In this issue: new research on students' expectations of ICT; a look at intellectual property rights on the web; a look at TASI, JISC's images advisory service; a new and groundbreaking inititive from JISC Tech Dis; and the JISC Conference 2008 in pictures

JISC Inform 22

In this issue: new research on students' expectations of ICT; a look at intellectual property rights on the web; a look at TASI, JISC's images advisory service; a new and groundbreaking inititive from JISC Tech Dis; and the JISC Conference 2008 in pictures

Contents

Amazing space

The post-16 sector is enjoying a massive injection of capital investment in new and refurbished buildings, which is placing technology at the heart of exciting and sometimes spectacular college buildings, reports Philip Pothen

A new generation of college buildings is not only attracting learners to enrol on courses but inspiring them to learn in ways that mirror their fresh, innovative and exciting surroundings. And with the Learning and Skills Council expecting to invest a further £2.3bn in capital investment in England up to 2011, the sector's rapid transformation is set to continue.

Richard Everett is director of e-learning and responsible for designing the IT infrastructure of a £100m new build project at Oaklands College. He says that his project's aim is not only to provide 'an attraction for prospective learners', but also 'to deliver exciting and flexible ways of learning'. Pedagogy, he says firmly, 'should drive the agenda and place the learner experience at the heart of the new building.'

The new building at Oaklands, however, aims to do even more than this, it seems. 'A key aim of ours was to deliver not only a flexible and responsive building, but also, he says, 'an “intelligent” building. A significant aspect of the building is the IT systems that control things like heating, ventilation, access control, which you can use not only from a management point of view to regulate the building, but also in a pedagogical capacity. Our building students, for example, can look at these in terms of the problems and pitfalls of building management as a part of their learning.'

He says support and inspiration came from a variety of sources: 'The JISC publication Designing Spaces for Effective Learning was very useful. Also listening to Ros Smith [its author] was highly influential. But I also draw from other experiences, from architects and designers. But the concepts still flow across — from the Regional Support Centres, from everywhere.'

JISC Regional Support Centres have been at the heart of the exchange of information that has characterised the sector's engagement with the issue of new and technology-rich learning spaces. For Gerard Hayes, manager of RSC Eastern, tapping into the expertise that already exists in the sector and bringing people together to learn from each other has been vital to the RSC’s involvement.

'The RSCs' mission ties in very closely with the new build agenda,' he says, 'from strategy development and transformation through to cultural change and advice and guidance. We're there to bring people together — the experts, managers, practitioners, librarians.'

He pays tribute to JISC infoNet whose infoKit on learning spaces builds on the original JISC work. 'It's a revolutionary task. It's about people looking at things differently and saying “let's take a bold step”. We're here to help people take that step.'

For Richard Everett and colleagues at Oaklands, who have taken that bold step, the real test will come when students begin their courses in the new building. 'I hope that the students will be really excited and that they'll want to learn. That's at the heart of the new building.'

Planning and Designing Technology Rich Learning Spaces infoKit

RSC Eastern

Listen to a podcast interview with Richard Everett

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News

JISC Collections goes to schools

JISC Collections has negotiated a new licensing agreement in partnership with Becta to give the UK schools sector access to millions of online images, newspaper archives, dictionary entries, and art, music, history and science resources for a fraction of the original cost.

'JISC Collections for Schools' will allow schools to use invaluable resources from a range of trusted high-quality online subscription services at a specially negotiated discount rate.

The online resources were selected according to quality, value for money and the National Curriculum. Thanks to direct negotiation with publishers by JISC Collections, discounts of up to 75 per cent will be available.

JISC Collections

New report on research data published

The constraints are as significant as the opportunities when it comes to publishing, locating and accessing research data, according to a new report from the Research Information Network (RIN) in association with JISC and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and carried out by Key Perspectives Ltd.

Based on more than 100 detailed interviews with researchers across eight subject areas, ‘To Share or Not to Share: Publication and Quality Assurance of Research Data Outputs’ suggests that potentially useful research data are at risk of inaccessibility in the long term, and there is no consistent approach to assessing and assuring the scholarly content or usability of the datasets being published today. Realising the full potential of data requires further progress in data management policies and practice.

Research Information Network

Licensing across national borders

A partnership of four national ICT bodies from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK has announced the successful publishers under a multinational licensing initiative that will deliver a range of resources to education and research communities in the four countries. The publishers are: Multi-Science, ALPSP, BioOne, ScientificWorldJournal, and Wiley-Blackwell.
 
The aim of the Knowledge Exchange project was for partner organisations — Denmark's Electronic Research Library DEFF, German research body DFG, SURFfoundation and JISC — to leverage greater economies of scale in the licensing of online content on behalf of their communities and to develop new and innovative business models.

Knowledge Exchange

Exploring the tangible benefits of e-learning

A publication has been launched by JISC infoNet that attempts to answer important questions about the tangible benefits of e-learning, and not least the question of how to define tangible benefits.

Exploring these questions through a wide range of case studies, the publication attempts to make sense of the diversity of current e-learning practices while seeking out evidence that technology-enhanced learning is delivering tangible benefits for learners, teachers and institutions. Funded by JISC, the publication was the result of collaboration between JISC infoNet, ALT (Association for Learning Technology) and the Higher Education Academy.

