SSBR Institutional Innovation Taxonomy

George Roberts

The Support and Synthesis project is getting down into two grooves of activity. The first is supporting the Phase three, Lifelong Learning projects to produce their outputs and then to realise the benefits more widely. We are contacting and visiting all projects, stirring up assemblies, promoting the “Festival of Assemblies” on 20 October (do get that date in your diaries) and encouraging the uptake of the current call for Benefits Realisation funding. Read more here…

Benefits Realisation

BR proposals deadline 21 June 2010

The deadline for BR proposals is Monday 21 June 2010. If projects could please let Paul Bailey p.bailey@btinternet.com or Ruth Drysdale r.drysdale@jisc.ac.uk know of any intended BR proposals as soon as possible it would help in predicting the likely funding commitment.

Reports: Location Independent Working and Asset

The benefits realisation activities have now been running for over 12 months and projects are starting to report on what they have achieved. So far two projects have submitted final reports and several more are due in the next few weeks. These reports are a good opportunity for others to discover the sort of activities that can lead to wider benefits for the sector. Read more from Paul (here…)

Assemblies

Festival of Assemblies 20 October 2010

Venue TBC

More details on this will follow shortly. In the meantime, please make a note of the date.

XCRI Assembly @ MUSKET – Middlesex University Date TBC

If you are using XCRI or want to find out more, come to the XCRI assembly, hosted by the MUSKET project at Middlesex University. The aim of this Assembly is to use MUSKET to focus on:

• APEL/APCL
• share the challenges we faced and what we found difficult.
• discover challenges other projects have faced, and how they overcame them
• XCRI
• Implementation
• Extension to include industry specifications.
• future development of XCRI standard to accommodate educational needs; industry standard/European standard?
• Demonstration of the MUSKET tools

Contact Geetha Abeysinghe (G.Abeysinghe@mdx.ac.uk) for date and venue details and for more information about MUSKET visit http://www.musket.mdx.ac.uk .

Keep up-to-date with assemblies

To see what is going on with your co-projects and their assemblies, visit http://assemblies.inin.jisc-ssbr.net and also http://planet.inin.jisc-ssbr.net, the Planet site for the Institutional Innovation programme.

Conferences and Events

Learning in a Digital Wales – Dysgu mewn Cymru Digidol
30 June 2010, All Nations Centre in Cardiff

This is a collaborative, cross-sector event brought to you by JISC RSC Wales, with the support of LearnTech Wales, Moodle-Wales and Community eLearning Wales (CeLW) covering all educational sectors in Wales including work-based learning and Higher Education.

For more information and bookings, visit JISC RSC Wales

JISC/CNI
1-2 July 2010, Barcelo Carlton Hotel, Edinburgh

Managing Data in Difficult Times: policies, strategies, technologies and infrastructure to manage research and teaching data in a fast changing technological and economic environment. To register for this event, go to http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/events/jisc-cni-2010/. The delegate rate is £345 including attendance at all conference sessions, refreshments and lunch on 1 and 2 July, a place at the conference reception and evening activities on 1 July, overnight accommodation on 1 July and breakfast.

Quality Assurance and Quality Enhancement in e-Learning
2 July 2010, Fielder Centre, University of Hertfordshire

This one-day conference will explore challenges facing the sector in relation to assuring quality whilst also enabling quality enhancement and innovation through technology enhanced learning (TEL). Presentations will include a keynote from Professor Colin Raban, Director of Quality Enhancement at the University of Derby and dissemination of consultation findings from the HEA funded QAQE project. The day will also include networking opportunities and participatory sessions and to explore practitioner needs. Further details of the programme and the booking form are available at the HEA site: QAQE Conference 2010 Attendance at the conference is free. Please e-mail completed booking forms to Helen Barefoot (h.barefoot@herts.ac.uk) by 18 June 2010.

Learning and Teaching Practice Experts Meeting
13 July 2010, Future Inn, Bristol

The next meeting of the JISC Learning and Teaching Practice Experts Group will be taking place on Tuesday 13th July from 10:30 – 16:00 at Future Inn, Bristol. We are delighted to say that this will be the 20th meeting of this group. The draft agenda for the meeting is available from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/… together with the online booking form. Registration for this meeting closes on the 28 June and the theme of this meeting is Supporting Learners in a Digital Age

If you would like to showcase your project at this event or any future meetings, please contact Ruth Drysdale r.drysdale@jisc.ac.uk or Sarah Knight s.knight@jisc.ac.uk

CIePD XCRI (eXchanging Course Related Information)
22 July 2010, University of Nottingham

You are invited to attend both of the events below, or either one depending on your interests. Lunch will be provided either way.

1. Morning event: Developers’ XCRI Workshop
Practical advice on moving your XCRI developments forward, as well as live demonstrations.

