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EUCLID PROGRESS - CURRICULUM MANAGEMENT (PREVIOUSLY CCAM & PCAM)

The following is a summary of recent developments as we move towards full implementation of the EUCLID Course Creation and Maintenance system.  Please contact Neil McGillivray if you'd like any further information.  All EUCLID meetings are summarised on the Implementation Co-Ordinator's Log.

Date	Development
01-04-09	University announces that the scope of the project has now been reduced.  The DPT functionality will continue to be delivered for the end of April 2009, although the future of the CCAM system is now unclear.  EUCLID have cancelled all April update meetings and hope to provide full information about the future of the project towards the end of May 2009.  Please contact Neil McGillivray or Stuart Anderson with any questions or comments.
20-01-09	EUCLID announce the PSG decision to extend the project by 12 months, effectively delaying the migration of courses, student selection and assessment parts of the project until the start of 2010/11.  The work on migrating the DPTs will continue, with these being managed via EUCLID from the start of 2009/10.
16-01-09	Informatics' DPTs have now been migrated into the new structure, and checked by members of the Board of Studies Committee. We are currently responsible for 31 degree programmes, each presented in a DPT format similar to this.  In EUCLID each year of an individual programme will be considered to be the DPT, see here.  This means that we have checked and approved >100 separate DPTs that are now stored in the EUCLID test system. We identified 58 errors (many duplicated across all degrees) and a few questions about how to best represent our existing rules within the new rule based system.  Discussions with EUCLID will continue until each of these questions/errors have been resolved.
17-12-08	Board of Studies agree to assign all courses to a single 'Informatics' subject area from the start of 2009/10.  It is agreed that this will help us make the most of the EUCLID system, improving the searchability of our courses.  This single subject area will be supported by a series of course collections, likely to closely mirror the 2008/09 structure of areas for each main degree discipline.  The ITO will take this decision forward, and consult with EUCLID, SACS and College Office about how best to make this change (pre or post course migration).
05-11-08	EUCLID confirm that there has been a delay in the converting of current DPT pages into new DPT pages held within the system, after discovering that this process hasn't been as straightforward as they had expected.  I'm still hopeful that the Informatics DPTs are in a suitable shape to ensure a reasonably swift switchover.  EUCLID now advise that they expect this migration to be complete by mid January 2009.  Further information on the structuring of the DPT system suggests that the School will need to write a Diploma DPT, enabling failing MSc candidates to be assigned to this new programme of study so that the system can validate their award.  EUCLID have also advised that the system is limited to only being able to record one primary and one secondary subject area per course.  There is a workaround for this that would help us assign courses to more than one secondary subject area (via a manually formed and maintained course 'collection'), although this workaround wouldn't enable students to search on courses in this collection/subject area.    I'll raise this, and the need for a Diploma exit DPT, at the 17th December 2008 Board of Studies
03-09-08	Access to early versions of EUCLID DPT pages will be available from October 2008.  Schools are asked to carefully check that these accurately refelct the rules imposed by our current (2008/09) degree structure (i.e. core courses, number of points per subject area etc).  During Jan/Feb 2009 the 2009/10 DPT pages will be made available for Schools to modify in advance of next session.  Note that EUCLID plan for students to be able to register onto their 2009/10 courses from around April 2009, meaning we'll need to ensure that DPTs are up-to-date asap and that an early decision has been made on the courses we're teaching etc.  EUCLID also confirm that the formal DoS confirmation that a student is in attendance will be removed, meaning there will now be no requirement for a student to meet with their DoS before the start of term.  DoS's and ITO staff will be given the ability to revise a student's course selection, prior to confirmation that they are fully registered.  Further investigation is required.  Students will also be able to sign up for a tutorial group at the time they register onto the course, providing the ITO structures the EUCLID course information in an appropriate way.
01-08-08	Neil attended the latest CCAM design partners meeting, following up on the feedback provided at the 18 June meeting.  The EUCLID team continue to fine-tune the CCAM pages, and seem to have decided on the final content of the course pre-approval screeens (the information that College would need to see in order to approve a course) and the information that would need to be entered into the system after approval, but before the course is delivered.  Neil will continue to talk to Tim Colles re the additional information required by our BoS, possibly to establish a system that creates a .pdf file that can be attached to the EUCLID course record.  Neil also had the opportunity to see the early format of the DPT screens, and how these relate to the screen that the student will use to register their course choices.  There was further discussion about whether a DoS will be given the opportunity to approve/veto a student's course choice, Informatics' position is that removal of this opportunity might mean that students can't benefit from DoS advice on exit routes etc, we therefore have asked that some kind of DoS check/approval mechanism remains in place.
18-06-08	Neil attended the first CCAM design partners meeting, giving us the opportunity to see the near-final version of the course creation and maintenance screens. This gave Informatics the chance to comment on these screens bearing in mind the role that our Board of Studies plays in approving courses.  EUCLID were interested to hear that our BoS requires more information than is held on WISARD (course syllabus, reading lists etc) and promised to look into this before the next meeting (1st Aug).  Neil also expressed the School's concern about associating the course code with the home subject area, explaining that our subject areas are regularly reviewed and that this might make the course code misleading.  Again, EUCLID agreed to look at this.
13-06-08	Ian Stark attended in Neil's place, and saw demonstrations of the same pages viewed by Neil and Stuart on 11th June.  In addition to the comments below, Ian also observed that EUCLID are pushing for a common progression rule (in particular from UG2 to UG3), but that APC have still to decide on this.  This might mean a change in our Hons progression rules after INF2, Ian will discuss this more with Stuart via email.  Ian also noted that EUCLID really only want marks to be entered manually typing directly into the web form, and that there was no automatic import of marks available at this stage.
11-06-08	Stuart and Neil attended a demonstration of some of the course mark entry pages, to be included in the Assessment part of the new system.  There is still some work to do but the early signs are encouraging.  At this stage I can confirm that all marks entered into the system will be percentages, and that the pass mark for all courses, and components of courses, will always be 40%. Compensation and Progression rules still require clarification, but work is now moving forward.  We also have confirmation that the 08/09 data will be added to the new EUCLID system for text and checking purposes, prior to go-live in 09/10.
12-05-08	ITO makes proposal to Board of Studies, suggesting that the School scraps the Course Descriptor forms from the start of 2009/10, and uses the CCAM structure with additional Case for Support information where necessary.  This was discussed at the 15th May Board of Studies meeting.
08-05-08	EUCLID ask for more information about how we propose, approve and maintain our courses.  We have provided details of the sortable course list and the Course Descriptors.  EUCLID also confirm that there won't be any change to the structure of the current course record (held on WISARD at the moment but will be moved to EUCLID from 2009/10), Neil provides additional information on the differences between these CCAM pages and our Course Descriptors, and how we might use CCAM more efficiently.
30-04-08	EUCLID confirm that the CCAM is on track to be introduced during March 2009, ready for Schools manage all course specific data via EUCLID in time for 2009/10.  This may invovle a short period of inaccessibility, although this should be no longer than a week and will be well documented in advance.  Further information about the conduct of Board of Studies and their relationship to College Learning & teaching Committee will be published in due course.  EUCLID confirm that the system will be able to automatically check student registrations, providing the DPT is presented in a straightforward way that the system can understand.  Use of the DPT term 'normally' will mean that student choices cannot be automatically checked, we should therefore remove these.  Use of the DPT term 'either or' will continue to be acceptable, and can be used for EUCLID checking.  EUCLID also confirm that the PCAM build is now 80% complete and that this area will be delivered during summer 2009, ready to support the other parts of the system being introduced for 2009/10.
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