JISCinfoNet: Exploring the Tangible Benefits of e-Learning

Leading from the front

JISC and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education have joined forces to promote the integration of technology within institutional strategy. The partnership brings together world-leading expertise in leadership with considerable experience in supporting and promoting the innovative use of technology.

The first step in this collaboration is a study to gather evidence of current levels of awareness and practice with a view to promoting engagement with the strategic technology agenda.

Leadership Foundation for Higher Education

The accidental data librarian

In June 2008's Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip) update magazine, an article entitled 'Data librarianship — a gap in the market', discusses how a JISC-funded project, DISC-UK Datashare, is helping to shape the future role of librarians.

The phrase 'accidental data librarian' is used as the sector is moving away from paper to digital and an increased emphasis is being placed on the stewardship
of institutional knowledge assets.

Data librarianship – a gap in the market by Stuart Macdonald and Luis Martinez-Uribe

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A national success story  

Thanks to significant and continued investment in learning, teaching, research — and ICT — the UK higher education sector is well placed to weather uncertain economic times, says the President of Universities UK

Universities are likely to feel the effects of an economic downturn in the near future. But, by playing to its strengths and with continued investment, the sector will emerge healthy and vigorous.

This is the view of Professor Rick Trainor, Principal of King's College London and President of Universities UK. Speaking exclusively to JISC inform, he puts forward a positive, but, he says, 'realistic', picture of a sector facing challenges, but with the twin pillars of national recognition and international reputation to support its continued growth in the future.

With demographic changes and economic factors resulting in an expected slowing of growth in the influx of younger learners, there is, he suggests, sitting in Universities UK's offices in central London, much that institutions can do, and are doing, to attract other groups of learners.

'There's been a big upsurge in so-called mature students and there's going to be even more so in the years ahead. The Leitch report [on skills] showed that it's really important that the UK has a significantly higher percentage of the population with higher education qualifications or their equivalent. So universities are attempting to do whatever they can to participate in that process and that's going to lead to a broadened agenda and a broadened market for UK higher education.'

But it's in the market for international students that the UK has perhaps most to offer, Professor Trainor suggests. An American himself, he has a particular perspective on the UK's global standing: 'UK higher education has a very strong reputation abroad, part of the inheritance of this country in attracting international students. I was an international student here myself as a postgraduate in the 1970s, but it is also because we have very strong quality assurance systems — our quality assurance agency is famous throughout the world — and there are other things that point in the same direction, like the external examiners system.'

He thinks that growing international demand for a British university education will play a central role in the growth of the UK higher education sector: 'We have the highest percentage of any major country and there is no sign of that decreasing.'

There is, though, a prerequisite, he suggests, and that is continued investment. 'We have to make sure we invest enough to keep up with the rising expectations of overseas students and of our domestic students as well, and of course the people who employ them at home and abroad.

'In recent years we've had a fair bit of money from government resources to invest in research infrastructure, and that has included ICT. We now need to find the money — and the government has an important role to play here — allowing us to increase our investment in the infrastructure of learning and teaching, and ICT of course will play an important role in that.'

As far as ICT is concerned, Professor Trainor believes that the sector has been on something of a journey, from early and sometimes naïve enthusiasm to more rounded and integrated approaches 'where you have real life human beings supporting the computer-based side of what you're doing… This is what everyone now thinks is the most viable kind and the way forward.'

One of the challenges now, he suggests, is for institutions to meet the expectations of students well used to social networking and other new technologies. 'Teaching and administrative staff have been slower to catch on, but a significant growing minority are catching up. I think it has very significant implications with how students interact with the people teaching and supporting their learning, just as email had a significant impact on the previous generation. So we do need to do more to adapt and I'm sure we will as we have a strong interest in doing so.'

He recalls the start of his own ICT journey as a researcher at Glasgow University: 'A group of colleagues and I managed to get a grant from what was then the Computer Board — an ancestor of JISC — to set up a lab. We optimistically thought we were going to design our own software to adapt to the peculiar, irregular form of historical data.

'We had to give up on that after a while but the basic notion that computers could be powerful and exciting for history students in bringing data alive proved to be a very successful method for a particular kind of teaching. We managed to get further national grants and became a national centre for this kind of activity. And as it happens that was my introduction into leadership and management roles in higher education.'

A former JISC Board member, Professor Trainor suggests that for JISC too, the journey has been a long but successful one: 'JISC was formed at a time when HE funding was being devolved to the different countries of the UK and even then it was crucial to retain a UK source of funding and an expertise in ICT.

'Not only has JISC gone on in the intervening 15 years or so to show how right that was, but it's been able to build on the high reputation that the UK had achieved internationally for the quality of its network JANET, which was a huge success and the envy of many other countries, and also for the pump-prime funding that JISC has given to ICT-based research and teaching innovations. No doubt JISC can be better — all institutions can be better, the search for perfection is always with us — but JISC is one of the great success stories of UK higher education in the last 15-20 years.'

As with ICT, the sector's foundations are strong in other areas too, particularly its engagement with business and other communities beyond the campus. 'There are a couple of reports over recent years commissioned by the government, which have surprised many people by emphasising just how open and effective British universities are in this sort of development… That's because the government has invested a fair bit of money, as have universities as well.'

