Course Management: Specification, Validation & Description strand : JISC

Start date: 1 March 2007

End date: 31 March 2009

JISC theme(s): e-Learning, e-Administration

Committees: JISC Learning and Teaching committee

Working Groups: e-Learning capital programme advisory board

JISC has funded a number of projects to explore, describe and pilot new approaches to aspects of the course management lifecycle, from specification through validation to description and course advertising.

Introduction

The administrative processes associated with course management – including course development, validation, advertising, review and quality assurance – are often carried out in a number of different places within an institution (or across more than one institution, in the case of joint provision.) This often results in data about courses and their validation residing in more than one place, leading to difficulties with version control and authority and currency of data. Potential learners can also have difficulty accessing appropriate information about courses available to them, for example all part-time courses on a given subject in their area.

Projects in this area are building on the work of the COVARM and XCRI reference model projects. COVARM explored the business processes around course validation, describing two of the sub-processes in formal detail. XCRI developed a draft specification for course description, which has now been simplified into a Course Advertising Profile and is being trialled and refined.

Projects funded

Course specification

Lead institution	Project name	Timescale	Summary
Thames Valley University	P-SPEX	Mar 07 – Mar 09	Development of a domain map for programme specification production and usage, implemented as models, descriptions and java services.

Course validation

Lead institution	Project name	Timescale	Summary
Thames Valley University	COVa	Mar 07 – Mar 08	Encoding of two COVARM scenarios in business process modelling notation and providing technology-enabled support for the management of the processes within these scenarios.

Course description and advertising

XCRI is a draft specification that resulted from a JISC-funded reference model project, which aimed to deliver a vocabulary and appropriate technology bindings (ie XML) for describing course-related information that encompassed course marketing, course quality assurance, enrolment and reporting requirements. The motivation for this is to make it easier for institutions to publish accurate information about learning opportunities and share this information with a number of interested parties such as partner institutions, UCAS, learners, information, advice and guidance services and course planners.

The XCRI draft specification was a result of grass roots demand from the sector and has already enjoyed considerable success and take-up. A standard data format for describing and publishing course offerings can facilitate many of the administrative functions that underpin learning and teaching. As such JISC seeks to trial, evaluate and refine the XCRI specification with a view to submitting it to an appropriate Open Standards ratification process. This process has been begun through the funding of a number of mini-projects to trial and evaluate the usability of the specification and help refine it:

Lead institution	Project name	Timescale	Summary
The Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance	GMSA XCRI mini-project	Feb - Aug 08	Examine the technical and procedural factors of utilising a course description specification in support of the GMSA overarching projects, ModCAT and Vocational Course Catalogue
Edge Hill University	Edge Hill XCRI project	Feb - Aug 08	Develop the course database(s) to hold all course related data using the XCRI standard, thereby enabling the University to manage the marketing-related course information from a single core record. From there the data would be fed through to the CPD Noticeboard (and /or other relevant sites) using XCRI-CAP compliant feeds.
Thames Valley University	P-SPEX	April 07 - March 09	Produce a programme specification Domain Map for higher education.
West Cheshire College	West Cheshire College XCRI mini-project	Feb - Aug 08	Publish course information from the college’s leaflets database and Unit-e course information system, combining them into a single XCRI catalogue.
University of Kent	XCRIKe	Mar - Sept 07	Provide a single management point for all externally facing course-related information.
University of Hertfordshire	MOVE-XCRI	May – Oct 07	Supporting the MOVE lifelong learning network by automating the input of course information from a sample of partner colleges using XCRI, through a system based on ioNodes.
University of Staffordshire	StaffsXCRI	Mar – Sep 07	Produce an extension to an in-house system to map and output, via a web service, proprietary learning structures (awards, modules, learning outcomes, etc) to an XCRI schema conformant catalogue. The catalogue will be exposed for consumption by an aggregator.
University of Bolton	BoXCRIP	Mar – Aug 07	Implement and test the XCRI schema against the full University course catalogue, including CPD and short courses.The course catalogue will be driven from the SITS student record system and will be created as a XML course repository.
Manchester Metropolitan University	XCRI @MMU	Mar – Sep 07	Review of the suitability of XCRI CAP as a candidate course schema for the UK by creating a harvestable XCRI-CAP prospectus for MMU.
Open University	OCCAM	Mar – Sep 07	Extend, enhance and standardise the existing methods through which the Open University supplies its courses data to third party aggregators.
University of Oxford	OXCRI	Mar - Aug 07	Create web services using SOAP and REST to deliver information about CPD courses from university departments using the XCRI format. This will cover public courses and internal staff and student development courses.
Lead organisation	Study name	Timescale	Summary
APS Ltd	XIM	Dec 07 - May 08	Produce a set of good practice models for implementation of XCRI-CAP, so that HEIs and others can use the outputs for their own implementations.

To support these mini-projects and refine and promote the specification, JISC has funded an XCRI support project from February 2007 to December 2008. This will enable members of the original XCRI team from CETIS, Manchester Metropolitan University and Kainao Ltd to further develop the specification, provide technical support for the implementation of XCRI, provide a prototype online aggregation service, and promote the specification towards submission to an appropriate open standards process.

Timetabling and resource scheduling

Lead organisation	Study name	Timescale	Summary
Oakleigh Consulting Ltd.	Study on timetabling and resource scheduling	May 08 - Feb 09	This study is concerned with the administrative processes and challenges around timetabling and resource scheduling for learning opportunities, and the way in which these link with curriculum and session planning.

JISC

Site tools

Site Navigation

Programmes