12 November Conference

A Few Words

On 12 November the JISC Institutional Innovation Support & Synthesis project conducted an upbeat online programme meeting where over 70 participants addressed the pragmatics of institutional innovation. The aim of the day was for the 40 projects in the programme to consider the challenges and tensions of institutional innovation, to look at approaches and solutions to innovating in institutions, and to consider the sustainability of innovation. Read more from George Robert’s blog (here)

Radio Continuity from Sounds of the Bazaar

Read more from Graham Attwell’s blog and for the music playlist (here) and to listen to the interviews with Leo Care, Mike Neary and James Wisdom visit:

• Mike Neary podcast link
• Leo Care and James Wisdom podcast link

Conference Slides

To see the slides for the day in full, click on the links below:

Keynote – Steve Outram – Elluminate 12 Nov

Room 4

• WELL – Ibrar Brutt - LLLWFD Nov Slides
• TELSTAR (UCLan) – Amy Wright – Project …
• TELWFD – Andrew Haldane – TEL WFL Pres…
• PineAPPLe – Neil Witt – Hd Pineapple Pr…
• CoGent – Martin Jenkins – Development …
  

Room 2

• TESTAR (OU) – Owen Stephens – SSBR 200…
• STEEPLE – Peter Robinson – Steeple Elta…
• ELTAC – Juliet Hinrichsen – Eltac Issues
• Erewhon – Tim Fernando – Mobile Oxford …

Room 1

• TAG – Lucy Warman – The Alternative Gui…
• ECCILES – Darrell Slater-Smith – Eccile…
• ASSET – Anne Crook – Elluminate Confere…

Afternoon

• Steve Warburton – Create121109 Addr…
• George Roberts – Exploring links betw…
• Ruth Drysdale – LLL&WFD 12th Nov 2009 Onl…
  

Institutional Pragmatics meeting wrap-up

Conference Feedback

There has been useful feedback submitted from projects via the event feedback form and most important is that there is still time to complete the event feedback form if you have not already done so. If you could take a few minutes and complete it ASAP – at the latest by the end of the week – so that your feedback can be taken into account for future events. A report based on the feedback will follow in the next newsletter. The link for the feedback form is here:

An Approach to Understanding Institutional Innovation in Higher Education

This post introduces an approach to understanding innovation in higher education institutions through the perspective of the JISC Institutional Innovation Programme (here referred to as InIn). This is a work in progress, and draws on previous postings on synthesis. Blogroll (here).

The post is in three broad parts. The first part addresses the question, “why?” Why change? Underlying conditions place pressure on institutions from many directions and institutions respond in various ways. The second part addresses the question, “what?” What is changing in higher education? What are the broad themes that can help us see the underlying shifts not only in practice but also in the shape and purpose of higher education institutions. And finally the third part looks briefly at the question, “how?” How are we effecting – bringing about – change in higher education institutions? George Roberts. See (here) for more.

LLLWFD News

Dear LLLWFD project team members

Thanks

A big thank you to all of you from the LLLWFD projects who participated in the online event in Elluminate on 12 November. We so enjoyed linking up with you all online. Whether you presented, observed or entered discussions you all contributed to the day’s success. Recordings of the plenary sessions (Elluminate does not record the break-out rooms) are now available linked to the event’s program webpage. For more on event feedback, the new URL for the database of emerging themes, LLLWFD assemblies and Benefits Realisation, please have a look (here)

Patsy Clarke and Ellen Lessner

Assemblies

Visit the Assemblies Events & Activities site for an overall picture of what all the projects are doing

TAG, UCLAN

9 December 2009

TAG is hosting a retention assembly to showcase some of the work going on around retention and in particular students’ transition into Higher Education. The morning session of the assembly will consist of introductions to the projects, details about how the projects were developed and why, the challenges they faced and what they have learnt. Each session will allow plenty of time for discussion and debate.

