Project Details:
PREDICT
Process Re-engineering Design for and Interdisciplinary Curriculum with Technology
This project responds to a University strategic imperative to evaluate our curriculum and build a core curriculum. The project will consider the challenges of doing this with our current curriculum design processes, identify key problems and challenges as well as current good practice for interdisciplinary curriculum design and working. It will then develop a new curriculum design model which will be supported by technology to create a more flexible and innovative process. In collaboration with Schools and other stakeholders the model will be piloted, evaluated and then rolled out across the institution.
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100% complete
Project Completed
Funding period:September 2008 to July 2012
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Organisations: City University London |
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Related Projects 
Related Projects 
Standards
Standards
| Standard | Comments |
|---|---|
| IMS_Enterprise |
Found that IMS Enterprise is too generic and vague, went to eduGov person for person description. 2012 update: not using at all now migration from WebCT to Moodle complete.
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| BPEL |
Used with IBM Websphere processing engine.
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| BPMN |
BPMN base is used to generate standard BPEL. Found that BPMN is great for modelling runnable models, but has found that it isn't good for communicating with the rest of the organisation. That communication issue is addressed on a case by case basis.
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| SVG |
SVG is used for visualisation.
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| J2EE |
J2EE is technology base
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| XCRI |
Looked at a refinement of the spec, but found it was missing metadata about course lifecycle. Will almost certainly adopt CAP. Also found that XCRI could do with tightening up for their purposes- particularly to describe the state of a course. 2012 update: Haven't done as much as envisioned, looked at CAP but haven't fully implemented,
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| TOGAF |
Is dipped into pragmatically as a sanity check. 2012 update: Still using, considering upgrade to v9, and monitor work of JISC EA Group.
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| ITIL |
Used for service management. 2012 update: Still using mainly for their service desk, had stepped back a bit but revisiting use.
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| eduGov |
Found that IMS Enterprise is too generic and vague, went to eduGov person for person description. 2012 update: not using, found it too generic and vague. Concentrating on KIS developments this year.
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Technologies
Technologies
| Moodle |
Migrating to moodle. Now being used as the single point for assessment submission and feedback rather than just content dissemination. Moodle customised for high performance bulk upload and download. Wanted to move to Oracle for storage, but will move back to MySQL because it's much easier to manage plug-ins and the like on that platform. Looking to move to 2.0 gradually, running 1.9 in parallel. 2012 update: Still running both 1.9 and 2, hope to transition completely to v2 by 2013.
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| WebCT |
Moving away from webct. 2012 update: Moved completely to Moodle, WebCT database being switched off.
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| Prism |
Locally developed portal/repository for storing course/module records, has XCRI interface. Course update in Prism now triggers updates in the rest of the enterprise. 2012 update: Currently reviewing in light of KIS work, may well re-engineer UI, looking at more component/SOA approaches.
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| SITS |
Student record system used. Some data massaging is required because the way that SITS records courses is not the same as the way staff and students think about courses. 2012 update: still using
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| StuTalk |
Providing integration with student record systems (Tribal software). Used to integrate SITS with their business processes. 2012 update: found StuTalk to be really important component to allow team to access SITS for wider business process. It has service enabled SITS.
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| Oracle 11g |
Standard institutional DB. Wanted to use it for Moodle, but found MySQL worked better. 2012 update: still using as institutional database.
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| IBM WebSphere |
Middleware stack used. Starting to deliver a number of quantifiable efficiency returns. Meant that student registration at the beginning of the year dropped from a few hours to 15 minutes or so. Lots of PubSuB services deployed to execute business processes. IBM websphere also links with a modeller to make a full MDA stack. 2012 update: Still core to business processes, monitoring developments particularly in JISC HE landscape work.
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| SAP |
Used for HR. Also plumbed into the ESB, in order to automated joining and leaving. This re-used a lot of the services developed for students. 2012 update: still using and plugged into their service bus. Team now looking at better ways to expand main HR data with more teaching and learning related data for staff.
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| evesis |
module feedback software. Now being deployed. 2012 update: Team investigating how to integrate richer data sets about staff.
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| scientia |
Timetabling software being introduced. 2012 update: Have used for exam timetabling, now investigating personalised timetabling
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| MySQL |
2012 update: Using as main Moodle database, it allows more flexibility and provides better integration with Moodle.
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Comments:
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2012-02-14 12:59:33
Want to continue to develop processes which allow staff and students more time to concentrate of core business of teaching and learning, and allow easier ways for users to exploit the capabilities of the technologies in place.
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2012-02-14 12:57:53
Team have noticed that curriculum design is used far more frequently in IT project discussions, there is more planning done around IT developments in conjunction with teaching staff than before the Predict project.
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2012-02-14 12:56:12
Work on HR records va SAP has highlighted to the team that they there is a need now to look at the information held about staff and to integrate that more in a similar way as has been done with student information. It is very difficult to integrate basic HR information with more detailed information on the actual teaching and research staff do. There is a need to look at approaches to consolidating that type of information, with for example module feedback data from evesis, and potentially for timetabling.
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2012-02-14 12:53:02
During the project lifecyle the institution has migrated to Moodle, the team feel that the work of Predict in terms of staff development and curriculum design thinking has helped increase uptake of Moodle and they have also observed that staff usage has changed from a default repository/somewhere to upload lecture slides and notes, to being much more considered and activity based.
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2012-02-14 12:50:31
The existing backend infrastructure has served the project well and there haven't been major deviations from original plans. The team are very interested in the current JISC HE landscaping work as they see it being very relevant to their future development plans.
Posted by wilbert at 2011-02-28 09:51:54
Learning about the balance of how much time to spend on automated dealing with exceptional cases, and time spent dealing with same manually
Posted by wilbert at 2011-02-28 09:37:11
Also improved cashflow
Posted by wilbert at 2011-02-28 09:35:29
Data quality has improved dramatically: HEFCE returns questioned fell from 25% to 8%. A lot of the remainder originate in UCAS.
Posted by wilbert at 2011-02-28 09:18:46
Student registers in SITS, STUTALK notices and kicks of business process in the ESB that creates accounts in various systems, including BB. Integration with Moodle was much quicker after putting this SOA in place.
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2010-01-21 10:52:07
have had historical problems interfacing with SRS. Now trialling- Stutalks (from Tribal) which is allowing better integration with SRS
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2010-01-21 10:51:08
Are about to install latest version of modelling tool. Existing one not particularly good at long running processes and late binding (both key for curriculum lifecycle/review processes) hopefully v7 will help with this
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2010-01-21 10:50:15
Are starting work on providing more "student friendly" views of course information which will be available in moodle as well as the portal
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2010-01-21 10:48:32
Have started work on single sign on integration of Uni portal and Moodle
Posted by wilbert at 2010-01-21 10:42:20
Wants to develop dashboards for these processes- as a series of prototypes.
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2009-02-05 11:09:39
Discussed possibility of working with CETIS later in project life-cycle to develop some SUMs
Posted by sheilamacneill at 2009-02-05 11:08:38
Are going to open up collaboration tools for models to firstly to cluster projects and us then the rest of the programme
Posted by wilbert at 2009-02-05 10:29:25
A set of Lotus collaboration tools (blogs, wiki, notification etc) is projected to build on top of the system integration.
Links, feeds, etc
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People:
Programme-Manager: Sarah Knight Maintainer: Susannah Quinsee