JISC

The study was set up to explore Business and Community Engagement (BCE) activities.

Executive summary

Terms of reference of the study and the report

The study was set up to explore the following issues:

• How ICT could support communication and collaboration in Business and Community Engagement (BCE) activities (whether through JISCmail or through blogs, Web2 applications, or other interactive environments).
• The perceptions of ICT experts in JISC and HEIs about issues around and barriers to reaching out to non-university organisations.
• The perceptions of ICT gatekeepers in HEIs about their understanding of BCE and what could be done to ensure that BCE practitioners are aware of opportunities to exploit ICT and JISC services.
• Identify the barriers that face HEIs trying to put BCE activities together and how JISC applications could support the HEIs in their BCE activities.
• Institutional data and cross-sector communication (including firewalls and control of access to intranets).
• The nature and scope of current and planned activity in JISC, and how JISC services could help HEIs' BCE programmes.
• BCE activities in HEIs in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
• How BCE activities operate across individual HEIs (through a small sample of case studies).

It was agreed that the research could be encapsulated in simple terms by asking the following question:

If the Business and Community agenda is about extending the boundaries of HEIs' activities, where are the pain points, and how could JISC services help to ease the pain?

Methodology

The methodology adopted for this research built on the quantitative and qualitative data already obtained in the Scoping Study. Further surveys, one-to-one interviews (telephone and face-to-face), scrutiny of a variety of websites and items of literature, attendance at a number of committee and network meetings and at the JISC Conference were all used. In total 126 people were interviewed and 184 responded to a variety of surveys. This included:

• Two online surveys of Computer and IT Services staff, Librarians and Learning Technologists, one aimed at FE and the other at HE, to which a total of 154 people replied, from 103 institutions in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales (1).
• A small-scale survey of, and one-to-one discussions with, 14 people involved in Community Engagement activity.
• Telephone or face-to-face interviews with 34 people at 10 institutions selected to represent a cross section of types of institutions and to provide further information to illustrate the variety of ways in which BCE is organised within institutions. Findings from these Case Studies are incorporated in the report, but they are not presented in full in order to preserve the anonymity of respondent institutions, which are at variant stages of development in the process towards embedding BCE.
• Telephone interviews with 26 people working in various ways within BCE who responded to the Scoping Study survey.
• Telephone interviews with seven Librarians, Computer Service staff and Learning Technologists to inform the design of the survey, and follow up phone interviews with ten further respondents to the survey to gain additional information about certain key questions.
• Telephone interviews with representatives of each of the 22 Centres for Knowledge Exchange (CKE).
• An online survey of the 104 Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) (2) offices in HEIs throughout the UK (with a return rate of 18%).
• Meetings and discussions with members of JISC staff, including the heads of the Advisory Services, senior representatives of MIMAS, JISC Marketing, the lead for BCE developments within JISC, the head of e-Learning, the BCE Working Party.

Findings

The conclusions from the scoping study still hold.

• The way that BCE is carried out across and within institutions is complex and complicated, and will become increasingly so as this work is further embedded within the work of institutions. This creates a challenging and difficult area of work for JISC to engage with and from which to deliver measurable outcomes.
• The number of people dedicated to BCE, although relatively small in relation to the total number of staff employed in HE and FE, is growing, and through the work of the IKT will become increasingly professionalised and recognised.
• JISC needs to understand how its market and audiences are differentiated and segmented, and respond in a more tailored way to ensure greater awareness of its work and services.
• JISC services are not always joined up or cross-related. Thus at the moment the Advisory Services are individual services working in different areas, and are not presented as a co-ordinated set of services under one umbrella, separate from all the other JISC activities (cf JISC Collections, which has its own website).
• Potential users have great difficulty in understanding JISC terminology.
• A significant number of respondents expressed the view that JISC's publications and website were written in language which was more suitable for JISC staff than for the practitioners who were the indicated audience.
• JISC could have a more explicit interpretational role. Practitioners need help in acquainting themselves with and understanding ICT applications and would welcome something that is a straightforward summary of new developments with examples of applications (like the Educause "Seven things you need to know about….." (3). Whilst this should not necessarily be accomplished through the RSCs, the models for communication and brokering used by the RSCs could be transferred to other aspect of the JISC's activities.
• Constraints on users' time are highly significant - people supporting and active in BCE do not have time to search for and understand what is possible. At the same time, as the use of ICT becomes more and more extensive and resources increasingly migrate to electronic format, the key intermediaries that JISC prioritises in its communication strategy, i.e. IT/Computer Service staff, Librarians and Learning Technologists, are increasingly stretched and the strategic priorities of such staff may not be ones which address the range of interests of BCE staff.
• There is now even more interest in CRM, with Business and Community focused units at different stages of development. In some cases HEIs have already committed to substantial investment in new, institution-wide systems, so further work by JISC would need to take account of this and look at what is already happening. Equally, some institutions are only just looking into CRM and would welcome guidance on the choice of appropriate software and systems.
• Web2 technology is developing and becoming of growing interest to end users. However, many BCE staff are interested in a wide range of ICT tools for collaboration, including more established technologies such as web technologies and video-conferencing, etc. In addition, the nature of the ways in which these technologies might be used may vary between Business and Community Engagement. At this time interest in Web2 seems to be greater in Community than in Business Engagement.
• Concerns about legal and security issues related to the use of JISC and HE funded services and resources in work with businesses and the community are also becoming more noticeable.
• Issues about licensing, exploitation and legal matters are not just about clarification, but about opening up access to commercial and wider use, especially to users in less well resourced domains such as SMEs and the voluntary and community sectors.
• Responses to surveys indicated that there is a desire for an integrated and accessible package of training opportunities.

