JISC Inform 19
The new look JISC Inform features a look at the revamped Go-Geo!, a portal project that links a wide range of geographically related resources; Alice Gugan on the ways the research community is using advanced data visualisation techniques to aid their work; an overview of the Student Expectations Survey, a vital research project undertaken by Ipsos MORI and commissioned by JISC; and a look at Open Source Software's place in the HE and FE world.
Contents
Going geographical
Some important changes to a familiar resource will support learners, teachers and researchers in a range of disciplines, writes Anne Robertson of Go-Geo! 
A portal project that brings together and links a wide range of geographically related resources has been revamped and is proving more popular than ever. Funded by JISC and run by EDINA, Go-Geo! offers a new interface with a number of design improvements, and also offers enhanced functionality.
Robin Smith is a regular user of the service. GIS analyst at the University of Sheffield, he says that improved access to and use of data is the 'key to fostering interdisciplinarity. Through geographical information', he continues, 'we can create and share meaningful mapped representations of datasets that collaborators can share and interpret together. Expectations are high and we often get requests for data that may not exist. That's where Go-Geo! comes in.'
Smith says that Go-Geo!'s ability to search and share details of projects and data is 'really helpful. It helps us to know what's out there, especially if we don't need to start from scratch. I see it as a first step towards grassroots e-Science. It's connecting users to both the datasets and the context of that data. It's not just about metadata but also who else is out there and what they have written, particularly outside of the academic arena.'
Among the changes to the resources is a new mapping interface, which now makes searching by UK geographical area easier, while colour schemes across the site make navigation easier. Resource channels now give greater prominence to frequently accessed resources and the introduction of new theme categories for software, books and online resources will simplify accessing information on hundreds of entries. The portal is also to be extended to provide links to catalogues for international data and geographically related resources in support of research in other countries.
Go-Geo! is a major component of the UK academic Spatial Data Infrastructure, the technologies, policies and people necessary to promote sharing of geospatial data. It has long been recognised that a critical component of an SDI is a catalogue that finds geographic information and services. Go-Geo! is an example of such a service.
Users are able to submit metadata so that others can access information about their resources. Support through online resources and workshops have been made available to support this facility.
Balviar Notay, JISC Programme Manager, says: 'This is a resource that can be used across many disciplines such as history, epidemiology, archaeology and geology as well as the more obvious subject areas. It's a very valuable resource.'
Download the podcast with Robin Smith (GIS analyst)
Go-Geo!
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News
Wales' Leader of the House opens major digitisation conference
A major international conference on digitisation took place in Cardiff in June and was opened by Carwyn Jones, now Counsel General and Leader of the House in the Welsh Assembly Government (pictured).
The conference attracted around 150 senior figures from education, research, cultural heritage, public broadcasting and industry in the UK and beyond, showcased national and international digitisation initiatives - including JISC's £22m digitisation programme - and explored the potential for cross-sectoral cooperation in this area.
An interview with Carwyn Jones
Further information on the conference
Task force to address sustainability in digital preservation
JISC is supporting an international initiative, led by US-based organisations the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to address the issue of economic sustainability in digital preservation.
A task force to be co-chaired by Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California and a pioneer in data 'cyberinfrastructure', and Brian Lavoie, an economist and research scientist with OCLC, will receive support from the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration and the Council on Library and Information Resources, along with JISC.
The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access is expected to meet over the next two years to gather testimony from experts in preparation for the Task Force's Final Report. Though significant progress has been made to overcome the technical challenges of achieving persistent access to digital resources, the economic challenges remain.
Keynote speakers announced for JISC conference 2008
Lord Puttnam and Angela Beesley are to be the keynote speakers at JISC's annual conference on 15 April 2008 in Birmingham.
Lord Puttnam of Queensgate is one of the most acclaimed producers of recent British film history. The recipient of an Academy Award (for Chariots of Fire in 1981) and a BAFTA Fellowship, in 2006, he left the film industry to pursue interests in British politics and education and was knighted in 1995 and made a life peer in 1997.
Chair of the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation - the non-profit organisation that operates Wikipedia and other wiki-based reference works - Angela Beesley has been involved with the Wikipedia community for more than five years.
JISC Conference 2008
JISC Legal highlights business and community engagement
JISC Legal has dedicated a section of its website to BCE, which features guidance on legal issues, with case studies illustrating how these issues arise in practice. Business and Community Engagement (BCE) is an area of activity in further and higher education, which aims to enhance the contribution of FE and HE institutions to business and wider social communities through knowledge transfer and expertise. The website will in future offer a helpdesk facility making it possible to address, on a one-to-one basis, specific areas of concern.
JISCLegal: Business and Community Engagement, Technology and the Law
New videos showcase best in collaborative research
Two videos that explain how projects from the first phase of JISC's Virtual Research Environments (VRE) programme are bringing researchers together through VREs have been launched.
Projects highlighted in the videos show how researchers in the materials sciences, for example, have been able to share results in real time with other remote teams of specialists; how dancers have been performing in remote environments (see image); how groups of historians have been 'meeting' remotely and collaborating across more than a dozen institutions, and so on.
