Costing IT services
This is a question that many are asking and for which, as yet, there are no clear answers or even proven ways of finding out. As part of the team at Jisc looking at this problem, we have some approaches and are developing tools that can help you both benchmark your costs against others and drill down into the real... >>
The Summer of Student Innovation winners announced
The competition was devised by Jisc, RLUK, RUGIT, SCONUL and UCISA as part of a new co-design approach to innovation within UK education. Improving the student experience is widely recognised as one of the most important strategic drivers for universities and colleges. We strongly believe that students should have a prime role in developing novel ways to improve their learning... >>
Developing digital literacy with local employers
This change in behaviour is in part fuelled by the economy and the need to cut down on expensive travel to conferences and job interviews. It means that technical skills are becoming more and more important for the workplace and are now seen as a key employability skill for young people. This trend has even led to the rise of... >>
A new dawn, a new day, a new site
New design The first thing you’ll notice is the visual design, carrying the new Jisc brand and logo. We have a lovely colour palette and elegant font to play with, which has helped us to create spacious, flexible canvases for our content. We put a lot of emphasis on typography. You told us that it was hard to read the... >>
How will Jisc help me use data in the future?
Using data in different ways is critical to education and research, but it also has a use in informing important organisational and business decisions. It’s fair to say that data is fast becoming ‘king’ in the digital environment, from educational analytics to open government data , to linked data , to data produced through research that is then becoming a... >>
DIY augmented reality apps
Many learning providers focus on adapting existing learning content for these smart devices. Although, we are seeing pockets of really innovative and exemplar augmented reality (AR) based learning solutions that are not only improving students’ experience but are also proving to be a medium through which the learning providers are communicating more interactively with their students. But, I believe we... >>
The year MOOCs got real
Despite this, many core issues around pedagogy and business models are yet to be resolved. And it is the gaps in these areas that are most usefully highlighted by today’s report from Universities UK . Positioning the debate within a wider climate of the rush to get online across a number of industries, it notes that xMOOC platforms are exploring... >>
No need for angst over analytics
The Wikipedia definition is a bit dry – ‘the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data’ – but at its most practical, analytics offers a means for universities and colleges to examine the reams of routinely collected data in new ways, to gain insights that can help to improve student and teacher experience, and bring about greater operational efficiencies... >>
Identifying resources for students, by students
You may have noticed that search engines don’t always place the most useful stuff at the top. Actually, the most useful resources are often those that have been shared by the students themselves, which they normally just post on Facebook or send their fellow coursemates a link. At the School of Engineering in the University of Liverpool , we were... >>
A customer-focused Jisc redesigns the future
This is in response to our Wilson Review which stated that there should be a set of focused Jisc projects that create clear outcomes for our customers, the learning and skills sector, colleges and universities. We believe that through co-design we will achieve this and this programme - which includes five partners, Research Libraries UK, the RUGIT (the Russell Group... >>
