Doug Peterson is a sessional instructor at the University of Windsor, Ontario. He blogs regularly at Doug - off the record. Here, he explains why he believes there is no such thing as a bad blog. Read his original blog.
via Jisc news
Throughout the summer, we’ve been conducting interviews with various projects that are part of the research data spring, to find out more about their work, their backgrounds, and how they’ve found the process.
In this series of interviews, we take the time to dig a little deeper into the thinking behind these projects, and get to know a little more about the work, and the people, behind them.
Ian Gent from the University of St Andrews and Catherine Jones from the Science and Technology Facilities Council fill us in on three Rs, but not as you might know them from school – theirs is a project about software reuse, repurposing and reproducibility.
via Jisc news
Throughout the summer, we’ve been conducting interviews with various projects that are part of the research data spring, to find out more about their work, their backgrounds, and how they’ve found the process.
In this series of interviews, we take the time to dig a little deeper into the thinking behind these projects, and get to know a little more about the work, and the people, behind them.
Ernesto Priego, from City University London and Andy Byers, from Ubiquity Press, talk about their work to create a series of plug-ins for a open source publishing software called Open Journal Systems. These plug-ins will allow authors to publish data and articles directly from a journal management system to insitutional repositories. This will reduce costs and save time for researchers.
via Jisc news
We are currently inviting nominations for influential HE professionals on social media. Nominations are open until Friday, so we spoke to our social media manager Tom Mitchell and senior co-design manager Sarah Knight about how the judges will choose the top 50.
Listen to the podcast and then join in the discussion, using the hashtag #jisc50social.
via Jisc news
Throughout the summer, we’ve been conducting interviews with various projects that are part of the research data spring, to find out more about their work, their backgrounds, and how they’ve found the process.
In this series of interviews, we take the time to dig a little deeper into the thinking behind these projects, and get to know a little more about the work, and the people, behind them.
Thanasis Velios, reader in digital documentation, tells us about his project to automatically gather data as artists go about the creative process - Artivity.
via Jisc news
Throughout the summer, we’ve been conducting interviews with various projects that are part of the research data spring, to find out more about their work, their backgrounds, and how they’ve found the process.
In this series of interviews, we take the time to dig a little deeper into the thinking behind these projects, and get to know a little more about the work, and the people, behind them.
Simon Coles, associate professor at the University of Southampton, is helping to develop a project called collaboration for research enhancement by active metadata (CREAM). It looks at changing and improving the way researchers use metadata, which is data that summarises basic information about data which can make finding and working with data easier for researchers.
via Jisc news
8 - 10 September 2015 marks the return of the annual Association of Learning Technology conference (ALT-C), which brings together practitioners, researchers and policy makers from across the sector to share their research and experience.
Sarah Knight, senior co-design manager at Jisc, introduces us to her session at ALT-C which looked at how universities and colleges are working in partnership with their students.
via Jisc news
Digital technologies charity Jisc today launches a competition for students and staff to come up with new digital solutions that will improve accessibility and inclusion in post-16 education.
Called accessible by design, the competition will invite ideas for how technology could support the access and inclusion of the UK’s learners, staff and researchers, with the best ones being offered the opportunity of funding to get their ideas off the ground.
Three of the ideas will be selected to receive £5,000 in funding plus expert support from Jisc to take them through the discovery phase and help develop tangible solutions.
Paul Bailey, senior co-design manager, Jisc, said:
“Technology is a major enabler in supporting accessibility for learning and teaching resources, but more must be done to ensure no learner is left behind.
Those students and staff who are having to overcome accessibility issues everyday are ideally placed to offer ideas on how their experiences can be improved through technology. With our competition we want to invite their ideas and involve them in the development of new tools and apps that support inclusive learning.
Specifically we’re looking for digital solutions that could make life easier not only for the individual and their institution, but can be rolled out so that others may benefit too.”
Accessible by design follows on from Jisc’s successful Summer of Student Innovation competition, now in its third year, which invites student teams to submit ideas for products that could enhance the learning experience.
