Since December things have moved on incredibly fast with the Kent Xcri Project. Thanks to the dedication of the web development team (who are literally working all hours on the project even when off-sprint), we now have a fully-fledged ‘superuser’ version of our new content management system and have started entering all the course data for our new undergraduate prospectus. The system is a pleasure to use and flexible enough to deal with forgotten fields and last-minute changes. In the next sprint we are continuing to look at the front-end, final backend issues and the xcri cap feed.
Within Enrolment Management Services, we are continuing to review the best way to present our course pages (editorially-speaking) which is challenging given the timeframe and the sheer amount of programme data to enter.
However, a great benefit of the system is that we can eventually allow editors within academic schools to contribute to these pages directly within the CMS. This will be a great step forward – after all, Schools know the most about their subject and their students. It’s definitely a very busy time for all involved but it feels like we are making excellent progress.
Being able to directly edit programme information really sounds like a welcome development, especially the ones that straddle disciplinary boundaries. Those are largely an artifice, of course, so a system that is flexible enough to recognise this will be great. At the moment, for example, two allied but dissimilar programmes provide “further details” by way of a single URL, which is a constraint of the current CMS. Being able to link to specific (different) pages for each programme will be v. useful.
HI Derek, Thanks for your comment. Most of the content is now bespoke to the individual programme page so the “further details” link issue you mention will be no more on the new UG pages 🙂