Frederique van Till, JISC's Programme Manager for the VRE programme, now in its second phase, said: 'We're delighted to have such a range of perspectives and research backgrounds on these films. What has really come through is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, just as no two research projects are the same.'
VRE Phase 1 projects
UK Data Archive celebrates its 40th birthday
The UK Data Archive (UKDA) celebrated its 40th anniversary with a special reception in the House of Commons in July. Among those attending the celebration were Minister of State in the Ministry of Justice, Michael Wills; Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex, Professor Sir Ivor Crewe; Chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council, Professor Ian Diamond (pictured right l to r)
Jointly funded by JISC and the ESRC, the UKDA is now an internationally renowned centre of expertise in data acquisition and is curator of the UK's largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities.
UK Data Archive
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Seeing is understanding
In today's 'next generation' information-hungry age, visualization is becoming increasingly used to communicate information, ideas and data. But, asks JISC's Alice Gugan, what actually is visualization and how is it being used?
If understanding and communicating complex ideas is at the heart of research, then visualization is a very important research tool indeed.
This is the view of Roy Kalawsky, director of the Research School of Systems Engineering at Loughborough University. He says that visualization, when used properly, has 'the potential to provide amazing insight into the complex relationships that exist in large datasets. It can dramatically aid in the understanding or explanation of a complex idea or in the interpretation of large quantities of data.'
The computer games industry has had a profound impact on the affordability and accessibility of visualization hardware to new users, commercially, socially and for educational purposes. Today, visualization enables the representation of data for a whole multitude of uses across a range of diverse fields.
Miniscule data from CT/MRI scans, for example, can be displayed for analysis; physical spaces can be scanned for 3D representation; and complex climate simulations can be explored in a highly intuitive manner.
In the world of the arts, visualization allows multi-dimensional depth and perspectives never previously possible. Visualization tools can aid reconstructions of the ancient world, bringing archaeological data to life. Not to mention the burgeoning trend towards virtual worlds, such as Second Life.
But there are challenges in its use, says Roy Kalawsky. 'The challenge is in the selection of the most appropriate method,' he explains, 'in terms of display technology and visualization technique, to display the data. Equally important is the need to understand human visual perception in order to maximise the user's understanding through innovative and effective representations.'
Advice and support is available, however, he continues, through vizNET, a JISC-funded initiative, which brings together a community of visualization users and developers from many backgrounds. It aims to help build capacity and widen access for new as well as advanced users.
One of its principal challenges is to ensure that researchers from all disciplines are exposed to the potential for research of visualization techniques, for example in the arts and humanities.
'It's important to increase take-up across all sectors,' says Roy Kalawsky. 'One of vizNET's objectives is to reach out to new or emerging visualization users in the science and engineering community and help demystify the visualization field. Another connected project, 3DVisA, works predominantly among the arts and humanities, helping to transfer vizNET expertise and knowledge to the arts and humanities communities through workshops and other events.'
And what of the future? Roy's team and other members of vizNET have already developed 3D visualization tools that can be used by anyone from anywhere, making visualization no longer the exclusive realm of the researcher with specialised equipment. Loughborough has developed a means of enabling real-time interaction with advanced 3D visualized data on mobile phones or PDAs, allowing complex data to be accessed from anywhere where there is a wireless network connection. Exciting research with a local Leicestershire hospital has also developed a stereo 3D visualization system, which can effectively be viewed from anywhere by any medical team, enabling users to stand in front of and 'touch' a giant heart, which appears to loom out from the screen in 3D - an experience not easily forgotten!
The system makes use of a new distributed visualization technique that dramatically reduces hardware costs and offers enormous benefits to not only hospitals but indeed to any working or educational environment, opening up a new dimension for interactive online training. Roy Kalawsky is looking ahead to future challenges - and to VizNET and 3DVisA's next annual conference in April 2008. 'Next year's conference will focus very strongly on the sharing of best practice,' he says, 'showcasing new stories and creating exemplars of use. New users really are the future as visualization continues to push the boundaries'.
Watch this space!
Download the podcast with Roy Kalawsky (Director of the Research School of Systems Engineering)
Visualization image gallery
Exploring the learner's perspective
A recent JISC publication brings together findings from the first phase of a four-year enquiry into undergraduate, post-graduate and adult learners' experiences of e-learning. In Their Own Words also provides resources on CD-ROM, reports Ros Smith for JISC
In Their Own Words
Finding out what learners think and feel about the use of technology in learning is a matter of increasing importance as universities and colleges prepare for those who have grown up in a digital age.
Through its e-Learning programme JISC has funded a two-part sequence of studies to shed light on the characteristics and preferences of today's e-learners in further and higher education to determine the shape of e-learning in the future. In Their Own Words has synthesised key outcomes from the first phase into a user-friendly guide.
The results make interesting reading. Learners are already seeking both choice and control when it comes to the technology and are mixing and matching personal and institutional tools with skill. Technology, it seems, is central to their lives and therefore also to their studies, but increasingly the boundaries between study and other aspects of their lives are being eroded.