Any student or member or staff that works in the area of accessibility and inclusion in further education (FE), higher education (HE) or skills is eligible to enter, either individually or as a team.
Ideas can either be a completely new concept or invention, or based on something already in existence by suggesting ways in which it can be improved. The ideas could provide solutions for individuals or a whole organisation, however, all submissions must be scalable and have the potential to benefit more than one institution in order to be considered.
Entries must be made via Jisc’s elevator website by 26 October and need to include a short video and summary of the idea. The general public will then be able to vote until 2 November with the final projects being taken forward announced in late November.
For more information please visit our accessible by design page, email paul.bailey@jisc.ac.uk or follow #accessdesign on Twitter for the latest news.
via Jisc news
8 - 10 September 2015 marks the return of the annual Association of Learning Technology conference (altc), which brings together practitioners, researchers and policy makers from across the sector to share their research and experience. James Clay, Jisc project manager, tells us what happened on day two at altc and talks us through the session on digital capabilities.
via Jisc news
8 - 10 September 2015 marks the return of the annual Association of Learning Technology (ALT) conference, which brings together practitioners, researchers and policymakers from across the sector to share their research and experience.
Paul Bailey, senior co-design manager, speaks to us about the first day, reflecting on Jisc sessions on the Summer of Student Innovation and learning analytics, as well as sharing what he's looking forward to seeing.
via Jisc news
Six student teams from colleges and universities across the UK have won support to develop their ideas for digital solutions that will transform the future of education.
Jisc will provide expert advice, technical support and funding to help build the ideas into products and services. The support is being offered through its Summer of Student Innovation competition, which asks learners to suggest new technologies and apps to improve the student experience.
Having already made it through first stage of the competition via votes from the general public, the students were invited to develop their concepts at a design sprint during the summer, before pitching their idea to a panel of judges ‘Dragons Den’ style.
The successful ideas are:
Paul Bailey, senior co-design manager at Jisc, said:
“Three years of running the Summer of Student Innovation has shown us how wonderfully creative students can be in coming up with solutions to some of the big challenges they’re encountering in learning and student life.
What all of the successful teams have brought to us are scalable ideas that have the potential to create a positive impact at other colleges and universities. We want them to help us to quickly take their ideas from the design stage and into development so that everyone can easily reap the benefits. We look forward to working with the students in the next phase.”
Jisc continues to work with six projects from the previous two years of running the Summer of Student Innovation, including: Unitu, a system to help universities structure and manage the feedback loop, from graduates from the University of Southampton; language-learning app Lingoflow, by brothers Lukas and Kamil Ondrej from Sussex Downs College; and Call For Participants, now the world’s largest open platform where researchers can promote their studies and connect with participants for free, from PhD students at the University of Nottingham.
via Jisc news
To celebrate International Literacy Day this September and support literacy for print-impaired learners, we look at how publishers, learning providers and libraries can make texts more accessible. Alistair McNaught, subject specialist at Jisc, tells us more. Read the original blog post.
via Jisc news
Throughout the summer, we’ve been conducting interviews with various projects that are part of the research data spring, to find out more about their work, their backgrounds, and how they’ve found the process.
In this series of interviews, we take the time to dig a little deeper into the thinking behind these projects, and get to know a little more about the work, and the people, behind them. Alisa Miller speaks about her project – and neologism – a consortial approach to building an integrated research data management system.
via Jisc news
In this series of podcasts we hear from our research data spring teams who are developing technical tools, software and service solutions to support research data management. This podcast is from Fiona Murphy who tells us about a project to give researchers credit for their data.
via Jisc news
We recently launched a call to find 50 of the most influential HE professionals on social media. We've been hearing from all kinds of academics and lecturers about the ways in which they use social media to generate change or improve things in their institutions - but what do the students think? We took the opportunity to speak to some students taking part in Jisc's Summer of Student Innovation to find out.
