Who plans IT provision for research?

Many players are involved, but they don’t always communicate with each other effectively or know where each others’ responsibilities begin and end. This is one of the key messages to emerge from the ‘Leaping hurdles: planning IT provision for research’ events held in Edinburgh and London. The events were held to discuss the findings, outcomes and lessons from the JISC Community Engagement (CE) and Virtual Research Environment (VRE) projects.

The projects had identified factors inhibiting researchers from adopting advanced research techniques and had developed some enablers, including suites of online tools and resources to facilitate research collaborations. Delegates brainstormed around some of the inhibitors to suggest actions aimed at ensuring that researchers have access to the ICT provision they need.

Actions included:
• Raising awareness at all levels of the potential of IT to deliver faster and different research. Institutional managers and policy makers, IT directors and services, research managers and researchers themselves all require clear information in jargon-free language
• The appointment of research facilitators to bridge gaps in communication between researchers, research computing services (where they exist) and IT services. Usability experts would bridge gaps between users and software developers.
• Training in advanced IT for research should become part of doctoral training
• The cost of IT provision for research should automatically be included in grant proposals and a better understanding of these costs is required
• Better guidance should be provided on the relative merits of cloud, cluster and grid computing for providing a shared computing resource.

The meetings heard of some of the inherent difficulties in planning IT provision for research. Mike Fraser, University of Oxford Computing Services commented: “No one plans IT provision for researchers in the sense of a strategic approach, because as soon as you [do] across the board, you end up providing something too generic . . . or it becomes entirely fragmented and you . . . prioritise certain groups . . . those that shout louder, bring in more funding or do more interesting research.” 

Peter Clarke, director of the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh, suggested determining IT requirements by asking researchers what they don’t rather than do want. “I always thought you should go to the end users and ask what . . . you do that you would rather not do,” he said.

JISC will be following up on the meetings’ conclusions to move this agenda forward.
View presentations and videos from the Edinburgh and London events.
Read further information on future developments.

Podcast/Press Release: Effective Practice in a Digital Age

In a world where we are surrounded by technology, where boundaries between our personal and professional lives merge, JISC’s e-Learning team have been looking at how to support teachers, researchers and academics with best practice advice and guidance for working in a ‘digital age’.

In this podcast with Rebecca O’Brien, Sarah Knight, a JISC e-Learning programme manager, shares the success of the team’s Effective Best Practice guide series and launches a new publication ‘Effective Practice in a Digital Age’. This new guide puts the teacher and learning at its centre and takes those new and experienced in using technologies on a journey to enhance their practices and illustrates through case studies how practitioners are opening up their practice and enhancing the learner experience as well as their own.

Listen to the podcast (Duration 18:53)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT

Subscribe to the JISC Podcast via RSS

Subscribe to the JISC Podcast via iTunes

Download the podcast

The world’s largest digital library of 18th century printed books grows even larger for UK academic community

Following an agreement between JISC Collections and Gale, part of Cengage Learning, Part 2 of the ambitious digitisation project, Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), is now available free of charge to all UK academic institutions currently subscribing to ECCO.

With 45,000 new titles selected from the English Short Title Catalogue, ECCO Part 2 adds close to seven million pages to the size of the collection - at no extra cost for subscribing institutions.

The new collection includes 96 new editions of Shakespeare, a unique edition of Allan Ramsay’s ‘Above Nine Hundred Scots Proverbs’ (Glasgow, 1781, from the Bodleian Library) and a new author (Joseph Fox) with his ‘Parish Clerk’s vade mecum’ arising from his work as parish clerk at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. As with Part 1, ECCO Part 2 includes almost 13,000 titles from British Library’s extensive holdings of eighteenth-century material – new additions include ‘A Catalogue of Vocal and Instrumental Music’ engraved, printed and sold by James Blundell in 1781 and a unique copy of ‘The Fairing: or, a Golden Toy’, a small illustrated book for children.