Personal tools and technologies - those owned and managed by learners themselves such as laptops, mobile phones and social software - are now often incorporated into their learning, which is supported by a constantly connected underworld of communication between networks of peers, friends and family.
Institutions should respond, the report suggests, by helping learners to understand the benefits and drawbacks of learning in an environment of increased personal choice.
In Their Own Words
The mature student
The story of Finbar, a mature student in the Learner Experiences of e-Learning study (LXP), shows how important access to a range of technologies can be for part-time learners juggling work, family commitments and study.
Finbar, a father of four, works in a telecommunications firm while studying for a degree. He studies in the university library and on his personal computer at home, but also takes advantage of quieter moments at work to complete internet research, emailing the results on to his university email account. He also uses colleagues in the firm as a support network and keeps in touch with students in similar circumstances by phone and web text.
'These strategies enable Finbar to keep up with his studies alongside his work and family commitments,' says Grainné Conole, LXP project manager based at The Open University.
'However, as a part-time learner, he still runs the risk of becoming isolated. This is where a mobile phone and web text come in.'
Finbar notes how the digital revolution has made it easier for mature students to return to education, but also expresses concern that the demand for rapid, bite-sized communication is diminishing learners' reflective and evaluative skills. 'They just read information, cut and paste it and distribute it round without thinking a great deal about it,' says Finbar.
Another issue for Finbar is availability of online information about his module options, since learners with work and family commitments need course information well in advance to plan their study schedules effectively.
More information on Learner Experiences of e-Learning phase 1
The digital native
Laura, an 18 year-old, full-time student, attends her local university while living at home. She is an experienced user of technology and relishes the convenience and companionship it brings into her life.
Laura makes use of a variety of technologies. She has established an online learning community in MySpace, where she networks for information and swaps problems with other students, as well maintaining her social life, but also enjoys opportunities to create as well as consume content in digital form by making digital films.
Laura can access course resources by logging onto the university's VLE from a personal computer in her bedroom and is well-supported in independent learning by lecture notes in case of absence and a bulletin board where students can post questions for tutors. Podcasts in MP3 format are released before examinations and Laura downloads these to revise on her iPod while travelling. 'No journey to university is complete without the iPod - this thing is glorious,' explains Laura.
Recreational technologies can act as distractions when Laura is studying at home, so despite having access to online support, she chooses to travel regularly onto campus to attend classes and meet with other students.
Collaborative group work is a feature of her course, but as group members come from different locations, so regular communication via the mobile phone is essential.
Laura's story is told in the learner's voice video case studies on the CD-ROM of In Their Own Words.
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Great expectations of ICT
Providing intelligence on the use of ICT is vital if colleges and universities are to provide services appropriate to their students. Philip Pothen reports on recently published research, which will soon feed into further far-reaching work in the coming year
New research published last month on the attitudes of 16-18 year olds hoping to go to university provides a glimpse into the ways in which university hopefuls use ICT and what they want from ICT when they reach university.
Commissioned by JISC and conducted by Ipsos MORI, the survey looked at the attitudes of over 500 young people using both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The survey suggested that ICT has become 'part of the fabric of the lives' of young university applicants, but it also uncovered a pragmatism in their approach to technology, with 79%, for example, agreeing with the statement 'I think that using IT at university will enhance my learning'.
The survey provides not only a snapshot of ICT use among a crucial and as yet under-researched section of the education population, but also provides an intelligence base for universities to review their ICT provision.
The survey found for example that while nearly two thirds 'regularly' use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, and over a quarter 'regularly' use blogs, wikis and online networks, there was scepticism about 'virtual worlds' such as Second Life, with less than 10% regularly taking part in such communities. It also found that of those who have at least begun the process of preparing for university application, half have looked at or asked for information about the types of IT provision.
It is insights like these which, says Charles Hutchings, JISC's Market Research Manager, could have important implications for institutional decision-making. 'Given the apparent uncertainty among the survey respondents of what university life has to offer,' he says, 'it's essential that universities do what they can to help ease the transition from school to higher education. Understanding and managing their expectations will be an important factor in this, especially its impact on recruitment and retention.'
A briefing paper is being published and distributed to all universities to alert them to the new research and to indicate some of its broad implications. 'Given the complexity of the subject and the diversity of students,' says Charles Hutchings, 'it's important that further research is conducted to better understand the changing experiences and expectations of today's learners.'
Further work is soon to be undertaken by a Committee of Inquiry being convened by JISC with the HE Academy this autumn into the changing learner experience. The Inquiry will look at the experience and expectations of learners approaching higher education with a view to providing high-level advice to universities and colleges.
Student Expectations Study briefing paper
Read the full report
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An open and shut case?
IT journalist Mark Samuels looks at how a consideration of open source options in procuring and developing IT systems is vital to ensuring the best fit between the needs of colleges and universities and the services they provide
With higher education institutions and colleges keen to work at best value, it would seem there is a big market for an alternative to costly proprietary software that also provides long-term sustainability, a sense of community and a better fit with user needs.
