Institutional Responses to Emergent Technologies
The purpose of this programme is to understand the issues surrounding the support for emergent technologies of Web 2.0 software and mobile devices from an institutional and organisational perspective – to help institutions manage their responses to the challenges that can arise, particularly in the context of staff and students’ demand for flexible access totheir institutions' functions and services.
6 small-scale pilot projects have been funded to support institutions in their responses to emergent technology developments.
Details of the Programme Start Up Meeting
A separate project has been funded to investigate the policies, practices and strategies that institutions are adopting to cope with integration of emergent technologies with institutional systems, as well as advice and guidance materials. This project will also work closely with the small-scale pilots by facilitating knowledge exchange, synthesising lessons learnt, and undertaking formative evaluation.
Pilot Projects
| Lead institution |
Project |
Summary |
| Staffordshire University |
Developing Intelligent Validation Systems (DIVAS)
|
This Project combines the use of a Community of Practice approach employing social software with the use of a repository to enable the outputs from validation events to exploited in a more intelligent and responsive way. By exposing outputs from validations by linking the repository to the social software, practitioners will be able to learn from the experiences of others via a "self-service" approach, which will reduce administrative burdens, and the community will be used to create "fast-track models" for courses employing technology supported learning to be used to facilitate rapid validations. In addition the work will contribute a Service Genre to the eFramework community. Project Blog |
| University of Cambridge |
Engaging Responses to Emerging Technologies (EGRET)
|
The EGRET project takes a fresh view across a range of the universities administrative systems drawing on advanced concepts in user centred design and social networking. Project Blog |
| Kingston College |
KATAPILA: Kingston Administration and Timetabling Application for Integrated Learner Access
|
The KATAPILA project seeks to exploit the opportunities provided by emergent technologies for administration of the learning experience for higher education students within a further education environment. We are seeking to provide integrated access for learners to timetable information relating to their courses of study, assessment schedules and examination programme. Project Website |
| University of Bolton |
Only Connect
|
A project to pilot the development of a new communications environment to strengthen the bonds between individual learners and the university which will transcend existing modes of communication, engagement, representation and support. Project Blog |
| Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication |
Quali-R – Quality tracking at Ravensbourne
|
The Quali-R project will implement a small-scale platform for managing and tracking quality assurance and enhancement actions through standards-based aggregation. A commodity issue tracking or task management system will be adapted to manage action items from external examiner reports, annual course monitoring reports, and course committees. A simple web-service client will facilitate the extraction of actionable items from narrative documents into time delimited actions and tasks. The action items will be syndicated as iCalendar feeds, and as RSS feeds to provide narrative updates. Project Blog |
| Manchester Metropolitan University |
Researching Emerging Admin Channels (REACh)
|
The Researching Emerging Admin Channels (REACh) project will inform institutional responses to the challenge presented by emergent personal technologies by publishing action-research on the responses of diverse student groups when administrative communication processes are extended to deliver personalised information via web 2.0 feeds and mobile channels - Project Blog |