Curriculum design tools: Using information modelling for course transformation and mapping

There is a plethora of international courses for applicants to choose from. Recent economic developments have triggered the proliferation of alternative studying modes and educational provision around the globe. There is an increasing focus on course pathways leading to more complex study modes and possibly a combination of academic provision and employer focused professional development. It is evident that such changes are likely to affect the way course information is created, shared and communicated. As the boundaries of higher education are no longer constrained from national boarders more education providers offer international courses. The Bologna process provides the means for attempting alignment of courses with respect to the level of study, learning effort and topics. However being able to match course documentation and provide accurate course profiles still requires the involvement of experienced academics with certain skills in curriculum design and documentation. The Join Information Systems Committee (JISC) has funded for the past few years several projects in the UK, using the XCRI-CAP information mode for modeling course data for advertising purposes. The standardized model deals with exchanging course related information for course advertising profiles (XCRI-CAP). This paper describes the creation of a series of tools assisting curriculum design and development through the semantic interpretation of course data. More specifically the project team achieved the semantic mapping of course documentation elements, making it possible to transform document based curriculum information into XCRI-CAP field data. Subsequently the set of tools provide the visual interpretation of course documentation structure and the ability to compare and contrast curriculum documents. This paper describes the development, use and evaluation of the MUSKET-toolkit, a series of tools used for the transformation of document based curriculum documentation. The JISC funded project produced a series of tools that are used for (i) mapping curriculum document components to field of an XML-based information model, (ii) transforming semi-structured documents used for curriculum design to a format suitable for extracting course related information and (iii) aligning descriptions of different courses based on semantic similarity algorithm. The paper provides a detailed discussion of the key issues associated with the range of curriculum description formats used in the education sector and emphasizes the lack of a consistent standardized approach for retrieving course related information. The benefits of such approaches could be used for `intelligent' searches of curriculum content, analysis of course content, retrieval of specific course description components and alignment of course documentation from different education providers. The scope of the paper is to increase awareness of the possibilities and applications available when course data existing in traditional curriculum documentation can be transformed into an information model that is independent of course management systems, curriculum development processes and course structures.