Recommendations

There are a number of recommendations which flow from this work. JISC should:

• consider sustaining a specific focus on the needs of BCE and extending the life of the BCE Working Group to support this, because as BCE work becomes more embedded in institutions it may become more difficult for the JISC to isolate its specific needs.
• give careful consideration to how it addresses the interests of BCE staff when their priorities are not the same as those of the IT Services in institutions.
• in order to establish and sustain communication channels with BCE staff, both continue to work through intermediaries such as Computer Services, Librarians and Learning Technologists, but also develop its relationships with representative and professional bodies such as the HEFCE BCE Good Practice Networks, AURIL and the IKT. The JISC should also consider how it can, through such links, offer support to BCE intermediaries such as business development managers and KTP managers to improve their understanding of the ways in which ICT might contribute to effective BCE activity.
• create a JISC Advisory Centre to bring together information about the JISC services, and to act as a one-stop shop for academics and others seeking advice about how JISC could support their BCE-related activities.
• consider differentiated navigation through its website, so that different users can find what they are interested in more quickly. (For example, in the same way that most HEI websites support navigation for users based on their interests such as employers/prospective students, current students/staff, etc.) It may even be that more than one website is needed, to separate out the very technical information, invitations to tender etc, from the more promotional content about JISC funded services, etc. It is recognised that each service has its own website, but as already mentioned, it is not always easy to understand the relationship between them.
• find ways to respond to bottom-up expressions of need from academic staff - through helping them find out about what might be possible.
• categorise services to make them more manageable, and do it from a user's perspective.
• promote the Advisory Services as one discrete set of services, and get them working together more effectively so that they work as a package and do not overlap or compete.
• consider how internal staff development activities could support JISC staff in understanding better the context within which BCE practitioners are operating and can quickly raise levels of awareness so that it becomes routine to consider the needs of BCE in programme planning and service enhancements.
• produce toolkits or guidance to help BCE practitioners evaluate software applications, and in particular CRM systems.
• pursue work on CRM, since this is clearly a sector wide and immediate need, which will help not only to improve BCE activity but also to integrate it in a more strategic way into the work of institutions. At the same time ensure that the guidance helps institutions implement CRM systems in a way which integrates with other institutional systems in line with the e-framework strategy.
• pursue the planned Social Software pilot, but recognise that this appears to be of more interest to people involved with Community Engagement than Business Engagement.
• pursue plans to support the effective exploitation of Web 2 technologies, but recognise that most of the respondents in our research had little experience of it and little time to develop applications for it. They therefore need information in non-technical terms with practical examples of how this technology might support BCE activity.
• pursue work on licensing and legal issues, but widen this to consult about issues of widening access to people outside the HE/FE community.
• co-ordinate training opportunities in order to promote an integrated training programme (they are currently scattered around the services).
• provide more support and development for intermediaries (Librarians, IT specialists, etc) to help them understand BCE.
  
  

1. See Appendix A of the full report for the full list of institutions

2. See the Glossary at Appendix B for explanations of acronyms

3. Educause '7 Things You Should Know About...pieces provide quick, no-jargon overviews of technologies and related practices that have demonstrated or may demonstrate positive learning impacts. Any time you need to explain a new learning technology or practice quickly and clearly, look for a 7 Things You Should Know About... brief from ELI'

See full report