Colleges and universities are legally obliged to provide a safe learning environment for staff and learners.  Reasonable steps must be in place to prevent foreseeable harm.  What steps are ‘reasonable’ will, of course, depend on particular circumstances.  The age of learners, any characteristics that make a learner more vulnerable in the online world, and the availability and accessibility of the environment are all likely to need careful consideration.

In my role at Jisc Legal I work closely with colleges and universities to offer relevant and practical guidance on e-safety.  As part of Safer Internet Day, here are my top 5 tips to help ensure you meet your duty of care:

1.  Be pro-active, don’t wait for something to go wrong

• Always consider risks and where appropriate, take reasonable steps to minimise them
• Establish and share fair rules of acceptable use, procedures and sanctions
• Raise awareness of good e-safety practice.

The National Education Network’s e-safety audit tool can help you to assess current practice at your college or university.

2.  Make someone responsible for e-safety within your college or university

Arguably everyone is responsible for e-safety, but having a named person in place means advice will be readily available and activities and responses will be co-ordinated and consistent.  Ideally, your e-Safety Officer should be a senior member of staff with child protection training.

3.  Use Jisc Legal’s policy checklist and template to write your e-safety policy

Ensure your policy reflects current technologies and the use of social media. It’s important that it is clear, relevant and easy to understand for your learners and staff.

4. Respond immediately and fairly to any breach in policy

It is important that learners and staff understand the importance of internet safety. Any action taken in response to an incident, including an investigation or sanctions imposed, should be proportionate and documented in line with your procedures.  Any criminal activity must be reported to the police.

Have a look at the Janet website for some useful guidelines on dealing with computer crime.

5. Support all your staff and learners to be e-safe

Regular training will help staff deal with concerns and reinforce good practice.  Education on managing relevant issues, such as privacy, will help learners to safeguard their online presence.  Bear in mind though that specific guidance for more vulnerable learners may be appropriate.

Training resources and other useful links are available on the Kent e-Safety Officer’s blog. The Information Commissioner’s Office also provides advice on how young people can protect personal information.

You can also read about how Jisc is supporting colleges and schools with raising awareness of internet safety standards.

I hope you’ve found my tips helpful. For further help, why not have a look at Jisc Legal’s Supporting Safer Internet Day page on our website.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are nothing new. In fact, Google web trends show searches for the term API have been on an increase since their records began in 2004.  However, I would argue that there are still potential benefits to universities to be wrung from this venerable technology.

The simplest definition of an API is ‘an interface to a website or software that is designed to be used by developers not by end users’. It allows developers to access the data inside the website or software and use that data in other websites or other pieces of software.

Allows an easy transfer of data around your institution and with partners
The modern university has a mind-boggling array of software, hardware and websites. They also work in an increasingly collaborative environment.  To ensure the smooth running of the university and for ease of collaboration, it is essential that data can flow between the systems that make a university tick. APIs offer a route to addressing the problem. Read some examples of how institutions have used APIs to move data between systems.

Provides automation for laborious tasks
Data sharing between systems can often be difficult and can sometimes require the manual processing of information to take it from one system and to another. APIs offer potential cost savings in the process of moving data. There will be an initial set up cost for the API, but in the long run they should offer a more efficient and more scalable option than manual data processing. This should not only provide cost savings but should also allow the exploration of new opportunities which arise when working at a greater scale.

Improves attraction and retention of students
Universities operate in an increasingly competitive environment; they need to attract students. A university’s brand is an important element in attracting students. APIs could offer opportunities to ensure a university’s brand is well represented in social media and other websites where potential students are likely to be looking. An way of using APIs to help with retention would be developing smartphone applications. These could make it easier for students to settle in to life at the university, for example the recently developed NewcastleUniversity App.

These are all big issues for universities and APIs offer the promise of big rewards. But big rewards rarely come easily. However, when thinking about APIs we are fortunate that there is a wealth of good practice in successful implementation on the web and in enterprises. The report which I have been involved in writing offers some useful case studies and examples that people can follow when implementing APIs. It also includes some practical pointers on management and planning issues that need to be taken into account if APIs are to be implemented.

So, while APIs are sometimes viewed as some kind of young web 2.0 upstart, I would argue that they are a mature technology with a long history of solving exactly the kind of challenges every university is facing. I’d love to hear how you are using APIs – please do tweet @andymcg or comment below I’d also like to hear if you think I’ve got it wrong and that APIs are in fact old hat with newer technologies emerging that can offer better ways of
addressing these problems.

Read Andy’s team blog

I know that many larger universities and colleges, and those who have found themselves in the FOI spotlight, have already invested in their own systems to help them log and track the requests they receive. However, I’m also aware that there are many more universities and colleges out there for whom the business case did not stack up. They were unable to invest in specialist software, but are now finding that their existing, largely manual, processes are struggling to keep pace.

As part of my role at Jisc infoNet I have been working to develop a possible solution to the management of these requests. I’ve helped create the Information Request Register; this is an Excel based tool which has been developed in conjunction with FOI practitioners from a number of universities. The register offers assistance to universities and colleges, allowing them to:

• Centrally coordinate requests received under different access regimes
• Manage requests with limited staff resources, therefore reducing cost
• Automatically calculate the appropriate deadline of a request response
• View ‘at-a-glance’ visual prompts as to the status of each request
• Use readymade reports which enable providers to view the current state of requests or analyse them during a given period
• Customise the system to meet their specific requirements.

Lastly, another benefit of the register is that it provides information for the annual Information Legislation and Management Survey. The survey’s results are widely accepted as the definitive source of data about the impact of information compliance legislation on the sector, but it takes considerable time and resource for people to submit their data each year. The register collects the data needed for the survey as you go. So, rather than representing a significant body of work each January all that is required is for you to copy the relevant worksheets to a new file and email it to us, and the job is done.

Now that’s what I call a win-win situation!

I hope you decide to give the InformationRequest Register a try and do let me or my colleague Teresa Tocewicz know how you get on as any feedback would be appreciated.

Follow Steve’s blog

Tweet Steve: @sjbailey
Tweet Teresa: @TeresaToc

There is growing demand for appropriate film and sound resources within education. Where the typical education consumer would previously have been content with text-based learning, they are now seeking to learn from the gamut of rich multi-media all around them.

For all those involved in education either as funders, producers, or practitioners, the challenge is how to harness this new media literacy, and in particular to help ensure that rich media resources can be systematically embedded in teaching and learning, as well as providing new avenues for research. Teachers are increasingly aware of the need to offer compelling and interesting resources that engage students to facilitate the high quality experience that our universities need to be able to deliver in order to remain competitive. Likewise, researchers want to engage more fully with film, television and radio to exploit the potential of resources that have been hitherto inaccessible.

We are therefore excited about the possibilities that the development of a Research Education Space (RES) will offer to address these needs. During 2013, we will be working on the first phase of creating RES which aims to deliver a sustainable digital content collection for post August 1989 BBC broadcast media assets using the ERA licences and the BUFVC’s Box of Broadcasts (BoB) service. More specifically we aim to:

Provide unique, rich and valuable assets to research and educational users.

The audio-visual archives of the BBC contain a wealth of material gathered since it was founded in 1922 but much remains largely inaccessible, held on film or videotape. RES will start to ‘open up’ one of the most influential archives in the world for use within UK education and research.

Establish Principles for making assets and catalogues available to research and educational users

We are only at the beginning of the process of unlocking archives for academic use, but we see our collaboration with the BBC and the BUFVC as crucial to bringing together expertise in this area and enhancing joint understanding. The project will pay dividends for education and research in the longer term by providing more cost effective ways to provide access to high quality and highly demanded archival content.

Develop a Platform for digitised assets which allows easy access and reliable delivery

For us and our customers, RES will contribute to a balanced Jisc portfolio of investment as not only will it greatly enhance the availability of video/ audio resources (being the only dedicated source of BBC broadcasts for education potentially dating back to August 1989), but also begin to create a sustainable infrastructure through the existing BUFVC’s ‘Box of Broadcasts – BoB’ (an off-air recording and media archive service).

Create Propositions to demonstrate the use of these assets within a range of contexts

BoB’s popularity and user-baser is already impressive – in 2012 alone, it streamed some 320 programmes per hour from 50+ channels, with 35k-40k unique users per month at 45 institutions (8 colleges, 37 universities). However, RES will also help us to learn more about current and potential content usage in education and research through academic engagement and case study development. This will help us present the content better in order to gain maximum exposure and use.

RES has the potential to both enhance and energise the academy’s relationship with one of the dominant media of the 20^th century- film, television and radio- by creating new opportunities for research and teaching and encouraging use across many different disciplines. We have some way to go until the first results of our work to develop RES become available in the autumn of 2013 but we’re looking forward to the journey and keeping you posted.

As we put the team together to create RES and our plans develop, I and colleagues look forward to keeping you up-to-date on our progress. If in the meantime you’d like to know more, please do email me at s.fahmy@jisc.ac.uk

An overview of the BBC’s Digital Public Space vision can be read in the Guardian here.

Find out more about BUFVC’s BoB National: http://bobnational.net

The DPC is dedicated to developing the skills, knowledge and solutions to preserve and ensure access to digital information. 2012 marks the 10th anniversary of the DPC and I had the pleasure of being a judge at this year’s awards.

I enjoyed working with colleagues from across the UK to assess the entries.  I saw some of the strides that have been made in digital preservation, and coming from one of the organisations that founded the DPC, I was certainly pleased to see such positive progress and the DPC’s ability to highlight this.

The DPC’s most prestigious prize – the Decennial Prize – was awarded to mark their 10th anniversary and recognizes the most outstanding work over the past decade.   There was intense international competition with finalists from New York, Washington and London.  Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of The British Library, July 2000-July 2012, presented the award to the winning entry - the Archaeology Data Service at the University of York.

It was heartening to see this award go to an initiative which we at Jisc supported at their inception and which continues to be successful.  The team at York are a creative group who have developed and thrived within an innovative business model that allows them to preserve an extraordinary range of data while providing free access to all researchers and other users.  This approach ensures the longevity of data that would otherwise rapidly be lost or become obsolete and provides advice to researchers.

