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Version 1.1 Produced 2012-03-29

Mock KIS

A substantial programme of research and evidence-gathering has informed the proposals for the Key Information Sets. All of the background documents can be found on the HEFCE website.

An example of a mock KIS can be found on the HEFCE website.

There is a column in the table in the Coverage of the record document that explains what the student will see for all the KISTYPEs that are returned by the institutions.

Widget

A widget is a small graphic with three pieces of information from the KIS, specifically about the course the user is viewing. The general principles behind the design of the KIS widget are that it should:

1. Be visually neutral yet clearly identifiable
2. Cause minimal disruption to the page
3. Provide useful, credible information to students within the context of a course website
4. Provide a clear call to action to find further statistics.

Widgets will be produced in a vertical and a horizontal format due to the variations in the design and layout of institutional web pages. When a user clicks on the widget they are presented with the full KIS information for that course.

Further details can be found in the Unistats widget user guide.

Places KIS information will be provided

Providing information to students in a way that is useful to them, and in places that they want it, is at the heart of the KIS developments. Therefore, the KIS will be available to potential students in the following ways:

1. Published 'in context' on the web-sites of universities and colleges via a KIS 'widget'.
2. On a new web site that enables users to search and compare both KIS and Unistats data.
3. On the redeveloped UCAS course search web-site.
4. Through comparison web-sites and facilities provided by other organisations. The KIS dataset will be freely available to other organisations to use within their own products.

Suppressions

Where institutions identify errors in the KIS they may request suppression of all or part of the KIS. It is not expected that this process will be used where there are errors made in the KIS submission as these can be fixed in an updated submission. Rather, this process is designed to cover cases where errors in institutional student or DLHE data lead to incorrect data appearing on the KIS.

Where institutions identify errors they should contact: HEFCE ([email protected]) for institutions in England and Northern Ireland; HEFCW ([email protected]) for institutions in Wales; and SFC ([email protected]) for institutions in Scotland; when requesting a suppression detailing the nature of the issue, the precise cause of the problem, and the KIS affected. HEFCE will then remove the entire affected KIS from the KIS website, a revised KIS without the specific erroneous data will be mounted on the KIS web-site at the next opportunity.

HEFCE may suppress KIS data, without a request from the institution, where there is evidence of inappropriate influence on the NSS results.

The KIS will not incorporate any amended data submitted to HESA as part of the fixed database or otherwise submitted to the funding bodies.

There is no guarantee that other organisations using the KIS dataset for comparison sites for example, will update their data on such a regular basis and so updated or suppressed data may remain unchanged on these sites.

Contact Liaison by email or on +44 (0)1242 388 531.