Business Case
Accurate and relevant information about learning opportunities is essential for both learners and providers of learning. However, the volume of programmes offered and the range of disparate individuals who might usefully require or impart information about those offerings, means that institutions can face significant logistical, cultural and structural challenges in ensuring that programmes as they are advertised match programmes as they are approved and delivered. This page sets out the rationale for adopting a standard XML schema for curriculum content that encompasses course marketing, course quality assurance, enrolment and reporting requirements. It focuses in particular on the benefits of:
- Communicating approved course marketing information externally to aggregator organisations
- Providing course marketing information for an online and/or paper prospectus
- Communicating approved course information internally to course teams and students
- Creating approved enrolment opportunities within a student records system
- Expressing programme content in a way that works with personal records of achievement to facilitate reflection and planning
Background
With the support and oversight of bodies like the Quality Assurance Agency and Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, universities and colleges have developed sophisticated and robust quality control procedures for scrutinising proposals for new or modified programmes and ensuring that only a catalogue of suitably validated programmes is offered. The advertising of those programmes must be fair and accurate. Version control poses particular challenges. Programmes typically evolve through minor and major modifications in between major review events. The version of a programme approved for delivery in the coming academic year can differ from that currently running and the right information about programme content needs to be available to staff and current students, and those inquiring about future study (who could be considering deferred entry in order to take a gap year).
University and colleges make annual returns to funding bodies that describe the levels and distribution of enrolments on programmes. These returns are typically produced from computerised Student Records Systems, which maintain definitive enrolment information. Vendors of Student Records Systems offer solutions that enable institutions to specify enrolment possibilities for future academic years, populated (ideally) as a step within the quality assurance business processes that govern programme approvals and modifications. The COVARM Reference Model project is looking at this area in more detail, but it is apparent that many institutions are interested in the possibilities of re-engineering their quality assurance business processes to ensure that accurate and definitive programme information is entered once and used to satisfy enrolment, reporting and marketing requirements.
An area of increasing importance to students and institutions is personal development and planning. Details of student achievement need to be made available to support processes of reflection and planning so that students can assess their performance to date and make informed choices about the learning opportunities that are open, relevant and most interesting to their developmental aspirations. To support the identification of relevant pathways, programmes must be described in ways that facilitate searching and filtering; and records of personal achievement must equate with pre-requisites specified for more advanced learning opportunities. Other JISC projects are also considering these challenges (e.g. the e-Portfolio for Lifelong Learning Reference Model project and the Pathways for Progression Regional Pilot), but it is clear that institutions will need to take a standards-oriented approach to programme description and recording achievement for this vision of lifelong learning to be realised.
Key Questions
To assess the strength of the case for a UK FE or HE institution adopting a standard XML schema for expressing curriculum the following questions can be considered:
