Lesson 4.4: Manual Data Entry Process

Description: This lesson provides you a step-by-step guide on manual data entry using the Curator interface, covering all six sections of qualification data input: General, Learning Outcomes, Credit Points, Awarding Opportunities, Accreditation/Licensing, and Learning Opportunities.

The ACQF QCP Curator interface is a tool designed for authorities and designated personnel to enter and manage qualification data for the African Continental Qualifications Platform manually.

This guide will walk you through the process of manually uploading qualifications data to the QCP step-by-step, referring to screen layouts similar to those you will see when signing into the QCP and as shown in Lesson Granted, due to the continuous development we are applying, there might be minor changes in the user interface compared to what you can see when logging into QCP. 

---

General tips for using the QCP curator’s interface:

Before starting off, we would like to share with you some general tips and trick of how to approach manually uploading data to the QCP.

Be prepared: before you begin, gather all official documents and information for the given qualification. This includes the full title, national ID, NQF level, learning outcomes, credit details, awarding body information, accreditation status, and any related URLs. If your country team has already developed one, we also suggest opening and prepare by your side any kind of procedure, rules or guidelines on how to map national qualifications to the African Learning Model. You can learn more about the African Learning Model and its structure in the previous modules of this course.

Follow prompts: pay attention to field labels, help icons (if any), and any error messages that appear. These are there to guide you.

Use the controlled vocabularies: many fields will use dropdown lists or require you to select from predefined options (e.g., Qualification Type, Status, Field of Study). Always use these official lists to ensure consistency and comparability.

Understand mandatory fields: fields marked with an asterisk (*) or otherwise indicated as mandatory must be completed to save the record.

Save your work: before you would publish publicly the qualifications, you can always save and edit your changes. We suggest doing this regularly to avoid any loss of data

Unique Identifiers (IRIs): Some fields, particularly system IDs, might use or generate IRIs (web identifiers). While you might not always type these directly, understanding their purpose in linking information is helpful. The system will often handle IRI creation based on your input (e.g., country code + national ID).

---

Step-by-step guide to manual data entry & QCP Curator’s portal

This guide follows a logical flow for entering qualification data, similar to what you might experience navigating through the QCP Curator interface.

Step 1: Starting a new qualification record

Navigation: Log in to the QCP Curator interface. There, you will see the top, green ribbon, where clicking qualifications brings up to option of either listing the qualifications already uploaded to QCP by your organisation. Clicking ‘Create’ here brings up menu where we can begin introducing a new qualification to QCP.

As you can see, the process of uploading a qualification is structured into 6 main sections: a general sections, learning outcomes, credit points, awarding opportunities and learning opportunities. We will go through each of these separately.

The general section, as you can see, asks for primary identifiers of qualifications, such as its title, the national reference ID, the NQF and ACQF (determined by the official referring of your NQF to ACQF) levels and the related education and training area (thematic area) as well as related occupations.

Tip: Ensure the title is exactly as it appears on certificates and official registers. If your template has fields for titles in multiple languages, you may use them as appropriate by clicking on the ‘Add new title’ button and specifying a language.

Further, if you would like, you can add any related documents of the qualifications by clicking ‘Add a new document’ or an online webpage via the ‘Add a new homepage’ button.

For illustrative purposes, we have selected a qualification from SAQA. Throughout this demonstration, we will use this qualification to show you how to enter data into the platform.

Step 2: Entering details on learning outcomes

The next section continues with information on the learning outcomes of the qualification by clicking on 2. Learning outcome on the left-side navigation panel. Learning Outcomes describe what a learner is expected to know, understand, and be able to do upon completion. Within the QCP, it is expected that you enter at least one

For each learning outcome, you should enter the concrete outcome in the ‘Title’ field. While it is not obligatory, we also recommend filling the ‘Related skills’ box especially. As you can see, we have continued filling the fields with the qualification example from South Africa, which had more than one learning outcomes.

You may add multiple learning outcomes linked to this qualification by clicking the plus button. As you can see, this brings up as much new text boxes as you would like. If you would like to quickly overview them, you may use the ‘Collapse all’ button to show less information. Conversely, clicking the ‘Expand all’ button would show the full details of each LO.

Step 3: Specifying Credit Points

You will typically create one or more entities here, capturing the number of credit points needed for the awarding of a qualifications, per a specific credit accumulation and transfer system.