Joanna Innes, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Somerville College, Oxford University says, "ECCO is an amazingly rich resource. It puts a magnificent library of eighteenth-century printed material on the desktops of scholars and students. It vastly improves access; allows the scholar to discover new seams of material and gives students unprecedented access to masses of primary source material. And of course it supports new kinds of searching. It is very well presented and in general easy to use."

First released in 2003 and originally acquired by JISC Collections in 2006, ECCO quickly established itself as the world’s largest digital library of the print book, with over 200,000 volumes of key 18th century works.

Since then, the English Short Title Catalogue has uncovered a wealth of valuable new material and new holdings of previously unavailable titles. The material in ECCO Part 2 includes both new titles that have been added to the ESTC as well as newly reported holdings information.
 
Scholars can delve into ancient and contemporary times, voyages and discoveries, biographies and memoirs in history and geography. They can also investigate how diseases were treated in medicine, look into science, technology and study other celebrated novelists, poets and playwrights in literature and language.

Those with a passion for social science and fine arts can look into international business, banking, taxation, music, painting, theatres and architecture. While those interested in law can follow its development throughout the British Empire.  Institutions familiar with ECCO will find ECCO Part 2 has an increased emphasis on literature, social science and religion. Women’s writing is also well represented with more than 900 new works and editions by over 400 female authors including such influential writers as Mary Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Inchbald. As with ECCO, most titles are in English, however scholars will also find material in French, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian and Welsh. ECCO Part 2 offers the only copy in all ECCO of ‘Petit Code de la Raison Humaine’, given a London imprint, but probably printed in Paris, and dedicated to Benjamin Franklin (copy from the Library of Congress).

The new release includes an enhanced user interface with new features and contextual tools to make the database more accessible to students and valuable to advanced researchers. Institutions that already participate in the JISC Collections ECCO agreement will have access to ECCO Part 2 and the new interface on August 1st, 2009 with no further action required on their part.  Those wishing to switch earlier can request to do so by emailing: emea.globaltech@cengage.com. 

For more information, or to sign up visit.

Why universities need a digital content strategy - JDCC 2009

A major conference to discuss the future of online content will be taking place this week (June 30 – July 1) to examine why UK universities need a sustainable, digital content strategy to successfully deliver accessible learning and research materials for the future.

The Digital Content Conference (JDCC), hosted by JISC, takes place in the Cotswolds with more than 200 delegates in attendance.

With the Digital Britain report focusing on the Government’s desire to move towards a fully digitally literate society, JISC will be highlighting and debating what is needed to ensure rich accessible content for education and research to be developed and sustained.

The conference will hear from keynote speakers Catherine Grout, programme director e-Content at JISC, Robert Miller, Director of Books, Internet Archive, Nick Poole, Chief Executive the Collections Trust and Sarah Porter, head of innovation at JISC. All will be bringing their own perspectives on the current challenges facing education as well as sharing JISC’s considerable contribution to the UK’s national e-infrastructure. Delegates are encouraged to blog and tweet their posts with the conference tag #jdcc09

It will also show how JISC is working with universities and colleges in ensuing digital content reaches its full potential for teaching, learning and research.

JISC’s digitisation programme, one of many JISC content programmes, has seen over 6.5 million items become available online and JISC Collections will be launching the world’s largest digital library of 18th century printed books online at the event.

Sarah Porter, head of innovation at JISC says, “The aim of the conference is to explore with colleges and universities the next steps that need to be taken to integrate digital content in to research and education in a sustainable way.

“Digital content is key to their future and we are not just talking about journals but unlocking our rich digital heritage and making content far more accessible to a wider community.”

Although the physical conference is fully booked - the conference website will be showing the keynote speeches live streamed and tweeted from 11.30am. The conference will also be live blogged and all delegates are encouraged to blog and tweet their posts under the conference tag #jdcc09   

Find out more about JISC’s Digital Content Conference and view videos highlighting all of JISC’s funded projects to put teaching, learning and research materials online, at JISC’s YouTube channel.

