Cyber Campus: Education Guardian Supplement
A sustainable future
Technology has the power not just to shape the future of higher education in the UK and across the world but also to cut greenhouse gases.
It all boils down to sustainability. Solutions such as thin client servers and grid computing – where PCs are linked together in a network – boost sustainability, enabling universities to get more bang for their bucks.
Wireless-enabled learning spaces such as the Information Commons at the University of Sheffield and Glasgow Caledonian’s Saltire Centre can transform the image of higher education to reflect the internet age.
The importance of these agendas is demonstrated by a recent survey by the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA), the membership organisation that promotes the development of IT in the higher and further education (FE) sectors. Universities are investing an annual £1bn on IT systems and spending a further £250m a year on energy, so they need to think hard.
UCISA’s Top Concerns survey ranked funding and sustainable resourcing of ICT, IT strategy and planning, and organisational change as the top three issues affecting the sector. All of these issues feature prominently in the pages of this supplement.
We also look at the winners of UCISA’s awards for excellence, which prioritise innovation and return on investment in a time of tight budgets.
With a membership that includes virtually all of the UK’s universities, a growing number of FE colleges and around 70 of the leading education software and hardware providers, UCISA recognises that solutions need to come from the private sector.
Meanwhile, collaboration both internationally and with other sector bodies, such as JISC – the organisation that promotes the innovative use of technology in teaching and research across further and higher education – ensures that resources are pooled and that best practice can transcend borders.