Case Studies

Many institutions have developed XCRI solutions since its inception in 2005. A number of these institutions have written project reports and case studies to encourage and advise those following in their footsteps. The side bar menu has links to case studies about the use of XCRI-CAP from the perspectives of policy makers, managers and administrators, and technical staff.

For an introduction to planning and process case studies, we have made available a link to a November 2008 article first published by JISC CETIS entitled "Courses? What courses? Can learning providers manage their course advertising information better?".

List of case studies

University of Bradford (WYLLN): Initiated via the West Yorkshire Lifelong Learning Network, the University of Bradford's case study investigates the challenges of starting out on an XCRI-CAP implementation project.

Bolton University: Creation of a new XCRI-CAP enabled database so that schools could directly enter their own marketing information with appropriate authentication and structures, while the Marketing team retained overall control. This was a 'start to finish' XCRI-CAP implementation.

Leeds Trinity University College (WYLLN): Initiated via the West Yorkshire Lifelong Learning Network, Leeds Trinity University College completed a bespoke XCRI-CAP based development to ensure the internal team had control over the structure and content of the system and were able to develop in line with the institutional needs and strategy.

New College Nottingham: Designing the new course management system around XCRI-CAP structures and vocabularies improved both the structure of the underlying database as well as the accessibility of course information from the website.

Open University: The University has worked extensively with XCRI-CAP, producing a version 1.0 web service, a 1.1 web service and a 'value added' 1.1 service. The outputs are used by a number of aggregators via a range of bespoke transformations. The OU case studies cover policy, management and technical aspects of the work.

West Yorkshire Lifelong Learning Network (WYLLNN): XCRI-CAP support activities from the WYLLN.

Case studies format

While the case studies have not been written to a pre-specified template, the authors have been asked to include the following material:

• The type, nature, size of the organisation
• Current or previous systems and processes
• Problems or issues with previous systems or processes, data quality, information or content management strategy
• Key issues the organisation wished to address
• Drivers for change>
• How the organisation found out about XCRI
• How relevant decision-makers were found and influenced
• How decisions were made
• Perspectives from different parts of the institution
• Who was involved in implementation
• What problems there were, and how they were overcome
• Lessons learned