The Award for Teaching and Communications, presented by Oliver Morley, chief executive of the National Archives team, was awarded to the University of London Computer Centre team who run the Digital Preservation Training Programme (DPTP); an entry-level, introductory course that develops critical thinking about digital preservation.  It is designed to help all those working in information management to understand effective approaches to the challenges of digital preservation.  It enables students on the course to assess the models and examples in the context of their own organisation.

The Award for Research and Innovation was presented by Martyn Harrow, chief executive of Jisc to the PLANETS project.  PLANETS brings together memory institutions, small businesses, major technology providers, and research institutions from across Europe to build practical services and tools to help ensure long-term access to digital, cultural and scientific assets.  It established the not-for-profit Open Planets Foundation to provide the digital preservation community with services, ongoing support, and a sustainable future for its Open Source results.  It has permanently changed the digital preservation landscape by shifting the focus to practical, sustainable solutions that are soundly supported by practice-driven research.

Digital preservation ensures future access to resources and I believe this is essential for research, learning and future knowledge creation.  Just think of all of the digital information that is created on the web and how that represents points in time that can be lost without action, or all of the data produced through scientific instruments that informs science and understanding – digital preservation helps to secure continued access to these resources.

I am looking forward to what the coming years will bring in terms of digital preservation and I am sure the DPC will be central to showcasing international best practice.  The awards were a great way of recognising important work and I have to say it was really enjoyable working with William Kilbride, executive director of the DPC on this, and being one of the judges.

The AoC Annual Conference is taking place this week.  I work for one of the Regional Support Centres at JISC and as part of the conference we are focusing on mobile learning and the benefits of using mobile technologies in the classroom.  Part of this is the concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), where students being their own devices into the classroom.

BYOD is a hot topic at the moment with numerous articles extolling its benefits, which range from organisations reducing their capital expenditure, to users having the option of using familiar and customisable mobile devices to support their personal learning styles.

Benefits of BYOD

There are many benefits that BYOD could potentially offer organisations and students:

• By allowing users to use their own devices rather than imposing technology upon them an organisation can make reductions in end user training
• Permitting users to use their own mobile devices provides them with an opportunity to personalise their device, which in turn allows them to access and engage with their learning in ways which meet their individual needs
• Users who are empowered to select, personalise and maintain their own devices are more likely to care for their equipment and to make technology work from them rather than dismissing it early in the adoption process.
• Learners who can use their own devices engage more with the topic area, therefore improving in learner engagement
• By adopting mobile learning and allowing users to utilise their own internet capable device, organisations can increase student satisfaction, retention and widen participation
• Flexible access means that students can access materials whenever and wherever they need to.

Considerations for your organisation

As the saying goes “there is no such thing as a free lunch” and before adopting BYOD at your organisation there are a few things to consider as these challenges or requirements will need to be met in order for you to reap the benefits:

• Interoperability between existing systems and non standard build devices. How can you make this workable?
• Existing online learning objects and other resources will be accessed from a wide range of devices, all with different web browsing capabilities, using different media players and different screen resolutions. How can you offer a seamless and consistent end user experience to all users?
• A diverse range of devices used within your organisation may increase technical support overheads. This may be an additional cost, but will the long term cost savings outweigh this?
• Increasing the number of diverse wifi-enabled devices on your network may have an adverse effect on wifi reliability and performance. How can you ensure your network can meet the requirements?
• Externally acquired devices may need to undergo safety checks to ensure they meet existing health and safety standards with your organisation. How will you arrange this?
• Equality of students – not all students can afford the latest tech, but as long as the materials are compatible on all devices, this shouldn’t be a problem. Is this something that can be investigated?
• Changes to course delivery and the way that classrooms are managed – teachers are used to not allowing devices to be switched on during lessons and some may struggle to adapt. What rules will need to be laid out for what students can and can’t use devices for?

I think from the above that is is becoming increasingly clear that when you consider the benefits and challenges of BYOD, you need to have a clear strategy.  Guidelines and expectations need to be set, as well as a degree of accountability. Organisations need to weigh up the pros and cons to ensure that BYOD works for them.

BYOD requires a change in attitude – not just from the end-user’s perspective, but also to any organisation’s IT hierarchy.

Ultimately, I believe IT is now about promoting flexibility and supporting inclusivity and this is one way of encouraging this.

Next steps with BYOD

For more advice on BYOD and how it could put your organisation at the cutting edge, talk to one of our mobile technology experts at your local JISC Regional Support Centre.

Image courtesy of Isra Alonso on Flickr

With a very competitive business market and unemployability at high levels for young people, I believe it is important that we try to maximise educational opportunities and match learners’ skills with business needs as best as possible.

We need to ensure learners have the best possible chance of securing a job in the current marketplace and to do this I feel that the further education sector needs to develop a more holistic approach to employer engagement.  In my understanding the key to doing this successfully lies in the following steps:

1. Market analysis
2. Identifying course need
3. Implementing course design
4. Presentation and delivery of the course
5. Gathering feedback to inform future needs and requirements.

Employer engagement is an important part of this, as colleges can’t even begin to understand, never mind match, the needs of businesses without an open channel of communication.  To help maintain these relationships colleges need to build relationships with local businesses, and ensure the right systems are available for course cataloguing, promotion, bookings, and of course staff training and customer service.

I think it would be good to approach businesses on the basis of “no point in complaining that further education colleges can’t provide what you’re looking for if you don’t let them know what it is you’re looking for!”

The benefits of this approach for colleges would be a raised profile within the local community and hopefully with more targeted courses a rise in learner uptake. For learners, I would hope they would improve the chances of securing a job and have an increase in opportunity to participate in work experience placements during their training.

Well after I’ve got that off my chest, the question is what would the successful process of matching students and course development with employer needs look like?  I think it would mean cultural change within colleges, resulting in a new approach to employer responsiveness; equally it would be important to see employers responding to the challenge.

I believe much of this could be accomplished through the development of a single skills economy platform, but it would require concerted effort to get employers, learners and learning providers singing from the same hymn sheet. I work at Trainagain and we have recently been working with JISC to create a ‘Skills Dashboard’, which I think may be one of the possible solutions. It provides concise information on what courses are being offered where, and the type of courses people are searching for.

As we develop this dashboard I hope to incorporate an employer feedback loop into the process to gain an understanding of what training employers would like. I want to encourage employers to anonymously submit skills gaps information so that colleges can see the volume of demand for a particular skill and respond accordingly.  In my experience the need for this is a consistent theme from senior managers in further education, they wish to base their courses on the needs and skills required in the workplace.

The skills dashboard could create an online market place for the skills economy and offer colleges, employers and the wider community the opportunity to respond to supply and demand in a more immediate way than before.  This could make a significant difference to the way workforce development is approached.

I hope you have found my thoughts on this topic useful during National Colleges Week and please do contact me if you would like to discuss. Fingers crossed for the future.

Image courtesy of Fremlin on Flickr

I was working late in my office the other night, at Chesterfield College when there was a knock on the door.  Without waiting for an answer in strolled a furry looking chap who put the kettle on and settled himself down at my conference table.

“Who are you?” I asked puzzled.

“I’m curriculum,” he said with a toothy smile.

“No way,” I shook my head in denial, “curriculum has been deployed and is working hard in the classroom.”

“Ahh,” he said. “That’s my little brother the 2012/13 curriculum.  I’m the 2013/14 curriculum.”  He took his cap off and showed me his pointed ears and just for a second his eyes seemed to glow with a strange yellow hue.  “I’m bigger, badder and need to be Wolf compliant.”

If you are working in further education then it is time to look at your 2013/14 curriculum with a critical eye. The implications of the Wolf review of vocational education and the corresponding changes to funding methodology are significant and will form the cornerstone of your planning cycle.  Wolf requires providers to reconsider their mainstream provision and ensure it meets local and national needs.  Also to offer substantive programmes that don’t lead to ‘cul-de-sac’ qualifications while promoting English and maths, work placement and employability.

What can you do to prepare for the changes ahead?

Chesterfield College planning for 2012/13 was subject to a good practice case study for our innovative use of technology in securing an outstanding curriculum with significant efficiencies.  This year we have to go one better and secure a Wolf compliant curriculum with additional significant efficiencies.  We are starting from the ground up to build something fresh and innovative with the technology at our disposal.  It is exciting and exhilarating to build a curriculum with the power to transform lives and we are continuing to receive great support from the East Midlands RSC and curriculum network groups which have been assisting our innovations and ‘sense checking’ our developments.

I believe the key to building a strong curriculum is in the groundwork; good preparation and teamwork are everything.

So… if you sitting comfortably, I’ve provided what I hope is some helpful advice for senior managers.  Let’s begin.

1. Audit, Audit, Audit

How does your current curriculum stack up against your shadow allocation, and what the Wolf report requires? You might be lucky, you may be better off or see no change, but I’d be prepared to bet that it is an ugly picture for some providers and that there are some worried senior management teams up and down the land.

Audit your 2012/13 provision against the funding bands in the new methodology.  How many of your learners sit just below a funding band?  What could you do to gently topple them over?  Have you planned for rolling starts throughout the year to increase your participation number?  How will you build this into the 2013/14 plan?

Top Tip – Think about which teams you’re going to need extra support from such as your management information systems (MIS) team and forewarn them that you’ll need their time.

2. Substantive Long Programmes

Are all your full time programmes substantive?  Even those little awards and certificates that you think no-one will notice?  Your programmes need to be substantive and coherent.  If you have been maximising your standard learner numbers (SLN) you now have some hard choices to make in terms of what to keep and what to remove.  The ‘perverse incentives’ to funding short courses often referred to by government always seemed to me like a fabulous opportunity to provide learners with a top notch suite of qualifications which made them more employable.  Have you looked at the implications of the loss of these qualifications of your 2013/14 staffing analysis?

Top Tip – Look at the implications of the funding methodology on staffing before your middle managers start too.  You may need to be ready to field some tough questions.