You can still nominate yourself or someone you know as one of the 50 most influential HE professionals on social media, or join in the conversation using the hashtag #jisc50social.
via Jisc news
Keeping your information secure can seem like a constant battle on all sides. Instead of trying to secure everything, Andrew Cormack, chief regulatory officer, Jisc technologies, advocates adopting a strategy to allow what activities you can, and defend your most valuable information assets. Read the original blog post.
via Jisc news
Recently Jisc opened a call to find 50 of the most influential HE professionals on social media in the UK. But what actually constitutes good practice among university and college staff? Tom Mitchell, group social media manager, offers his advice. Read the original blog post.
Listen to the podcast and then join in the discussion, using the hashtag #jisc50social.
via Jisc news
In the 12 months since the first shared data centre for research and education was launched by Infinity SDC and Jisc, many of the country’s top universities, colleges and research institutions have joined to improve efficiency, decrease costs and advance collaboration on world-leading research.
A year ago research in the UK was given a boost when the first shared data centre was created to support the requirements for academic research; becoming the first shared data centre of its type in the world. It is offered by specialist data centre provider, Infinity, through a framework agreement with Jisc.
Now, eleven leading UK institutions are utilising the facility for high performance computing and core IT infrastructure; resulting in increased collaboration with significant research projects, improved efficiency across core IT and on-premise data centre facilities being repurposed for teaching.
University College London, Francis Crick Institute, King’s College London, London School of Economics, The Sanger Institute, Imperial College London, Brunel University, Queen Mary University, University of Surrey and the Higher Education Funding Council for England as well as the data centre’s first further education tenants, City of Liverpool College, have all moved into the facility.
For researchers, being directly connected to the core of Jisc’s Janet network, the high capacity network for education and research, allows the quick and secure linking of large data storage and high performance computing facilities at national and international levels.
Jeremy Sharp, director strategic technologies, Jisc says:
“In the short time since launching, the shared data centre has proved a great success. Conversations with the sector show it to be in full support of the initiative, seeing it as an important step in allowing universities and colleges to be more efficient, effective and increasing collaboration that push the boundaries of research.
"The fact that eight of the UK’s leading institutions have already moved into the facility is further support for the data centre and we are in talks to welcome more tenants before the end of 2015.”
Commenting on why they selected the data centre, Nick Leake, CIO at King’s University College, says:
“Power flexibility was a very important reason for us moving into the facility. We required a data centre to provide a range of power densities per rack, as well as the flexibility to change the power allocation within the data hall when needed to meet the processing power required for biomedical research. The facility certainly helps us with this and is a vast improvement over our previous on premise data centre.”
Spencer Lamb, business development director, Infinity adds:
"Colocation providers have rarely delivered services for research HPC clusters as the majority of these have been kept on premise by the user. The Jisc shared data centre has bucked this trend by providing a flexible home for these systems, laying the foundation for collaboration between these institutions, something that was very difficult to do in the past.
"Furthermore an ecosystem is being generated to deliver further services to all the existing and future users as the Jisc shared data centre matures."
via Jisc news
Dr Paul Feldman, currently an executive partner at Gartner UK, has been appointed as Jisc’s new chief executive with a start date in mid-October 2015. He has extensive experience of working at a senior level in large, complex IT organisations. Paul takes over from Professor Martyn Harrow who, over the past four years, has transformed the organisation to better meet the changing needs in UK universities and colleges.
Dr Feldman has a strong commercial background having spent over 20 years in retail financial services at Nationwide Building Society, Barclays Bank and First Data EMEA, both in IT and business roles. He has also worked in knowledge-based IT companies including Thomson Reuters Legal UK and the Intellectual Property Office.
He has a track record in introducing innovative solutions, was in the vanguard of the first moves to use the internet for commercial purposes, and led the work that resulted in same-day payments between bank accounts.