Open Educational Resources programme officially launches

Today June 24, 2009 the Higher Education Academy and JISC officially launch its Open Educational Resources programme, helping to drive open innovation across the UK.

This week’s announcement by David Lammy (Minister for Higher Education and IPR) to create an online innovation fund and the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP’s celebration of the Open University show the importance of accessing and opening up digital education resources.

Open Educational Resources (OER), funded by HEFCE and run by the Academy and JISC, aims to make a wide range of learning resources created by academics freely available, easily discovered and routinely re-used by both educators and learners.

OER could include full courses, course materials, complete modules, notes, videos, assessments, tests, simulations, worked examples, software, and any other tools or materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge. These resources will be released under an intellectual property license that permits open use and adaptation.

Dr John Selby, Director of Education and Participation at HEFCE, said, “Significant investment has already been made in making educational resources widely available by digitising collections of materials and enabling people to reuse and adapt existing content to support teaching and learning.

”This new initiative will test whether this can be done much more generally across higher education.  It will give further evidence of the high quality of UK education and make it more widely accessible.”

There are three separate strands of projects.  The subject area and individual strands of the programme will be overseen by the Academy. David Sadler, Higher Education Academy Director of Networks said, “A positive student experience depends on having access to resources. Students and academics will benefit from this move to make more content available.”

JISC is managing the institutional strand, and have overall responsibility for the management of the programme.  Dr Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary at JISC said, “JISC believes in open access and opening up the UK’s resources. This is the first time that a project of this nature will have been undertaken on this scale, collaboratively across an entire national educational sector. Its success will enable researchers, academics and learners to benefit from world class learning resources.”

Projects will be supported by advice and materials from a range of JISC services, including Jorum, JISC Legal, CETIS and InfoNet, and by the Open University Score project. Programme findings will be evaluated and brought together to inform further work.

The programme will make the equivalent of 5,000 undergraduate modules of existing learning resources freely available online. Projects will be working towards being able to sustainably release a much larger pool of resources over a longer period.
The funded projects will run for 12 months and will end on 30 April 2010.

Find out more about the funded OER projects
Further information about the Academy and JISC's partnership
For blog and Twitter posts tag #ukoer

Podcast: The Edgeless University – Minister announces new £20m open learning innovation fund

At the launch event of the Edgeless University publication, a report produced by Demos and commissioned by JISC, David Lammy Minister for Higher Education and IPR announced a new £20m open learning innovation fund for UK universities.

#edge09

Listen to the podcast (Duration 7:20)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT

Subscribe to the JISC Podcast via RSS

Subscribe to the JISC Podcast via iTunes

Download the podcast

Digital lifeline for UK universities

British universities will lose their leading international standing unless they become much more radical in their use of new technology, a JISC commissioned report says today.

British universities occupy four of the top ten world rankings and the UK is one of the top destinations for international students. But the Edgeless University, conducted by Demos on behalf of JISC, suggests that a slowness to adopt new models of learning will damage this competitive edge. The research showed that the recession has put universities under intense pressure as threats to funding combine with increasing demand.

A wave of applicants is expected to hit universities this summer as record numbers of unemployed young people seek to ‘study out’ the recession. The report says that online and social media could help universities meet these demands by reaching a greater number of students and improving the quality of research and teaching. Online and DIY learning can create 'edgeless universities' where information, skills and research are accessible far beyond the campus walls.

Malcolm Read OBE, Executive Secretary for JISC, which supported the research, said: ‘The UK is a leading force in the delivery of higher education and its universities and colleges have been punching well above their weight for some time. Safeguarding this reputation means we have to fight harder to stay ahead of developments in online learning and social media, and embracing the Web 2.0 world.

‘This is a great opportunity for UK universities and colleges to open up and make learning more accessible to students who would not traditionally stay on in education. 'Edgeless universities' can transform the way the UK delivers, shares and uses the wealth and quality of information its institutions own.’

