Personal Development Planning practice and systems

Survey of IT systems supporting HE/FE PDP

With particular attention to information type and storage

Simon Grant - 2003-01-20

This survey is in the main being carried out by direct access to the system on-line. These questions are addressed where practical, but not initially asked of any particular person. One or more people directly responsible for the system will be able to view and edit all the information surveyed, and add more if they find it to be incomplete, or as their system is developed.

Some explicit assumptions:

• we are surveying an IT system which plays a part in a PDP process, and in which at least some PDR information is held;
• the survey will assess the coverage of the system and its potential for interoperability, and will help to clarify possible relationships with any MIS in place.

Questions about the PDP IT system as a whole:

• what is it called?
• what is the web address of the system, or of information about it?
• what is the parent body that owns or controls the development of the system?
• what kind of body is this? (EntTypeLines - see below for these and all similar)
• what framework of skill or competency categories and definitions is used in this system?
• what kind of learner and learning environment is it designed for?
• what measurements have been made of the use of the system?

For the system as a whole, and for each distinct identifiable version of the system:

• how and where is data stored? (StorageLines)
• what kind of database or storage is used? (BaseLines)
• how is the system delivered to users? (DeliveryLines)
• which institutions or other bodies are known to use it?

For each version of the system:

• is it a concept, prototype, current, old, or defunct? (VersionStatusLines)
• where appropriate, when was it published and when withdrawn?

Each system (or version) stores data in some form or other. It can be stored in many structures and formats. Ideally, we want to have a map of the data storage structures, so that we can map them to the same generic PDP output parts as were identified in the survey of practice. Thus the whole system data store may be divided, and subdivided, into structures. For each data structure in the system:

• what is it called?
• what type of structure is it? (DatatypeLines)
• if the structure has a size, what is it?
• what sub-structures make up the structure?
• who does or can own it: learner / tutor / department / institution? (OwnerLines)
• which of our generic PDP parts does it relate to?

The operation of the IT system would normally be considered to be divisible into various components, where each component may address some different task, or relate to some different information. Each component may have sub-components. We want to know what these components are. At the point of use, IT systems are generally presented to users in a series of screens, forms, or (following terminology from the Web) pages. Each page will deal with a set of information which is to be dealt with as a unit. Each page will belong to a particular component. For each of these components:

• what is it called?
• what sub-components, or pages, belong to it?
• which of our generic PDP activities may it support, and how much? (ClaimLines)

And for each page:

• what is it called?
• is the page presented in a main window, or as a pop-up? (FormLines)
• who uses the page? learner, tutor, department, institution? (UserLines)
• which of our generic PDP activities may it support, and how much? (ClaimLines)
• which data structures (as above) are used on the page, and how? (UsageLines)

For the various options, these are possible options. "None" and "other" are assumed included.

EntTypeLines:

• Commercial business
• School
• FEI
• HEI
• Local government
• National government
• other non-profit

StorageLines:

• Institution servers
• Departmental servers
• Tutor's files
• Learner's files
• Paper only

BaseLines:

• Relational database
• Object database
• XML database
• Other database
• XML files
• Proprietary files
• Structured text files
• Unstructured text files

DeliveryLines:

• Internet
• Intranet
• Particular machines only

DatatypeLines

• Group of tables
• Table
• Column
• Class
• List
• Integer
• Float
• String
• Text
• Date
• Boolean
• Other structure
• Other type

FormLines

• Main
• Pop-up

VersionStatusLines

• Concept
• Prototype
• Current
• Older
• Defunct

UserLines and OwnerLines

• Learner
• Tutor
• Department
• Institution
• Employer

UsageLines

• Used in display but not as such
• Displayed but not changed
• Changed and displayed
• Set only, not displayed

ClaimLines

• May help
• May satisfy
• May wholly cover

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Maintained by Simon Grant for the CRA as part of the JISC MLEs for Lifelong Learning programme.