JISC BCE and the New Engineering Foundation
Staff from the JISC Business and Community Engagement programme were pleased to be involved in the New Engineering Foundation Innovisions Conference held on 8th January 2010 in London. In addition to the programme being part of the exhibition at the event which included demonstrations of the recently launched Embedding BCE Online Resource, Simon Whittemore, JISC BCE Programme Manager, addressed delegates on the Impact of Secondments on Higher Level Skills.
The New Engineering Foundation is a grant-awarding charity that promotes the development of vocational education in science, engineering and technology and is a key stakeholder and partner within the BCE programme. They have recently produced a series of Golden Knowledge Bites. These are a series of videos commissioned by the JISC BCE Project Supporting Training, CPD and Staff Exchange for BCE to illustrate the value and importance of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) with a focus on secondments to build up knowledge and skills, and engender a culture of knowledge exchange.
This series of videos will be launched by the project and made available through the project website in Spring 2010.
Driving Transformational Change for Employer Engagement
The University of Salford recently held a conference to showcase their work in Employer Engagement. The University has produced a model by identifying barriers to employer engagement which they have developed into enablers. These include Communications and Marketing, Costing, Quality Assurance and Staff Development.
In addition to these, as part of an enabler ‘IT Systems and CRM’, the University has recently implemented a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Prior to implementation their CRM processes often resulted in fragmented engagement, and there were no standard processes which led to a large number of standalone spreadsheets and databases. To overcome these issues, the University chose Agresso as their software solution. The university looked initially to use their own in-house IT department to implement the CRM system, but decided that they did not have the resources to do so and took the decision to use technical expertise from Agresso in the form of a full-time secondment of an Agresso consultant to the University.
This approach has resulted in a two way process of sharing knowledge. The university has learned a great deal about the system from Agresso while the Agresso Consultant seconded, as an employee of the University, has learned a lot about how the institution operates.
The scope for the system was to manage business relationships, record and progress leads and opportunities, administer non credit-bearing CPD courses and to integrate the CRM system with their Agresso Business World finance system. The commitment of the Vice Chancellor has been an important driver for the success of the system and has resulted in buy in across faculties. The system also includes scope for capturing impact statements for use in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and will be used for funding bids, KTPs and essentially everything other than credit bearing students.
There are currently 80 cross faculty users, with the intention to increase this to 120 by Spring 2010. In recognition of the work carried out so far, the JISC Business and Community Engagement programme has recently funded a project to allow the University to carry out further development of their CRM system and processes and to undertake dissemination of their activities.
Find out more about Employer Engagement at the University of Salford
Enhancing Knowledge Management
Supporting institutions in developing sustainable systems and ICT strategies for management and exploitation of their knowledge assets.
March 2009 saw the CRM-SLRM call go public, from which the JISC BCE programme funded 20 projects across UK Further and Higher Education. You can keep up-to-date with current activity via the JISC CETIS RMSAS (Relationship Management Support, Analysis and Synthesis) project page, with regular news updates and background information.
A brief overview and further links on each project can be found on the JISC CETIS website. The following video provides a brief introduction to one of those funded projects, taken at the start-up event earlier this year. View the full playlist via the BCE YouTube channel.
Praxis and UNICO Merge
A merger between Praxis and UNICO, proposed at the recent Unico Conference in Brighton attended by Marc Dobson from the JISC Services BCE Team, has been approved by an overwhelming majority vote.
Unico is the UK’s leading representative body of professionals realising the potential of university and public sector research through commercialisation, and Praxis is a national training programme aimed at technology transfer professionals working in universities, research institutions and industry. Both are key stakeholders within the JISC BCE Programme, having been represented on the BCE Advisory Group through Dr. Alison Campbell, and Praxis have been involved in collaboration as part of the JISC Services BCE Project ‘Supporting CPD, Training and Staff Exchange for Business and Community Engagement’. This BCE project is developing a Training Support Package for BCE practitioners, building on the AURIL-CPD framework and other resources, combining online diagnostic tools and catalogued resources.
Unico Chair, Professor David Secher said, “This significant step will simplify the complex knowledge transfer landscape in the UK, improve the offering to members and enable us to strengthen international links with other similar organisations around the world. Universities and PSREs throughout the UK have shown tremendous support for this proposal.”
Praxis Chair, Dr Alison Campbell added, “Consolidating the strengths of two leading organisations is very sensible. The merged organisation will be in a stronger position to represent the views of its members. I look forward to working closely with Praxis and Unico colleagues to bring a diverse offering that better meets the networking and training needs of the profession, to Knowledge Transfer professionals in the UK and abroad.”
In response to the news, Simon Whittemore, JISC BCE Programme Manager said “This is excellent news and a significant step forward, which will further enhance the coherence of expert support and training for professionals and institutions alike in knowledge transfer and exchange - congratulations to Praxis and Unico”.
JISC BCE at the Higher Education Academy Conference
The recent Higher Education Academy Conference which took place in Manchester included a session on the JISC Business and Community Engagement Programme. The workshop, ‘JISC Business and Community Engagement: Supporting a professionalised approach to managing partnerships and engaging employers’ provided an opportunity for delegates to gain an overview of the BCE programme, and to learn more about the work of three projects within the BCE programme with a focus on employer engagement. The programme includes a dedicated Employer Engagement work-package, within the ’Enhancing Knowledge Management’ stream, as well as other work-packages, for example in CRM and online collaborative tools, designed to support and enhance institutional management of collaborations and relationships with employers and other external parties.
Nye Nduche and Nick Holt presented the CRM4UNI project led by Birkbeck College. Their CRM Analytics Tool supports centralised employer engagement and strategic decision-making in the provision of personalised training/CPD to strategic business partners.
Stephen O’Regan from Roehampton University introduced the the FutureSkills pilot, a joint project by two West London Universities, Roehampton University and Thames Valley University, together with Ealing Hammersmith and West London College, focussed on defining how collaborative provision to the vibrant Creative Industries sector of West London will work in the post Leitch Review environment of employee-led demand.
Finally, Jacquie Kelly from JISC infoNet presented one of the projects led by JISC Services, Trialling of Online Collaborative Tools for BCE. Jacquie gave an overview of the eight trials of collaborative tools which are taking place across a variety of institutions and collaboration contexts. The aim of the trials is to enhance and empower BCE collaboration among practitioners, between institutions and between institutions and external partners.
JISC is also funding a portfolio of projects, managed by Ruth Drysdale in e-Learning, which are designed to enhance institution-wide innovation in support of employer engagement, lifelong learning and workforce development