2. Afternoon event: East Midlands XCRI Seminar
Bringing together those representing a wide range of educational stakeholders to discuss the opportunities arising from joining together data relating to learning and skills.

All information about the events and the booking form is available from this link: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/…

UK Perspectives on Open Educational Resources
23 July 2010, Holborn Bars, London, EC1N 2NQ

The Higher Education Academy and JISC would like to invite you to the Open Education Showcase: UK Perspectives on Open Educational Resources. This free one day event will showcase how the UK is supporting innovative learning, teaching and assessment by enabling universities and colleges to share educational materials freely online.The day will bring together British and international colleagues who are working towards the sustainable development and delivery of Open Educational Resources nationally and internationally.For more information, the full programme and to register for your place at the event please visit: www.jisc.ac.uk/ukoer10

Funding Opportunities

Open Educational Resources

The HE Academy has released the next strand of Open Educational Resources funding:

Open Educational Resources for Accredited Courses for Teachers in Higher Education – Call for projects
Max Amount/Bid: £20,000
Closing date: 9 July 2010
Type of funding: Projects

See here for more information http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/…

News in Brief

Call for participation – The Open University

We are running a project funded by the Higher Education Academy, UK, that is investigating evidence-based practice in the use of technology in teaching and learning in higher education. We are particularly interested in hearing from practitioners about the kinds of evidence they use, or would find useful, when using technology to supporting teaching and learning. We would really like to hear about your views. Could you spare a few moments to complete the short online survey at this URL http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZZPGKGY? The team is also interested in supporting a network where practitioners can talk about their practice and issues in relation to supporting learning and teaching with technology. If you are interested, please go to http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2050 where you can follow and contribute to discussions. If you would like any further information please contact Linda Price l.price@open.ac.uk or Adrian Kirkwood a.t.kirkwood@open.ac.uk

JISC TechDis

For more information on JISC TechDis visit http://www.techdis.ac.uk, and for the JISC TechDis SME e-Empowerment Toolkit, see (here)

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

A few words…

In this newsletter, you will find details on assemblies, conferences, events and publications which relate to your projects. Don’t forget to visit the Assemblies site to see what projects are doing, the Comms site for information on dissemination and the SSBR_DB site for the database.

http://assemblies.inin.jisc-ssbr.net/
http://comms.inin.jisc-ssbr.net
http://inin.jisc-ssbr.net/ssbrdb/

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

Assemblies

Hello – Employer Engagement
24 March 2010, Leicester College, Leicester

The aim of this assembly is to focus on the successful and not so successful techniques of engaging employers in project activity and participation with project outputs. From this, the team hope to have an understanding of how other projects have engaged with employers; share ideas of how to effectively engage with employers and produce a “best practice” list of methods to share with the wider community.

Contact Lucy Stone for more information lstone@lec.ac.uk and visit http://hello.lec.ac.uk

iBorrow – Learning Spaces and Technology
25 March 2010, Canterbury Christ Church University

The conference will look at the lessons learned and insights gained from the iBorrow Project. This partly JISC-funded project provides 200 thin-client netbook devices within the new library and student services centre, available “as easily as picking a book from a shelf”.

For more information: http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/…

TWOLER – User Generated Contributions in Higher Education
26 March 2010, University of Westminster, Regent Street, London

Unfortunately, due to staff illness and lack of interest in the assembly, the TWOLER project is cancelling their event on 26 March at the University of Westminster. If you would like more information about the project, please contact Iqbal Hussain I.Hussain8@westminster.ac.uk and visit the project website (here)

The workshop is focused around the themes of Westminster’s recent JISC-funded project TWOLER – studying student generated Web 2.0 content with Lightweight Enterprise RSS.

For full details of the day and sign-up, just click here.

The XCRI Support Project

March sees the end of the JISC-funded XCRI Support Project as it signs off leaving the development of the XCRI (eXchanging Course Related Information) specification for sharing (and advertising) course information looking very healthy indeed. For more about this and the XCRI Validator which has been designed to help implementers check data structure and content, see (here)

Focus on CETIS

JISC CETIS, the Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards, provides advice to the UK Higher and Post-16 Education sectors on educational technology and standards. This web site brings together educational technology news, comment and analysis, as well as information on our community events. Our aim is to contribute to current debates and future thinking in this rapidly growing and changing field. For more information see http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/

Conferences and Events

SEEC seminar
18 March 2010, London Metropolitan University

HEAR – Would you credit it? The Clore Seminar Room at The Women’s Library

For more information on the subject of the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR), visit www.seec.org.uk

Mobile Enabling Technologies
25 March 2010, University of Bradford

http://www.alt.ac.uk/workshop_detail.php?e=348

XCRI at the JISC Annual Conference
12-13 April 2010

Sharing course information efficiently and effectively – XCRI at the JISC Annual Conference

