Case study - DIVAS
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Summary
The DIVAS project demonstrated how course validation can become more efficient and responsive through the use of emergent technologies. By developing a web-based repository to store validation outputs, these became more accessible to staff through a ‘self-service’ approach and more likely to be reused to facilitate new validations. To support this process, a community of practice (CoP) was established, enabling academic practitioners, learning development staff and core quality administration staff to work together.
The challenge
An increasingly significant issue for universities is the need to be more agile in the development of new courses and modes of delivery in response to learner, employer and market demand. Course validation is often a limiting factor in this process due to the enormous administrative burdens it can impose. Furthermore, although validation outputs are typically available to staff, they are not usually easily accessible, so the outputs of one validation are not effectively exploited to inform subsequent validations.
The solution
A web-based repository was developed for storage and retrieval of validation documents to facilitate improved discovery, sharing and re-use in different contexts. The role of each document in the validation process and the relationships between documents was defined using an XML specification based on the established XCRI Course Advertising Profile (XCRI-CAP).
Work was carried out on a graphical user interface for bulk submission and metadata entry, as well as a ‘widget’ to link the repository to other systems, including the social network supporting the CoP. However, this work was not completed in time for implementation as part of this project.
The CoP established to support the validation process included academic practitioners, administrative staff and learning development staff from Staffordshire University and affiliated colleges forming the Staffordshire University Regional Federation (SURF).
Results and benefits
The CoP helped enhance practitioners’ reflective practices and enabled them to refocus their thinking on their existing knowledge of the validation process and generate new knowledge and ideas through social interaction with other community participants.
Studies into the rationalisation of how validation documentation is created, stored and accessed have the potential to make the validation process more open and collaborative.
Lessons learned
The CoP was valuable in highlighting issues of concern and areas that staff find challenging with current validation processes. The project acted as a lever to enable a review of enterprise validation processes and facilitate focused discussion around improvements. As a consequence, communication between community members across the university was improved through online discussions, but also through face-to-face activities. In this sense, emergent technologies can serve as a powerful driver for institutional change.
The uptake and use of emergent technologies is likely to be more successful if supported by an active CoP. In order to maintain momentum of such a CoP, regular and relevant activities are required. In this case, this was hampered by delays in establishing linkage between validation documents and the CoP. More broadly, this requires changing people’s perception about what a CoP is. New members may have misunderstood the community to be simply a source of information and best practice, rather than a participatory environment. There were also concerns raised over privacy in an open forum where colleagues, managers and directors could view their questions, opinions and views. Adopting emergent technologies at institutional level is likely to require a culture change by staff who are used to more traditional methods of communication (i.e. talk, phone and email) and networking.
Validation documents tend to be a culmination of work around the course design process, rather than a driver. It may therefore be better to think more holistically about how emergent technologies could allow the team designing the award to create and store all course design materials in a way that could be used to automatically create documentation for validation.
The XCRI specification provided a flexible framework for the description of course related information in a format that is interoperable between institutional systems and institutions.
Further information
Further DIVAS project reports, documentation and outputs are available from:
http://divasproject.blogspot.com/
http://divascommunityofpractice.blogspot.com/
JISC IRET programme
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/emergetech.aspx