Professor Trainor cites an example close to home, which resulted in commercial applications of award-winning research undertaken at King's into Parkinson's Disease. 'That's a good example of a virtual circle between high quality research and high quality commercial applications… There is of course much more that we can and will do — there's a momentum behind that kind of development now.'

Along with the call for continued investment to support such activities as these, central to Professor Trainor's presidency of Universities UK is the insistence on universities' autonomy: 'The two most fundamental things are that UK universities need the adequate resources to carry out their complex mission, and they also need a degree of autonomy to enable them to carry out this mission in the most effective way possible. Those are the two greatest priorities, the key to fulfilling the potential of UK universities.'

For Professor Trainor, the stakes — and the potential rewards — couldn't be higher: 'I think there is a broad consensus in British public life, far more than there was a generation ago — or even more so two generations ago — that universities really are central to the country's future.'

Listen to the podcast

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Great expectations of ICT: Are institutions measuring up?   

Looking at how students use technology to learn, network and communicate provides useful insight into the future of ICT provision. Rebecca O'Brien reports on how students' expectations of technology could see less textbooks and more Facebook

New research commissioned by JISC and carried out by Ipsos MORI suggests that students are starting to mix their social networking sites with their academic studies and inviting tutors and lecturers into their virtual space.

The research builds upon on an initial study — Student Expectations — carried out last year when 500 students were asked to indicate their expectations of technology provision when entering into higher education. These new data are based on students now that they are studying as first years at higher education institutions, compared to the previous study when they were still at school or college.

Findings of the research show that 87% feel university life in general is as, or better than, expected especially in terms of their use of technology, with 34% studying at the Russell Group of universities saying their expectations were exceeded. The survey also shows that 73% of students use social networking sites to discuss coursework with others; with 27% on at least a weekly basis. Of these, 75% think such sites as useful in enhancing their learning.

Charles Hutchings, Market Research Manager at JISC, highlights what makes social networking a success and where the balance lies in getting it right. ‘Although there is an openness towards lectures or tutors using social networking sites for teaching purposes — the response is also mixed, with 38% thinking it a good idea and 28% not.

‘Evidence shows that using these sites in education is more effective when students set them up themselves; lecturer-led ones can feel overly formal.’ 

It seems that when the student is in control of the technology that they use in the learning environment rather than being instructed to use certain types of technology they are more receptive.

Despite students being able to recognise the value of using these sites in learning, only 25% feel they are encouraged to use Web 2.0 features by tutors or lecturers.

Mark Stiles, Professor of Technology Supported Learning and Head of Learning Development and Innovation at Staffordshire University, has been working on the organisational and cultural implications of the use of Web 2.0 in learning.

‘This research shows how important it will be for institutions to get their policies for the use and support of new technologies right. Both tutors and learners need room to innovate but need guidance and support structures to enable this to be done effectively. Institutions need to consider what needs to be controlled by them, where just guidance is needed, and where learners and tutors should be given free reign.’

While students on the whole are satisfied with the level of ICT support provided by their institution around a quarter rate guidance on using ICT to support studies as average or poor. This suggests that there may still be a group having difficulty in fully realising the benefits that technology can bring to their studies.
Of the students who took part in the research, 75% are able to use their own computer on all of their university's systems falling to 64% of students from lower income households perhaps due to lack of affordability and ownership.

There is an opportunity to help students understand best practice for validating their work taken from the internet. Of the students, 69% believe that they are validating information taken from the internet, whereas the Google Generation report explains that students 'do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web'.

There is a training opportunity that highlights the way students think about information, rather than the way that they use technology itself. Students note that ICT training is often limited to how to use web-based technology, rather than how to think about the potential of various types of technology.

Charles Hutchings, Market Research Manager at JISC, says, ‘The findings of this second phase of research are encouraging that student expectations of technology are being met and in some cases exceeded. However, the report also illustrates the opportunity for students and universities to enhance their knowledge and understanding of wikis, blogs and online networking to ensure that their skills are keeping up with the future demand of an increasingly competitive workplace.’

At a glance: key findings
  • 80% of students use social networking sites regularly
  • 73% use social networking sites to discuss coursework with other students 
  • Of these, 75% think such sites are enhancing their learning 
  • 75% are able to use their own computer on all of their university's systems
  • 87% feel university life is as, or better than, expected in terms of technology


Great Expectations of ICT full report

Great Expectations of ICT briefing paper

The Google Generation Report

Listen to Charles Hutchings discussing this research

Listen to a podcast of the students who took part in the research talking through their experiences of ICT

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Pathways less travelled

Do IP rights exist in a virtual world and, if so, who owns them? What happens if you can't find the rights holders? How can risks associated with content reuse be sensibly managed? These are just some of the questions that a new support project is asking, writes Alice Gugan

A new project funded to explore the issue of intellectual property rights in a Web 2.0 environment is turning IPR advice on its head with an entirely new approach based on leading users on 'pathways' to information.

Funded by the Users and Innovation programme, the Web2Rights project began by developing a practical IP toolkit to support the programme's own projects in the arena of social software and Web 2.0. The toolkit has now not only been made openly available but is attracting the attention of practitioners around the world.

