JISC

The Western Colleges Consortium (WCC) is a collection of four Further Education Colleges in the West Country.  This project has examined the needs of FE for access to JISC collections and services within a virtual learning environment, and how these are disclosed and accessed alongside local resources.  The disclosure of local assets for use across the consortium and the associated IPR issues associated with this have also been examined in detail.  

Further information is available via the  JISC project page and the project website. 

Outputs from this project include a series of awareness-raising events and discussion sessions resulting from a series of experiments, information on the technical platforms being examined and a number of  presentations and publications. Links to associated initiatives have also arisen from the project. 

Contact

James Clay
Western Colleges Consortium
Keynsham Learning Centre
2/4 High Street
Keynsham BS31 1DQ

Email: james.clay@westerncc.ac.uk 
Tel: 0117 986 1631 

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Events

See details of all events held. Different types of events were organised for different purposes. In general, increased awareness through these events encouraged use and sharing of resources.

• Curriculum Collaboration Events, a series of six events held within the WCC in May and June 2003 to raise issues of IPR and sharing of learning resources. These events included a short survey and were open to non-consortium members. Further such events are planned beyond the end of the project
• Staff development events on IPR have been held within the WCC, which included a series of presentations developed for wider use.   
• A series of drop in sessions have been held throughout the lifetime of the project to encourage awareness and use of the VLE used within the WCC.  For details. These sessions will be carrying on after the end of the project.

Experiments

• A number of embedding experiments were performed with staff and students within the WCC to investigate how the presentation of JISC resources in different contexts and locations within the VLE might affect their use. The use of RSS has been found to be particularly popular as a mechanism for keeping people up-to-date and aware of new developments and resources 
• Another experiment focussed on an investigation of the effect on student take-up of resources by making them available through a VLE. 

Software

No software has been developed specifically for the project, but a number of technical platforms have been used to test the embedding and surfacing of JISC and local resources:

• TekniCAL Virtual Campus - the VLE used within the WCC
• Moodle - an open source VLE attracting a high level of interest within the FE sector
• Blackboard - a large commercial VLE in use at the University of the West of England
• uPortal - an open source portal framework, attracting much interest and use in the Higher Education sector.  uPortal 2.3.4 is being used as a delivery mechanism within a VLE; this investigation will be the subject of ongoing work after the completion of the project.

The project also installed and tested DSpace software for use alongside and in support of the VLE.  See results from this investigation.

Links with related initiatives and projects

• The WCC carried out a JISC-funded records management project in 2003 entitled AFFIRM. 
• The project manager has contributed to the DfES e-Learning Strategy Advisory Group, specifically on issues of IPR
• The project manager was a member of an expert panel for a JISC-funded Portal Sustainability Study in 2004
• The WCC hosted a workshop as part of a JISC-funded Personalisation Study in 2004
• The project has contributed to programme meetings for the 1/01 MLEs for Lifelong Learning Programme

Presentations

FAIR Enough synthesis, James Clay, JISC Joint programmes meeting, 6-7th July 2004, Brighton

FAIR Enough – a poster. JISC Joint Programmes Meeting, 6-7th July 2004, Brighton

Ownership and protection issues within and outside institutions in regard to learning materials, James Clay, ‘All your own work? Plagiarism and copyright' RSC South West event, Bristol, 12th November 2003
Sharing resources: ownership and protection issues within and outside institutions (updated version), James Clay, ALT-C 2003, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, September 2003

Sharing resources: ownership and protection issues within and outside institutions, James Clay, JISC workshop on IPR, London, 29th May 2003

Publications

Archer, E., Atkins, A. and Clay, J., The FAIR Enough project, New Review of Information Networking, 2004 10(1): 3-17

Mentor ‘monkeys’ around at Bristol Zoo, news piece on FAIR Enough event in NLN Materials World July 2003 Issue 7, Clay, J.

Writing and Submitting JISC bids in FE, FEI (Termly Newsletter of the RSC South West) October 2002 Issue 2

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See also

PORTAL
JISC Portals programme