West Cheshire College XCRI miniproject

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West Cheshire CollegeXCRI mini-project

• Anthony BealLiz Taylor

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Project description

• Aim to pilot the generation of XCRI within the FE
  sector
• Exporting Health and Social Care course
  information using XCRI into SOLVS
• Software company Phosphorix was employed to
  develop the CourseExchange agent software,
  mapping the fields in the current college
  databases to XCRI fields database views

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What we did

• Liaised with other stakeholders within West
  Cheshire College to bring together data from
  several data sources.
• A single view of the data was created
  incorporating course brochure information and
  course presentation details. This view was used
  to import data into Course Exchange and to
  subsequently generate an XCRI-CAP xml file.

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What we did

• The process was tested several times, initially
  with all college course information. The next
  stage was to share this xml file with the SOLVS
  project, so whilst still in the testing phase we
  decided to limit the selection of data to a small
  subset relevant to SOLVS.
• We have proved the concept that the WCC
  CourseExchange ioNode can publish XCRI-CAP course
  information directly to the SOLVS ioNode test
  server.

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Publishing directly to SOLVS
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How we did it

• An extract report, using Unit-es query
  application, was created to export course
  presentation data from the Unit-e Oracle database
  into a table on the SQL server. An extract from
  the Learning Aims Database (LAD) was also used to
  collect data items such as level of course and
  the awarding body.
• Within the SQL database, a view was created to
  bring together data from these 3 separate
  sources, which was then used to import data into
  Course Exchange, and used to produce an xml file
  to import to SOLVS.

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Potential further development of CourseExchange

• We were unable to generate a subset of data at
  the point of export. Therefore we resolved this
  by creating an alternative view of the data for
  each export. However it would be desirable to be
  able to save filter criteria so that different
  subsets of data could be created at the time the
  xml output is generated.
• Course Exchange only allows the mapping of
  certain fields at present this limits the
  content of the output file. For example, we were
  able to map provider address details, but not
  presentation venue address details.

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Impact of the project on institution and partners

• The project has raised awareness at the college
  of
• The national standard for describing course
  information
• The possibility of automating the export of data
  to aggregators that inform prospective learners
  about opportunities in vocational training.
• SOLVS now have XCRI-CAP information they can test
  in their prospectus
• Our institution in now in a position to act as an
  advisor to colleges and schools in Cheshire and
  Warrington who wish to generate XCRI-CAP

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Taking the project forward 1

• We would like to continue to liaise with
  Phosphorix to further develop the functionality
  within the software, especially with reference to
  the ability to create subsets of data at the
  point of export.
• We have established links with Chester University
  SOLVS, and would hope to continue to develop
  this relationship and share data.
• The creation of the SQL view still requires some
  manual intervention, but we hope to automate this
  process, probably through implementing DTS
  processes.

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Taking the project forward 2

• The college plans to move from Unit-es Oracle
  based software, to one running on SQL. This
  should potentially assist with the automation of
  the processes to feed Course Exchange.
• The college would like to work with Cheshire
  Warrington Common Application Project Group to
  export the XCRI-CAP data to the Wayahead online
  prospectus.

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• Anthony Beal
• a.beal_at_west-cheshire.ac.uk
• 01244 670578
• Liz Taylor
• l.taylor_at_west-cheshire.ac.uk
• 01244 670490