During 2012 the University has been gathering data from Faculties and Services for Key Information Sets (KIS), the first version of which were published on the Unistats website on 27 September: http://unistats.direct.gov.uk/.
Key Information Sets are comparable sets of standardised information about all full-time undergraduate courses offered in England and Wales, and are part of government initiatives to provide more information to prospective students to facilitate choice. The initiative is led by HEFCE with the data being managed by HESA. All higher education institutions offering full-time undergraduate courses have been required to submit data for those courses.
The information for each course is compiled by combining data from the NSS and DLHE surveys with institutional data on learning and teaching, assessment methods, accreditation, fees and indicative accommodation costs. The information is presented in tabular form with the option to select up to five comparator courses. Data will also be downloadable by external information providers including Which University?
The KIS project team have been working with Faculties to collect and submit the data, and to review our return on the beta version of the UNISTATS website which was released 12 days in advance. Some initial analysis of the data has been made and some changes will be submitted to HESA this week in the first data update.
Some concerns raised by Faculties are related to the way in which the data is scoped and aggregated in the HESA model, and these will be taken forward for further work during the next month. Planning and Communications will also be carrying out a more extensive comparator exercise that will review our KIS data against key comparators at course level, and in collaboration with Faculties will determine how to convey key messages reflecting both the positive and the more challenging areas of the data.
In addition to the published information on the Unistats website, the data will also be fed through to the individual course pages on our University websites in the form of a widget. We will implement the widgets during October as the comparator exercise is carried out and supporting information and key messages are established.
For more information on the KIS project, including details of what data has been included and how it has been calculated, you can refer to the Frequently Asked Questions at southampton.likn.co/kis_faqs.pdf
Alternatively if you have questions regarding KIS data please email [email protected].