3. Labour Market Intelligence (LMI)

Are you using effective labour market intelligence to inform your curriculum choices? How do you explain all those hairdressers you are training then?  Robust LMI is now at the heart of an effective curriculum and should inform your choices about what to launch and what to retire.  You need to gather significant LMI from a variety of external and internal sources.  You can’t just roll over the same curriculum you’ve always had with annual ‘tweaks’ – it is the educational equivalent of putting go faster stripes on an Austin Allegro.  Your learners and employers deserve better than this.

Top Tip – Don’t reinvent the wheel, the Skills Sector Councils hold significant amounts of up to date LMI, use it to your advantage.

4. English and maths

What does your maths and English provision look like?  Are your functional skills success rates outstanding or crying in a corner after being beaten up by the GCSE bullies?  You need to ensure your 2013/14 curriculum has English and maths written all the way through like a stick of Skegness rock.  Ensure all learners are given the opportunity to develop their English and maths skills via comprehensive and inclusive GCSE provision, stand alone qualifications and functional skills.  If you have high proportions of learners who already have GCSEs at grade C or above then offer them the opportunity to extend their knowledge with an AS alongside their main provision.

Top tip – Don’t assume because learners have grade C or above you don’t have a responsibility to stretch them further.

5. Work placements

Under Wolf more learners than ever will be required to undertake work placements.  How are you going to plan for this, especially with hard to engage sectors, such as construction?  Are your work placement protocols and systems ready for significant growth?  You need to ensure your local environment has sufficient opportunities for placements and plan accordingly.  Nothing will annoy employers more than multiple departments calling to secure work placements with zero coordination between them.

Top Tip – Use your customer relationship management tool wisely.

And my final piece of advice would be to highlight the best defence against the big bad Wolf.  Don’t build a curriculum made of straw!

Find out how your local RSC could help you.

Read the Wolf report.

See our case study.

Read our blog on embedding digital literacy into your curriculum.

Advice and guidance on how to keep your curriculum relevant at a time of rapid change.

Image courtesy of Fremlin on Flickr.

Part of my role at JISC’s Regional Support Centre in Yorkshire & Humber has been to work in partnership with RSC colleagues and learning providers nationally, and together we have developed the Digital Literacies Organisational Review tool. This empowers you to take an approach which encompasses every department and allows you to review how digital literacies are embedded across the organisation, from strategy to practice.

Although this may sound like another job for the to-do list, the benefits of placing digital literacies at the heart of your organisation, in my opinion, far outweigh the effort.  Benefits include:

• Preparing students for the workplace by developing their digital competencies
• Improving the quality of teaching and learning by offering more flexible and engaging models of delivery
• Informing staff’s continual professional development needs to ensure that they are empowered to help learners make best use of technology
• Contributing towards a safe and responsible learning environment, minimising the risks of cyberbullying and inappropriate online behaviours
• Supporting senior managers to develop strategies focusing on digital literacies that join-up good practice across the organization, these could include and online curriculum.

At the moment we are piloting this tool.  We recently visited Solihull College and Sue McGregor, their Director of Curriculum said: “The Digital Literacy Organisational Review was thought provoking and produced some clear and immediate actions to help us move forward.”

If you would like to take part in testing the Digital Literacies Organisational Review at your organization, please don’t hesitate to contact your local RSC to discuss this further.   Alternatively, you can also find out more about how our network of Regional Support Centres can support your organisation with digital literacy by following @JISCRSCDigLit on Twitter or by visiting our website.

For me I see the greatest improvements in learners when they develop their own digital abilities and they are able to control their own use of technology.

As part of National Colleges Week I thought it might be useful to share with you a little about how we have not only improved our learners’ digital literacy, but how us as teachers have also benefited too.

As teachers we were keen to break down barriers and increase access to IT and digital devices.  We wanted to open up IT and not only help our students develop skills to benefit them in the future, but also to help us as educators develop new digital skills and understanding.

Having looked at some options the ‘In-folio’ project at JISC TechDis appeared to be the ideal vehicle for channeling a digital literacy project.  ‘In-folio’ is an e-portfolio developed specifically for students with learning needs; it was clear, adaptable and allowed significant flexibility in how it could be used.

For us it was important ‘in-folio’ fulfilled the needs of both our curriculum team and the students.  When we were looking at this we were also introducing online Personal Learning Plans (PLP) across the college.  In-folio allowed each learner to have their own PLP which could be a shared by the tutors, so ‘student goals’ could be identified and progress monitored during termly meetings.

The ‘in-folio’ system is now in use and over 150 student profiles are loaded onto tutor pages ready for rollout across a whole group of colleges in Wales who we have been working with.   The students each create a personal profile with photographs and update information about their hobbies and interests.  They create other tabs as their course requires and build up image collections, a ‘scrap book’ of images and photographs which they can then add to.

Another development is that our students now also work together with other colleges on a joint newsletter and create file which are uploaded to their ‘in-folio’ as evidence of their participation.

I’ve found it incredibly rewarding working together, contributing and using technology independently and creatively.  Feedback in these early stages is very positive with ease of use highlighted again and again.  This system removes barriers and allows students to own their development and develop their skills through this ownership – ultimately with some excellent results!

I hope you’ve found this helpful and if you are interested in running a similar project in your college I would suggest contacting your local JISC’s Regional Support Centre for more information.

I work at Somerset College as research & library services manager and many of my colleagues may ask – ‘Is it worth creating various interactive tutorials or embedding other media with the use of digital tools for the sake of a one hour session?’

Let’s be honest here, learners rarely master research or referencing skills in a one hour library instruction session. The sheer amount of information all around them in different types and formats may even leave them more overwhelmed. Alongside this, the numerous methods of referencing information sources can turn learners to the web, (sites like Neil’s Toolbox, for example), and without the proper understanding of how citation works in real terms or what it consists of this is not always a good thing.

This has been helped at some colleges by the induction of an integrated study skills module into the curriculum; this means that librarians are delivering library instruction sessions throughout the academic year. Although, this is not the case everywhere and library staff are often heard saying that getting numerous library instruction sessions booked in for learners would ‘eat away’ at precious tutorial time with their lecturers.

I believe that there are two areas where we can teach learners how to use library materials and reference usage correctly:

• Create effective communication to enhance participation
• Support a learner-centred/interactive approach to activities enhanced by the use of technologies.

Here are some thoughts on how we can help make this happen:

• Communication is fundamental and it does create transformation, awareness about libraries and their services gets cascaded to learners via academic staff almost instantaneously.  In my experience most colleges have staff development departments or units, as they are sometimes called, that can help with organising training sessions for academics. How about thinking of a cunning title that will encourage curiosity and ultimately better attendance (we called one of ours ‘Library at Your Fingertips’)
• Another idea…… librarians ‘roving’ around with tablets (iPad, Samsung Galaxy or their equivalents) and mingling amongst learners and staff demonstrating library resources in less traditional learning environments (see University of Huddersfield’s Project 2012: The Roving Librarian)
• As for teaching materials, rather than venturing into the vastness of cyberspace in search of ready-made tutorials, it can be rather satisfying to create your own that can turn a traditional library instruction into an interactive learning experience. Such tutorials, if uploaded onto a virtual learning environment (VLE), can be particularly helpful in reaching a large number of learners 24/7. What’s more – they are also tailored to individual learning needs and their study levels. Creating an envisioned tutorial through the use of freely available Web 2.0 digital technologies can be a huge accomplishment for librarians and learners alike.  Read our full case study for more information
• At Somerset College our latest development with harnessing technologies involves the use of e-clickers. A vital feature of the TV games’ shows such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Jeopardy! are now mimicked during the referencing and research teaching sessions. The use of e-clickers helps to engage learners during their library instruction and results in an increased participation and competitiveness with their peers. Instant feedback provided on screen helps librarians assess learners’ understanding of the subject matter during the session.
• Involving learners in creating tutorials could improve their digital literacy development and employability skills. In doing this you could also be enhancing your own technical skills.

College libraries are always on the lookout for new emerging technologies to see how they can be utilised in improving library instruction and the learning experience. JISC RSC South West has been pivotal in helping us with researching and implementing new technologies as well as showcasing best practice in their use across the academic region. The JISC RSC South West has been key in providing that all-round continuity!

Here are a number of tips which I feel can help researchers make use of social media and related online activities to maximise the visibility of their research papers.

These are based on my personal experiences and I’ve learnt a lot through trying to make my own papers more visible:

1. Be pro-active:

For example, for the delivery of a recent paper, the co-authors agreed a plan on how to inform the members of our professional networks.  We uploaded the paper to the institutional repository and included the URL on our presentation slides, which were then uploaded to Slideshare (an online resource for sharing slides) shortly before the presentation.  This meant that could write blog posts with appropriate short URLs available in advance, which we could use whilst we responded to questions on social media channels such as Twitter during the presentation.  The key is to find the opportunities you have to promote your work and then make sure you maximise these by being prepared.

2. Monitor what works:

Monitor where people are getting your report from to find out the best channels for promoting it. A good way to do this is through usage statistics.  Look at Slideshare and YouTube views and Google Analytics (which can tell you how many visits you have had to a page and track where they are coming from).  Websites like Topsy provide statistics on URL usage and Twitter hashtags (these mark your work on a subject area and mean you can monitor twitter responses and activity).  Topsy can also provide comparisons with previous work and approaches taken by your peers.

3. Make it easy for readers:

Make it easy for those who are interested in your research to access your research by providing links to the papers.  Remember that they’ll want to read the paper and not the metadata about the paper, so provide direct links to the paper or key parts of it.  You may find that readers view your papers in mobile devices – perhaps even in bed!  So consider making your paper available in a mobile-friendly format such as HTML (this is the ‘language’ that web pages are written in).

4. Don’t forget the links:

Between 50-80% of traffic to institutional repositories come from Google.  A good way to ensure you come up near the top of a search is to use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques, making sure key words in the content are placed effectively to increase web traffic.  For papers hosted in open access repositories you will probably not be able to address ‘on-the-page SEO’ – tailoring the content or headings.  Therefore it will be important to provide ‘off-the-page SEO’ – links to the repository item.

5. Encourage feedback and discussion:

Unlike repositories, social media stories are often decided by support feedback and discussion.  We can exploit this feature by being involved with these discussions, use it as an opportunity to answer questions or correct mistakes and ask for feedback.

