Technical considerations for HEAR implementation

Achievement Information Working Group

What are the key considerations for implementing the HEAR? We'll be commissioning a self-evaluation framework with more detail, but already we identified some common requirements at the Manchester meeting:

(1) Vendor profile: A lot depends on your MIS product and selection of optional features. This means that institutions will start from very different places. Related to this is the capacity and willingness to conduct in-house MIS customisation. In general Oracle Campus Solutions users seem to have greater readiness.

(2) Versioned programme information: HEAR relies on having detailed programme information for the version of the course that the student actually enrolled on, rather than the most current version; student management systems sometimes also handle programmes, but not with version control and not necessarily with the right kinds of content. Either there needs to be good quality versioned course and module information external to the MIS, or the MIS needs to have this functionality.

(3) Lifetime account access for graduates: Depending on the model of sharing the HEAR, the institution needs to provide lifetime accounts for graduates to be able to grant access to employers to view their HEAR documents. This can be linked in with alumni portals and other activities, but it should be considered when planning HEAR implementation.

(4) Workflows and data specification for 6.1: Institutions need to decide on the content for 6.1 and be able to source the data for it. Guidance has been produced on how institutions make policies regarding 6.1 information, however there needs to be a consideration of how this information is recorded and any extra implementation requirements this has. For example, will Students Union officers need access to enter information in the MIS? How will the review cycle be implemented - can the MIS handle this type of workflow?

(5) Archiving and preservation: How will the institution handle the long-term preseration of HEAR? Are there archiving practices and systems already available? Will this need to be eventually outsourced to specialist preservation services?

(6) Commerce options: Will the HEAR always be free, or will there be admin fees for access after a certain time? Or will it be free online, but costs for printing? How will commerce be implemented, and is there already a solution available?

(7) Paper: Is the HEAR going to available in printed form at all? Or only in special cases? Or only for decorative purposes? Will the printed form be considered valid, or will only the electronic version be considered verifiable? If printing is an option, will this be delivered in-house or outsourced, and will there be charges for it (see above)?

(8) Cool URIs and link preservation: Will all the HEAR data be a complete standalone record, or will it have links? If so, the institution needs to have a very clear policy to ensure that links remain valid indefinitely. (For more information, see http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI)

(9) Conventions on level of detail: While the spec allows any level of detail for programme details and learning outcomes, in practice institutions will want to know what a reasonable convention is for this. The conventions for the "paper template" are not necessarily meaningful when considering the HEAR as an XML information set that has stylesheets; its not just what appears in the template, but what gets included in the record. This is necessarily an emergent solution - we'll only know what's appropriate when there are lots of examples to compare.

(10) Searchability: Will the HEAR contain enough distinctive words to make it usefully searchable?

(11) Formative access and use: How will the HEAR be made available to students as a formative document? For example, will it be integrated with the VLE, or will it be exposed via portal products added to the MIS? Will students be able to comment on or note errors in their HEAR? Will tutors be able to make use of HEAR in hepling students? This has implications for other systems outside the MIS.

(12) Third-party access: Will the institution be making use of third-party services such as GradIntel or other employer-student brokering services? If so, how will this access be managed?