In this series of blog posts I’m looking at the Jisc #coursedata programme and in particular how the demonstrator projects are using the xcri-cap feeds produced by the 63 stage 2 Projects.
xcri-cap stands for eXchanging Course Related Information, Course Advertising Profile. xcri-cap is the UK standard for describing course marketing information, and provides a standard way to structure course advertising information.
It defines and names simple data components and specifies the types of data permitted within each component.
The Plymouth moodle block aims to present existing students with progression opportunities through a moodle block – presenting useful information in a useful place at a useful time.
It takes the Plymouth xcri-cap feed and filters it on level. If we look at the structure of the feed we can see this is a simple matter, selecting the element ‘level’:
catalog >> provider >> course >> credit >> level
eg
<credit:level>6</credit:level>>
Because the current level of study is known, and funding requires upward progression rather than vertical consolidation, the results show courses above the current level.
The results are also filtered by subject, and title so for example a fine art student isn’t offered an inappropriate progression route.
catalog >> provider >> course >> subject
eg
<dc:subject xsi:type="http://xcri.co.uk:JACS3" identifier="W100">Fine Art</dc:subject>
catalog >> provider >> course >> title
eg
<dc:title>Manga Comics illustration</dc:title>
With some simple logic rules relevant post grad learning opportunities can be displayed for under grads.
This is important at Plymouth as the College has relatively recently commenced the delivery of a number of postgraduate courses of which students may not be fully aware.
Due to the open nature of the Moodle community, the creation of this demonstrator as a Moodle block allows wide-scale uptake and re-use of for any institution running Moodle (2.x) with an xcri-cap feed. The code will be available from the ULCC Github .
