JISC

In November 2007 JISC announced that the Regional Support Centres in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were to receive funding for a further three years, to August 2010 (Scotland had received a similar vote of confidence the previous year). The RSCs’ success in establishing and developing close relationships with learning providers in their regions has seen them emerge as the only established regionally based teams supporting improvements in the quality of learning and teaching in the post-16 sector across the UK. Their success is also reflected in the RSCs’ ever-widening remit, which now embraces – depending on the individual strategies of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – Specialist Colleges, the Adult and Community Learning sector, HE in FE, small higher education institutions and, most recently, Work-Based Learning.

A special Times Educational Supplement report published in November praised the ‘success’ of the JISC Regional Support Centres over the last seven years, saying that their establishment in 2000 marked a ‘turning point’ for the sector. Published to mark the award of further funding, the report explored various aspects of the RSCs’ work over the last seven years and its impact on the post-16 education sector. 

In January of this year JISC infoNet launched a suite of linked resources designed to support institutions run projects to support their educational mission. The set of linked ‘infoKits’ looks at Project, Programme and Portfolio Management and suggests tools and techniques to help staff succeed, arguing that effective management of all three is essential if organisations are to run projects that help them achieve their missions and contribute to organisational growth.

In May JISC Legal updated its Code of Practice on Data Protection to provide the most up to date guidance to the FE and HE sectors. Not intended as an in-depth examination of the general principles of the Data Protection Act 1998, it concentrated on key issues of concern and relevance to FE and HE institutions, as indicated through consultation with the sector.

The role of the nine JISC Regional Support Centres (RSCs) in England was expanded to include the Work Based Learning (WBL) sector, part of the ongoing strategy of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) to extend e-learning across all of the post-16 sectors. English RSCs recruited advisers to work with the national JISC coordinator and with national partners already working in the sector.

The importance and profile of information governance has grown rapidly in recent years and November 2007 saw the launch of a resource commissioned as part of JISC's ongoing programme of activities aimed at supporting and developing institutional records management and compliance with information-related legislation. Hosted by Mimas and led by the University of Manchester, JISC’s Information Governance Gateway (JIGG) is a comprehensive resource on all matters relating to information governance legislation and the HE sector, including records management, data protection, copyright, freedom of information and related legislation.

A publication was launched in April by JISC infoNet which attempted to answer important questions about the ‘tangible benefits of e-learning’. Exploring this question through a wide range of case studies, the publication attempted to make sense of the diversity of current e-learning practice across the HE sector and to seek out evidence that technology-enhanced learning is delivering tangible benefits for learners, teachers and institutions. The publication was funded by JISC and was the result of collaboration between JISC infoNet, ALT (Association for Learning Technology) and the Higher Education Academy. Other outputs from the project included a JISC Briefing Paper, a 41-page publication and the full set of 37 detailed case studies available online.

Tangible Benefits of e-Learning: Does investment yield interest? briefing paper

Among the themes to emerge as key for the sector at the JISC Innovation Forum in June was the issue of sustainability, especially the question of how innovation can help the learning and teaching community reduce its environmental impact. Representatives from the Suste-IT project at the University of Bradford and the Low Carbon ICT project at the University of Oxford showcased their work and demonstrated how, respectively, institutions can reduce their power consumption and better monitor and adapt their computer use through realistic software simulations.

Podcast The importance of innovation to the future of higher education 
Sarah Porter, Head of Innovation Group, JISC (Duration: 12:41)

 

                      Podcast JISC and the higher education sector: challenges and opportunities
                      John Selby, Director of Education and Widening Participation, HEFCE (Duration: 16:57)  

Read the final report from the JISC Innovation Form 2008

The Suste-IT project ran a series of workshops across the UK from May to explore not only how institutions can limit the carbon emissions directly produced by data centres, but also the rocketing costs of cooling and the increasingly expensive equipment and infrastructure that are required by non sustainable solutions. One of the themes of the workshop was that green ICT issues need to be addressed at an institutional level. The project is currently preparing a major report on these issues to be published in the coming months.

The Future is Green (with Dr Hugh Beedie of Cardiff University)
(Duration: 9:52)

How Green is our ICT? with JISC programme manager Rob Bristow
(Duration: 11:42)

JISC TechDIS joined forces with publishers to provide resources with the potential to transform the delivery of materials to disabled students and staff. One of the resources – Publisher Lookup UK - enables education providers and publishers to source electronic formats of textbooks for students with disabilities more quickly and efficiently than existing processes allow, while the second – Guide to Obtaining Textbooks in Alternative Formats – provides guidance to staff who need to provide text books in alternative formats for reading-impaired learners. The new guide not only helps institutions fulfill their legal obligations, but also supports staff to better understand and provide for the needs of their disabled students. Guides were distributed to both higher and further education institutional Library teams across the UK. 

Equality for all with JISC TechDis director Sal Cooke
(Duration: 9:26)

Mainstreaming accessibility with Sue McKnight, director of library services at Nottingham Trent University
(Duration: 14:05)

Supporting users with disabilities with Susan Smith and Isabel Arreola of Leeds Metropolitan University
(Duration: 17:11)

Articles on this initiative: Equal access for all (JISC Inform, issue 22)
Libraries rise to the challenge of inclusion (Guardian, April 2008)
Supporting users with disabilities (CILIP Supplement November 2008)

JISC infoNet undertook a survey during the last year that revealed that the most pressing strategic issues facing both further and higher education institutions are related to ‘organisational infrastructure’. The online survey received 86 responses from 75 institutions with the responses showing that ‘organisational infrastructure’ eclipsed financial concerns and the stresses of operating within an increasingly competitive market-driven sector.

In October 2007, JISC launched a programme of work designed to support institutional strategies by providing solutions to institution-wide problems. The Institutional Innovation programme will provide examples of good practice in the sector, particularly in the areas of leadership, effective institutional processes and sustainable technologies to support both administration and learning and teaching functions.