Funding programme: Institutional Responses to Emergent Technologies
Project website:
http://sites.google.com/a/ga.kingston-college.ac.uk/katapila-etimetabler/Home
JISC theme(s): e-Administration
Committees: JISC Organisational Support committee
This project is based at Kingston College
The KATAPILA project seeks to exploit the opportunities provided by emergent technologies for administration of the learning experience for higher education students within a further education
environment. We are seeking to provide integrated access for learners to timetable information relating to their courses of study, assessment schedules and examination programme.
The project will examine the potential of several emergent technologies, including XML, SOAP and AJAX, to capture, manage, process and present timetable data in formats that may be consumed by learners in convenient and accessible ways. These methods will include mobile devices (using web-based SMS services), RSS feeds for presentation in user-selected web-based and client applications; email content (using Google Apps for Education) and an institutional VLE (a dedicated timetable block for Moodle).
The project is designed to produce outputs, which conform closely to open standards and adhere to the principles behind the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), advocated by the JISC. It will involve implementation of database-independent XML plugins that facilitate structured information exchange between institutional and other systems. Our pilot study will focus on a large Business Management degree course although we envisage rapid uptake more widely across the organisation. Furthermore, we believe the initiative will be of widespread interest and value for e-administration to institutions across the further and higher education sectors.
The KATAPILA project is based on the premise that the integration of emerging technologies within institutional systems such as management information systems, collaboration portals and virtual
learning environments can provide flexible, time-efficient and engaging solutions to the information management needs of further and higher education institutions and the students they serve. We believe the future of educational administration will centre on the use of integrated web-based tools and services and unified authorisation and access management services, which enable data to be exchanged in standards-compliant ways between disparate systems and platforms.
Timetabling presents a key information concern for all education providers. The scheduling of multidimensional events (where curriculum activities, teaching staff and room locations must be synchronised), the recording of this information, integration with appropriate data sources (e.g. for student enrolments on representative classes) and the presentation of such information in convenient formats to staff and student communities all represent significant challenges. Not all of these elements are easily addressed with technology; decisions will always need to be made about resolution of conflicting resource allocations. However, emergent technologies do provide a promising suite of tools to enable timetabling information to be handled in intelligent ways. XML protocols, database-driven web applications and mobile technologies are all examples of systems that may now be used to capture, process and present such administrative data in suitable formats for users.
The introduction of integrated administration and timetabling services will progressively provide a more coherent, intuitive and effective experience for learners. Specifically, the initiatives proposed here are designed to address the challenges presented by management of learning-related information. For example, many large course programmes currently present difficulties for curriculum managers and tutors in keeping in regular contact with students and issuing relevant and timely information about the course programme (such as timetable changes and an ongoing assessment schedule). Announcements in lectures, the VLE systems and corridor notice-boards do not provide adequate channels of communication.
We envisage a scenario, where students on large programmes, especially HE courses, receive a personalised weekly timetable sent to them by automated email and have entries automatically added to institutionally-provided online calendar systems. They also have the option to subscribe to RSS timetable feeds, which they may display using their selected RSS aggregator tools, including social networking sites. Furthermore students will routinely send SMS requests for assessment deadlines and receive appropriate data in personalised SMS messages. We believe the KATAPILA project will enable us to realise this state of timetable data handling.