The afternoon session is to enable delegates to explore retention issues in their own courses/institutions and start to think of how they can adapt the projects, or elements of the projects, they have learnt about in the morning to address these issues. The afternoon session will be managed by Lawrie Phipps.

For more information, contact Lucy Warman at LPWarman@uclan.ac.uk and visit the site (here)

Academic Networking, Cambridge

8, 14 or 15 December

Academic Networking from Cambridge are planning an assembly on 8, 14 or 15 December to be held in Cambridge between 11 am and 4 pm on the topic of ‘Personas and User Testing’. The team think that user testing would be of interest to others at this project phase and the programme for the day is as follows.

  * Personas and their place in user research and testing (presentation by Cambridge)
  * 10 minute micro-briefing ‘Post-It Notes and their Special Place in research’
  * Our experiences of user testing as part of a user-centric design process (presentation by Cambridge)
  * best practices in user testing (group brainstorming, to be documented online for comment)
  * hopefully some presentations from others about their user testing experiences

If anyone is interested, please contact Laura James at laura@caret.cam.ac.uk and visit their blogsite http://academic-networking.blogspot.com/

ELTAC/ELTAC BR, Coventry

tbc: Feb/Mar 2010

This assembly on staff development will be a workshop-style day aimed at producing relevant collective resources for use by the wider HE community based on common and divergent experiences in implementing capture technologies for learning and teaching. It would be of interest to those with strategic responsibility for academic staff development or for disseminating key project findings through staff development resources.

The day will focus on lecture capture and podcasting and will also be relevant to other learning technologies. Themes to be discussed are: What staff development needs arise when a new learning technology is being introduced into an institution? How can we manage the multiple, and often conflicting, expectations of what needs to be delivered?

Institutions (provisional): Newcastle (ReCap), Reading (Asset), Imperial, Nottingham.

Contact Juliet Hinrichsen at aa0211@coventry.ac.uk for more information.

EdShare workshop, Southampton

Traditional Educational Repositories vs Web 2.0 Resource Sharing

4 November 2009

The University of Southampton’s JISC-funded EdSpace Project organised a workshop on Wednesday 4 November, 2009, entitled “Traditional repositories vs. Web 2.0 Resource Sharing”. The event was both stimulating and informative and will help us to design a second Assembly which we will be organising for early 2010. Read more (here)

Benefits Realisation

First deadline 9 December 2009!

Don’t forget the first deadline for Benefits Realisation funding is 9 December 2009. For full details see

The invitation has rolling monthly deadlines, up until June 2010 and the funding must be allocated by the end of June, and if possible much earlier so get you ideas in before the money runs out (which it will). We are particularly interested in ideas that will link into the Building Capacity programme, what we previously called “project-fed” or Phase 2 BR. (see here) that can support other institutions in addressing strategic issues and requirements supported by the outcomes of your projects. We would expect the benefits to be mutual, with our institution gaining new knowledge as a result of working with other institutions. This was always the aim of the Institutional Innovation programme, so share the expertise gained from the projects with the wider sector. Now is the time to try and realise the benefits from what you are learning and achieving.

Conferences and Events

SSBR dates

  * 28-29 January 2010 Programme Meeting (Aston)
  * 25 March 2010 (Elluminate)
  * 14 October 2010 (Elluminate)
  * 27-28 January 2011 (location tbd)

JISC TechDis presentations for projects

• Introduction: Inclusive Learning 09:34 –> direct link
• Reasonable Adjustment 08:14 –> direct link
• Organisational Added Value 10:08 –> direct link
• Standards, Guidelines and User Testing 10:26 –> direct link
• Communicating with users 04:32 –> direct link
• Sources of Support and Guidance 20:07 –> direct link

APL: Developing Tools for Engagement and Widening Participation Strategies

24–25 November 2009, Paragon House, TVU, Room PR807

For more information on this course, visit (here)

Strategies for Employer Engagement

1 December 2009 10 am EST/3 pm GMT, Free Seminar

This session, ‘Strategies for Employer Engagement – Evaluating the potential of Web 2.0 for enhancing teaching delivery’ explores how the University of Winchester, and Logica, a global IT company, worked together to design a sponsored degree programme and to develop an enhanced learning environment for undergraduates. To sign up, click Online – Sign-up Here

OSS Watch Open Development Workshops

7 December 2009

OSS Watch will be holding two concurrent workshops on the theme of open development, on 7 December at The University Club, 11 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3SZ; 09:30 – 16:00. One workshop will examine open development as a part of open innovation; the other will address building an open development community around a software project. Both workshops are free to UK higher and further education.