An alternative to off-the-shelf applications comes in the form of open source software (OSS), where the programming code is freely available for modification. Such freedom allows open source programmers to form strong communities that produce innovative solutions for intractable problems, including the creation of virtual learning environments and content management systems for the education sector.
JISC issued a briefing paper last year to raise awareness of OSS. It encouraged academic institutions to consider open source as the default for developing and deploying software. The briefing paper followed the government's published policy, which in 2004 set guidance for the exploitation of publicly funded software development.
Supported by its advisory service OSS Watch, JISC advocates the use of open source as the default for software development, as well as providing guidelines on copyright, patents and development practices. And with inflexible commercial providers usually undertaking more restrictive practices around their source code, it was perhaps unsurprising to discover a 2006 survey by OSS Watch found 77 per cent of colleges and universities regularly explore open source options in procurement exercises.
But while the survey concluded institutions now have higher levels of experience of open source compared to three years ago, Ross Gardler, service manager at OSS Watch, says there remains a great deal of confusion about how universities and colleges can make the most of OSS. 'It seems to make sense, but institutions sometimes struggle with the concept of how they can actually do open source,' he says.
Most significantly, there is often a lack of understanding about how best to consider OSS as part of institutional IT procurement and development activities. Gardler believes such issues can be explained by difficulties surrounding evaluation techniques.
'There often isn't an established marketing department that will take you out for lunch and smooth talk you about the potential benefits, like there is with a commercial provider,' he says.
The OSS Watch survey also found that only 25 per cent of universities and colleges mention open source in their institutional policies, suggesting an important discrepancy between policy and practice. 'Institutions need a policy that says they will evaluate open source solutions,' says Gardler. 'Without such a policy, they won't.'
He says openness is critical to the success of institutional policies, particularly when colleges and universities branch from procurement to research and development. With the code openly available, changes to open source applications can lead to issues of ownership.
Gardler says it's crucial to ensure that when significant changes to the source code do occur that the institutions are recognised for their contributions. 'Such developments could provide strong research bonuses for universities,' he says. 'Being able to say that your institution has helped to create a popular virtual learning environment, for example, fosters a lot of kudos.'
Creating strong policies for the usage of open source in the institutional arena is therefore vital. Some institutions are already ensuring such practices take place - and Fahri Zihni, director of ICT at Aston University, says his institution is building open source into its IT procedures.
But attempting to include OSS in software buying decisions is not without its challenges, as Zihni demonstrates by referring to the recent procurement of a content management system.
At the pre-tender stage, Aston did receive interest from several open source companies. But the formal part of the tender required the receipt of £150 for a more detailed specification. 'Either for this, or other reasons, we didn't have anyone coming forward to tender - perhaps the next time we need to do a separate evaluation of open source products and go and see existing users to get a fair comparison,' says Zihni.
Sometimes choices are more clear-cut. In the case of niche development and generic applications, Zihni would stick with off-the-self providers. 'I wouldn't take an open source product where we had little or no skills base,' he says. 'And where there is a large user base for generic products like e-mail or student records systems, I wouldn't go searching for exotic products with little support.'
The key point, however, is for institutions and colleges to avoid being dogmatic about choices surrounding potential software solutions. And Zihni suggests technology purchasers cannot afford to be zealots, especially in further and higher education, where money is hard to come by and value for money is essential.
Under such conditions, OSS solutions do offer a range of potential advantages over proprietary applications. Ann Borda, programme executive for e-Research and e-Infrastructure at JISC, has gathered feedback from various communities of researchers that are undertaking projects using open source solutions and says an obvious advantage is the initial cost.
OSS is available without licence fees for use by the academic community. Unlike in the case of proprietary software, institutions do not have to purchase additional licenses for every computer that uses an application.
Open source - facts and figures
56% - institutions using the open source Moodle VLE
77% - institutions regularly exploring open source options in procurement exercises
25% - institutions mentioning open source I their institutional IT policies
14% - institutions using open source make contributions to developing the software
100% - institutions providing the proprietary Internet Explorer on their desktops
68% - institutions also providing the open source Mozilla and Firefox browsers
Savings from license costs can be used to customise code through internal staff or external experts. Reduced costs can also be redirected towards integrated staff training. Here, users can be involved in the development and roll out of a software implementation, something that would be unthinkable when using commercial software.
With OSS, institutions can also be part of a community and track the development of a project or application. The key is to select open source solutions that are well supported by other institutions: 'There's the potential of having more support through a community of users and developer forums,' says Borda.
Vendor lock-in can be reduced by selecting the community-based OSS route, as large scale providers sometimes withdraw support for a closed source application. 'Proprietary software vendors often package services with the product so that option can be limiting,' says Borda. If many colleges and universities are using a solution, you can be more certain it's going to survive and contribute to its ongoing sustainability.
