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Loughborough University Dr Jennifer Nutkins, Academic Registrar Martin Hamilton, Head of Internet Services m.t.hamilton@lboro.ac.uk N/A http://open.lboro.ac.uk Course Data: making the most of course information Stage 2 Ruth Drysdale, eLearning Team Innovation
Document Information Author(s) Project Role(s) Date Martin Hamilton Project Manager March 2013 Filename Loughborough Open Course Data Phase 2 Final Report.doc
URL Access
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Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 - v11.0
Project Identifier: Version: 1.1 Contact: Martin Hamilton Date: Feb 2013
Table of Contents
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... 3 PROJECT SUMMARY.................................................................................................... 3 MAIN BODY OF REPORT .............................................................................................. 3 3.1 PROJECT OUTPUTS AND OUTCOMES ....................................................................................... 3 3.2 HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT ACHIEVING YOUR OUTPUTS / OUTCOMES? ............................................. 4 3.2.1 Overall Approach to Project Management ............................................................. 4 3.2.2 Process Mapping Exercise ....................................................................................... 5 3.2.3 Developing the Ideal Process Map .......................................................................... 7 3.2.4 Benefits of Unified Course Information ................................................................... 8 3.2.5 User Experience for Content Contributors .............................................................. 9 3.2.6 Generation of XCRI-CAP Feed from CMS Data ...................................................... 10 3.2.7 Autodiscovery via Cool URIs ............................................................................... 11 3.2.8 Validity Checking with the XCRI-CAP Validator ..................................................... 12 3.2.9 Inclusion in the XCRI-CAP Aggregator ................................................................... 12 3.3 WHAT DID YOU LEARN? ..................................................................................................... 13 3.4 IMMEDIATE IMPACT .......................................................................................................... 13 3.5 FUTURE IMPACT ............................................................................................................... 14
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CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................... 14 RECOMMENDATIONS................................................................................................ 14 5.1 5.2 5.3 STRUCTURED DATA ........................................................................................................... 14 MODULE AND PROGRAMME APPROVALS ............................................................................... 15 VARIANT FIELDS ................................................................................................................ 15
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Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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Project Identifier: Version: 1.1 Contact: Martin Hamilton Date: Feb 2013
Acknowledgements
We extend our appreciation to everyone who has been involved in the project. Particular thanks are due to Chris Carpenter and Greg Milsted for their initial work mapping XCRI-CAP fields to data held centrally by Loughborough University, Dharmisha Nakeshri for her work on mapping the print and online prospectus processes, and Jonathan Walters for leading on the Content Management System strand of the project and working with Terminal Four to implement this. We are also indebted to Terminal Four for their assistance with the project.
2 Project Summary
This is the final report from the Open Course Data project at Loughborough University. We have been funded by JISC to develop a machine readable version of our online prospectus. In parallel we wanted to explore improving the way that the prospectus is developed. The reader can find out more about the project at http://open.lboro.ac.uk. This project implemented the system, service, process and policy changes at Loughborough University that were needed in order to produce an XCRI-CAP feed of course marketing information. It also identified a number of benefits to the institution, many of which will also be of interest to the larger community and perhaps also relevant to related initiatives such as the HEFCE Key Information Sets and the wider Open Data agenda. The project documented the process of stakeholder engagement and technical development via periodic blog posts. Project outputs were released under appropriate licenses, i.e. Creative Commons version attribution license (CC-BY 2.0) for reports and documentation, GNU General Public License (GPL v3) for code (Site Manager CMS formatter script), and Open Government License (OGL) for the course data feed itself. The project engaged with JISC and the wider community through the project blog and faceto-face/online programme events. Loughborough is an active participant in a number of relevant communities, e.g. AUA, UCISA and CASE, and is actively exploring opportunities to promote this work.
