5 top tips to enhance your students' experience
Word of mouth plays a big part in the marketing of any product and education is no different. If students don’t have a positive and enjoyable experience, which they believe meets their needs and offers value for money, a college or university is likely to notice a fall in applicants and reputation. I’m Head of Learning and Research Technologies, at... >>
How e-portfolios helped us to improve our college's digital literacy
I am the learning zone and e-learning manager at Deeside College. I work with an extremely dedicated group of people with a passion for taking the student forward and developing real world skills. The students too are a wonderful group, with varying needs and abilities – they have a real sense of fun and enjoyment whilst learning and many are... >>
Wikipedia in universities and colleges?
Here at Jisc we are lucky enough to have a view across the education sectors in teaching, learning and research. I’m delighted to be at the EduWiki Conference this week, which is run by the Wikimedia UK Foundation and brings together educators to discuss how they use Wikipedia in their teaching and Wikipedians who create and edit the content. I... >>
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... >>
Lend me your ears dear university web managers!
Jisc is considering future opportunities for innovation funding in collaboration with university web departments who manage the .ac.uk pages of their website, and we'd like to make sure that what we are proposing would be of value to the sector and is interesting enough for several of you to consider bidding. Please make your opinion known using the #lncneu hashtag... >>
App-ortunity Knocks: Mobile and the future of the library
How do universities and their libraries respond to an increasingly mobile world? At what point does mobile find itself at the heart of what a university does? Are we at a tipping point with those that fail to address students’ mobile expectations experiencing falling numbers? Prompted by a recent Jisc mobile infrastructure for libraries funding call, I wanted to outline... >>
The value of local developers
The higher and further education sectors in the UK are fortunate to employ talented and dedicated software developers. Without them, many kinds of technical innovation would be significantly more difficult, more expensive or even impossible. While the patterns of employment of 'local' (locally employed) developers varies considerably between higher/further education institutions, it is rare for such institutions to invest strategically... >>
Maximising your online event experience
With just one week to go before the Jisc11 conference in Liverpool , the final preparations are in full swing. We are working hard to ensure those of you planning to follow the conference online have as full and interactive an experience as possible. For someone choosing to follow a conference remotely, it is rarely now a one-way communication channel... >>
Maximising your event amplification
Those of you unable to come and see us at the Jisc11 conference in Liverpool next week will no doubt be keeping one eye on what is happening throughout the day with the help of your laptop, phone or tablet. As an event organiser I love experimenting with new and interesting ways to amplify events as well as enhance the... >>
Five factors for survival
First Browne, then the Comprehensive Spending Review, and with more reviews and uncertainty to come it’s easy to feel like the distraught lover in L'Âme Immortelle’s song – “life will never be the same again.” While this is de facto true it is certainly not the end! Higher education and research have been well funded over the past decade but... >>
