JISC

Core to JISC’s work is investing and building a technical backbone for research and teaching excellence.

Central to this, is the JISC-funded Janet computer network which this year, became the first national education and research network in the world to complete a 100Gbit network trial.  JISC has not only invested in technical infrastructure to support colleges and universities but this year has seen the culmination of our digitisation programme, with over 6.5 million items previously in archives being transformed into online content.

There was also another first, as over 3000 e-books were made available online for further education colleges as JISC funding enabled JISC Collections to negotiate content license agreements. Listen to the podcast

As e-books and previously archived content is moved online the demand to access these quality assured resources securely and easily is rapidly increasing. JISC’s work to provide those working in colleges and universities with a single sign-on user name and password continued this year. As the move from a centralised access management system to one that is owned by universities and based on open standards, letting different systems operate together, reached a milestone, as over 700 members joined the Federation of Access Management, making it the largest in Europe.

Creating ways to access information, transforming and building content all support the education sector, but understanding how people use technologies and what universities need is crucial to be able to inform project, innovation and investment decisions.

For the first time this year, senior managers and strategic leaders within learning and teaching were involved in JISC’s Key Audience Survey which asks people in education to contribute to JISC’s understanding of what is needed.

JISC and The British Library also commissioned a three-year study called Researcher of Tomorrow  looking into the behaviours of the ‘google generation’ researcher and how they use digital technologies.