Borda says whatever final solution - open or closed source - is selected, it's best to provide users with a choice of products. 'It's unlikely that a single set of software choices will meet everyone's requirements, either technically or at the simple user-preference level,' she says. 'It's highly desirable to allow users to choose their working preferences first and foremost.'
Mark Samuels
Features editor - Computing
OSSWatch
What is Open Source Software?
For OSS Watch, open source software is always software released under an Open Source Initiative (OSI) certified licence.
Each of the licences approved by the OSI meets the conditions of the Open Source Definition. That definition includes 10 criteria, perhaps the most important of which are the free redistribution of the software, access to the source code, and the permission to allow modifications to the software and derived works that may be distributed under the same licensing conditions.
Above text is from, and expanded upon in www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/opensourcesoftware.xml
Download the podcast with Ross Gardler (OSSWatch Service Manager)
OSS Watch survey 2006
Click image to view full size spread on Open Source software (3mb PDF file)
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Breaking down the e-book barrier
e-Books - important yet under-used learning resources with the potential to transform the way we study - are being given a boost by JISC's national e-books observatory poject, launched earlier this year. Rachel Pitman reports on how the project is igniting enthusiasm for online textbooks
e-Books have not developed as the vital resource for university students that they perhaps ought to have become. But a two-year JISC project could change all this and place e-books at the forefront of institutional library provision.
The project follows an in-depth study commissioned by the JISC e-books working group into the availability and usage of free e-books in the HE sector. It aims to address the issues that have so far hindered the development of e-book publishing and endorsement by universities in the UK.
According to the report, the underwhelming take-up of e-books stems from a lack of available core reading list texts, which publishers are reluctant to issue online for fear of a decrease in print sales revenue. Those texts that are freely available are viewed questionably due to the lack of quality assurance surrounding their integrity or relevance to UK students. With too little choice, unsatisfactory pricing and access models, and the cost of managing the resources and supporting users creating a significant additional barrier, university libraries have largely been unwilling to take a financial risk in purchasing collections of e-books.
Nevertheless, the report highlights the growing demand in institutions for access to core reading list materials online, predominantly from within library communities themselves. As pressures on library space, demand for 24/7 access to resources and provision for distance learners increases, the need to switch to digital collections is obvious.
With a clear role having emerged for JISC to bear the financial risks and take the lead in pushing the market forward to stimulate engagement with e-books, the JISC e-books National Observatory Project has been launched to take on that task. Its goal to further knowledge and understanding of how e-books are being used on a national level will be achieved through acquiring and analysing the use of a critical mass of e-books by HE students throughout the UK.
The resulting data will provide knowledge on student behaviours and the impact of e-books on print sales to JISC collections, libraries, publishers and e-books aggregators, and will ultimately inform the creation of appropriate technical standards, and business and licensing models to stimulate the e-books market.
The project is being welcomed by the library community as an important and much-needed push towards persuading universities to invest further in e-books. The evaluation being carried out will enable libraries to measure the benefits and potential costs involved.
'For many years academic librarians have tried in vain to acquire core reading list materials in electronic format,' explains Hazel Woodward, chair of the e-books working group and Librarian at Cranfield University. 'I believe that this project will provide the vital breakthrough, allowing both librarians and publishers to assess real data about the use of such materials.'
Over the course of the observatory's two-year lifetime, all HE students in the UK will be able to access the core reading list texts online, and their usage will be evaluated via a deep log study being conducted by specialists, CIBER at University College London, who were awarded the tender for the project.
From the outset in January 2007, the project issued tenders inviting publishers and e-books aggregators to submit e-books which are relevant to UK higher education taught course students and which would be licensed by JISC for a period of two years. The e-books would cover four discipline areas: Business and Management studies, Engineering, Medicine and Media Studies.
Following a period of consultation in which the library communities were asked to identify which books they most wanted to access from the 136 short-listed e-books; a final collection of 34 titles has now been endorsed and will be licensed at a cost of £600k - which will be paid to publishers to mitigate the possible impact on print sales. The e-books will be made available for free at the point of use to all HE students in the UK from September 2007 until August 2009, via the myilibrary and Ovid platforms, to which many libraries are already subscribed. And in order to ensure the message is delivered to universities, JISC collections will be holding a number of workshops and roadshows focused on promoting and embedding the e-books from September, until February 2008.
The deep log analysis will be carried over a period of one year, between January 2008 and December 2008. Both quantitative and qualitative data will be gathered by CIBER about users and e-book usage in order to provide valuable in-depth information on student behaviours, and their needs. A final report on the analysis will be presented in March 2009 and will inform discussion on future actions to take in relation to e-book licensing.
'Ultimately,' stresses Dr Woodward, 'it should inform the creation of improved business and licensing models. But most importantly it will hopefully increase in the long-term the quality and availability of e-books for all our students.'
Download the podcast with Anne Bell (Librarian & SCONUL Chair) and Caren Milloy (National e-books project)
JISC National e-Books Observatory Project
Breaking News... NEO CAR!
To avoid duplication of effort, JISC is funding the National E-books Observatory Catalogue Records (NEO CAR) which will be hosted by EDINA. This source of records will provide librarians with a single download for all MARC records.
