Morning mist over Kent campus
We have added an item to the work packages for Kent’s XCRI-CAP project – namely configuration and implementation of the KIS widget. Key Information Sets are comparable sets of standardised information about undergraduate courses. In an increasingly competitive market, and in an online world where customers are used to being able to make comparisons, HEIs need to make relevant information easily accessible to prospective students. People browsing the prospectus want to know about the experience of previous students and what their prospects might be after graduation as well as details of the courses on offer. The information provided by KIS differs from the XCRI-CAP feeds in that it includes data from, amongst other sources, the annual student survey. Crucially it is also presented in context on the same page as the course information
Final details of the appearance and contents of the widget are not released until the end of this month (March 2012) but the widget will include data such as:
- Student satisfaction
- Percentage of graduates of the course in work after six months
- Average salary of graduates of the course
The data will be aggregated in part from national data sets, such as the National Student Survey (NSS) and the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey. But data on learning and teaching, assessment methods, accommodation etc will need to be submitted by HEIs initially to HEFCE. In the future HESA will collect this data.
The KIS widget which will be embedded on each page of the online prospectus – much like one might embed a YouTube video – and will display data pulled direct from the aggregating HEFCE website which will be launched in the autumn of 2012.
Much of the data displayed in the KIS widget is currently available from the Unistats website but the widget will display the data with the programme to which it refers. The user will also be able to click through to the Unistats website (or more accurately its replacement) to see further information on the course, the institution and information about the local facilities, rental prices and etc
I’m web author for SMSAS. We’ve been talking about KIS the last few days and clearly our pages will either have to include the KIS widget or link to the main Kent prospectus pages which will include it. Or possibly both. Any sense of which is the preferred direction to take? Our programmes pages (and many others besides) could certainly do with reviewing but it would be nice not to have to do this twice this year!
My understanding is that, from September 2012, all pages advertising programmes should include the KIS information. Not sure I understand your comment about twice a year. Once the widget is on the page it will draw down ‘live’ data from the HEFCE/HESA aggregation site so there would not be a need to update manually. Hope this helps but please get in touch if you want to discuss further.
“twice this year” (not “twice _a_ year”) in that (1) our pages are tired and need rewriting/redesign with, possibly, (2) redesign to incorporate the KIS widget later on. For obvious reasons I will wait until the widget is published so that I know where to fit it in our template. However, if the main prospectus pages having the KIS widget will suffice, then I don’t need to worry about step (2) and just crack on.
To put it another way: I’m trying to establish what the recommended option is: (a) widget on school pages AND main prospectus or (b) school pages sans widget but with link to the main (KIS-enabled) prospectus. Option (a) seems to me like unnecessary duplication but lots of department/school pages seem to take that route to a greater or lesser degree.
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