Electronic data standards for Higher Education

This page aims to summarise the existing projects and initiatives in the area of defining electronic data standards for Higher Education.

European workshop held on 9th November 2007 in Rome

"Defining electronic standards and procedures for the exchange of student curriculum data between Institutions of Higher Education within international mobility"

Representatives from European and US universities and other institutions active in the field of Higher Education met on the 9th November 2007 to discuss future common data standards for exchanging student curriculum data. The workshop was hosted by the Conference of Rectors of the Italian Universities (CRUI) in Rome. 40 participants from 13 countries attended the meeting with the dual intent of sharing domestic and international initiatives in this area and defining future common actions to be taken.

Click here to access the programme and the documentation of the workshop

Existing electronic standards for course or student related information

CDM (Course Description Metadata) - Norway

CDM is an XML data format for program and course descriptions. CDM started as a Norwegian project in 2001 and is maintained by Utdanning.no – Norway’s national portal for education.
more info: http://cdm.utdanning.no/cdm

CDM-FR - France

CDM-fr is the French application profile of CDM developed by the French Ministry of Education and being progressively deployed by French universities.
more info: http://cdm-fr.fr/

XCRI-CAP (eXchanging Course Related Information - course Advertising Profile) - United Kingdom

The XCRI Course Advertising Profile is an open specification for producing and aggregating collections of courses offered by providers.
more info: http://www.xcri.org

EMIL – Education Information Markup Language - Sweden

EMIL was initiated in 2003 by the National Agency for Education, the Swedish National Labour Market Board (AMS) and the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement (MSU)
More info: http://www.nshu.se/page/3090/emil.htm

Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC) - USA

The Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC) is an association established in 1997 and located in Washington, D.C. PESC's mission is to lead the establishment and adoption of data exchange standards in education. The first PESC approved standard, the XML Postsecondary Transcript, was developed and produced in July of 2004.
More info: http://www.pesc.org