6. Develop your network:

Seek to grow your network and create new contacts. For example, conferences that you attend may have their own Twitter hashtag (which people can search by to find out information on the event).  This provides you with an ideal opportunity to develop your Twitter network.  You could follow other researchers who have similar interests to yourself, or tweet about the conference.

7. Understand your social media network:

Understanding who is getting to your information and how is key to successful promotion, and is the same with social media.  Twitter analytics tools such as SocialBro can provide insights into your network, by showing you who your followers are.

8. Know your limits in the social media environment:

‘Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Academia.edu, YouTube… I haven’t got the time!’  Remember that you can’t expect to make use of every social web service which is available.  Prioritise channels based on relevance and the potential to reach your key audiences.  Analysing these channels will help you to prioritise.

9. Seek improvements:

Reflect on your use of social media and online services and identify improvements you can make.  If things aren’t working, change it!

10. And finally my top piece of advice… participate!

If you’re not there you can’t reap the benefits!

I hope these tips are helpful.  More information can be found in the slides I used for my presentation in Open Access week or on my blog.

Brian Kelly works for the Innovation Support Centre at UKOLN, based at the University of Bath.

Data from OpenDOAR (an authoritative worldwide directory of academic open access repositories)

As Heather Morrison describes in her blog post, there is plenty to celebrate in the continuing growth of open access.

Here at JISC we have been supporting emerging open access practices for over a decade. We’re busy building services and communities to support universities to respond to the changing landscape of education and research on a global, networked scale.

This week we has been highlighting some of the recent work that supports developments in open access and helps to raise awareness of the tools available:

• Watch our JISC open trailer and find out what open can do for you for the future
• Explore CORE the JISC-funded place to visit for open access research papers from across the world
• Hear how Open Education Resources could help your part-time tutors in our podcast
• Take a look at JISCs animation to find out about open data licensing
• Senior managers: find out what we can do for you by exploring our open education resource info kits
• Caren Milloy, Head of Projects at JISC Collections is exploring open access to save monographs, the question is – how?
• Read a blog post on the UK’s contribution to the European progress of open access from Rachel Bruce, digital infrastructure innovation director at JISC.

Key themes in the global discussion around International Open Access Week this year for education and research seem to be:

• the potential of opening up communications for greater public engagement and impact
• the relationship with open educational resources and concepts of digital learning and research
• the various approaches emerging to academic publishing; such as green, gold, self-publishing and new forms of journals
• the issues around opening up research data
• the renewed focus on Creative Commons licensing options into open access research articles

There is so much happening that it can be difficult to keep track of! What do you think the challenges and opportunities are for #openfutures?

… You could be thinking about challenges – how do we ensure we can benefit from text mining?

… You could be thinking about new aspects of open – will designs for 3D printers become an important area for exploring the potential of open approaches; do universities need to focus more on open innovation?

… You could be thinking about how to scale up good practice in areas like open educational resources?

There has been great progress and there is a lot to celebrate but we recognise there is also a lot to do and we want to ensure that JISC can help the sector realise the benefits offered by an open future…

Comment on this post or tweet with the #openfutures by 3pm GMT today and we will report back this afternoon!

The aim of the workshop was to collaborate with our counterparts in Europe to achieve the vision and recommendations identified in the European Commission Communication on open access and the preservation of scientific information.  As summarised by my colleague Paul Stokes, what the Communication asks is that:

• Research and funding policies which reflect the new open and linked digital world.
• Policies that are defined at a national and sub-national level.
• A robust and interconnected e-infrastructure is required to improve preservation & access to scientific information.
• A suitable new solution which needs to be established to support the transition in publication methods and emerging scientific processes.

The key principles of the Communication are:

All publicly funded research should be made available through open access as early as possible.

• That this should be underpinned by robust preservation.
• Business will benefit from access to research.

It’s imperative for Europe to work together to realise these aims and this was something all delegates seemed dedicated to achieve.  Experts at the meeting tackled open access, open research data and preservation.  A range of issues were raised where further collaboration, and in some cases coordination, is required.  These were naturally from the policy, infrastructure provider and information professional perspective – after all we were discussing implementing the Communication recommendations at a national level and moving the underpinning infrastructure forward to support policy.

The Commission wants to help Europe make progress and recommend a coordinated follow-up to their recommendations through “national points of reference”.   It is early days, a survey of workshop participants asked if they had or intended to appoint a national point of reference.

• 29% indicated that a national point of reference had been appointed already
• Of the 71% who haven’t yet appointed a national point of reference, 54% expressed an intention to appoint one.

However, thinking about the change in the practice of research is also very important.  How can you marry the policy direction with research practice?  Of course many researchers are undertaking open research and are also involved in curation of their outputs.  However, in order to make a more wholesale change the need to address the issue of incentives was raised; how can researchers be incentivised to make their research open access, whether it is the data or the final paper, and how can they fulfil the curation needs required to fulfil the aspirations of the communication?

A critical area of importance that the research data group focused on was the issue of skills, and the fact that digital data management requires a set of skills that are not yet widely developed and practised.  There have been developments in this area (for one example see the  JISC research data programme) but it was believed by the experts that the skills of both information professionals and researchers needs more attention if the aim of open access data is to be realised.  Discussion focused on the need for recognised qualifications for information professionals, training for early career researchers; and librarians and scientists working together on data management.

One of the aims of the workshop was to start to identify areas where collaboration and co-ordination might help member states achieve the goals of the Communication.  Generally there were a lot areas raised where exchange of knowledge would be valuable, but rather than a new forum being required it was felt there are already mechanisms, although in some cases these might need further resource.

For example, in the area of open access for publications discussion indicated that working through existing fora on sharing what works in national transition models and financial arrangements for transition to Open Access should be possible.  However, a gap which no obvious existing body fulfilled was identified; this was the area of specific infrastructure for Open Access.  The discussion concluded there is a requirement for further work on identifying both the needs, and addressing sustainability and governance arrangements for Open Access infrastructure.

The workshop has started to raise the profile of the need to further address European collaboration and coordination, whether it is through mechanisms based on the national points of reference or ensuring existing forums seek to further address the recommendations.  I believe that Europe does need to work on these issues collaboratively to remain competitive and the Communication offers a framework for this.

Knowledge Exchange and the European e-Infranet project hosted the workshop with 60 participants from across a wide range of European member states.

You can’t wait to have the book in your hands and show your mum, flaunt it under the nose of the VC and place it on your bookshelf. Yes it’s going to look great in your new office and the citations will start flowing soon. Yep. This is the beginning of….

Oh no wait, what’s that? It only sold 30 copies, worldwide.

In the last ten years, library print book purchasing expenditure has declined from 11.9% of their overall budgets in 1999 to 8.4% in 2009 (RIN, 2010). The average number of sales of monographs to libraries has declined from around 2,000 in 1980 to around 200 in the early years of this century (Willinsky, 2009)

This creates two problems for researchers. First, it decreases the number of readers with access to individual monographs, meaning that the flow of knowledge that underpins research is compromised. Second, it means that many scholarly monographs become economically unviable, leading to concerns that publishers may select titles based primarily upon the potential for sales rather than scholarly worth.

So how do we…

a) Keep the monograph alive to allow humanities and social science researchers to present considered arguments

b) Help increase readership to foster new connections and research, and

c) Find an economic model to sustain the publishing and dissemination of monographs – in both electronic and print.

These are some of the questions we are trying to answer in our open access monograph project –  OAPEN-UK being managed by JISC Collections. What if your monograph was available online for free for everyone to read as a PDF or in HTML and in addition libraries and academics could still purchase print (60% of academics still prefer print) or e-book editions if they wanted them? There would be no limits on who can read your book – discoverable to all through online search engines and the sales of the print could support the sustainability of the Open Access version. And of course each book is put through the same peer review processes that normal print books are – you could even experiment with open peer review – or get input from fellow colleagues as you write.

This is the model we are exploring in OAPEN-UK with 58 monographs matched into pairs – half available in OA and half available through standard methods. We are gathering sales, usage and citation data to assess performance – do the OA titles get more usages and sales than the control group titles?

In addition we are gathering data on perceptions, attitudes and priorities and processes to help us work out how a move to OA publishing may work. We recently did a survey of HSS academics – and had around 700 responses. Here are some of the highlights:

• Only 50% of researchers are aware of OA and only 30% familiar with it.
• Around 50% of researchers think it is ok to make a profit from OA publishing as long as that profit goes back into supporting the discipline or making more OA content available – 20% think you can make a profit and use it however you like and 20% think that you can make a profit but only to cover costs.
• Almost 80% would prefer the most restrictive Creative Comms licence, but what is interesting is that the responses show that researchers are more concerned about protecting their work than it being used commercially.
• 60% had read a monograph in the last couple of days – 39% had bought it and 33% had got it via the library
• Early career academics are more willing to consider self-publishing than later career researchers.
• 397 that had published a mono, book chapter or co-authored a mono since 2000 where interviewed. The authors picked their publishers because 1st they are good at disseminating to the right audience, 2nd cause they have good QA process, 3rd cause they are the best in their filed and 4th because they were the only ones interested!
• Phd students were more likely to rely on the library that late career academics
• Print still dominates reading preferences but less so for early career academics
• Perception of the group was that open access will have negative impacts on quality, reputation and reward but will be brilliant for availability and efficiency – so clearly any open access model really has to address quality and think about impacts in terms of the REF and reputations. Oh and no one really cares about royalties!

You can view all the results of the survey at: http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/research-findings/researchersurvey/

You can also read about focus groups with publishers, research funders, librarians, learned societies and ebook aggregators at: http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/research-findings/y1-initial-focus-groups/

We are doing lots and lots of research so stay involved by following us on @oapenuk or visiting the OAPEN-UK website at: http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/, or by joining us at events: http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/events/

The key findings from the AoC report highlight:

‘The ability of Colleges to implement the education policy agenda, and deliver the required policy outcomes, relies… on the ability to manage the deployment of that technology in ways that best meets the specific requirements of the individual College. In particular this requires:

• Relevant and structured staff training in the use of technology across the curriculum
• A whole College approach to strategic planning in the use of technology;
• Representation on senior management team (SMT) for the development of technology strategy
• Efficient purchasing that takes into account collaborative initiatives such as shared services and migration of some services to ‘cloud’ technologies
• Technology resourcing as a core function of College business processes
• Specific funding for the development of e-learning.

