This document discusses the origins and development of XCRI (eXchanging Course-Related Information), an open standard for exchanging course information. It began in 2005 when JISC funded the XCRI reference model project to create a better way to exchange course data than the existing primitive methods. The XCRI standard was developed through trials and engagement with European partners to harmonize with the CEN MLO course advertising standard. While XCRI adoption has faced challenges due to systems and processes, it is positioned to be the UK implementation of MLO and align with the upcoming Key Information Sets requirement for UK universities to publish standard course information.

1. X-CRI ORIGINS

2. Sunday, June 26, 2011 2 X-CRI ORIGINS | How we got hereNottingham, June 2011 Professor Mark Stubbs Head of Learning & Research Technologies Manchester Metropolitan University m.stubbs@mmu.ac.uk | http://twitter.com/thestubbs

3. 2005 | JISC seeks “reference models” Strong sense of “there must be a better way”… National agenda of ‘informed choice’ about learning opportunities but feeling that education lags behind other sectors in making its ‘products’ easy to discover and compare. Standards exist for exchanging information about people, groups, membership and learning objects but no standard way to exchange information about courses. Institutions developing ways to populate their prospectus from definitive data but resorting to primitive data entry to populate aggregator sites, regional portals, area prospectuses… Genuine interest from the community in an open standard for exchanging course information that facilitates joined-up thinking This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence

4. 2005 | JISC funds XCRI reference model Ty’nRhos: where the XCRI concept was born Manchester: where the XCRI project was born … except it was raining! This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence

5. XCRI | History This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence

6. XCRI | Approach Maintained dialogue with European partners in a search for best practice Recognised importance of course-related business processes Evolved a data exchange specification based on best practice and large-scale trials Engaged with EU partners to harmonize developments around a common information model for advertising learning opportunities (CEN MLO) Building capacity & interest within UK This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence

7. MLO | UK significance A European Norm on metadata for advertising learning opportunities will be established in 2011 MLO prEN 15982 Member states should drop any competing standards and pursue compliance Good news for XCRI! XCRI 1.2 earmarked as UK implementation of MLO XCRI 1.2 synergy with Key Information Sets Significant XCRI capacity building in place BUT sector has process & systems hurdles… LO Provider LO Spec LO Instance 7 This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence

8. Course Info | state of the art Interim findings from the JISC’s £8M 4 Year Curriculum Design & Delivery Programme… ‘Many problems with the management of course-related information can be put down to the fact that this is still a document-based rather than a data-based system (and paper-based at most institutions). This gives rise to duplication of effort and of information, lack of version control, poor re-use of relevant information for different purposes, and a tendency for information to be designed for approval rather than any other purpose.’ This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence

9. Better Course Info | resistance is futile ‘Many prospective students do not get adequate advice or information to help them choose a course of study’Browne, Oct 2010 ‘In our 2008 report, we suggested that universities should publish a standard set of information setting out what students can expect from their academic programme – we are pleased to see that the coalition government will be taking this forward’National Student Forum, Annual Report 2010 ‘From September 2012, prospective higher education students will have easy access to the new Key Information Set (KIS) to help them choose what and where to study’ http://hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2011/kis.htm HEFCE, June 2011 This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence

10. Quick quiz 1 across: Forthcoming UK standard for course information 1 down: Prospectus requirement for UK universities 1 K X I 1 C R S This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence