UKCDR

The United Kingdom Collaboration for a Digital Repository (UKCDR) was a software design project.
Aims
To research and define functional requirements for a tool to support storage, exchange and analysis of high-stakes assessment items. UKCDR set out to scope a tool suitable for use in United Kingdom further education and higher education.
Funding
UKCDR was funded by a grant from the Jisc applicable for the two-year period from 1 June 2005 to 31 May 2007.
Process
The UKCDR project used a methodology designed to ensure maximum generalisability of outcomes across United Kingdom further education and higher education. The project team used Unified Modeling Language (UML) as a starting point, gathering use cases to define raw requirements. Use cases can be used to develop discrete functional requirements which can be scrutinised via activity diagrams which allow software developers to look at various user interactions with a proposed system. The product of these undertakings is often a series of test cases. Test cases are a useful way of determining objectively whether a system covers the desired functionality. UKCDR went through several drafts of test cases before a working version was arrived at. This version was used to examine the functional coverage of a range of item banking solutions.
Core processes

UKCDR's requirements gathering was condensed into a series of core processes.
Item development
Item authoring
Item administration
Addition of media
Attribute authorship
Quality assurance
Fullquality assurance audit trail
Flexible stages of review
Item storage and selection
Metadata tagging
Incorporation of items into examinations
Exam delivery
Output to paper or electronic format examination
Adherence to standards
Import and export of numerical results data and metadata
Results analysis
Flexible basic statistical analysis
Interface with existing statistical packages for complex results analysis
Project outputs
The project has produced a range of documents including UML and functional requirements information. The project has met with members of the technical and educational communities to validate and refine these prior to releasing a final version. UKCDR has produced an online tool for anyone looking for an item banking solution. Users can go to the UKCDR website and click on 'Needs calculator' where users can select which of the UKCDR requirements they feel are important to find out which of the solutions appraised by UKCDR offers a best fit.
Project partners
The project included higher education partners at University of Central Lancashire, University of Leeds, University of Liverpool, University of Manchester, University of Newcastle and University of Sheffield and further education partners at Stockton Riverside College and West Cheshire College. The project also learned from the combined experience of the UMAP national assessment item banking project for undergraduate medicine which incorporates five of the aforementioned universities as well as University of Birmingham, University of East Anglia, Hull York Medical School, University of Keele, University of Leicester, Peninsula Medical School, University of Southampton, University of St Andrews and University of Warwick.

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