Some of these findings will be of no surprise to us working within JISC’s Regional Support Centres (RSCs), who support colleges with advice and guidance on how to best use technology, as we too are finding similar issues.  We work to both advocate and support UK learning providers with how they can adopt ‘A whole College approach to strategic planning in the use of technology’. We do this through eProgress Reviews and other consultations that put technology in the context of a college’s overall business.

We recognise that if we are to fully exploit the potential of technology to help Colleges meet their strategic objectives ‘technology strategy’ must be considered at the highest level in the organisation along with Business Strategy.  We regularly support senior management to review their ‘technology strategy, offering advice and guidance based on our experience of the very best practice the sector has to offer’.  An example of such an approach can be found with Liverpool Community College.

Our network of 12 RSCs will continue to advocate and support College’s ‘Relevant and structured staff training in the use of technology across the curriculum’ by providing inspiration, support and training to those charged with providing Continuous Professional Development and supporting others to use technology effectively in delivering the curriculum.  We are supporting those developing the next generation of teachers to ensure that technology is not an afterthought but an integral part of their development.

By creating and sustaining forums and networks of collaborative practice, often using collaborative social networking tools as well as the tried and tested JISCMail supporting Colleges and other learning providers to consider and enter into collaborative initiatives, exploiting technology to share services and to get the best deal from technology and what the Cloud has to offer.  JISC and Janet themselves are, of course, trailblazing as services shared by the sector.

Our recent investment in 32 projects in the FE and Skills sector is testament to its commitment to support ‘Specific funding for the development of e-learning’ and RSCs will be helping to disseminate the findings of these projects so the whole sector can improve and make the most of what technology, wisely deployed, has to offer.

The report also identified that the areas in which the use of technology is perceived to be the least effective are:

• Widening participation
• Reducing digital exclusion
• Engaging students with disabilities and/or learning difficulties
• Improving retention and achievement.

These findings show that although we work hard to support Colleges and other learning providers to make sure technology is more effective in these areas, we still have a lot of work to do to ensure that colleges make the most of our guidance and advice.  JISC RSCs are regularly demonstrating how a variety of technologies can be used to reach out to different communities and widen participation, and how digital exclusion can be reduced by effective procurement and the use of Open Source Software and Open content. Along with JISC TechDis, RSCs are supporting Colleges and others in ‘Engaging students with disabilities and/or learning difficulties’.

If you’d like to know more about how we can support your college or learning provider visit http://www.jiscrsc.ac.uk/

Very quickly students have to learn how to live and gain their education unaided, without the constant pressure, nagging and help that parents provide.  We instead all eventually turn to technology for help.  I can honestly say that for the last year it has been my trustworthy laptop that has raised and nurtured me.  Universities therefore have been continually developing to provide the best programming, sites and systems to make sure that we, their new ‘children’, can easily mature and thrive.

My generation is fortunate to have been raised in a century of technology, where if you don’t know how to use a laptop, mobile phone and iPod by the age of fifteen it is considered bizarre.  However, when it comes to using digital technology for University education, it is surprising as to how similar it is to when I gave a mobile to my grandmother.  As students, we are taught the basics and yet that is where most of us (like my grandmother) give up.

However, there is a whole diverse world of digital information that can ease our lives, improve our knowledge and assist us in our daily duties.  If only my granny had been able to discover the wonders of Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia, I’m sure her days would have been more fulfilling and improved much like my quality of life at University.  My point here is that after the first few months of adjusting and struggling with the new, seemingly impossible build up of work, I began to explore what the internet could really do.

Aladdin’s treasure trove of information was opened to me.  Through the University portal I could access the online library filled with free journals that I could easily search and use, which really improved the quality of my work.  No longer did I have to back up my poorly argued essays with made up and often incorrect evidence but I could research and quote known authors.

Through VLE Blackboard I could go onto modules message boards and yell at team members who weren’t pulling their weight, or view important announcements made by lecturers (that I had not listened to as they were said in the last five minutes of class).  I even found that social network sites, of which I had previously spent what seemed like my life on, were surprising me with answers to my questions that I had hash-tagged #HELP!!!

Finally University’s burden seemed to ease and I can’t stress how important the access to digital information helped this.  From timetabling being my new mum shouting at me to go to lectures; to Google being my dad, though with far more accurate answers to questions; Twitter being my new brother giving me annoying updates but often with interesting points; and my sister being the VLE giving me last minute help in my states of sudden panic.

So, with A-Levels recently revealed I wish luck to the new first year students and pass on my wisdom that as unlikely as it seems, you can survive without your family, on your own and be independent, through the help gained by exploring the digital world.

Amy is currently in her second year of studying English and Classical Literature at the University of Leeds.

I intend to give a view across the sector, pulling together changes in research and in teaching from our colleagues in the field, and showing how the ‘“Wikipedia” way’ supports those emerging trends in practice.  For example, JISC has already been involved in improving Wikipedia entries by getting academics and Wikipedians together – as you can see from this blog post by my colleague Sarah Fahmy.

easel.ly

Martin Poulter, who is organising the conference, told me: “This is the first Eduwiki conference and hopefully the first of many.  We see immense mutual benefits in working with educators and academics and really welcome the involvement of the Jisc community.”
I’m keen to widen the circle, too.  Some key questions that we’re looking at to help lead institutions through the changing scholarly process include:

How can students and researchers make best use of Wikipedia?  And importantly, how do they verify and cite their reading?
What’s different about the way people approach the scholarship on Wikipedia?
How can universities and colleges use that platform to raise the profile of their work?
How does the Wikipedia approach to openness impact on the way people are doing their research and reading online?

I’d welcome your thoughts.

As learners become more discerning about their choice of course they will make use of services such as Unistats to compare courses and the learning experiences of previous students.

From the 24 September 2012 when Unistats launch their new website these statistics will also include Key Information Sets (KIS), a breakdown of student satisfaction, graduate outcomes, learning and teaching activities, assessment methods, tuition fees and student finance, accommodation and professional accreditation.

Designing responsive curriculum and creating learning experiences that really engage students as well as building their skills for the workplace can help you attract learners. But how do you go about redesigning your curriculum; and how can technology help?

Listening to the experiences of Manchester Metropolitan University and Birmingham City University in the latest edition of JISC on Air, it is obvious that student experience has been a key factor in their new curriculum developments, but that they have also found it equally important to consider how the processes and IT systems will also need to change.

When it comes to making sure your courses are responsive to the changing needs of learners is it best to work from grass roots or do you need a top down approach where senior management take the lead?

Each university has taken a different approach to tackling curriculum change projects but both their experiences highlight that whichever direction you take, it is going to mean a major organisational change.

Birmingham City University share their experience of engaging with key stakeholders and how they have empowered staff to take ownership of the process to improve courses, providing staff with guidance in the form of ‘a rough guide to curriculum design’. This was a grass roots approach, which has led to a gradual series of changes to the curriculum over time.

In contrast Manchester Metropolitan University have been through a period of rapid change to transform curriculum through assessment. Their programme has been driven from the top by their deputy vice-chancellor for student experience. Aiming to improve student satisfaction and strengthen their position, they implemented a new virtual learning environment and new learning spaces.  The university saw how technology could enrich the curriculum because by adding online learning resources students could access them via a range of mobile devices ‘anytime, anywhere’. This suits learners who are often juggling paid employment with study, where time is precious.

What’s clear is that for both universities two factors were key to success: firstly, getting buy-in from those who would need to lead the change, either senior management or academic staff, and secondly, focusing on the student benefit to motivate staff.  To find out more about these different experiences listen to the latest edition of JISC on Air. This is available to listen to online or download from iTunes.

Listen now to the podcast now
Episode 8: Curriculum change: designing for the future (Duration: 23:29)

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image by Joseph Hart

JISC and Research Councils UK (RCUK) are announcing new coordinated work which will ease the burden on universities of reporting research outcomes.

As UK universities face increasing demands to share information with other sector bodies, it is more important than ever that their research reporting systems talk to one another, to ensure their data is accessible and can be collected and processed without duplication.

During the academic year 2012-13, JISC and RCUK will be working to ensure that systems will interoperate to maximise benefits for universities, researchers and other sector bodies. These systems include: the Research Councils’ Research Outcomes System, ResearchFish (formerly e-Val), and the forthcoming Gateway to Research – a system to be used by members of the public to access information on research funded by the Research Councils; JISC’s RepositoryNet+ and research management shared service projects; and HEFCE’s REF collection system.

One way these systems can work together is by using a single data ‘language’ or standard– such as the Common European Research Information Format, CERIF, an approach that is compatible with systems in many UK universities.

To support universities with this approach, JISC is funding a new CERIF support person to work with them to help ensure they can implement this standard consistently and fully benefit from its interoperability. Both HEFCE and the Research Councils have already been working with this post.

Universities can also share data by using a simpler option designed especially for information about research outputs – such as the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) which is used to collect the metadata of the records in the archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives.  Other approaches like SPARQL, a query language for databases able to retrieve and manipulate data stored in Resource Description Framework (RDF) format, are also being used.

JISC and Research Councils UK, repository representatives and others will make sure that universities can send information from an institutional repository to the research system using this simpler option by 2013 through a new project at UKOLN, based at the University of Bath, which will work out the schema for such an option and software for universities to use.

Astrid Wissenburg, deputy chair of the RCUK Impact Group, said: “The UK higher education and research sector has a unique opportunity to improve the ways in which research management and reporting systems interact with each other. Researchers, universities and funders have a common interest in ensuring that research outputs are visible to demonstrate the impact of UK research, using institutional and subject repositories alongside more sophisticated research information systems. In either case, it is important that these interoperate effectively with the systems operated by research funders and others.”

