JISC

The Government is putting ICT at the heart of education reform in its third term. So says the man responsible for implementing its e-strategy in an exclusive interview with JISC Inform published today, an interview also made available as a sound file for downloading.

Michael Stevenson is Director of Technology at the Department for Education and Skills. Charged with implementing the department’s e-strategy, published last year, he talks about the strategy’s commitment to supporting progression, attainment and personalised teaching and learning - ‘all things that a Government naturally cares about,’ he says.

Placing the learner at the centre of current priorities, the strategy for the first time, says Michael Stevenson, covers all education sectors.

‘There’s clearly an opportunity,’ he continues, ‘to create a more cohesive system for each learner to travel through, tracked and supported as they go. If you want to do that, then technology and data are going to be powerful levers for making it happen.’

Speaking of JISC’s role in the implementation of the e-strategy, Michael Stevenson suggests that JISC has a significant part to play to support its cross-sectoral aspirations:

‘Often beginning quite small JISC has developed some very important solutions to problems the whole system recognizes, whether that’s digital content, repositories, Shibboleth… whether indeed it’s the provision of network connectivity. All of that seems to me to be powerful and could benefit not only the HE sector but other sectors too.’

He goes on to talk about leadership and how an important focus for the e-strategy is on ‘equipping leaders to understand how important technology is in working out how to run the organisation they are responsible for, make it more efficient, more effective and above all, a better setting for teaching and learning.’  

To read the article or to hear the interview, please go to:  Interview Other articles in the new Inform include features on a new JISC publication on the design of learning spaces, an article on digital repositories by guest journalist Mark Samuels from Computing, a look at the UK’s first public web archive being developed by the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) and articles on the work of the Scottish Regional Support Centres (RSCs), JISC’s work with small publishers and its work in support of e-Science.

To access web, pdf or Word versions of JISC Inform, including the download of the Michael Stevenson interview, please go to:  Inform 13. To order a printed copy please contact publications@jisc.ac.uk.