JISC

This project supports management and business professionals in university departments and related organisations who are the essential links between research and commerce, i.e. they are engaged in managing the process of Knowledge Exchange.

These groups develop best practice in management and liaise with other stakeholders such as the Regional Development Agencies. This project focuses on their requirements, and demonstrates how a Virtual Research Environment can be extended to include management research and practice with tools enabling more effective collaboration, sharing of information and accelerating their progress through the research lifecycle.

Our key challenge is to provide a web-based VRE platform using existing tools to enhance collaboration. This platform will support the opportunity for staff in business and management schools to change their relationships both with each other and with the groups they support. The project has chosen Sakai as it is already familiar to users at the partner institutions and the project partners already have experience of enhancing the current tools in Sakai. Examples of this enhancement include further development and integration of tools such as the Sakai Profile-2 tool and BRII.

Other tools are required to help change the relationships staff have with online scholarly information, such as the use of the CREE cross search tool, and to enhance the use of such information as a fundamental part of the Knowledge Exchange agenda.