The report also calls for universities to acknowledge the impact of the internet by making academic research freely available online. Author of the report, Peter Bradwell, said: ‘The internet and social networks mean that universities are now just one part of the world of learning and research. This means we need their support and expertise more than ever. Just as the music industry may have found the answer to declining CD sales with Spotify, universities must embrace online knowledge sharing and stake a claim in the online market for information.’

The report makes a series of recommendations for opening up university education, including making all research accessible to the public. It says teaching should be placed on a more even footing with research in career progression and status and teaching which uses new technology rewarded.

Read the report in full
Request a copy of the report
Find out more about Demos

New online resources for learning, teaching and assessment

The Higher Education Academy and JISC have teamed up to produce a set of online guides and interactive tutorials, designed to help learning and teaching professionals make best use of digital technologies in their practice.

The rapid development of information technology has made available a plethora of new resources for education. These educational tools can significantly enhance learning and teaching but also create new challenges for staff.

These new online tutorials and guides give practical guidance on how to use digital technologies in areas such as assessment and work-related learning. They also show how technology can be used to help tackle issues such as inclusivity, copyright law and plagiarism.

Topics cover:
□ Assessment
□ Copyright, accessibility and the law
□ Creating your own on-line learning materials
□ Internet plagiarism
□ On-line image searching
□ Preparing learners for the workplace
□ Supporting learning in the workplace
□ Supporting inclusivity
□ Technology-enhanced learning and teaching

This is one of the many areas of work with which the Academy and JISC have been collaborating, drawing on the respective expertise of each organisation: an understanding of the needs of learning and teaching professionals and the potential of digital technologies to support learning, teaching and assessment.

Professor Sol Picciotto of the Lancaster University Law School provided some early feedback on the copyright-cleared images toolkit he said: ‘Congratulations on this tutorial. It's really excellent, very well set out, and the information on copyright is presented clearly and accurately. It really fills a gap and does so extremely well.’

These guides and tutorials will be available to try out at The Academy's Conference, at University Place, Manchester, from 30 June to 2 July 2009 or online.

Read more about the Academy and JISC's partnership

Podcast: Virtual Research Environments 3 - bridge the gap for researchers

As JISC launches a new suite of work in virtual research environments (VRE), Frederique Van Till programme manager in e-research running JISC's VRE3 programme, talks to Rebecca O’Brien about how these environments can not only bring people together within universities but how projects are connecting outside their institution, with industry and business too.

Listen to the podcast (Duration 7:21)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT

Subscribe to the JISC Podcast via RSS

Subscribe to the JISC Podcast via iTunes

Download the podcast

JISC's response to the Digital Britain report

The Digital Britain report published by Lord Stephen Carter clearly states the Government’s commitment and ambition ‘to secure the UK’s position as one of the world’s leading digital knowledge economies’.

Commenting on the report Dr Malcolm Read, JISC’s executive secretary said: “The report highlights the need to open up the UK’s public resources, an area which is central to the work JISC does for and with colleges, universities and other public bodies.

“We make information available online for teaching, learning and research, with many resources being freely publicly available. Not only are we looking to deliver safe and secure access to quality assured resources today, through our award winning network JANET, but we are also working to create sustainable models where this information can continue to be accessed as technology develops.”

The report refers to the need to ‘make some changes to the legislative framework around copyright licensing, to tackle the problems such as those surrounding the use of so-called orphan works’ and ‘the need to invest in research and innovation to enable a Digital Britain’.

Dr Read added, “We welcome the report’s references to innovation and to change current copyright laws which we hope will avoid the real risk of there being a 20th century black hole of online content as highlighted in the recent ‘In from the Cold’ report.

“We will continue to offer best practice guidance to train academics on how to use digital technologies and deliver the UK’s e-infrastructure to support colleges and universities educate digitally literate graduates.

“However, the report does need to go further to highlight the issues around open access, open innovation and network capacity to be able to support a digital society.”