Climate change – pulling the figures out of murky waters
At the start of March the Environment Agency warned that Britain needs to become more resilient to drought and flooding, as extremes of weather may be on the increase. That didn’t come as a surprise to me, as someone who has spent the last eight months in flood-prone Yorkshire, working on a project to help climate scientists unearth reliable information... >>
How digitised 'special' collections are boosting experiences of teaching and learning
The recent media frenzy that surrounded the launch of the Jisc-funded Bomb Sight website, which saw visitor numbers soar to about 200k in just one day, is testimony to the wide-spread public interest in the type of content that is, in fact, often hard for people to access, if not impossible. Until now, the only way for me to find... >>
Should universities care about APIs?
So why should universities devote effort to caring about application programming interfaces (APIs)? I work at Jisc as a programme manager and have recently been involved in work that could provide some answers as to the benefits of APIs. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are nothing new. In fact, Google web trends show searches for the term API have been on... >>
Supporting colleges to get the most from their technology
The September 2012 AoC Learning Technology Survey Report carries interesting messages for all of us working within further education and in particular for me and the team at Jisc working to support the sector. Although we will be considering the report in detail later this month so we can ensure we meet the changing needs of further education I thought... >>
No such thing as a free MOOC
And that brings me to our recent decision in the University of Edinburgh to join our colleagues in North America and offer our own MOOCs - or massive open online courses - through the Coursera consortium. It has been a very busy few weeks. After taking the in principle decision, there has been a tsunami of sorting the legals (you... >>
“Knowledge is the currency of the new economy” where research is “intelligently open”
A flow of policy reports focusing on research and access to the outputs of research appeared over the past month. Today the European Commission published two communications that respond to the way the “internet has fundamentally changed the world of science and research”. One on Access and preservation to scientific information reflects the outcome of a lengthy evidence process on... >>
How to feed, nourish and sustain your digital resources
From the late Nineties, European and UK funding agencies across sectors, from education to cultural heritage, have invested significant resources in the creation of digital content in the not-for-profit sector. The grants have facilitated major digitisation and encouraged innovative work that paved the way for forms of scholarship and communities possible only in an online environment. In the words of... >>
Where the open things are
The issue of making Open Access books discoverable was discussed in nearly all of our focus groups that we held earlier this year as part of the OAPEN -UK project. It’s not just about putting the PDF onto a platform and hoping that readers will find it, it’s about getting metadata out into the web, search and library systems where... >>
Open Practice: University College Falmouth see the big picture
The temptation within an innovative organisation like Jisc is to concentrate on talking about what is new. But a chance conversation on twitter with Alex Di Savoia at University College Falmouth (UCF), holder of one of our early Jisc/Higher Education Academy Open Educational Resources phase one projects, brought home to me just how much added value can be traced back... >>
Blackboard's new open source strategy: how virtual learning environments became commodities
Unthinkable a couple of years ago, and it still feels a bit April 1st: Blackboard has taken over two other virtual learning environment organisations : the Moodlerooms and NetSpot Moodle support companies in the US and Australia. Arguably as important is that they have also taken on Sakai and IMS luminary Charles Severance to head up Sakai development within Blackboard’s... >>