In my opinion, an improvement of this kind would contribute to sector efficiencies, and to the availability of accurate information to inform planning and research management, as well as to easing the reporting burden on researchers.

A consensus view seems to be emerging that we will need to support all of these approaches to interoperability over the medium term, as they offer people different benefits. However, we anticipate that universities will steadily move towards using the CERIF standard over the longer term – which is why we’re funding the important CERIF support post.

And that brings me to our recent decision in the University of Edinburgh to join our colleagues in North America and offer our own MOOCs – or massive open online courses – through the Coursera consortium.

It has been a very busy few weeks. After taking the in principle decision, there has been a tsunami of sorting the legals (you might be surprised at how much of this there is when you place your courses with another organisation, even if those courses are free!); choosing the MOOCs to develop; making sure we have enough capacity for shooting a lot of short videos in a tight timeframe; informing senior colleagues and University Court; organising publicity and responses to queries – at times it has felt over-whelming.

I must acknowledge here my academic colleagues for their enthusiastic response to our search for suitable MOOCs, and my real indebtedness to two of my staff, Sarah Gormley and Amy Woodgate, who have worked tirelessly on the big stuff and on the details.

So, why did we decide to ‘go MOOC’? My colleagues and I have been watching MOOC developments since their earliest days, aware that they offer interesting opportunities to explore new ‘educational spaces’ in which the scale goes way beyond large on-campus classes, and where assessment has to be thought about differently.

Of course, much of what we are designing is based upon experience with technology for on-campus courses and for our expanding range of fully online taught Masters programmes, and technology in our open LLL/CPD courses, but nevertheless it does have different dimensions. Over the years JISC has helped enormously, with our participation and learning from others through programmes in pedagogy, learner experience, open content etc – its easy to forget that, because so much knowledge just becomes internalised.

For me, MOOCs sit as part of current thinking in open educational practices (OER, OCW, OERu, connectivism etc) – ways to flex and bend the constraints that much of our traditional HE formats impose on us, and on our learners. Currently, we are exploring some of this in an EC project OERtest, especially routes to offer credit for OER/OCW/MOOC-based learning. Out of the MOOCs we expect to learn about different course designs, to reach learners from a much wider base than normal, and of course, there is reputational value for us too.

So, the preparedness was there – the big decisions were How?, With partners or solo?, and When (early adoptor or mainstream)? An invitation to join Coursera, extended by Daphne Koller to our Vice Chancellor Tim O’Shea (Chair of JISC Board) whilst he was on study leave in California, gave us the opportunity to answer all those questions, and we decided after some brief but intense reflection that now was the time and with peers in the US was the route.

This meant that we didn’t need to build our own infrastructure but could concentrate on the pedagogy and course construction.

We shall offer our courses *as a university* rather than from individual academic staff working without our support or formal involvement. We will quality assure all our courses to ensure appropriate quality. They will be short (5 weeks in the first instance) as we feel these learners may find sustained study at a distance hard going (as do those on taught online courses), and we will also stick to first year undergraduate level.

What did it cost, and is it sustainable? As with all online courses, the costs are front-loaded but even more so for MOOCs of this type, where the delivery cost (especially teaching) is low. We will spend effort and money on all our courses to get them to the right quality. We didn’t find that we had most of what we needed to hand to ‘re-arrange the pieces’ to form MOOCs, so we are going back to the design stage and creating new where necessary. One example is video lectures; we do have lots of 50 min video lectures but they really are not what we want to offer – we want shorter, focused segments with associated study and assessment. Ditto for assessment. So, it isn’t cheap for the typical university course to ‘go MOOC’. On the other hand, no knowledge is free and as we wish to explore this space, we feel the return will be worthwhile to us, and to those who take our MOOCs.

How will we sustain it? The model is to share with Coursera of the modest charge for the ‘certificates of completion’, and we will use that income to pay for our support for learners, offered in the light-touch form that these types of MOOC use. It should break even!

And for the future? I am cautious as to where the ‘MOOC movement’ will go. Some of the wilder speculation about ‘free online degrees’ and the ‘end of HE as we know it’ doesn’t help serious debate. Currently we know little about MOOC learners, about how to design and deliver successfully in a range of subjects, and most importantly at a range of levels (eg final year undergrad). Is the experience helpful to learners, and do they get value from their certificates of completion? Much more research is needed, and perhaps JISC might find this a useful area in which to support the UK HE community.

I can see openings where MOOCs might find a useful place in HE – enabling those in less privileged HE settings to access courses in subjects that they cannot take, individuals with weak formal qualifications who might demonstrate competences at advanced levels as part of portfolios for recognition of prior learning, as a more formal way to learn for those ‘just interested in that subject’, and for teachers in universities to pick up new ideas as to how to teach and learn online.

MOOCs won’t suit everyone, any more than on-campus courses or distance education suits everyone but extending the menu of choices is valuable. They may not be suitable for all subjects.

I am sure the next few months up to launch of our courses and then through first delivery will be fun, and also hard work. I am really looking forward to it, and I must continue to resist the temptation to keep checking how many thousands of people have registered interest

The EC’s position supports OA to research papers encouraging both Green and Gold routes, in line with recent proposals from the UK Research Councils. It seeks to address the sustainability issues relating to increased subscriptions as well as accelerating the benefits of digital distribution on the web.

The Communication nicely expresses some of advantages as helping to:

“accelerate innovation (faster to market = faster growth); foster collaboration and avoid duplication of effort (greater efficiency); build on previous research results (improved quality of results); involve citizens and society (improved transparency of the scientific process).”

Research data is also addressed, as you’d expect.  The EC proposes that they will implement a pilot with regard to research data deposit in a similar vein to their previous OA pilot to publications. It recommends that research data from publicly funded research is publicly accessible and re-usable. These are welcome proposals, and I think JISC can support universities in the UK in response to them.

The other communication – A Reinforced European Research Area Partnership for Excellence and Growth (pdf) – sees open access to publications and research data as essential and encourages open innovation between what they term the “knowledge triangle”, research, business and education. It’s great to see that the EC have brought together open access to research, alongside the development of research infrastructures (see their roadmap) to support world class research and facilities and collaborations with business, small and medium size enterprises  and wider society. This is a major contribution to achieving a thriving European economy, as well as sustainable research production and use. This reflects the UK department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) policies on Research and Innovation and the Strategic Vision for UK e-Infrastructure (pdfs).

As I say there have been several key policy documents in the last month or so, the Royal Society ‘Science as an Open Enterprise’, the UK Government open data white paper and the Finch report: expanding access to research publications, all of which suggest concerted movement toward a more open research environment.

So what about implementation of these policies for UK universities?

Open access

In terms of OA to articles JISC is working on practical implementation in partnership with other stakeholders:

• for example JISC Collections can support the licensing recommendations in the Finch report and the JISC development of repository services is underway via EDINA working with universities and research funders.

• In the UK transition to OA, maintaining an efficient and competitive scholarly publishing market is important. Key processes, such as peer review and academic publishing, must be sustained and evolve, and incentives will be needed to enable all stakeholders to play their part. Importantly, progress toward open access to UK published research will need to be measured. Methodologies for this purpose are being developed in the UK by the Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG).

• On behalf of OAIG, the Wellcome Trust and JISC are working to specify the role of an intermediary in enhancing the management of ‘gold’ article processing charges (APC’s); this is seen as a key role in the transition. Recently the OAIG report Going for Gold? shows economic modelling of OA adoption: it looks at both Green and Gold and finds that with worldwide Gold OA, all universities would see savings if article processing charges were at the current average levels.

Open data and software

The Royal Society report makes the case for open inquiry being at the centre of scientific enterprise; it calls for data to be “intelligently open” – more on that later.  Open data and software are themes in the EC communications, and in the UK we’re seeing policies from research funders and universities on these issues.

Last week the Software Sustainability Institute hosted a workshop at OR12 in Edinburgh where the early plans for a software repository for NERC research was discussed. In order to replicate and access data for research often the software used for related simulations and analysis have to re-usable too, this issue is now gaining serious attention.

• The EC Riding the Wave report called for a collaborative data infrastructure. The Knowledge Exchange report (pdf) gives a good overview of actions that are underway to realise this in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Demark and the JISC led European project, Sim4RDM, is working with European partners to develop shared policies and practice. Global coordination, from the US, to Europe to Australia is under active discussion with the proposal of an international Data Web Forum where essential interoperability issues will be addressed to help develop a sustainable data infrastructure.

• The JISC Digital Curation Centre and research data management programme are providing practical solutions to the deposit and re-use of research data, for example they support the use of data management plans for universities to implement research council requirements.

The building blocks of a more open research environment are here, but I would say the “intelligently open” phrase from the Royal Society report is important, it’s about the right data being shared in a usable way and accessible to researchers, business and the public.

So yes, stakeholders (universities, researchers, funders, publishers and infrastructure providers) must work together to develop policies, technical tools, infrastructure and capacity to enable the ‘intelligently open’ research that we see promised.

I welcome the EC positions, but what do they mean to you?

It was the final plenary on 30 May in Old Billingsgate. I was on stage excitedly introducing the video of John Hayes MP, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning who was launching two new JISC TechDis services.

John Hayes couldn’t be there in person but he was so enthusiastic about the BIS/JISC TechDis partnership projects that he wanted to introduce them to the ND2012 delegates himself.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I should explain here that JISC TechDis has been working with the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) on three projects to ‘improve take up and understanding of assistive and mainstream technologies for the benefit of disabled and disadvantaged learners.’ These projects: the TechDis Voices, TechDis Toolbox and the Small Business Research Initiative were presented to the audience and explained more fully in a  video montage.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was pleased with both films and felt they had turned out very well , and even from where I was sitting there seemed to be conversations going on immediately with delegates asking each other about the TechDis Voices.   When I talked of the other project – Toolbox -  I really wanted people  in the audience to understand how important technology can be, how liberating, how empowering and enabling it can be for people with disabilities. That’s why I asked Robin Christopherson from AbilityNet to deliver the next bit of the plenary.   TechDis works with AbilityNet on a range of accessibility issues including testing the accessibility of our website and providing us with supporting materials for topics such as our senior manager briefings.