Report
Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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Project Identifier: Version: 1.1 Contact: Martin Hamilton Date: Feb 2013
Report
http://open.lboro.ac.uk/open-course-data-project/ Interim, final and closure reports: May 2012: http://open.lboro.ac.uk/open-course-data-may2012-interim-report-to-jisc/ November 2012: http://open.lboro.ac.uk/ocd-nov2012/
Presentations
Course Data Technical Day, June 2012: http://open.lboro.ac.uk/presentation-at-open-course-datatechnical-day-june-2012/ Video for Programme Meeting January 2013: http://open.lboro.ac.uk/ocd-video/
Knowledge built
Improved understanding of location of core data and information flows; potential vehicles for improving efficiency and reducing duplication; opportunities presented by in-house and third party software and services As described above Open Source software (Terminal Four Site Manager output formatter) to produce an XCRI-CAP feed based on the Loughborough course data. This is attached as an Appendix and is also available via the project blog as: http://open.lboro.ac.uk/open-course-data-terminal-four-sitemanager-cms-formatter-for-xcri-cap-generation/ We have also provided a copy of our specification to Terminal Four for the development of the XCRI-CAP output formatter: http://open.lboro.ac.uk/open-course-data-centralised-xcri-capcourse-information-using-terminal-four-site-manager/
3.2 How did you go about achieving your outputs / outcomes? 3.2.1 Overall Approach to Project Management
We held regular project team meetings throughout the course of the project: January 2012, March 2012, April 2012, June 2012, September 2012, November 2012, December 2012, February 2013, March 2013. The project team reported back to the Universitys Student Information Steering Group via Student Administration Management Team. Further stakeholder engagement took place on a needs basis, e.g. School Operations Managers received a presentation on the project in November 2012.
Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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Project Identifier: Version: 1.1 Contact: Martin Hamilton Date: Feb 2013
A project plan was maintained in Microsoft Project, of which an excerpt is shown below:
Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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The online and print versions of the prospectus had historically been treated as largely separate activities. We wanted to see if we could change that, improve our efficiency and effectiveness, and create opportunities to re-use course information.
Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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From a technical perspective, we were particularly pleased that our app was able to re-use the information from the Content Management System that we use in the prospectus website and the printed version. For example, consider the MChem course details:
Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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Project Identifier: Version: 1.1 Contact: Martin Hamilton Date: Feb 2013
This is quite a long page, with an embedded form containing the various fields used in the course description. The screenshot below shows the MChem entry requirements:
The reader may note how the entry requirements are broken down into individual entries on the form - this gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of how the information is presented. Once the change has been committed and approved in the Content Management System workflow system, it will be automatically published. Behind the scenes the published prospectus material is formatted by the Content Management System for presentation as a web page. The length of the form required to capture all of the possible course variants has given us some cause for concern, and we are discussing possible approaches to improve usability with Terminal Four and the University of Bristol, another Site Manager user. Bristol have used Terminal Fours Application Programming Interface (API) to construct a custom course data entry form.
Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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Project Identifier: Version: 1.1 Contact: Martin Hamilton Date: Feb 2013
An excerpt of the Site Manager output formatter script to create the XCRI-CAP feed is shown below:
Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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Sample XCRI-CAP Aggregator search results against the Loughborough data feed are shown below:
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
Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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through doing so, reduces the likelihood of incorrect or out-of-date information being presented to prospective students
Conclusions
By moving course data and associated workflow into the central Content Management System database, we were able make significant improvements in terms of reduction of duplication of course information, and also improve the efficiency of its management. Content held within the CMS may be re-used elsewhere on the Loughborough website. This is highly desirable as a means of preventing errors from creeping in as content is updated centrally but not in Schools and Departments, or vice versa.
Recommendations
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In our phase 1 project we had noted that some of the data we wished to represent via XCRICAP had complexity beyond the free text fields provided in the XCRI-CAP schema, e.g. entry requirements and fees, and we have provided feedback to JISC on this aspect which we hope will be helpful with the future development of the XCRI-CAP standard.
References
XCRI knowledge base - http://www.xcri.co.uk JISC Making the Most of Course Data Programme http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/coursedata.aspx
Document title: JISC Final Report Template Last updated : Feb 2011 v11.0
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