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In search of excellence
JISC is sponsoring the THES Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year award to highlight examples of exciting and innovative use of ICT across the higher education sector. The shortlisted entries, outlined here, represent an impressive array of innovative and potentially far-reaching ICT initiatives
The Media Zoo at Leicester University is bringing academics together to develop their approach to learning innovation and to find out about the latest research findings on the pedagogical impact of wikis and blogs, repositories, mobile learning, e-learning design and so on. The zoo's resources are available in a physical laboratory but also in an interactive website and more recently in Second Life.
The Virtual Pedagogy Initiative from Aston University is exploring podcasting and vodcasting with psychology undergraduates, promoting a sense of community and personalising student learning. Lectures also showcase the 'campus-cam' link, which uses wireless networking to bring to lectures live images of experiences that were previously inaccessible for large groups of students, including a brain scan being performed remotely in real time.
The Technocafe at Durham University provides a place where students can collaborate and have a full range of technologies available to them. The Technocafe has 10 pods each seating six to eight students and each providing tablet PCs, laptop and communication tools such as Skype and videoconferencing and an interactive whiteboard. Staff can use the lecture console to deliver lectures, and cameras in each pod enable staff to observe the group during the lecture via monitors. Microphones allow feedback and enable conversations to take place.
Community@Brighton at the University of Brighton is an open source social networking system breaking down barriers between students and staff and giving them equal rights within the system. The emphasis is on self-management of personal learning through contributions to communities, sharing of materials and through influencing the evolution of the system itself.
OpenLearn from the Open University provides free and open access to over 250 structured media-rich study units supported by a number of learning and communications tools, and published under Creative Commons licences. The resources are complemented by LabSpace, an area for experimentation where practitioners are encouraged to download, amend and adapt course materials.
The e-course team at the School of Dentistry, University of Birmingham, has developed a Content Management System (CMS) to overcome challenges of the remote geographical location of the school, the expansion of teaching placements and a high number of part-time dental practitioner staff. The CMS allows users to drive the content through creating podcasts and interactive learning materials with staff. Interactive captioned videos of procedures help students prepare for unexpected clinical situations at short notice, while a virtual microscope was developed to run on any platform.
The Times Higher Awards 2007
Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year Award - Sponsored by JISC
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One hundred and counting
Membership of the UK Access Management Federation has reached 100 and includes colleges, universities, local authorities, Regional Broadband Consortia and 'service providers' such as publishers of online resources. Jane Charlton and Mark Williams look at the benefits of membership to the different kinds of organisations that are joining the Federation
College repositories
Having taken part in a JISC programme for early adopters, Kidderminster College is now enjoying the benefits of 24/7, IP free, shared access to resources within its regional partnership.
Through a 'shibbolized Moodle-based content repository', users have gained access to a greater range of materials at other partner sites.
Highlighting the benefits that Shibboleth adoption has given his institution, Graham Mason of Kidderminster College points in particular to cultural and organisational changes within his institution.
'Developing Kidderminster's own Identity provider platform (IdP) has brought closer involvement between our Library and ILT teams,' he says. 'When shibbolized services are combined with a virtual learning environment such as Moodle you then get multiple benefits.'
For Kidderminster, Federation membership and adoption of Shibboleth has enabled their content repository to come to fruition, through sharing of resources between other institutions, allowing increased access to resources for students.
'It's enabled us to do some horse trading with other training providers, helping us and them get content to students.'
For FE, access management can mean not just more content for their own students but a means to develop an income stream from their own self-made content, which can be made available on terms of the institution's choosing.
University challenges
Universities have seen the new access and identity management tools and procedures permit them to provide staff and students with greater and improved access to institution resources and tools.
Kieran Shaw, at the University of Warwick, has found that staff time is being saved: 'Having moved from classic Athens [to federated access management], it has saved us a huge amount of time supporting the old additional user codes and forgotten names and passwords.'
At the University of Newcastle, Cal Racey has seen the benefits of the integration of applications into the institution's authentication and identity infrastructure.
'We are using [federated access management] to provide access control to email list management, blogs, wikis (media wiki), exam papers access, custom web forms, custom VLEs.'
As well as increased capability, Cal highlights the reduced workload and efficiency: 'Shibboleth greatly eases the burden of deploying theses applications as integration into our existing authentication infrastructure is easy.
'Autopopulation of user data means we can generally create accounts in systems on first login instead of laboriously importing the entire user base into a new application and updating it every night.'
Clearly, access management, when based on strong identity management, frees up library staff from the task of monotonous account creation, allowing them to spend more time focusing on learner needs. 
Publishers come on board
Publishers are becoming increasingly interested in the work of the UK Access Management Federation, concerned as they are that their users should access
online content seamlessly and securely from wherever they are in the world.
BMJ Group - the publisher of the British Medical Journal and other publications - is one such publisher. It plans to implement a new system during 2008, which will be able to incorporate different authentication technologies through one system, something of vital importance given the range of technologies being used.
