Integrating Corporate Systems for Educational Purposes: lessons from MMU

1. Integrating Corporate Systems for Educational Purposes: lessons from MMU Professor Mark Stubbs Head of Learning & Research Technologies m.stubbs@mmu.ac.uk | http://twitter.com/thestubbs http://lrt.mmu.ac.uk/w2c #jiscdvle http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/src #jisccdd

2. What we are learning from JISC CDD ‘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.’ • BCU is concerned with capturing the ‘lived experience’ of curriculum design • Strathclyde and the Open University are exploring how to represent the curriculum in a way that can be reused to meet the needs of various stakeholders • MMU identified representations of curricula as a barrier to responsive provision Adapted from Sarah Knight’s 2010 JISC Curriculum Design & Delivery Reflections

3. QAA commend our robust processes Practice is too varied to systematise Barriers | Dependencies We struggle to interpret vague QA docs Central systems don’t support local variety so we build our own We keep it vague to avoid tortuous QA Student Records QA We can’t get concrete details on courses for website, so maintain our own Marketing Course Teams Why do marketing never have up-to-date info about our courses Event Name and Venue

4. Solution | Change Everything! Scope of MMU Change Programme... • Curriculum Framework • Admin Systems + Business Processes • Seamless Student Access • Quality Processes Implications... • New rules for Curriculum (30 Credit, max 5 LOs...) • Every UG course & module will be re-written • Entirely new first year goes live September 2011 !

5. Barrier | Joined-up Imagination • Co-designing an alternative to the status quo • Blending specialist expertise without blinkers! Student Records + Enrolment + Transcript (HEAR) QA / QE + Definitive documents + Annual monitoring CurriculumDatabase Marketing + Prospectus + UCAS Curriculum Innovation + Learning Outcome mapping + Competence development

6. Solution | Creative Dialogue • Scenarios • Rapid Prototyping • Multi-stakeholder walk-through workshops • Enterprise Architect know-how • Understand how islands of info can be joined • Ensure identifiers are in place for integration • Remember: new interfaces might enable new practice • Build buy-in by demonstrating that the integrated approach works!

7. Understand how islands can be joined enrolments+ tut groups enrolments VLE Timetable enrolments + hand-ins Student Records specs + linkages Submissions enrolments CourseRecords active units skill mappings Library Portfolio

8. Ensure identifiers in place for integration Course Record Student Record Student Details Course Spec CourseYear Instance CourseYear Enrolments Course Structure Unit Spec Unit Instance Unit Enrolments AssessmentStructure Assessment ElementSpec Assessment Element Instance Assessment Element Hand-in + Marks

9. New interface, new practice?

10. Demonstrate the approach works Timetable StudentRecords CourseRecords Data Feeds Financials apis.mmu BusinessIntelligence LibraryCatalogue Email +Calendar NewVLE OldVLE Mobile Apps DigitalCollections ReadingLists

11. Integrating Corporate Systems for Educational Purposes: lessons from MMU Professor Mark Stubbs Head of Learning & Research Technologies m.stubbs@mmu.ac.uk | http://twitter.com/thestubbs http://lrt.mmu.ac.uk/w2c #jiscdvle http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/src #jisccdd