Introducing the Building Capacity Programme
One of the key success criteria of any project is the degree to which people use it and its outputs. The new Building Capacity programme is focusing on recent and existing JISC projects and services and helping HEIs to implement the outputs and outcomes of relevant projects in their institution in response to their own strategic drivers
How will it work?
The programme is aimed at senior managers (Pro Vice Chancellor level) who will sponsor an institutional change programme by applying a combination of appropriate JISC outputs, outcomes and services (products) to the issue. The programme will provide a small amount of funding to seed the change process and enable local contextualisation of JISC products.
For example, if an institution wishes to address aspects of social mobility it may decide to use a combination of outputs from Innovation Projects, such as the TAG project at UCLAN (methods for providing online pastoral support), the CoGenT project, at the University of Gloucestershire for developing workforce development curricula, the Mining Course Management Systems at TVU for accessing student retention data and the JISC TechDis service for accessing advice on widening access. The funding can be used to deploy and contextualise the projects and outputs in the institution or it may also be used to bring in projects to act as consultants, where the required input is over and above the stated project remit.
What sort of issues will the programme look at addressing?
In providing this funding and mapping JISC products to issues we have identified the following high level issues as indicative of the areas we are interested in:
- Economic recovery and public funding
- Quality standards and reputation
- Research funding and governance
- International competitiveness
- Social mobility
What will the programme deliver?
The major output for the programme will be toolkits that will enable other institutions to enact similar change processes; these will be underpinned with roadmaps and case studies describing the process of how JISC projects were deployed away from the project host institution and how they are being used to address strategic issues.
For more information, get in touch with Lawrie Phipps
Location Independent Working Conference (April 2009)
“…Work is not a place where you go but rather something you do”
Morgan R.E. (2004) Teleworking: An assessment of the benefits and challenges, European Business Review
David Morris introduced the day with a series of concise slides explaining the concept and also that his project was a 3 month pilot. A series of presentations took place that gave different perspectives from the institution.
The Basics
- LIW Is a formal recognising that work does not just take place on the campus and supports people in working from other locations.
- LIW staff give up their offices but have “touch down” spaces on the campus.
- Training the staff and managers involved in the pilot was essential.
Some Myths
- Everyone is doing it anyway.
- LIW is for everyone.
- It’s a recipe for avoiding work.
- LIW staff are never around and the rest of us can’t talk to them.
- LIW people get left out.
- Non-LIW colleagues carry the can.
Expected Benefits
Individual
- Improved Work-Life Balance
- Reduced commute time
- Reduced travel cost
- Reduced Stress
- Legitimisation of home working
Employer
- Improved work flexibility
- Improved recruitment (good working environment attractive to potential employees)
- Reduced absenteeism and stress
Environment
- Lower Carbon Footprint
- Reduced congestion and transport burden
- Improved teaching quality and innovation in teaching
The Process
At Coventry all staff went through a process to support them and the scheme. This involved Consultation with staff > Briefing Sessions > Expressions of interest > Decision Making (is LIW appropriate for members of staff) > Training > IT Consultation (what staff needed) > T & Cs (formal LIW Policy) > Set up and Start up
At Coventry….
120 people attended briefings, 52 expressed interest, 35 participated (25 academic, 10 non academic)
Lessons they learned
- Have a senior champion – who believes in it
- Create LIW spaces, both big and small (promote cross dept etc)
- A formal system is essential
- Training is important
- Dispel the myths
- Process for storage of University owned material.
The Day closed by looking at the “costs” of LIW
There was a caveat placed on the data in that individual costs can very enormously. In terms of carbon saving it was predicted that a saving of somewhere between 133kg and 785kg.
At Coventry University it estimated that, per member of staff, a notional saving of £1,061 could be made, per annum. This figure includes start up costs of the scheme, office space, heating etc.
Further details http://cuba.coventry.ac.uk/culiw/
An interview with the Project Manager Dina Shah
Immersion or Augmentation: A culture or just another tool?
As well as developing technology and processes many of the Users and Innovation projects are also engaged in much wider debates, pushing our understanding of the role of technology in the wider education sector.
The Habitat project is currently exploring the role of virtual worlds such as Second Life, which may on one hand be described as ‘immersive’ but in some pedagogical circles may be described as ‘augmentative’ The immersion verses augmentation debate may become more important as the sector looks at integrating these technologies into educational and research practice.
The immersion ‘camp’ tends to describe virtual worlds as a culture or society in which we play a role and/or become a member while the augmentationist ‘camp’ describes them as simply an addition to the range of tools we already use to communicate. Whilst for people not in either camp the debate looks reasonably esoteric, the debate is actually quite divisive and feeds the desire of those involved to be in a particular ‘camp’. In this way it is similar to the classic mac vs PC discussion we all like to partake of occasionally. Nevertheless the immersion vs augmentation concept could act as a useful yardstick for the projects such as the Habitat project which is piloting the
educational use of virtual worlds with art & design students and philosophy students.
When the project is developing its pilots, for example, for their philosophy students, the students may simply want to have a discussion at a distance so the only valid reason to use something like Second Life is if it brings a sense of presence beyond that of a straight text chat. In this sense the measure for the success of the pilot is focused on immersion. In contrast to this the art & design students will be in the same room whilst building aesthetic artefacts in world. This is a direct extension of their real life practice in the studio and could be said to fall into the augmentation category. Clearly the division between these principles and between the pilots is not black and white. Each aspect of the pilots contains elements of both immersion and augmentation. The Habitat team’s role is to delicately use the distinction to guide the pedagogical design of the pilots and to evaluate the success of their activities.
To keep an eye on the debate, and to contribute, monitor the Project Blog. Alternatively, if you are attending the Next Generation Environments conference (further information from Lawrie Phipps) there will be a chance to engage the Habitat team in the debate on day one of the event.
U&I Showcase: The Web2Rights Project
One of the joys of working as a programme manager at the JISC is working with a group of people that you can bounce ideas off, find gaps and then elicit solutions. Following a series of reports about IPR and Copyright issues around new and emerging technologies, we, (JISC, and the JISC Users and Innovation Programme), commissioned a project in Autumn 2007 to provide some pragmatic advice and guidance. Delivering earlier than expected, with more outputs on the way, the Web2Rights project is a fantastic resource for anyone in the education sector working in this area. Furthermore a series of FAQs is constantly being added to. A good starting point is the IP Toolkit.
For April the team intend to launch an interactive resource which will help users navigate through the advice in a flow diagram. In addition keep an eye on the project blog for interesting developments, one of the editors informs me that they are looking at some terms and conditions of specific commercial products and whether they suit academic practices. The team have now published a great article about whether or not to use Blackboard Scholar- well worth a look.
Finally, the project is also trying to exemplify the practices it advises on. The website provides a clean design, with good RSS feeds, embedded videos, a blog, discussion forum and opportunities for the ‘community’ to contribute. They are also using the tools they are investigating, using for example, a Facebook group, and slideshare (below).
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