X-CRI ORIGINS

Thursday, April 13, 2023 2

X-CRI ORIGINS | How we got hereNottingham, June 2011

Professor Mark StubbsHead of Learning & Research Technologies

Manchester Metropolitan University

m.stubbs@mmu.ac.uk | http://twitter.com/thestubbs

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

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2005 | JISC funds XCRI reference model

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Manchester:

where the XCRI project was born

… except it was raining!

Ty’n Rhos:

where the XCRI concept was born

XCRI | History

2005 JISC fund XCRI “Reference Model” project. Team review international standards, e-prospectus websites (161+) & site visits; R1.0 XCRI schema prototyped & tested with Plymouth-UCAS, Oxford, Reid Kerr & L’pool LMX

2006 XCRI tools prototyped: XCRI>PDF brochures & ReST Xpath search. Existing deployment reviewed & optimised XCRI CAP 1.0 released. JISC fund XCRI CAP 1.0 trials, demo aggregator & xcri.org support

2007 XCRI ‘invited’ to brief DfES and Becta. XCRI CAP pilot with London 14-19 leads to XCRI as ‘preferred approach’ in LSC vision. Bolton, OU, Oxford, MMU & Staffs CAP feeds read by demo aggregator. CEN WS-LT & vendor meetings for European MLO harmonization begin.

2008 JISC funds CAP 1.1 trials + talks open with Becta about regional 14-19. XCRI champion elected to DIUS/DCSF ISB + JISC fund more CAP trials. GMSA, Edge Hill, West Cheshire, Kent develop XCRI feeds. CEN WS-LT Agreement on MLO & formal submission for European Norm; East Midlands, Huddersfield, Teesside, Worcester start XCRI projects.

2009 UK Gov Info Standards Board for Education Skills & Children’s Services approves XCRI-CAP 1.1 as national e-prospectus standard; Credit and ECTS application profile of MLO submitted for CEN WS-LT approval

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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

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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… 7

LO Provider

LO Spec

LO Instance

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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.’

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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

‘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

‘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

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Quick quiz

• 1 across: Forthcoming UK standard for course information• 1 down: Prospectus requirement for UK universities

1

1

X C IK

SR

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