Slides for talk on "Key Information Sets Data" by Andrew Oakley, HESA given at the IWMW 2012 event held in Edinburgh on 18-20 June 2012.

1. Key Information Sets Data
Andrew Oakley, Head of Software Development

2. Key Information Sets (KIS)
• Information for prospective undergraduate
students; applicants; e.g. sixth-formers
• To help them choose a course and an institution
• Throughout the UK
• Comparable information
• Standard widgets
• Standard reports

3. Screenshot – portrait (vertical) widget
• Widget will be available in landscape
(horizontal) or portrait (vertical)
• As an HTML5 Snippet or an HTML
iFrame
• Sample code provided – see links on
last page of this slideshow
• Mandatory from September 2012
according to every funding council
(Scotland, NI, Wales, England – all
mandatory)
• Also available in Welsh for Welsh
institutions

4. Screenshot – landscape (horizontal) widget
• Both vertical and horizontal widgets will be
animated
• Will scroll through around 10 data items
• Users may pause the carousel

5. Sample report
• Widget links to
report hosted
on Unistats
• You can also
link to the
report directly
• Also in Welsh

6. Sample report – in full

9. This KIS sample report dates from July 2011. The final design has changed to incorporate tabbed sections
and other design changes, but the content remains virtually the same. Design provided by:
• Chris Lorensson http://chrislorensson.com/
• Pure Usability http://www.pureusability.co.uk/

10. Where does the data come from?
• National Student Survey (NSS)
Student opinion poll, e.g. "Staff are good at
explaining things – 87% agree"
• UCAS
Course fees (for non-UCAS institutions, this is
provided direct by the institution instead)

11. Where does the data come from? (cont'd)
• HESA Destination of Leavers in HE survey
(DLHE)
– Percentage in employment, average salary,
percentage in graduate-level jobs
– Six months after graduating
– So it really matters that your institution gets their
alumni to complete the DLHE survey!
– Next year HESA plans to also include the percentage
employed in the subject area they studied in
• Did a B.A. Basketweaver get a job in Basketweaving?
• Using SIC/SOC codes

12. Where does the data come from? (cont'd)
• HEFCE/HESA Cyy061 data collection (e.g.
C12061)
– XML file provided direct by each institution
– E.g. "Coursework assessment percentage", "Upper
and lower quartile accommodation costs",
"Professional accreditation"
– Data is provided to HEFCE in first year; to HESA in
subsequent years. Other national funding councils
have asked HEFCE/HESA to provide this service on
their behalf. More on that later…

13. What is a course?
• Every course has a KIS. So it matters that you
have one widget per course on your institution's
website.
• A course is "something you can apply to study"
• If applicants apply to study "Natural Sciences"
and then choose to specialise in Biology or
Chemistry in their 2nd or 3rd year, then "Natural
Sciences" is one course
• If applicants apply to study "Biology" whilst
others apply to study "Chemistry", then those
are two separate courses

14. What about new, small or modular courses?
• Where a course is new, or the intake is too small to
be statistically valid, data will be aggregated
• This will be clearly labelled, where it happens
• There are three levels of aggregation for a
course, called KISTYPE. In general:
– KISTYPE 1: Any course with 20+ students.
– KISTYPE 2: Placeholders for joint courses with less than
20 students – links to the individual KIS records for the
individual subjects provided they all have 20+ students
– KISTYPE 3: Subject-level KIS.
E.g. a rare language course might be aggregated up to a
generic European Languages And Area Studies KIS.
Or where KISTYPE 2 has <20 students.
– This is just a summary. It can get more complicated.

