Background information
The Course Information System (CIS) was designed and developed at UTS in 2004 as an interim solution to support the storage of course and subject information that could not initially be stored in the Curriculum and Student System (CASS).
- CASS is a proprietory system purchased from business software group Technology One. It holds all student data, and course, subject, major, sub-major names, codes, credit-point values, rules of completion, etc., and is used to assist with web enrolment, study plans, transcripts, testamurs, etc.
- CIS holds all the descriptive text information for courses, subjects, majors and sub-majors and facilitates the publication of information in a variety of media. CIS also stores course area information, primarily for use in the course area information section of the UTS: Handbook and as standard fields in every subject outline within a course area.
Although the original objective was to establish a single source of curriculum data stored in a single application, it became evident during the continued development of the CIS that the University's diverse legal and business requirements for course information were best met through the maintenance of CIS as a complementary system to CASS.
As a result of the successful operation of CIS, it was demonstrated that data could be successfully managed across more than one application provided that each data item had a single location. Therefore, the use of both CASS and CIS to manage the University's course information provided a fit for purpose solution. It made sure high-level curriculum data was controlled at the appropriate level and ensured both descriptive and ancillary course and subject text was regularly reviewed and updated by faculties, and then went through a quality-control, editing gateway before publication.
At the end of 2005 UTS formally recognised that the establishment of the CIS provided the University with an authoritative source of course and subject information which could be used to populate a range of course information products.
The development of CIS and the use the XML capabilities of InDesign (publishing software) also revolutionised the way course information products were produced at UTS. Most notably, it became possible to export pre-edited final course information, via a feed, into prepared InDesign templates, which eliminated the need to manually input data and substantially reduced the amount of desktop publishing time required.
Benefits derived from the successful implementation of CIS include, but are not limited to:
- a reduction in the duplication and discrepancies in UTS course and subject information, as well as the more efficient use of human resources in the ongoing maintenance and use of the data
- improved access to an authoritative source of UTS course and subject information
- standardised methods for electronically populating various types of course and subject information products in a variety of media
- the appearance and content of published information on UTS courses and subjects is more consistent and accurate; reviews and refinements of the information are undertaken on an ongoing basis, as part of the continuous improvement program developed for the CIS.
The quick facts
- CIS was developed at UTS in 2004 using an Oracle database and a Cold Fusion web front-end portal.
- Faculties can view course information stored in CASS and CIS via CIS, and can electronically enter and maintain their own descriptive course and subject information on a continuous basis via a single CIS access point.
- Course information stored in CASS is imported into CIS on a daily basis by a direct feed from CASS, which ensures the most up-to-date information is displayed in CIS.
- CIS uses CASS data in conjunction with CIS descriptive data to feed into UTS publications; data is not duplicated across the systems.
- The first combined print UTS: Handbook, which included data for all faculties, was produced using CIS in 2005.
- In 2008, the system was further enhanced to enable subject coordinators to produce their subject outlines from the system.