A key concern for many in an educational environment, which is dealing in, and indeed encouraging, the use and delivery of 'user-generated content', is the IPR questions such a shift of practice raises. But as complex as the task of understanding the issues, it seems, is that of finding relevant and up-to-date information.

This is where the new resource comes in, says Naomi Korn, IPR consultant. 'It's about a different way of presenting information and about thinking about user needs first and foremost. Rather than those using new technologies having to make sense of copyright issues, the Web2Rights project provides more practical user-based help, providing 'pathways' to information.' As well as the more traditional fact sheets and templates, a core part of the project toolkit is the use of interactive diagrams, diagnostic tools and other image-based materials such as animations and videoheads.

'These have only just been launched but we've introduced these as part of the pedagogical approach,' continues Naomi. 'Not only can individuals access these tools and make use of them, but they can also be used in educational contexts, actually in the classroom, and we're more than happy for this to happen.'

Other more established services, such as JISC Legal and the Open Source service OSSWatch, are also referenced, she says.

The Web2Rights model has a broad appeal, evidenced by the fact that several hundred users have already taken an interest in the project's website, from around the world.

'Although this was developed for the Users and Innovation programme,’ says programme manager Lawrie Phipps, ‘it's already clear that there was a real need for a new way of showing how IPR fits in to everyday new technologies, and we're delighted it's attracting such a strong amount of interest in the early stages.'

Naomi Korn says a range of people will find the toolkit useful: 'Projects that are adapting and deploying pre-existing tools, technologies and software, those developing new ones, or adapting and using their own content, or perhaps those using content created by a third party, will, we hope, all find the Web2Rights tools helpful and informative.'

Web2Rights

JORUM

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Libraries unleashed

Part of JISC's Libraries of the Future campaign, a recent Guardian supplement highlighted the achievements of UK academic libraries, the innovative integration of ICT into their services and explored future challenges. Two of the articles in the supplement, focusing on licensing and key resources, are reproduced here in edited form

Why a Wild West approach just won't do

Universities are looking to the media for lessons on how to make online academic resources sustainable, according to a new survey. It says most successful online ventures are marked by a willingness to constantly try new things, citing the example of the Guardian newspaper website, which built a large audience while other papers were still trying to replicate their print models online.

Growing costs of subscribing to journals and buying books, combined with developing technology, has led many universities to develop online academic resources. But the draft report produced by Ithaka, a US-based research organisation, adds that these projects must become sustainable in the dynamic and increasingly commercial online environment of Google, Facebook and YouTube.

'By deciding to launch web-based resources or services, scholarly projects are moving from a relatively sheltered environment, operating at the pace of the academic enterprise, into one that operates at the speed of web commerce. It is a challenging new world.'

While much attention is given to making material available online, very little is given to making sure people become aware of it and can find it. 'We find few digital resource projects have devoted substantial financial or intellectual resources to understanding user needs, preferences and behaviours,' say the authors of the report, who call for a 'shift in mindset' among project leaders if their projects are to secure needed ongoing resources.

The study is part of the Strategic Content Alliance, a three-year initiative to look at new business models and widen access to online content.

Working with a range of partners, including JISC, the BBC, the British Library, Becta, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and the NHS, the project aims to break down barriers between each sector's online resources, and to work towards a national framework for online information.

Stuart Dempster, director of the alliance, says current online content is uncoordinated and likened by some to the Wild West: 'For example, if you take the fact that content is being created for a particular audience — let's say universities — there's no reason that it shouldn't be made available to other audiences just because the funding comes through a particular government agency.' He says using the right kind of business model to underpin the creation of electronic content is critical.

The alliance is scrutinising the different business models, including subscription, advertising, contributor pays, content licensing and Open Access.

Licensing and intellectual property rights are a major issue when extending online content provision. One groundbreaking project, the Knowledge Exchange, is experimenting with licensing resources across four countries — the UK, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. It will be offering a range of resources to education and research communities after doing a deal with five major publishers. This approach allows partner organisations to gain greater economies of scale in licensing online content. Discounts are negotiated with publishers so that the greater the number of subscribers across partner countries, the greater the savings.

'This has never been done before,' says Louisa Dale, JISC's partnership manager. 'We have learned a lot through the process to date — we are learning by just working with each other and sharing experiences. More importantly to the library community, we will measure the uptake by institutions and students, and look at how they use this content.'

Academic publishers are also looking at new business models to help them adapt to the digital age, according to Nick Evans of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. 'We are not anti-Open Access as such. But our advice to members always is that they have to think about how they are going to pay for the publication of journals. Making them free doesn't solve the problem — you need to have an income to pay for the processes.'

Martin Whitaker
Guardian

Strategic Content Alliance

Knowledge Exchange 

Student Voices

Samantha Young, 21, a third-year psychology student at Leicester University

In the first year I wasn't a frequent user of the library. I'm now in my third year and I go every day. It's a lot easier to concentrate there than at home and everything is at your fingertips.

Everyone at university gets a user account for the library so you can access and renew your loans online. We have a system where every student has a password and they are given access to journals from around the world. Most of the time I print stuff out as it gives you more up-to-date information.

