Linking systems and information

Just had an interesting session with the head of Information Services, to talk about how the university handles course information and its different purposes. This is linked to the fact that during August we lost links to the course information from the website from within the Support Point. It raised some interesting points about looking at the reason behind existing databases, how they are very focused to different business purposes and whether it is right to expand their purpose. A big thing is if their purpose is expanded to include new audiences how is this managed? Are we going to start putting too much pressure on Faculties to manage this data?

This is a good point as the www.staffs.ac.uk has a definate marketing focus on the traditional learner, therefore both the course search and results are targeted at that type of person. With the Support Point the target is either employers or employees looking for awards in a particular sector, and rather than looking at what entry requirements they need they are more interested in progression information and location of study. So how is this managed? Information overload!