and 20000 part-time learners studying at the college.
The college offers a range of vocational courses in the following areas:
- Art, Design and Media
- Care and Childcare
- Commercial Services
- Computing
- Construction
- Engineering
- Hairdressing and Beauty Therapy
- Hospitality and Catering
- Logistics
- Performing Arts
- Public Services
- Sport
- Travel and Tourism
During the project, we intend to publish course information from the college’s leaflets database and Unit-e course information system, combining them into a single XCRI catalogue. By doing this we hope to standardise the college’s offerings in preparation for exporting course information to external databases. As a result curricula activity will be more accessible to learners and prospective learners, allowing the college to become more active in regional collaborations such as the Lifelong Learning network.
Aims and objectives
The overall aim of the project will pilot both the generation of XCRI within the FE sector and also the exporting of XCRI into an appropriate Web service. Objectives include:
- Exporting data to aggregators that inform prospective learners about opportunities in vocational training.
- Enabling wider access to West Cheshire College course information
- Establish a model for XCRI implementation within the FE sector
- Collaboration with external partners (i.e. University of Chester, SOLVs, Lifelong Learning Network, FastTomato, Connexions)
Project methodology
- The methodology being used for this particular project will include a close working relationship and consultation process with key stakeholders: Phosphorix (Software developers), College Information Systems, West Cheshire College networks and marketing departments, University of Chester and SOLVS.
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West Cheshire College will work with the software company Phosphorix to develop the CourseExchange agent software, mapping the fields in the current college databases to XCRI fields from the aggregated views, providing a reasonable way to maintain an authoritative source of data for XCRI CAP.
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College Information Systems will install the CourseExchange software and configure it to connect to our two databases and their VIEWs.
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Phosphorix will visit the college to assist with configuration and connection and will deliver training to WCC staff.
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The resulting XML document will be validated by an aggregator provided by the XCRI support project.
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We will investigate implementation the XCRI feed with FastTomato, Connexions, Chester University and the 14-19 initiative.
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Scope This is essentially a small scale project, whose scope is limited to a single Further Education College and its course output. Similarly, the partners involved are limited to a single Software developer and the further partners named above.
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Critical Success Factors include the development of the CourseExchange agent Software (1), the connection of the databases (2), the successful output of the XCRI to the respective external partners.
Anticipated impact
Project Outputs
- West Cheshire College XCRI feed with external partners.
- Protocol / model for XCRI implementation for Further Education sector.
- Increased familiarisation of XCRI and the processes which enable this.
- Wider access to Further Education programmes within the Cheshire and Warrington Lifelong Learning Network.
Project Outcomes
- Wider access to Further Education programmes within the Cheshire and Warrington Lifelong Learning Network.
Technology / Standards used
Specific further development of CourseExchage (ioHub, ioAgent and ioPortal ) will include XSLT (via ioMorph), Java, Spring, Struts, JSP, XML, web services. Phosphorix employ agile methodologies from RAD, XP and a growing interest in the JISC UIDM. OSS products include ioNetworkNode and ioMorph, Apache Tomcat, Apache, mod_jk, postgres, Hibernate.
Lead institution
Project partners