JISC

JISC today announced the successful bids under the first round of funding of its capital programme. Representing an investment of nearly £5.5m, the 27 projects are being funded under the e-learning, e-infrastructure and repositories and preservation strands of the programme.

The first call under the programme - which represents a total investment of some £81m over three years - was issued in April of this year in response to which nearly 100 bids were received. A second call is currently issued, totalling around £15m of further funding.

Among the 11 funded projects in the repositories and preservation strand of the programme is the national Repository Support Project to be managed by SHERPA at the University of Nottingham and supported by the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, the University of Southampton, UKOLN and the Digitial Curation Centre (DCC).

The project will provide a free 'one-stop shop' for advice and support to all HE institutions in England and Wales in establishing and developing digital repositories. Wider take up and development of institutional repositories is an important objective of the capital programme and, along with the other funded projects in this strand, the national support project will provide an important focus for national activities in this area.

Among other central objectives of the programme is the enhancement of the national e-infrastructure, and two funded projects in the e-infrastructure strand will build on work already being undertaken by JISC in the area of access management. Led by the University of Manchester and Cardiff University (in partnership with the London School of Economics), the projects will focus on security and identity management.

Among the 13 projects funded in the e-learning strand will be those linking with HEFCE's Lifelong Learning Networks which are providing regional progression pathways between further education colleges and higher education institutions as a means of widening participation. With a key focus of the e-learning strand being the exploration of technology's potential to enhance learning and teaching, another focus for a number of the funded projects will be how ICT can enhance practice-based learning, particularly in health, nursing and medicine.

Sarah Porter, JISC's head of development, praised the standard of bids received, saying: 'These projects, the first to be funded through the capital programme, will build on important JISC work to date, enhancing our core activities as well as further supporting the education and research community's engagement with ICT. We feel sure they will bring a wide range of benefits and look forward to seeing the fruits of their work in due course.'

Along with these projects, other activities funded through the capital programme for which expenditure is now committed include: SuperJANET5, the upgrade to the JANET network (£27.6m); enhancements to the national e-infrastructure, including enhancements in the areas of access management, the National Grid Service and text mining (£3.6m); the interim repository service PROSPERO (£0.5m), and collaborative activities with the Higher Education Academy in the area of e-learning (£2m).

A separate call under the digitisation strand of the programme was issued in April and the successful projects under this £5.5m strand will be announced in due course.

For further information, please go to: Funded projects

Contact: Philip Pothen (JISC) on 020 7848 2935 or 07887 564 006 or write to: p.pothen@jisc.ac.uk