It will also enable publishers to personalise content for their users through features such as 'my favourite journals', 'my saved searches' and email alerts. Becoming a member of the Federation, which they intend to do in 2008, is a key element of their plans.
Phil Caisley, Head of Information Services at BMJ Group, says that federated authentication 'provides benefits to both the content provider and institution… Joining the UK Access Management Federation will enable us to support our UK-based institutional customers as they migrate to using federated authentication.'
The same will be true for other international publishers who provide services using different technologies and across different sectors within the same country, say Federation staff. For example, in the UK the health sector currently supports the Athens service whereas education and research are adopting federation-supported technologies.
According to a recent JISC scoping study on cross-sector issues, the health sector is also likely to migrate to federated access management technologies in the near future.
The UK Access Management Federation
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From education to innovation
As sources of knowledge and innovation, colleges and universities have been identified as a major driving force behind economic growth, social development and job creation. Philip Pothen reports on a newly-published report which looks at ICT's role in supporting the education sector's links with business and the wider community
Further and higher education have a key role to play in the UK's attempts to remain ahead of international competition in the 21st century. But, as technology becomes central to the emergence of advanced knowledge-based economies around the world and to institutional attempts to transfer or share knowledge rapidly, barriers to exploiting the potential for innovation need to be dismantled.
This is the starting point of a new report, which sets out to investigate some of the legal barriers to further and higher education institutions' knowledge transfer and exchange activities, core to what has become known as Business and Community Engagement (BCE). With education institutions using or creating a wide variety of publicly-funded digital assets, networks and services, the question of which, if any, of an institution's business and community partners has the
right to use these has become a central one.
But, while the report - by knowledge transfer organisations AIMES and AURIL - set out to explore these and other legal issues, it found that many were in fact wrongly perceived to be legal, that the barriers often went deeper than this, touching on fundamental issues of organisational policy, strategy and culture.
For Simon Whittemore, JISC's programme manager for Business and Community Engagement, one of the key messages to emerge from the report is the extent to which a lack of knowledge and communication across departments and central functions is hampering institutional activities in this area.
'In most institutions,' he says, 'there are pressures on central resources, such as IT services, the library or marketing. Some of these will lose out when resources are scarce and so there's the perception among them that BCE is not as important as central activities. So it can easily be downgraded.'
But it has become 'critical', he continues, for an institution's BCE strategy to be better reflected in its central operations. He gives the example of an IT procurement exercise: 'IT procurement needs to take into consideration much more explicit connections between procurement and finance services, IT services and those responsible for BCE', he suggests. 'The IT systems procured should take into account the institution's wider mission and its wider partnerships so that the right people have access to those systems or resources.'
JANET connections are considered by the report to be crucial to institutional BCE activities, but it points to the 'confusion' over which external organisations can be connected by an institution to the academic network and which cannot - and even which out of a range of possible policies might be the relevant one. This, it suggests, is 'the most intractable problem' it encountered.
Simon Whittemore comments that such problems are also symptomatic of the fact that 'BCE is often not truly reflected in organisational and resourcing matters. This means that when someone is asked to extend access to IT services or resources to someone beyond the institution, the relevant people default to saying no even when there may not necessarily be any legal reasons for saying no. It means institutions aren't as responsive as they could be to the needs of business and community partners.'
The report makes some important recommendations for JISC and other national bodies to ensure that institutions have the relevant information they need in this area, suggesting, for example, that there needs to be greater awareness of both institutional and national policies surrounding network connections and their acceptable use.
For Simon Whittemore the report is an important element of JISC's initial BCE activities, which are now feeding into further proposed activities next year. 'The initial phase', he says, 'has looked principally at needs analysis, at customer relationship management (CRM) issues and the tailoring of existing materials produced by JISC and its services for the BCE community. There are six proposed streams of activity for further work, including enhancing the interface between an institution and its BCE partners.'
Other strands, he continues, consider questions of collaboration, knowledge management and needs analysis, as well as the especially crucial one of enabling internal change.
'There are legal issues to be addressed,' says Simon Whittemore, 'and the report has some important insights and recommendations to make into these. But perhaps its biggest service is to point to wider organisational issues and to suggest that an institution's BCE activities should be fully integrated into an organisation's policy and strategy. That's undoubtedly the biggest challenge facing BCE communities.'
JISC strategy [2007-09]
Aim Five
To develop and implement a programme to support institutions' engagement with the wider community
… This stream of work is important to institutions and JISC will commission work and be guided by the institutions in identifying any activities that JISC can provide to HEIs and their business partners that would be of value.
Business and Community Engagement at JISC
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Carrying a torch for e-learning
Hugh Dailly reflects on the development of staff development training delivered by a JISC Regional Support Centre in Scotland
Things had gone well. We'd delivered some excellent staff development that session but something was lacking, some spark that would shift e-learning from the wings to the centre stage, from the edge to the middle. At the same time the Scottish Funding Council, through its 'eMerge' programme, was encouraging agencies like ourselves to think outside the box and develop innovative approaches to staff development. That summer the 2004 Olympic Games was scheduled for Athens. Sport was in the ether as the Greeks rushed to finish the stadiums and the Olympic pools.
