Boxcri

Bolton and XCRI 27th March, Leeds, Scott Wilson Bolton and XCRI

Or… Overcoming the chicken-and-egg conundrum of XCRI adoption

At the University of Bolton, we’ve realised a lot of benefits from adopting XCRI…
… Even though we don’t think anyone is seriously using our XCRI feed yet!

UB 2009 UB 2007-2009 UB 2009-2011 UB 2012-

How we adopted XCRI
JISC-funded XCRI mini-project in 2007
Initially looked at SITS IPP extensions
Abandoned in favour of creating a new course database, focusing on marketing and web search
The Course Database is now the catalyst for a range of innovations and improvements at UB

The Marketing Perspective
Lack of national standard has been a major headache
3 staff involved in updating external sites:
1-UCAS, 2-HotCourses, 3-innumerable local, regional, sectoral, subject and national initiatives
Value of target sites not easy to judge
Accuracy and timeliness very hard to manage, creating problems for the public with outdated info around on web
A thankless and rather dull job staff would rather avoid!

Prospectus Push
Staff still view course information in prospectus-centric way, e.g. an annual push
Despite the fact that course search has up to 4x as many users per week than our annual total of printed prospectuses!
Still have to use “prospectus push” to goad staff into taking action on course information
… but XCRI has enabled us to take a more managed all-year-round view of course information

The Bolton Course Database Designed from scratch Requirements gathered from marketing, QA, and student data management A lot of differences in language/terminology and data requirements - also different views of what a “course” was! In the end, database design primarily based on XCRI with marketing and QA requirements

While originally developed to support generating the XCRI feed, the DB is actually used to support:
Course search on our website
On-demand prospectuses and course information sheets
Prospectus printing

Course Search Project
Identifying the information needs for effective search was pretty challenging, and delayed implementation
Initial import was a big job, involving inputting data from hundreds of Word files. But never again, except for brand new courses! All updates go directly into course database
XCRI and Course DB enabled us to take a more managed approach, and improve quality of both data and results
Live update of course staff contacts from HRMS is a big improvement - saves a lot of effort and improves accuracy

Course Search Project
Printing templates/stylesheets based directly on course db results enable schools or individuals to print their own information sheets or mini-prospectus - much cheaper!
Have been enable to work on consistency of style and quality of content with new central management of course information
Overall the course “portfolio” doesn’t have much overlap or waste, but we don’t really have a good picture at module level

In the future we can see further value from this investment in XCRI realised by:
Supporting innovation in the course validation process
Developing new services that rely on course information as core data
… as well as the original core purpose of reducing time spent updating course information on other people’s websites…
(Potentially the biggest win will be the “tertiary” sites)

How we implemented XCRI
SQL Server database
Intranet application for managing courses, owned by Marketing
Live connection to HR database & Active Directory for keeping course contacts up-to-date
Versioning and auditing
Course Search service linked from website

How XCRI fitted our needs
A good fit for our existing marketing fields; only notable missing areas are:
Keywords (vs subject)
Related courses linking
Employment sector
A good fit for the entities for our database
Course/Presentation distinction in particular very useful
Potential areas to expand into

What’s next?
Linking cost element directly to fees, bursaries, scholarships
Google Analytics
Integrating with validation process
Custom reporting to support planning
Extending approach into managing modules - building the business case based on the value realised in managing courses

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