Curriculum design for e-education: make effective use of course data

This paper provides an overview of how an XML-based information model is used for managing course data in e-education. The work presented in this paper has been funded by JISC as part of a number of projects under the e-learning programme and more specifically the course data coordination activities. The projects’ outputs included toolkits for generating, comparing, matching and using course data with the use of the XCRI-CAP information model that is known as eXchanging Course Related Information – Course Advertising Profiles. The initial stage of the project work focused on transforming course data descriptions in text format to XML files based on the XCRI-CAP model, allowing course providers to compare and contrast their provision according to the XCRI-CAP fields (e.g. duration, learning outcomes, description). The second stage of the project was concerned with the visualization of course data in a way that would allow course stakeholders (e.g. applicants, students, providers) to assess the extent to which, certain user-defined keywords exist in course definitions. Finally, the third project stage was focused on developing tools to match courses to potential job profiles in an attempt to align specific courses to available job opportunities. The paper provides a brief background on the project work and summarises the main outputs as walkthroughs of the developed toolkits.