So, against that background the idea of the e-Olympics was born. At the RSC we borrowed the metaphor but applied it to staff development rather than athletics. Delegates to the e-Olympics would be assigned to countries and challenged to develop complex online learning sequences. Over the course of two days they would explore each stage of that creative process from planning to implementation, gently competing with each other in three particular categories: pedagogy, interactivity and accessibility.
The RSC staff would double up as 'coaches', speakers at the event would have a secondary role as 'judges'. Medals would be awarded in each category in a ceremony to close the e-games. National anthems would be played; learning sequences demonstrated. We would even try to secure the services of a real live 'Olympian' to light the flame.
Once the spark was released in the RSC office then the plans for the event became more elaborate and detailed. And there were sceptics - including the writer of this article. Hard bitten FE lecturers wouldn't be encouraged to compete (or to learn) by a flag on their delegate badge, the chance to win a 'gold' medal and a moment of glory on the podium. Would they…?
They would.
Come September and the new session, all the pieces of the jigsaw were in place and the first ever e-Olympics was held at the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh. From the moment delegates registered to the last guttering of the 'Olympic' flame two days later the event followed the ancient metaphor. The games were opened and the flame lit by world champion cyclist and Olympian Graeme Obree whose inspirational words fired the delegates up for the challenge to come.
In a series of presentations which followed, delegates were introduced to some basic software tools such as mind mapping™ software which would allow them to concentrate on the pedagogical design of the learning sequences they would create. Presentations on resources, interactivity, accessibility alternated with workshop sessions where the e-athletes were encouraged to apply new techniques to their evolving learning sequences. Then as Day 1 gave way to Day 2 so the emphasis shifted increasingly to the workshop sessions …and the tension increased. This was serious fun and it seemed to be working.
As the medals were awarded and the anthems played at the end of the second day it was clear that we had hit upon a formula which pushed the boundaries of staff development far further than the RSC had ever been able to push them before. The course evaluations reinforced those first impressions. Delegates had bought into the metaphor and 'run with it', if you'll pardon the pun , but more importantly had emerged from the experience with new skills and a new understanding of how they might apply the technology back in their home colleges.
What happened next provided further evidence of the power of the e-Olympics formula. Staff who had attended that first national event came from across Scotland and now they wanted to light the flame in their home Colleges. At the RSC we had anticipated that the e-Olympics would be a one-off, would maybe fuel two events at most but now requests for college-based e-Olympics began to arrive at the RSC office.
So, since late 2004 the RSC team has delivered 25 events to over 750 delegates reaching nearly every college we support. And at every one the reaction was the same: delegates reported a sharp increase in their abilities and understanding of new learning technologies- and that they'd had a great time learning. College-based e-Olympics events were hosted from Galashiels to Thurso. We tweaked the formula slightly in order to run events tailor-made for specialist groups such as Staff Development Officers and Learning Resources staff. Two separate national events were held which focussed on accessibility and enlisted the services of TechDis, the specialist JISC service in that area, and of our sister Regional Support Centre at Scotland South and West.
A website was developed to support e-Olympics events where a record could be kept as the torch passed from college to college. Also on that website we slowly developed a whole toolkit of materials which contained everything necessary to run the event without having to directly enlist the RSC. 'e-Olympics in a Box' was offered free to providers and is still available.
The most recent e-Olympics in August of this year was perhaps the most ambitious yet. Three island colleges, Lews Castle in Stornaway, Sabhal Mor Ostaig on Skye and Shetland College competed in the 'Island Games'. The event followed a by-now familiar pattern but the method of delivery was radically different. The major presentations were delivered from the RSC base in Edinburgh using video conferencing. These were reinforced by a member of RSC staff in situ at each location who also managed the workshop sessions and acted as the coach to the island teams. Inevitably the process was rather slower than it might be in a face-to-face situation but the technology proved robust enough to allow us to bring the training to colleges where it might otherwise be difficult to deliver such an event.
The Island Games brings the Regional Support Centre full circle. The e-Olympic flame has burned in practically every college we support and staff have been unfailingly enthusiastic about the experience of taking part. The time has come to be innovative again and to think once more of a new and original vehicle to embed the use of e-learning in the providers we support. Whatever emerges the e-Olympics will be a hard act to follow.
RSC Scotland North and East
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Print and Electronic Publications
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Research in the arts and humanities
An overview of JISC activities |
Research in the physical sciences
An overview of JISC activities |
Transforming the learning experience |
Web 2.0 and social software
An introduction |
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Podcasts
You can now subscribe to JISC podcasts either via an RSS feed or via i-Tunes, or download individual podcasts as required.
Among the latest podcasts made available are interviews with Chris Batt (pictured right), Chief Executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), Kevin Guthrie (pictured far right), President of Ithaka, David Robey of the AHRC, Richard Ovenden (Bodleian Library) and Mike Keller, Librarian of Stanford University.
See our podcasts