Individuals should register for the single workshop that interests them most. However, it should be possible to move between the two workshops on the day, so long as space allows. For more information, visit http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/events/…

Engaging and Responding to Learners

11.30 – 12.30, Wednesday 16 December 2009

This Elluminate Live! session will give Curriculum projects an opportunity to consider the impact of their projects as experienced by learners. Building on the methods and findings of the Learner Experiences of e-learning programme we will start by examining the rationale for engaging learners as stakeholders in the planning and development of e-learning provision. Then we will share learner-centred practices such as strategies for keeping learners engaged over the lifetime of your project, involving learners in making sense of their own experiences, and embedding the ‘learner voice’ into curriculum processes and practices.

This participative session, led by Rhona Sharpe, previously Director of the JISC Learner Experience of Learning Support & Synthesis project, will build on the face-to-face workshop in June and will be of interest to project members who are involved in planning strategies for engaging learners and staff who are working directly with learners.

To register go (here). Further details about accessing the session will be sent in due course and for more information, contact Marianne Sheppard marianne.sheppard@northumbria.ac.uk

JISC TEchDis and ALT event

Rewiring Inclusion: Strategies, Tools and Techniques to Promote Barrier-Free Learning

9 February 2010 Nottingham

A national one day conference has been organised jointly by JISC TechDis, (a JISC Advance Service) and ALT, for any staff whose work and role affects learners and learning. If you or your organisation has good practice to share in the inclusive use of technology to support learning, we invite you to submit a proposal to run a 45 minute workshop at the conference.

To submit a proposal, please complete the proposal form by 12.00 noon on Monday 4 December 2009: (link to submit proposals). We will let proposers know the result of the selection process before Christmas, to give those invited to run workshops plenty of time to prepare.

Please contact Ruth Drysdale r.drysdale@JISC.ac.uk if you would like any support in developing your project’s communication and dissemination plans, as these are very important for the sustainability of your project and ensuring it can be rolled out across your institution – as discussed during the online event on 12 November.

Researching and Evaluating Personal Development Planning and e-Portfolio seminar

Nottingham 26-28 April 2010

A call for contributors is announced for the forthcoming international research seminar which is to be held at the National College for School Leadership, Nottingham on 26-28th April. For more information, contact John Peters j.peters@WORC.AC.UK

SOLSTICE Conference 3 June 2010

Call for Proposals

This conference will focus on the use of technologies in teaching to support and challenge learners, to bring efficiency and added value to assessment and feedback, to impact on employability and to support research activities that face towards the curriculum. Creative and inclusive deployment of technologies to add value to student support and guidance and communications are an additional focus of interest.

SOLSTICE is committed to TEL practices that are informed by and generative of research. To that end, proposals for papers, workshops, presentations and posters are invited which consider. For more information, visit www.edgehill.ac.uk/solstice/Conference2010 or contact Amanda Boult at boulta@edgehill.ac.uk

News in brief

The Edublog Awards 2009

Calling all bloggers. Now into their 6th year, The Edublog Awards have just opened nominations for 2009. The awards are open to anyone – bloggers, podcasters, tweeters, online communities, video bloggers, teachers, administrators, students and more! And nominating an outstanding blog, post, podcast or tweet couldn’t be easier…

If you have any news or information you would like to share, please contact emma@jisc-ssbr.net

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 12:38 am and is filed under Newsletters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.