Mohummed Surve, 21, in his final year of studying history at Warwick University

I look for the obvious in the library in terms of history books, I also look for online journals and, if they're not online, I'd expect the library to have them. I do about 66-70% if my research online. I have a laptop linked to the online library catalogue and I can search for books on that. If you'd interviewed me two years ago, I would have said that I wasn't confident about using the library, but now I find it very easy. We can study in groups at the learning grid, a casual work area open 24/7 and during the Easter and Christmas holidays, and can take our laptops in and have coffee.

Reena Pau, 24, PhD student with dyslexia at the school of electronics and computer science at Southampton University

I did an undergraduate degree here and used the library more as a place to go for resources and to get books. Now I have a desk at university so I don't need to go to the library to work. At our library, there is a café and a place to check emails. I can also check what journals are on the system online. Personally, I don't feel my dyslexia has had much of an impact on my learning or the way I use the library, although it does mean it takes a lot longer to read and write documents. The library has lots of photocopiers so I can copy things that need to be given back or if I have to write notes on things. As a postgraduate, I need articles and papers and most of those are available online. We do have a special section for students with learning difficulties and we have computers with special software such as text readers.

Academia's big guns fight 'Google effect'

A digital treasure trove of information is out there for the taking, but only if students have a means of discovering the way to find it — a search engine that is both academic and user-friendly.

Scores of academic search engines provide a heavyweight alternative to the commercial ones and work against what Brighton University's professor of media, Tara Brabazon, has termed ‘the Google effect’ — a tendency towards mediocrity.

The challenge they face is to make themselves sufficiently user-friendly to attract and retain a generation of students reared on commercial search engines.

JISC funds several. The Archives Hub provides descriptions of archive collections from 140 UK universities and colleges; the Copac academic and national library catalogue offers access to the catalogues of 24 university libraries, plus the national libraries, and can indicate the availability of books.

Jstor is a comprehensive collection of archived journals; and Zetoc, the British Library catalogue, gives details of its 20,000 current journals as well as offering some 16,000 conference proceedings per year and an email alert service.

Intute, part of the Mimas national data centre at Manchester University, is an interesting service that has tried to address students' lack of information literacy by providing access to a quality controlled set of free resources and virtual training courses — a kind of training lane in the information highway — and has recently launched a new UK university research papers service.

The host website is getting 2 million searches a month, says director Caroline Williams. 'Commercial search engines are not discriminating. We tackle that by making sure our information is of sufficient quality for academic work. Whatever you're studying, you can come to one place and find what you need.'

Intute, which is also JISC funded, is now looking at how it can make itself commercially viable.

Edina, the UK's other national data centre, based at Edinburgh University, both hosts data — scholarly publications, documentary films, and images and maps — and is easier to use. Edina's forte is in adding value to information and finding new ways of using it — its Digimap service was a world first, says director Peter Burnhill.

Some sites are discipline-specific. Cornell University's well-regarded science site, arXiv, contains an extensive collection of quality-controlled papers on physics, maths and computer science. Eric is a free index of subscription articles on education, sponsored by the US Department of Education.

There is, increasingly, a crossover between the academic and commercial worlds. Google Scholar is welcomed by some academics as a pragmatic option for students already loyal to the brand.

Google Scholar is 'a tremendously valuable tool', says Sheffield University's Sheila Webber.

Its international dimension is commended by Tara Brabazon, although results can be too broad. The 'advanced search' option discriminates better.

Academic publishers are launching their own online journals sites. Blackwells, for example, publishes 850 journals on the web in disciplines ranging from business to veterinary medicine. Oxford University Press has created Oxford Scholarship online, providing access by subscription to its titles.

Meanwhile, Bloomsbury is behind Bloomsbury Magazine, a database of its own reference books, a rich source of material on myth, art and literature. University libraries' online catalogues have been criticised for being non-intuitive and difficult to navigate. UCL's Ian Rowlands says they have much to learn from supermarkets about setting out their contents in accessible and logical ways. 'Stores are laid out by type — fresh fruit, wines, cheese. Library catalogues offer jars, cartons, loose stuff,' he says, referring to the way material is grouped according to its form rather than its content.

But library computer software is not a mass market proposition, says Webber, and so its development has not attracted the same commercial interest. 'Librarians do what they can to make links easier for students but it's a little bit clunky.'

Those working on making high quality information accessible to students recognise they have lessons to learn from sites like Amazon — where people will be invited to look inside books, offered reader reviews and informed of what other people with similar interests have bought, as well as being notified of new publications in areas where they have shown interest. Caroline Williams, of Intute, describes this process as ‘aggregated personalisation ... These are the things we're testing out behind the scenes.'

Wendy Wallace
Guardian

These articles have been reproduced by kind permission of the Guardian. They are part of a special Education Guardian supplement published in April, which is available online.

If you would like print copies of the supplement, please contact news@jisc.ac.uk

The supplement was published as part of JISC’s ongoing ‘Libraries of the Future’.

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Do you have an image problem?  

