1. Paul Horner Newcastle University www.epics.ac.uk www.eportfolios.ac.uk Paul Horner paul.horner@ncl.ac.uk +44(0)191 222 5020 Embedding Europass at Newcastle University to support student and graduate mobility – work in progress

2. Background EPICS • Mobility • Traditional pathways vs non-traditional pathways • Interoperability • IMS-LIP

3. Europass Benefits • Small and concise • Mobility HR-XML

4. Initial Roll-out Who was it available to? • Postgraduate Researchers • Approximately 2,500 students What was made available? • Europass-CV (upload/download) • HR-XML (download) • Zip file (upload/download)

5. Initial Roll-out Usage • 17 downloads • 10uploads

6. Initial Roll-out Feedback? • Generally positive • Useful • Easy to use • Some negative comments • How/where will I use the download?

7. Loop through the Europass XML Number of records Single Yes Is this part valid? No Does a record exist? Multiple Insert Yes No Update Insert Technical Issues Creates duplicate entries • No checks on uploaded data

8. New Upload Process Loop through the Europass XML Number of records Single Yes Is this part valid? No Does a record exist? Multiple Does a record exist? Yes No Update? User chooses Insert Yes No User chooses Yes Update? Is it similar to the existing record? Insert Insert No

9. Technical Issues No support for diacritics • Accented letters • á, ç, ê, ü etc… • ASCII vs UTF-8

10. Unicode (UTF-8) support • Python and ASCII • SAX XML and ASCII (Python) • Fixed • Encoding a string at a time • Not the entire XML

11. New Developments September 2007 • UTF-8 Support (diacritics) • Checks on uploads • HR-XML upload • Europass Language Passport

12. Where we’re at October 2007 • Upload from EuroCV • Upload to EuroCV • Europass upload • Europass download • EIfEL CVT

13. Future Developments • EPICS 2 • Job Boards • EuroCV • HR-XML • IMS-ePortfolio • Other schemas?

14. Interoperability options

15. Conclusions • Successful pilot • Good starting point • Interoperability • Lots more work to do • Europass • HR-XML • Interoperability

16. Paul Horner Newcastle University www.epics.ac.uk www.eportfolios.ac.uk Paul Horner paul.horner@ncl.ac.uk +44(0)191 222 5020 Embedding Europass at Newcastle University to support student and graduate mobility – work in progress