This is a (brief) heads-up about a Hefce plan for universities to produce so-called Key information Sets (KIS) which will provide information to university applicants in a standard form.
(Apologies if your head was already up, and I’m one of the few whose head wasn’t.)
The plan arose out of a consultation on how to make information from HE/FE institutions more useful and accessible.
To quote Hefce:
Key Information Sets are comparable sets of standardised information about undergraduate courses. They are designed to meet the information needs of prospective students and will be published ‘in context’ on the web-sites of universities and colleges.
Timetable and workload data, contact hours and assessment methods are certain to form part of these sets, along with a range of other info, such as:
- student satisfaction
- course information
- employment and salary data
- accommodation costs
- financial information, such as fees
- students’ union information.
The aim, I’d assume, is also to provide this information as raw data that can be analysed and deployed by third-party organisations.
The university is already involved in stage one of this project.
In the meantime, there’s useful background and guidance on the Hefce site.
Maybe we should start thinking about this in the run-up to 2012? It could mean, for example, that we need to standardise our course information and procedures much more.
And, yes, it is a terrible headline.
It could have been worse, though. I did toy with KIS met hardly…but thought better of it.