I have known Robin a good number of years and knew he could deliver an expert overview of the Toolbox and the  stress the importance of its message to other disadvantaged users.

Robin, who has been blind from birth, talked about how technology has enabled him over the years. He explained how when he was young it was necessary to purchase specialist equipment that cost thousands of pounds. But things have changed and he now has a computer in his pocket in the form of his smartphone. Robin demonstrated how he can use voice recognition on his phone to undertake research on the internet. He showed how he uses the camera and an app to tell him if the money he is holding in his hand is a twenty, a ten or a five pound note. Many of the features that were once considered specialist are now part and parcel of everyday technologies.  Robin has also been a part of the story of Toolbox  and some of the video footage to come,  will show Robin and his skill with technology at work and so I felt it important that the topic came to life at the launch event.

As I sat on the stage with the other keynotes in the TechDis slot;  Robert Mullins of Raspberry Pi fame and Saul Nasse – controller of BBC  Learning, I was aware of the hush in the room.   Robin finished his speech speaking eloquently and emotionally about how without technology he would not have been able to complete his studies and earn his degree. Without his degree he would not have been able to get meaningful employment with AbilityNet. If he had not had employment he would not have moved to Warwick where he met his wife and ultimately, without the help of technology he would not be the father of two gorgeous children.

It was very moving and I was not the only one with tears in my eyes.

After Robin’s slot he (plus guide dog Tenby)  and I sat on the stage together and I explained to him what I was watching – ie  that many people were actually mopping their eyes, and at the end of the session when one of the  photographers   came on stage – I thought for a group picture  – instead he grabbed me by the arm and almost hugged me and then shook Robin’s hand (nearly shaking it off) saying how we, but in particular  Robin had changed his outlook on life  and that he had phoned his friend (another photographer) saying – in tears as he spoke   – how he could not do his job without his sight and he had never valued it so much.

Robin and I took great delight in then talking to him of the many blind photographers we knew and I mentioned the work of another good friend of TechDis, Artur Ortega (ex Yahoo) who set up the Blind Photography Yahoo Groups -  – but that is a whole other story.

That evening the Digital Leader’s dinner took place and I lost count of the people who came up to me and congratulated TechDis and AbilityNet for walking the walk and talking the talk and in most cases moving them to tears.

image from BPSUSF on Flickr

We heard this week that too many young people lack the social skills needed to get their first job.  The report by the Work Foundation (PDF) doesn’t explicitly mention digital literacy, but perhaps it should. With an estimated 90% of UK jobs requiring some level of IT competency, the notion of digital literacy – those capabilities that equip an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society – is becoming a key requirement for employability.

But will they really make graduates more employable? Why are digital literacies important to institutions and students? Is this something new or the same old skills agenda just repackaged again?

These issues and more are explored in a two part series of JISC on Air radio programmes that looks at how institutions have recognised the strategic importance of digital literacies of all staff and students working in a digital world.

In the sixth episode we are exploring how universities and colleges can help teaching staff, researchers, support and administrative staff to develop their digital literacies – those capabilities which prepare an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society.

One trend I’ve noticed is that when it comes to ‘keeping up’ with their tech-savvy students, institutions are realising that this is no longer a race they can win.  Instead they are looking for approaches that allow them to continue to meet the needs and expectations of learners in the 21^st century.

These issues are explored in a two part series of the JISC on Air radio programme that looks at how institutions have recognised the strategic importance of digital literacies for staff and students working in a digital world.

Find out more about how JISC is investing in the area on our website.

Watch videos showing how different institutions are implementing digital literacies at a strategic level with our funding

To follow the ongoing developments of the JISC funded Developing Digital Literacies projects visit the Netvibes page which collates all the project blog postings and subscribe to the Developing Digital Literacies programme blog for up to date information about the developments in the programme

Join our digital literacy mailing list to contribute to discussions around digital literacy and how it affects your institution.

JISC On Air Podcast Episode 7: Developing digital literacies for working in a digital world
(Duration: 15:48)

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This is the compelling pitch offered to millions of prospective students from a bewildering array of start-ups and initiatives. Building on the open educational resource movement to create immersive online learning courses scalable to a global audience, and then giving them away. It seems like hardly a week goes by without another powerful announcement concerning another Massively Open Online Course (MOOC).

Examples include EdX (MIT/Harvard), MITx, Udacity (Stanford/Independent), Coursera (Princeton, Standford, Michgan, Pennsylvania), OERu (Abathasca), Khan Academy (Independent).

All share a similar business model: free content, free learning experiences, paid accreditation and additional support.  A business model that ALT-C 2010 attendees may find hauntingly familiar.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(video taken from a presentation given by Heather Price and David Kernohan from JISC,  Li Yuan and Sheila MacNeill at JISC CETIS, at the Association of Learning Technologists [ALT] conference in 2010)

Like any buzzword the term MOOC has shifted in meaning as use has expanded, from a specific set of pedagogic assumptions around networks and learning, to a term for any large online course with no initial fee.  These initial framings of the idea drew heavily on concepts around connectivism, and saw the learner as an active participant both in the design and the delivery of the course, alongside a network of peers.

My own experience with ds106 has brought home to me the power and possibilities of this “classic MOOC” model.  As a MOOC on Digital Storytelling, the course is actually taught in a number of locations to paying students, and uses the huge numbers of open participants to support, direct and encourage creativity. For me, the power has been in the community not in the course.

In the UK, the experiments of Jonathan Worth and Coventry University with open online courses around photography (for example PHONAR and PICBOD) have seen similar results.  Students on the PICBOD course spontaneously organised and ran their own well received end-of-course exhibition.

Clearly the power of this form of MOOC works, in ways related to more traditional university outreach activity, to engage and inspire people outsides of the confines of an institution.  And bringing the interested amateur into contact with the ideas and processes of academia can only be a good thing for student recruitment.

A parallel movement, which could be exemplified by Anya Kamenetz’s “DIYu” and “Edupunk’s Guide”, sees the MOOC as a replacement  rather than an enhancement for institutional study. Courses within this tradition, despite the revolutionary trappings and “Education is broken” sloganeering, tend to be far more traditional in structure. Indeed it could be argued that only the zero cost of entry separates them from millennial initiatives like Fathom and UKeU.

The learning itself tends to be more pragmatic, with a skills/mastery rather than an understanding/practice focus, and there is a clear demarcation between tutor as source of knowledge and student as consumer.

To me,  it is this revolutionary strand of MOOCs that is reinforcing the traditional model of education,  and the institutionally-based pedagogic experiments of people like Jim Groom, Jonathan Worth and Stephen Downes that are challenging it.

In February we released JISC Elevator, a beta website designed to allocate JISC funding to ideas based on votes from those working and studying in higher and further education. People could submit an idea to the site via a video pitch and if enough people voted for it JISC would consider it for funding.

We think JISC Elevator is a useful approach for a number of reasons:

• It is driven by what the sector wants. JISC projects are funded after an established review process conducted by experts. Elevator projects still benefit from this review but they also have an initial screening where a much broader range of people get to decide whether an idea is relevant to them or not.
• It establishes demand for an idea. One of the most difficult things for people who are applying for JISC funding to demonstrate is that there is a real demand for the idea they are proposing. The Elevator establishes this right from the start, if you can’t get enough people to vote for your idea then you don’t get funding.
• It supports small, practical ideas. Previous work in JISC has shown that small projects can have a big impact. Small projects also offer a chance to try out new technologies and very innovative ideas that have a higher chance of failure in a way that minimises the risk.
• It promotes ideas that benefit many institutions. To reach voting targets on Elevator ideas have to get votes from a minimum number of institutions so ideas have to appeal to people working in other departments and institutions and not just meet local needs.

In the future we are likely to use Elevator in more specific and targeted areas where small projects can be used to realise elements of the JISC strategy. It is likely that Elevator will be most useful in early stage innovation because it will allow us to support experiments with emerging technologies and practice that could benefit the sector by developing new tools, services and practices. We see this as a specific tool we can use to improve the allocation of innovation funding in certain areas. We don’t expect it to replace existing approaches.

We were very happy with how the trial went. In the 6 weeks the beta was live, we had 26 ideas and there were 2300 votes from 234 different institutions. There are more numbers and detailed analysis in the evaluation report I prepared on the trial.

Naturally as this was a trial, there were lots of things we think we might be able to improve upon. The report goes into some detail on this. We are about to embark on further development on the site to address some of these issues.

Of the 26 ideas, 22 reached their voting target. We then submitted these ideas to an evaluation with expert markers. Based on this evaluation we have decided to fund 6 projects – you can click on the links to see their video pitches:

1. Mobile Reflections – University of Leeds - Using mobile devices to enable students to capture videos of them reflecting on their work while out in the field
2. Interactive Visualisations – Oxford University - Developing an open source and easy to use tool to help researchers produce interactive visualisations that they can use for teaching, for investigating data and for disseminating their research
3. Classy Apps – Kingston College - Developing a guide to using apps on the ipad and iphone for teachers to engage GCSE re-sitters
4. Health CARE – City University -Developing augmented reality apps to support the learning of health care students
5. Open Access Index – Edinburgh University - Investigating the development of a score to denote how engaged an academic is with distributing research outputs via open access routes
6. Mobile app for course data – University of Central Lancashire - Developing mobile apps to enable prospective students to discover information about courses they may be interested in

There is a nice spread of projects here, they come from a range of institutions, address a variety of institutional functions and serve the needs of a number of different user groups. You can expect to see the results from these projects around the end of August.

We are in the midst of planning the next iteration of the elevator site. We see its immediate future as a platform for enabling innovation in specific areas. However in the longer term there are some more intriguing possibilities. Would it be useful to provide a version of Elevator that could be installed and used at universities, colleges and other organisations?  Can we use the Elevator to involve more students in the innovation we fund? How can we involve innovators from outside the further and higher education sector? Lots of questions and we don’t have the answers yet but we hope that by iterating our approach to Elevator we can continue to find new ways to support innovation in the sector.