A JISC service is delivering workshops beyond its traditional speciality in images and to new audiences. Is it time to develop your digital image skills with TASI, asks Xanthe O'Donnell

The JISC-funded advisory service, TASI, provides focused workshops that offer participants vital hands-on training, which is supported by well-structured technical information to develop the skills, knowledge and confidence required to work with digital images.

Run in small groups which encourage participants to discuss individual issues with their tutor and peers, the workshops' learning activities are supported by clearly illustrated resources, which enable each participant to take detailed reference materials away with them.

These training sessions, although originally established for the education community, are also supporting many government agencies, charities, museums and libraries in much of their digitisation requirements. TASI is able to assist with the creation, use and management of digital images and actively promotes the use of digital media to support teaching, learning and research.

The TASI team will soon double in size to accommodate their future transition into moving images and sound archives. The team has extensive experience in managing both small and large scale digitisation projects which include working with the University of Bristol Theatre Collection to develop a picture library for educational use.
Karla Youngs, TASI Director, believes her team may be able to assist with your next technical project. 'Whether it be the creation of your next high quality digital resource collection, or the promotion of good practice in the creation, delivery and use of digital media, there is expertise within TASI to support your needs.'

As it can sometimes be difficult to make it to scheduled workshops — or if you have a large number of employees that a technical training session may benefit — TASI is able to offer 'in-house' workshops to accommodate the requirements of individual institutions. Recently TASI developed an 'in-house' workshop for the BBC who use RAW format images in their day to day work. The workshop was designed to address the entire 'lifecycle' of RAW files from the receipt of images from photographers to creating final print versions.

Another interesting development is TASI’s soon to be released online workshop. The inaugural workshop 'Beyond Google: finding images online' focuses primarily on locating 'free' images that are either provided under a Creative Commons license or with the permission of the artist/photographer.

It is hoped this workshop will illustrate that the reliance on Google to locate images is not good practice and does not resolve issues of copyright.

The TASI online workshop serves to suggest the wide range of resources available, which are more specifically geared to people who need to find and use images for educational purposes.

Iris Millis, Heritage Assistant from the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, attended the TASI workshop on Digital Photography and was impressed, feeling that the subject matter was expertly adapted to suit the specialist requirements of the small course group. ‘I've since implemented the technical advice into much of my work. I hope to follow this up with more TASI workshops in the future’.

TASI

Listen to a podcast with Grant Young, TASI's technical research officer - COMING SOON

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Digging deeper for archaeology's exciting moments

Virtual research environments are supporting researchers in a range of subject areas, including archaeology. Judy Redfearn reports

Archaeologists digging at the site of the Silchester Roman town in Hampshire this summer are discarding pen and paper in favour of digital pens and digital memo pads to record the details of their finds.

They are participating in the JISC-funded Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology (VERA) project to develop digital technologies that speed up some of the processes involved in archaeological research and enable widely-dispersed archaeologists to collaborate over interpretation of the new finds.

This is the fourth summer that the new technologies have been under test at Silchester. Last season, digital pens were used for the first time. 'People were comfortable with them, so this year everybody who is making records, even students, will be using them,' says Professor Mike Fulford from Reading University who with Professor Mark Baker, also from Reading, is joint principal investigator for VERA.

Combined with digital memo pads, which will be used for the first time this year, the pens enable the archaeologists to record finds and the context in which they were found just as they would have done with pen and paper. Rather than waiting until the dig is over to digitise their records manually, however, they are able to download their recordings directly from the site into the York-based Integrated Archaeological Database (IADB), which is held on a server in Reading.

Another new development this year is the use of digital methods to create a 3D plan of the site onto which the position and context of a find can be entered. The team will be experimenting with the satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) and Total Station, an electronic surveying method, to see whether they can create 3D plans accurate to within a few centimetres. 'We hope we can develop an instant 3D record,' says Professor Fulford.

The use of these and other new technologies is already speeding up the process of archaeological research by reducing the time taken to record finds and enter them into databases from months to days or even hours. This, in turn, is shortening the time from dig to scientific publication. 

Last September, Professor Fulford and colleagues published a paper in the journal Internet Archaeology based on material excavated during the Silchester dig in summer 2005. A two- year delay between excavation and detailed analysis may seem pretty unremarkable, but it is not uncommon in archaeology for at least 5–6 years to elapse before final publication of complex excavations. 'This is a great advance,' says Professor Fulford. 'The journal is also able to provide immediate access from the article to the underlying data, which is of enormous benefit.'

Making different archaeological databases interoperable is another aim of the VERA project. This would make the task of finding other examples of a new find much easier. The aim is not only to enable searches for correlations across different databases, but also to record the findings of those searches so they are available for others to access. 'We've achieved interoperability between the different databases within the IADB, now we're working with completely different databases,' says Professor Fulford. Collaboration with another project to build a virtual research environment for the study of documents and manuscripts at Oxford University is already enabling searches to be performed across different databases in different locations for any text, graffito, inscription or artefact and the context in which it was found.

One final development for this year's Silchester dig aims to show people what an archaeological dig is really like. Webcams at the site will be live-streamed to the project's website to show the archaeologists in action. 'It can be a bit like watching paint dry, but there are moments of excitement when you find the coin,' says Professor Fulford. The plan is to use an automatic system to select out such moments — so web watchers needn't fear that they'll miss all the excitement if they take their eyes off the screen for a moment.

