JISC Regional Support Centres
JISC RSCs (Regional Support Centres) exist to advise the learning providers of designated sectors to realise their ambitions in deployment of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to achieve their organisational mission. The network of JISC Regional Support Centres operates as a national service responsive to local needs through a strong sense of local ownership.
Team structure
Search for information across all of the RSC websitesRSC teams comprise of 6-12 individuals. Each team includes a manager, administrator and specialist advisers covering technical, curriculum and learning resources issues, as well as some with sector-specific responsibilities.
Funding
The total RSC budget including central costs is in the region of £5M. Most funds are allocated directly through JISC.
With RSC Board approval, RSCs may receive funding for additional work so long as this does not undermine delivery of the core remit.
Location
Most RSC staff are based in their host institution. In some cases RSCs operate a distributed model, with staff in different locations across the region. Host institutions are, in 10 cases universities, in two cases FE colleges and in London, the University of London Computing Centre (a non-teaching institution).
Customers
RSCs give advice to key contacts in supported learning providers. These contacts include in most cases, a senior management contact, a teaching and learning contact, a learning resources contact and an IT technical contact. In most cases RSCs also work with staff development officers. In practice, a much wider range of staff in supported organisations benefit directly from RSC services. The actual customer of the RSC is deemed to be the learning provider organisation itself.
Examples of RSC service
- run an annual regional conference on all aspects of ICT and e-Learning, in a prestigious regionally central location, for say 200 delegates from their provider community to experience and sample innovative ways to deliver their curriculum and business using the latest technologies.
- take an urgent call late on a Friday afternoon about a network connection that has gone down. Following advice over the phone, the local network manager fixes the problem in time for the weekend.
- facilitate a forum of staff development managers from across its region, where experience of delivering programmes on e-learning or information skills to all staff in the organisation are shared.
- facilitate a user group for a particular VLE or library management system.
- discuss its newbuild programme with the SMT of a learning provider, giving pointers to the sorts of questions they might consider putting to their architects.
- visit a learning provider about to be inspected and, based on interviews with sample groups of learners, and staff at various levels and positions within the organisation, provide advice on ways that e-learning might be better integrated into curriculum delivery.
How we deliver our services
The type of support provided by your RSC is not the same as the support one receives from an ICT vendor following purchase of their product, where they take responsibility for fixing any problem that arises, for you. Your RSC will not take responsibility for your problem, nor for fixing it. However, once you alert them to your problem they will not let go until you have resolved it, and they will do everything they can to source suitable advice for you. In general, your RSC facilitates the changes learning providers choose to make in their working practices, with full control over strategy and implementation in the hands of the provider. They are knowledge-brokers, with a vast range of expertise to draw on, from within their own team, from the other RSCs across the UK and from JISC and other national sources of expertise. Their middle name is ‘Support’ because they provide a personal and friendly service to their customers, but more accurately their overall service is ‘advisory’, in that they offer advice, and the customer is responsible for the actions taken.