New College Nottingham | Management
About New College Nottingham
New College Nottingham (ncn) is one of the largest Further Education Colleges (FECs) in the UK, delivering 50% of the funded FE provision in the region. ncn operates across six centres, including four major campuses, and works with numerous community venues, businesses, and schools to cater to a diverse range of learners. In 2008/09, ncn had 23,096 students, totaling 29,002 enrolments, and 8,745 full-time equivalent students.
Why XCRI-CAP?
As a large institution with diverse course offerings, ncn recognized the need for a consistent and accurate representation of their course offerings across various advertising and information media, including marketing materials, websites, and external course websites.
Further and Higher Education institutions often spend considerable time supplying course information to external websites in various formats, such as spreadsheets, web forms, and bespoke CSV or XML feeds. Keeping track of the college’s entire course offering across these platforms is a challenging task.
For ncn, a primary driver for adopting XCRI-CAP was to reduce the time spent preparing course information for external websites, while also creating a single, quality-assured, standardized source of course information that could be reused by external agencies and for the college’s online prospectus.
ncn first became involved with XCRI-CAP through their Lifelong Learning Network and the University of Nottingham’s Centre for International ePortfolio Development (CIePD). Partnering with CIePD, ncn worked on projects promoting XCRI-CAP and developing imports for regional prospectuses. This collaboration, along with commitments from key course information websites, provided early momentum for ncn’s XCRI-CAP implementation.
Main Drivers for XCRI-CAP Implementation
- Reduced time spent updating external websites.
- Consistency in college course information provided to external websites.
- A central, authoritative source of course information to be used internally and externally.
- Flexibility for data use, such as building bespoke prospectuses or merging with other course data.
- Confidence in providing quality-assured information to external websites.
- The ability to respond to new technologies and initiatives.
These priorities reflect the institution’s commitment to maximizing the quality and accessibility of public course advertising information.
A Cross-Institutional Decision
XCRI-CAP was initially championed by staff in the Development Unit, which manages websites, intranets, learning portals, and business administration systems. Internal discussions led to support from the Marketing, MIS, Admissions, and IT teams, as well as approval from the Director of ICT Resources.
XCRI-CAP became a regular agenda item at cross-institutional meetings for recruitment, admissions, and marketing. Though not the primary reason for developing a new course management system, keeping XCRI-CAP in mind positioned ncn well to meet new obligations.
ncn also played a key role in influencing course aggregators, such as its Area Prospectus and Your Future East Midlands, to adopt XCRI-CAP as a method for importing course data. Additionally, ncn took part in testing new software and was actively involved in the Skills Funding Agency’s Course Directory XCRI-CAP group.
Benefits of XCRI-CAP for New College Nottingham
XCRI-CAP provided a useful structure for organizing the course information held in ncn’s databases. Designing the new course management system around XCRI-CAP improved both the structure of the underlying database and the accessibility of course information from the website.
By storing information in a more granular way, the system enabled complex queries and provided an effective course search feature, allowing users to filter courses by various criteria, which improved the visibility and discovery of ncn’s offerings.
Implementing the Changes
There were no significant hurdles in implementing XCRI-CAP within the institution. Participation in East Midlands XCRI-CAP projects greatly benefited ncn, helping the team gain a better understanding of the standard. The projects fostered a regional community that worked together to define vocabularies and provided input into national XCRI-CAP recommendations.
ncn recommends that institutions tap into local or regional user groups to share best practices and access expert guidance. Involvement with such groups proved useful for ncn’s implementation process.
The implementation team at ncn consisted of an analyst and a technical developer, both familiar with the institution’s course information processes, data, and classifications held by the MIS. Senior management’s support, structured project management, and well-managed timescales allowed staff to focus on testing and developing the technical aspects of XCRI-CAP.
Further Information
- Website: New College Nottingham
Last Updated on Friday, 14 October 2011, 20:05