The dig runs from 23 June–3 August.

VERA

JISC VRE programme

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Equal access for all  

A JISC service is working closely with publishers to make a real difference to the support received by disabled students and staff. But, as Philip Pothen discovers, others are also benefiting from this groundbreaking work

There are digital divides of all kinds, some less obvious than others. But a new initiative is showing how technology can bridge divides within our institutions, in both practical and far-reaching ways, to ensure that all students and staff have fair and equal access to the resources they need.

Sal Cooke is director of JISC TechDis, which for years has been at the forefront of promoting the issue of 'accessibility', that is to say, ensuring that students and staff with disabilities or learning difficulties are able to exploit the full potential of technology. Sal calls the service the 'pragmatic voice of accessibility', but, as is clear from the new initiative, there's more than pragmatism alone in the service she and her team provide.

Dedication, expertise and a keen sense of the possibilities of collaboration have also gone into the new resources JISC TechDis is making available to support the delivery of resources in formats better suited to students and staff with disabilities or learning difficulties.

'Textbooks in pdf format have always been notoriously inaccessible,' Sal explains, 'completely unsuited to the needs of disabled users who may need larger text or sound formats. Libraries trying to access pdfs from publishers were always coming up with the same problems — who to contact, how do they get hold other formats, and so on. There's a legal obligation on libraries and all academic institutions to support all their disabled users, but the system was putting up pretty impenetrable barriers.'

The solution, she continues, was to work with publishers to set up a central system so that there is now one place for libraries to go to source different formats for different needs. 'The Publishers Association has been wonderfully supportive, so what we've been able to do in conjunction with publishers is to create an online database of contacts to provide the appropriate information. But most importantly we've also created some advice and guidance for publishers about what might be required of them. The end result is, we hope, to provide a better service for libraries, publishers and, most importantly, disabled students and staff.'

For Sue Smith, learning support officer at Leeds Metropolitan University library, the two new resources — Publisher look up and Guide to alternative formats — answer specific and important needs faced by students and staff on a daily basis.

'We have students who need to be able to access books like everyone else but in a non-printed format that's accessible to them,' she says. 'A blind student, for example, would need to use a package like the JAWS screen-reading package which reads the contents of a book aloud. We can scan the contents of the book individually, but that's incredibly time-consuming. There must be a better way of doing it. That's where the JISC TechDis resources come in.'

Isabel Arreola is one of the students supported by Sue Smith. A blind student, Isabel believes strongly that systems like this are needed to go beyond piecemeal and ad hoc approaches that can otherwise merely entrench divides: 'I'm a huge believer in equitable services,' she says. 'But I'm an even greater proponent of normalised and inclusionary services of education. For me having books in a format that's already accessible bypasses the entire labyrinth of people and processes I have to contact to acquire even a piece of a book.

'So if I don't have to have these extra support pillars in order to get where I'm going in my education then I can focus my energy and time in doing my work. That means much more of a level playing-field with my schoolmates.'

For Sue Smith, the services the library at Leeds Met provides would — and should — be provided even if UK law didn't require it: 'We should be doing this work because it's the right thing to do. All students should have an equal opportunity. That's how I approach my work.'

Sue McKnight would agree. Director of Learning Resources at Nottingham Trent University, she goes even further than this, however, and suggests that mainstreaming such an approach benefits everyone: 'Whether a student is blind or dyslexic, you can improve services for everyone. Developing that culture puts the focus on getting it right for everybody. It doesn't mean you don't do special things for special customers, but it's about empowerment. A disabled student doesn't need to ask for accessible resources, because we already have them.'

The library has spearheaded a strategic approach to accessibility that has seen a range of measures adopted, such as individual inductions, proxy borrowing by friends of users, a postal loans service, staff training, and so on. 'It's a mix of mainstream and specialist services', says Sue McKnight.

More even than this, the library has influenced the wider institution in its development of policies and in ensuring the accessibility of its Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). 'We included the needs of disabled users of the VLE at the very outset of its development', she says. 'We looked at the requirements of users with mobility problems with mice, those with problems reading texts on screen, dyslexic students, blind users. The chosen supplier submitted to a full accessibility audit. We wanted to make sure there were no surprises around accessibility. It's not an add-on, but something essential.'

She pays tribute to JISC TechDis who were, she says, 'very helpful… We contacted them and they made recommendations regarding the audit. The auditors used disabled students to do the testing. So it wasn't a sterile test at all.’

For Sue, the 'costs' of this work aren't, strictly speaking, relevant: 'If we do it right the first time, it's cheaper. We want to be mainstreaming good practice, setting good examples. It's a matter of making sure when we have a new service that we think inclusivity the first time round. So there's efficiency in this as well as equality. It's about making a difference.' And the difference for students, as Isabel and many others would attest to, is a significant one indeed.

TechDis
 
Listen to a podcast interview with Sal Cooke

Listen to a podcast interview with Sue McKnight

Listen to a podcast interview with Sue Smith and Isabel Arreola

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Engaging Researchers

Understanding the motivations of researchers is emerging as key to ensuring greater take-up of technologies. Alice Gugan reports on three projects funded by JISC and partners

JISC has had an active e-research programme for several years; certain elements for longer. However, when it comes to take-up of the tools and technologies, researchers have always presented a particular challenge, for JISC as well as for the wider e-research network. One strand of the current e-research programme is seeking to get to the root of the problem.