Now, as before, we can proceed to the next section by clicking ‘Credit points’ on the left side. This section captures details about the credits awarded for the qualification.

The credit points field accepts a numerical value, while the framework field described the credit system which defined the number of credits needed. In case the qualification is tied to multiple such frameworks, as in the case of learning outcomes, you may create new entries by clicking the ‘+’ sign near the Credit Points title.

Step 4: Defining Awarding Opportunities

This section specifies the organisation(s) that officially award the qualification.

You will need to choose an existing organisation that provides this qualification. This could be either registered in the QCP and thus you could find it when starting to enter its name, or, it could be unregistered. In the latter case, you will need to navigate to the ‘Organisation’ field, in the upper right ribbon.

Under the Organisation tab, you can introduce any kind of entity that is relevant for QCP. This could be, for example, an organisation that provides a qualification or an institution that issues accreditation. In our current example, we introduced the name of the organisation awarding the qualification (e.g. University of Venda in this case).

Step 5: Recording Accreditation / Licensing Details

This section is for details of any formal accreditation, quality assurance, or licensing related to the qualification or its providers. Each distinct accreditation event is typically a separate record, and, as in the previous section, you may add new instances by clicking the ‘Plus’ button.

Under the section, you should mandatorily provide a descriptive title of the relevant instance of accreditation or licensing. Furthermore, you must select its type from a controlled list (e.g. programme-level accreditation) as well as the issuing organisation.

Both the issuing and the receiving organisations should be already added entities to the QCP database. If you cannot find the organisation you are looking for, you may do this by following the steps we outlined earlier, under the section on awarding opportunities. Evidently, you can also indicate the expiration date in the field, either by entering the date in the required format or using the calendar button on the right of the field and proceeding with the selection of a specific day from the calendar.

Step 6: Adding Learning Opportunities

The last section allows you to describe specific ways the qualification can be obtained, e.g., through a particular programme at a specific provider.

Under here, you must introduce a descriptive title for this specific offering (e.g., in this example we are using, the Bachelor of Education Honours in Chemistry Education”). Furthermore, you can provide any number of training or education providers that have this qualification offered.

Evidently, the language of instruction, a mandatory field, requires you to specify a language in which the learning opportunity is delivered in.

Step 7: Reviewing and editing qualification editorial status

After completing all relevant sections, you can go ahead clicking the ‘Create new qualification’ button. Importantly, this means that the qualification is created in the curator’s section but not yet published and openly accessible to people outside your organisation.

At any point, you may return to the qualification to perform further changes or just to continue filling in data. If you have closed the QCP portal or if you have done other work in the meantime, you may do this by clicking the ‘List’ field under the ‘Qualifications’ button. In this menu, you can search for the title of your qualification that you would like to modify and then click the ‘Pencil’ icon to edit it.

As you work with qualification records in the QCP Curator interface you will use different editorial statuses to reflect the lifecycle stage of your data. Selecting the correct status is crucial for proper workflow and data management.

• Draft status: this is your starting point. Use this when you are initially creating a qualification record or making significant revisions. In this phase, the information is considered a work-in-progress, is typically visible only to you or your team, and all fields remain fully editable. It means the qualification is not yet ready for formal review or public visibility.
• Under review for release: once you’ve completed all necessary data entry and performed your initial checks for accuracy, you will move the qualification to being under review for release. This signals that the record is ready for a supervisor, quality assurance officer, or another designated approver to examine it.
• Ready for release: after successful QA review and approval, the qualification is set to be ready for being published. Once a qualification is published, the qualification record goes live and searchable by all users of the ACQF QCP. This status indicates the qualification is current, valid, and intended for use in comparison and recognition processes. Edits to published records are generally controlled and might require a new review cycle to maintain data integrity, though minor corrections might be permissible under specific rules.
• Under review for obsoletion: a qualification that was already published may become obsolete per the given country’s internal versioning policy (e.g. due to an expired accreditation, a review of the NQF etc). When marked as such, a qualification under review may allow curators to signal if a qualification should be considered for archival.
• Ready for obsoletion: Once the evaluation has been done, this status allows for flagging qualifications to be archived. This status is for qualifications that are no longer current, have been officially withdrawn, replaced, or have expired and are not expected to be active again. The data is retained for historical, statistical, or referencing purposes.