Enhancing Feedback Provision in the Digital Age
14 April 2010, University of Reading

The day will be a mixture of brief presentations, ’show and tell’ sessions, case studies and a final panel discussion; Phase 2 project ASSET will be participating and the aim is to make the day highly participative with a range of presenters from within the University as well as external colleagues, including Rod Cullen, Stephen Gomez, Paul Orsmond and Steve Maw. see here

Briefing on Business Modelling and Sustainability
14 April 2010

JISC Meeting Rooms, Brettenham House, 5, Lancaster Place, London, WC2E 7EN

To register for this free briefing from the Strategic Content Alliance exploring Business Modelling/ Sustainability challenges, examples and tips for the long-term sustainability of grant-funded digital resources go to http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/scabbbms

Podcasting in Learning and Teaching
14 April 2010, Sheffield Hallam University

The recent explosion in the popularity of podcasting provides exciting new possibilities for the development and delivery of learning resources. As well as placing a renewed focus on the use of audio as a medium for learning and teaching, it offers great flexibility in how learning resources can be created and used by staff and students alike, offering new opportunities for independent study and creativity within the curriculum.
http://www.alt.ac.uk/workshop_detail.php?e=351

Beyond Borders: Open Education Conference
20 April 2010, Said Business School, University of Oxford

This event will showcase work done at Oxford University this year during the OpenSpires project and provide an opportunity for discussion and debate on the following themes: Use and re-use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in research-led teaching; Business models for OER in a global market; Open access and open content; Sustainability and support at institutional, national and international level; Legal and IPR issues for researchers who teach.
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/events/beyond2010/

Using of Twitter in Higher Education
4 May 2010, The National College, Nottingham

This workshop, held at The National College in Nottingham, will provide an introduction to Twitter, a microblogging/social networking service, and its potential uses in HE. The first part of the workshop is organised in two strands: strand A – for those who are new to Twitter and who have yet to create or use an account; strand B – for those who have a Twitter account and who would like to extend their understanding of its possible uses.
http://www.alt.ac.uk/workshop_detail.php?e=349

Eduserv Symposium 2010
13 May 2010

The Mobile University. Royal College of Physicians, London

Mobile technology will play an increasingly important role in the delivery of UK higher education in the future. What does this mean for UK higher education institutions and their members? Find out more here http://www.eduserv.org.uk/events/esym10

Employer-responsive provision: designing, delivering and supporting flexible learning opportunities’
27 May 2010, Aston Business School

This e-Learning led event will be aimed at JISC projects working across Curriculum Design, Curriculum Delivery, Lifelong Learning and Workforce Development, Business and Community Engagement plus related HEFCE-funded programmes. The event will enable projects who are working in employer engagement/workforce development to come together to share experiences, discuss issues of interest and consult around emerging outputs.

To register, visit http://www.jisc.ac.uk/…/eventmay10.

Reports

CRM Self Analysis Framework

BCE Employer Engagement Reports

CETIS briefing paper on distributed learning environments

Could the eportfolio could be the new PLE?

XCRI at the University of Huddersfield

Success of XCRI at MMU

XCRI enabling wider access to FE programmes within Cheshire and Warrington

Guide to using Schematron with XCRI-CAP documents

Publications

QAA’s Employer-responsive provision survey: A reflective report

Becta’s report Delivering results with learning technology in the workplace

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

‘Responding to Learners’, is a resource pack which offers recommendations on how institutions can better respond to learners’ expectations and uses of technology, as well as practical guidance on how to embed learners’ voices more effectively into institutional processes and practice. The pack brings together the research findings from the ‘Learner Experiences of e-Learning’ theme which funded a total of ten projects from 2005 to 2009, and involved over 200 learners in qualitative research with more than 3000 survey respondents. See (here)

Managing Curriculum Change

‘Managing Curriculum Change’, investigates how technology can help make curriculum design processes more responsive and the experience of learning more engaging, inclusive and rewarding. The publication visualises a curriculum lifecycle, with a focus on who needs to be involved to help theory become reality. The written report is supported by the web based Design Studio , is a dynamic online toolkit hosted by JISC InfoNet, which draws together a range of JISC resources around technology-enhanced curriculum design and delivery. See (here)

Learning Literacies in a Digital Age

The third publication, a briefing paper on learning literacies for a digital age, summarises findings from a recent JISC-funded report of the same name. ‘Learning Literacies in a Digital Age’ explores examples of technology skills provision in UK further and higher education and offers a series of recommendations for institutions which want to evaluate their own provision in this area, based on original data including 15 institutional audits and over 40 examples of innovative practice from across the UK. See (here)