15. Timeline
• 22 Aug 2012
– Final deadline for submission of KIS XML data by
institutions
• 30 Sept 2012
– Widgets available for institutions' websites
– Reports will be available on Unistats website
– UCAS will include KIS data in course searches
• 31 Oct 2012
– All institutions' websites must have KIS widgets
– KIS data collection re-opens for updates

16. Frequently asked questions about time travel
• HEFCE and HESA number their data collections as CyyNNN where
yy is a two-digit year and NNN identifies the collection such as staff
data (025), student data (051), DLHE (018), KIS (061)
• C12061 is the KIS data which institutions are submitting now
– Applicants will see widgets/reports from Sept/Oct 2012
– So it applies to courses starting Sept/Oct 2013
– Institutions will be able to update it throughout the year (e.g. they decide not
to run a course)
• C13061 is the KIS data which institutions will submit next
spring/summer
– Applicants will see widgets/reports from Sept/Oct 2013
– So it applies to courses starting Sept/Oct 2014
– There will be a few months of data collection overlap when both C12061
updates will still be allowed and when C13061 data collection starts

17. What is HESA & HEFCE's role?
• HEFCE is running the C12061 data collection
– The first year of KIS, goes live Sept 2012
– Using rapid development tools
– On behalf of all UK national funding councils
– With lots of input from various bodies including the
NUS and national governments
– HESA is providing the XML validation framework
• HESA will take on KIS from C13061
– Second and subsequent years, goes live Sept 2013
– Using the established HESA Submission system

18. How is the data updated?
• Institutions will be able to re-submit their XML files
throughout the year
• You'll have to resubmit the whole XML file, for all
your courses
– This may (or may not) change when HESA take it over
next year; we usually allow partial data inserts
• Updates to the widgets/reports will happen on a
regular interval yet to be agreed, most likely once
per week
• For seriously misleading information, your funding
council will be able to request an emergency
immediate update

19. What about Alternative Providers?
• "Alternative" includes non-funding-council
institutions who may be for-profit, charitable etc.
• A handful of APs are taking part from day one, e.g.
Buckingham
• Some data items may be missing (optional) for
those APs
• The number of APs included, and the completeness
of their data, is expected to increase in subsequent
years
• Also possibly some FE colleges, but there's a grey
area if they're just providing venues/resources for
another "normal" institution's courses.

20. Can I re-use the data?
• Yes. Exact terms are still being agreed.
• Most likely:
– The whole dataset will be available to download in a
variety of formats including XML and popular spreadsheets
– For no cost, for both commercial and non-commercial
purposes
– To anyone who signs up to the licence agreement, e.g. you
must agree not to misrepresent the data
– You can use the data as-is and call it official data
– You can remix / mash-up the data (e.g. aggregate it, slice it
up, overlay it on a map) and state that KIS was the source,
but you will no longer be able to call it official data
– Hopefully one of the standard open licences such as the
Open Government Licence

21. Any Questions?
Links, contact details & credits
• The author of this presentation
Andrew Oakley, Head of Software Development, HESA, 95 Promenade, Cheltenham GL50 1HZ
Email: andrew.oakley@hesa.ac.uk (preferred method of contact)
Twitter: @aroakley (usually only monitored during events, conferences etc.)
• HESA’s KIS data collection pages
Includes field-by-field summary of data collection, XML/XSDs, FAQ, guidance
http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_studrec&Itemid=232&mnl=12061
• Unistats widget user guide
Code snippets for embedding the widget in your course web pages
http://www.hesa.ac.uk/includes/C12061_resources/Unistats_widget_user_guide.pdf
• Funding council KIS pages
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/lt/publicinfo/kis/
http://www.hefcw.ac.uk/documents/publications/circulars/circulars_2011/w11%2015he%20key%20information%20sets.pdf
http://www.delni.gov.uk/index/further-and-higher-education/higher-education/role-structure-he-division/he-policy/he-teaching-
and-learning.htm
• KIS report provided by the designers & usability experts who created the KIS widget & reports
Chris Lorensson http://chrislorensson.com/
Pure Usability http://www.pureusability.co.uk/
• KIS screenshots provided by Jenni Rogers & Julia Moss of HEFCE
• The Open Government Licence – not yet confirmed to be the KIS licence, but to give you an idea
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/