Dr Feldman said:
“Jisc plays a pivotal role in helping the UK’s higher education, further education and skills sectors reinvent, adapt to change and make savings through the shared services, collective deals and advisory support it provides. Now, more than ever, universities and colleges need this kind of body and advice to help them take advantage of the opportunities digital technology offers to transform research, teaching, learning and organisational culture.
“Martyn and his team have made great strides in transforming Jisc. I look forward to building on this success and the solid foundations he has laid.”
David Maguire, Jisc chair, added:
"Our organisation exists to help colleges, universities and learning providers to thrive and perform at the forefront of international practice by fully exploiting the power of digital technologies.
“I want to pay tribute to the work Martyn Harrow and his team have done here. Jisc today is significantly different from the organisation he came into four years ago; we are stronger, sharper and more agile, with a solid customer service ethos at our heart.
“Paul's appointment will help take us to the next level, further supporting the critical work of universities and colleges.”
via Jisc news
This week Jisc launched a call to find the 50 most influential HE professionals in the UK on social media. Tom Mitchell, group social media manager, talks about the initiative - which will recognise those individuals who are using social media in a way that benefits and adds value to education and research - in his blog post. The post is read in full by Ben Goodway in our podcast.
via Jisc news
Martin Hamilton, Jisc's futurist, looks back on his experiences at the Google Moonshot for Education Summit, where 40 edtech innovators came together to discuss the future of education. He tells us about some of the moonshot thinking to come out of the event. Read the original blog post.
via Jisc news
Andrew Cormack, chief regulatory advisor, Jisc technologies, has recently written a chapter on information security for the book Digital Futures, which brings together a number of expert briefings on digital technologies for education and research. In this podcast he gives us a preview of his advice. Read the original blog here.
via Jisc news
Vivien Ward, project manager at Jisc Collections, looks at why universities might want to look at publishing textbooks themselves, what the challenges are, and how it can add value. Read the original blog post
via Jisc news
In this edition, Simon Thomson, an academic specialising in digital and technology-based learning, considers how digital pedagogies can support innovation. Looking at Jisc's senior co-design manager Lawrie Phipps' recent blog post referring to digital colonialism and its power to destroy pedagogic innovation, Simon asks: if this is the case, how should we redress the balance of power? Read Simon's original blog.
via Jisc news
A move to an open access model in research means that developments and requirements are constantly changing. Jisc is not only supportive of this move, but is taking an active role to work with universities and researchers to help meet any new requirements in a cost effective and joined up way.
In response to the recent OA policy review by Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the release of the Higher Education and Funding Council’s (HEFCE) updated requirements for next year’s Research Excellence Framework (REF), Jisc is working to help universities and researchers reap the benefits offered from OA practice.
Neil Jacobs, head of scholarly communications at Jisc tells us more:
“There are many benefits offered from an OA model, increased author visibility and improved accessibility to research outputs to name a few. But with such a new and evolving systems we need to get the infrastructure in place to ensure researchers and universities gain the maximum benefit.
“RCUK’s policy review offered various recommendations which will help us to continue to build this infrastructure; including immediately exploring how they can incorporate the use of ORCID, a research identifier that allows you to track research outputs by individuals, in their systems. At Jisc we have recently established a national consortium for ORCID to make it simpler for UK universities to start using it, we already have over 22 universities signed up.
"Alongside this we have been working closely with RCUK, SCONUL, ARMA and UKCoRR to ensure there is join up about what is needed and how it is developed. Today RCUK have released a template which we were heavily involved in developing. It provides details on what is required and a means for HEIs to supply data to them and a range of other funders, about compliance with their OA policy this year. I hope you find it helpful.”
Some current Jisc tools and solutions to support a cost effective and sustainable OA model:
For more detailed information on Jisc activity support OA for research papers take a look at their scholarly communications blog.
Neil concludes,
“There are still additional areas of uncertainty around OA, including around systems interoperability, measures to support compliance in subject repositories and the expectations around staff movement between institutions. I would like to assure those involved that these and other concerns are being considered and say that we will be working with others over the coming months on a common approach.”
via Jisc news