One of the main issues appears to be that 'e-infrastructure' resources — covering distributed and interoperable computing and data resources, and often major interdisciplinary collaborations — have rarely, it seems,

been developed around the user. Added to this, the often extended research lifecycle — from initial idea to funding, progress and validation, through to publication and preservation of findings — has led to researchers finding a myriad of different ways of collaborating. If JISC is to broaden the use of e-infrastructure throughout the sciences, medicine, arts and humanities and social sciences research communities, getting to the bottom of the motivations of researchers is key. 

Enter the e-Uptake, eIUS and Engage projects, which all aim to involve researchers through evidence gathering and then extend this into wider community building work, with the collective involvement of many of the major, established players in the e-research domain (see inset box).

Each collaborative project forms an integral part of the overall picture. e-Uptake, for example, is running a series of studies across subject disciplines, types of use and services to map adoption (and non-adoption) across different research areas and plot where patterns emerge and cross-trends could be identified.

The eIUS project is coming at the problem from the opposite angle, focusing on existing practices to develop use cases or scenarios to illustrate how researchers can 'join up' technologies to achieve their research goals. Engage, lastly, is focusing on the process of engaging communities directly with specific technologies, particularly those enabled by the National Grid Service.

Initial findings have confirmed some suspicions but also brought out new issues. 'Gathering, storing, processing and analysing data appears to be a universal issue, with no uniform method even within the same research group,' says Dr Alex Voss, project manager for e-Uptake.

'While e-research tools are known of and used in some cases, support is largely couched in computer scientist-speak, forming a barrier. Most significantly, the bewildering range of ever-developing options that researchers face when adopting tools can lead to issues of time and capacity, and the lack of standardisation of tool usage within disciplines doesn't help; in fact usage of different, incompatible tools can also hinder cooperation between researchers from different disciplines or organisations precisely where it is meant to help!'

The Engage project has found similar fundamental issues to be significant. 'Often seemingly trivial barriers appear insurmountable, which can be particularly frustrating for researchers who simply wish to make use of tools and services,' says Neil Chue Hong, project manager for Engage. 'We're aiming to tackle some of these issues in collaboration with the researcher, and disseminate the solutions to the wider research community. In this way, greater confidence in the use of e-infrastructure can be developed by the community itself.' Developing confidence to increase usage is being investigated through  the building of scenarios of potential ways of using technologies for research, which is where e-IUS's work comes in.

'Many researchers can be working in small groups doing groundbreaking stuff with this new technology, but not necessarily telling other researchers. Getting these stories out there can enable a much wider group of people to take advantage of their experiences,' explains Dr Mike Fraser, principal investigator of e-IUS.
 
A fundamental activity across the projects is awareness raising and community building through a series of workshops, training and other outreach events, and the development of a 'one-stop-shop' portal, to support researchers with information, contacts and advice, as well as feed back market information to developers.

As Matthew Mascord, acting programme manager, sums up: 'While we want to get to the root of issues that researchers face and how we can overcome or work with these, equally important is to ensure that these findings can shape the development of support services and long-term help for these communities, for which there appears to be a need.'

Funders and partners

Funders of the e-Uptake, eIUS, and Engage projects include JISC, the UK National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS), the National e-Science Centre (NeSC), the Arts and Humanities e-Science Support Centre (AHeSSC), the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII UK) and National Grid Service.

Further partners are the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, Southampton and Manchester, King's College London, and the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Engage

eius

e-Uptake

Listen to a podcast interview with Matthew Mascord

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JISC Conference 2008

JISC Conference 2008 Gallery

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JISC Conference 2008 Videos

Watch the keynote speeches at UStream TV (requires Adobe Flash Player 9)

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Print and Electronic Publications

Managing and Sharing e-Learning Resources Managing and Sharing e-Learning Resources Library Management Systems Great expectations of ICT: findings from second phase of research briefing paper

Managing and Sharing e-Learning Resources
How repositories can help

 

Managing and Sharing Research Resources
How Open Access repositories can help		 Library Management Systems
Investing wisely in a period of disruptive change

Great Expectations of ICT
Findings from second phase of research

 

JISC Publications

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Events

JISC Events

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Editor
Philip Pothen   

Design & Production Manager
Greg Clemett

Dissemination & Production Coordinator
Amy Butterworth

Editorial Assistant
Xanthe O'Donnell

Designer
Episode One Ltd

JISC inform is produced by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to raise awareness of the use of information technology (ICT) to support further and higher education in the UK. Contributing Authors include members of the JISC family of services and initiatives, JISC’s partners and staff working in the FE and HE sectors.The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of JISC.

You can download a PDF or rich text format version of Inform 22 below or order a hard copy by sending your name, full postal address and job title to publications@jisc.ac.uk

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Summary
Author
Philip Pothen (Editor), Greg Clemett (Design & Production Manager), Amy Butterworth (Dissemination & Production Coordinator)
Publication Date
21 July 2008
Publication Type
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