“Digitisation breathes new life into material from the past, and turns it into a formidable asset for the individual user and an important building block of the digital economy.”[1]

Still, the way we create content online is still in its infancy, and the path from initial funding to long-term sustainability can be challenging. Despite financial investment, some undesirable outcomes have emerged:

• Project leaders return again and again to funders, because alternative revenue streams have not been developed;
• Completed projects cannot always be updated/ungraded once funded has ended;
• Content created may live in silos, be difficult to find and hosted on a variety of platforms;
• Preservation strategies are often uncertain, both for digitised and born digital content;
• Project leaders often rely heavily on the largesse of a host institution
• Some programmes or projects that cease to secure ongoing funding are obliged to stop work altogether

Add to this the challenging economic environment of the past few years and all of these issues are brought into glaringly sharp relief.

Since 2007, Ithaka S+R and the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance have led the way in examining ways  that the academic and cultural heritage sectors are defining sustainability and helping to make sure that the digital resources will endure and provide value well beyond the term of the grant. In 2012, two years and one economic crisis later, this essential research is more important than ever to answer questions such as:

• What were the key sustainability issues to consider?
• How have project leaders made their resources valuable to users?
• How have project leaders made growth and innovation possible?
• Which sustainability models have been most successful?
• How had budget cuts and other factors affected the projects?

Answers to these questions however are never simple and the process by which projects, both current and previous, consider them are multifaceted and complex. As a first step to traversing the difficult road to sustainability, the following video lecture series has been developed with Nancy Maron (sustainability expert at Ithaka S+R) to consider how universities, museums and libraries can deal with these issues in a challenging economic environment. You may not find all the answers here, but you will certainly find out more about the questions you need to be asking and guidance on how to answer them.

Split into parts or available as full versions, the videos (under a CC-BY-NC-SA licence) allow for individuals or organisations to embed or repurpose the relevant sections for their own specific audiences. As they are in easily digestible ‘bite-size’ chunks with links to the relevant resources referenced, these should help you to think in more depth about the issues raised and to read and research at your own pace. All we ask is that you let us know how you are planning to use them and if/ how these have been useful to you.

Please follow the links below to view the videos most relevant to your sector:

Sustaining Digital Resources for Universities

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sustaining Digital Resource for Museums

Sustaining Digital Resources for Libraries

Image by Loop_oh on Flickr

The issue of making Open Access books discoverable was discussed in nearly all of our focus groups that we held earlier this year as part of the OAPEN-UK project. It’s not just about putting the PDF onto a platform and hoping that readers will find it, it’s about getting metadata out into the web, search and library systems where the users are. The 29 Open Access titles in our pilot are available on the OAPEN Library platform which also provides MARC records for libraries, exposes its metadata and is joining up with library discovery services. But our 29 titles are just a small part of the whole, how then do readers find out about all the other Open Access books available?

In the journals market we have the Directory of Open Access Journals to help and now, thanks to OAPEN, we have the Directory of Open Access Books – a central place where users can search and discover Open Access books by publisher, subject area or by keyword search. This is a great step forward for the discoverability of Open Access books.

I’m particularly encouraged that this marks a further step forward in allowing UK researchers a way in to open access resources from across Europe.  During our recent OAPEN-UK focus groups, what was clear in all three groups was the awareness that issues are often at a local level, while in an open access model, it has to work at an international level also. Publishers publish authors from across the globe and authors want to be published by publishers who are based outside the UK. Whatever the model, the need for infrastructure and funding models to take account of this was made apparent by the groups.

Discoverability is just one aspect that will affect the future of the monograph. If you are a humanities and social science researcher interested in that future, can you spare twenty minutes to help us understand your views? You could win one of several £100 Amazon vouchers by completing the OAPEN-UK Researcher Survey.

Search open access books

For more information on the directories or to get involved, please contact Eelco Ferwerda, director of the OAPEN Foundation, e.ferwerda@oapen.org, +31(0)629565168.

“So there I was, with a 100 page screenplay that seemed so close to being finished; but I just couldn’t seem to do it. Something just wasn’t working; or it hadn’t turned out how I’d envisaged it. But I couldn’t figure out what to do to fix it.

Then I came across the Screenwriting Unit by Jane Pugh at the OpenSpace Project, hosted by the University College Falmouth, UK…  I listened to the second unit (“The Principles of Screenwriting”) and it was a revelation! Suddenly knew what was wrong with my screenplay, and why it wasn’t working for me!”

Ed from Notes on Video: A blog about video equipment and video production

Quotes like the one above made University College Falmouth’s journey into open education a rewarding experience. Rewarding , however, doesn’t do the experience suitable justice. It’s something fundamentally intangible. We gave without expectation and what this institution gained is something quite profound. We hoped our pilot project would inspire. That it achieved this objective turned out to be as humbling as it was exciting…and transformative.

UCF’s geographical isolation presents challenges in building tangible networks nationally, much less internationally. Our non-STEM subject portfolio also presents challenges within Higher Education. “openSpace”, our HEFCE-funded and JISC managed creative subject open education repository, has proven to be an excellent bridge and an effective calling card. This bespoke repository allows UCF to share its expertise, knowledge and pedagogic approaches in an organic and transparent manner.

The success of openSpace has had a direct impact on UCF, resulting in:
· A new institutional Intellectual Property Rights policy
· An interest in open education from other UCF courses
· The widening of technology applications in teaching, learning and innovative approaches to teaching practice
· Discussions around a paid assessment model and certificate model – a sustainable UCF open education model
· A positive impact on applications to UCF’s MA Professional Writing course.

“But what’s so special about this [Screenwriting] course is it gives long distance learners an opportunity to learn and gain peer feedback on work. This is a pioneering new scheme and well worth a look.” – Helen Murphy, Step2InspireTV

The secret of success is straightforward. We took our open educational resources (OERs) to the people rather than trying to entice them to come to us. We uploaded our OERs on established, familiar and popular online platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Podomatic, Scribd and Twitter. People felt free to engage with the OERs, experiment with them, play with them….and then follow the links to the relevant courses on openSpace.

We also made our OERs, and our open education courses, easy to find online. The use of standard search engine optimisation best practice and meta tagging protocols ensured the OERs and courses appear at the top of search engine results against common search phrases.

The respected film makers’ website filmmakeriq.com and Celtx, the all-in-one open source media pre-production system, found the YouTube hosted Screenwriting OERs and featured them on their respective blogs. Their Tweets about the free screenwriting course resulted in a flurry of re-tweets and postings to Facebook, Digg and other leading social networking sites.

The result of these word of mouth online coverage was 1,000 people a day accessing the course in the two days following Celtx and Film Makers IQ’s first Tweets. That number rose to 1,700 people a day as social network users continued to spread the word. While they are no longer viral, these OERs remain widely accessed and commented upon. As late as November 2001, they were referenced in the Guardian Careers Blog post Live Q&A: Thinking about a career in screenwriting? by OER user Michelle Goode

The project used Podomatic to host a variety of screenwriting lectures, which have been popular internationally.

Our OERs were always geared towards and pitched to the general public. Comparatively speaking, there are few global institutions with similar degrees. Our OERs were always going to have an appeal to a specific and discrete audience within Higher Education. Understanding who our primary audience was informed our approach to online dissemination and promotion.

Other OER related activity at Falmouth includes the IPR for Educational Environments (IPR4EE) project supported within phase 3 of the UKOER programme, and the new Blogging for Educational Environments project,  funded solely by UCF.

Is open education a transformative process? Absolutely. Through means both predictable and unpredictable. Open education influences institutions, academics and the general public. Has the journey been an easy and straightforward one? No. Has it been rewarding? Most definitely. It continues to enlighten and inform us as UCF plans the release of further OER courses.

Further reading: You can read more about how other institutions have reaped the benefits of open practice in a series of case studies, and find out more about the work of our current crop of OER projects.

For a deeper analysis of Open Educational Practice, the UKOER Evaluation and Synthesis project have produced an online briefing paper.

For those of us who saw Blackboard’s aggressive acquisition of commercial competitors WebCT and Angel, and have seen the patent litigation they unleashed against Desire 2 Learn, the idea of Blackboard pledging to be a good open source citizen may seem a bit … unsettling, if not 1984ish.

But it has been clear for a while that Blackboard’s old strategy of ‘owning the market’ just wasn’t going to work. Whatever the unique features are that Blackboard has over Moodle and Sakai, they aren’t enough to convince every institution to pay for the license. Choosing between VLEs is largely about price and service, not functionality. Even for those Blackboard institutions where price and service are not an issue, many departments persist with some other VLE, for all sorts of not entirely functional reasons .

In other words, the VLE had become a commodity. Everyone needs one, they are fairly predictable in their functionality, and there is not that much between them, much as I’ve outlined in the past.

So it seems Blackboard have wisely decided to switch focus from charging for IP to becoming a provider of learning tool services. As Blackboard’s George Kroner noted, “It does kinda feel like @Blackboard is becoming a services company a la IBM under Gerstner.”

And just as IBM has become quite a champion of Open Source Software, there is no reason to believe that Blackboard will be any different. If only because the projects will not go away, whatever Blackboard does with the support companies they have just taken over. Besides, ‘open’ matters to the education sector.

Interoperability

Blackboard had already abandoned extreme lock-in by investing quite a bit in open interoperability standards, mostly through the IMS specifications. That is, users of the latest versions of Blackboard can get their data, content and external tool connections out more easily than in the past- it’s no longer as much of a reason to stick with them.

Providing services across the vast majority of VLEs (outside of continental Europe at least) means that Blackboard has even more of an incentive to make interoperability work across them all. Dr Chuck Severance’s appointment also strongly hints at that.

This might need a bit of watching. Even though the very different codebases, and a vested interest in openness, means that Blackboard sponsored interoperability solutions – whether arrived at through IMS or not – are likely to be applicable to other tools, this is not guaranteed. There might be a temptation to cut corners to make things work quickly between just Blackboard Learn, Angel, Moodle 1.9/2.x and Sakai 2.x.

On the other hand, the more pressing interoperability problems are not so much between the commodified VLEs anymore, they are between VLEs and external learning tools and administrative systems. And making that work may just have become much easier.

This post originally appeared on the JISC CETIS website