What is XCRI-CAP and how can it help your institution?

Universities and colleges produce course information for a variety of purposes and duplication of effort and information is a costly problem. XCRI-CAP aims to solve this problem by developing specifications that make generic aspects of a course description publicly available and easily transferable between information systems.

XCRI-CAP is short for eXchanging Course Related Information – Course Advertising Profile. It provides a UK standard for describing course information, followed by most learning providers, software vendors and publishers when creating an eProspectus.

XCRI-CAP sets standards for:

• How to structure information
• Define the names and data components
• Specifies types of data allowed within each component

Recommended by the government

The government has identified a need to improve the delivery of services in the education and training sector and recommend the creation of a set of common data standards as a solution to this problem.

The Department for Education (DfE) recommended the use of XCRI-CAP when developing online prospectuses and common application processes for course offered in the age 14-19 sector.

The project is supported by funding from the JISC Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards (CETIS) and is endorsed by the Department for Education's International Standard's board as the UK's eProspectus standard.

How can it help your institution?

Since September 2012, institutions are now required to provide Key Information Sets (KIS) data for the majority of their undergraduate courses and to feed their data into the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR).

Recording data for these initiatives as well as for internal reporting provides a requirement for institutions to consider how their course information is managed and how it links to their other processes. Implementing XCRI-CAP can be a valuable way to solve this problem.

The system enables sharing and updating of course information held across the computerized information systems of institutions, without the need to re-enter data. This will naturally lead to cost savings through reduced duplication of information and data-entry.

Who has trialled using XCRI-CAP?

• University of Bradford
• Bolton University
• Leeds Trinity University College
• New College Nottingham

Find out more about the success of XCRI-CAP case studies.

Get in touch, we'd love to heard from you!