BCE

Just a reminder that the deadline for replying to the JISC Collections ITT for extending access management into Business and Community Engagement is in two weeks time (13th September).

The ITT asks for proposals to create a package of materials and strategies based on Identity Management activity taking place at the bidding/partner institutions so as to enable other institutions to extend current identity management (IdM) to Business and Community Engagement (BCE) groups.

http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/News/fam2bce

Please email or call Mark Williams (m.williams@jisc.ac.uk or 02030066042) if you have any questions concerning the ITT.

Collaborating Across Boundaries
Showcasing the effective use of online tools for Business and Community Engagement in UK Further and Higher Education

Friday 24th September, 09:30 – 16:00, Royal York Hotel, York, UK

http://collaborativetools4bce.jiscinvolve.org/events/showcase/

The focus of this one day event is on the use of online tools to support, enhance and enable collaboration between Further and Higher Education and their commercial, public sector, cultural and social & civic partners. Presentations will include 3 keynotes plus sessions showcasing outputs from the JISC Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for Business and Community Engagement project. The day will also include networking opportunities and a panel discussion to explore emergent themes from the day.

The event will be of value to anyone interested in any of the four dimensions of BCE, namely: Employer Engagement, Knowledge Transfer, Lifelong Learning or Cultural Community & Public Engagement. We anticipate that attendees will include senior managers, academics, lecturers, IT directors, knowledge transfer managers, business development managers and staff from support services.

Registration for the event (via the URL above) is free and includes access to the day’s talks, lunch and refreshments.

Places are limited so please book early to avoid disappointment!

Interested in JISC’s work in Business and Community Engagement? Why don’t you join our team?

We have a vacancy in a high-profile national role, on a part-time job-share basis, working 40% FTE over 2 days based at JISC Netskills at Newcastle University.

Salary : up to £47,905 rising to £52,347 pro rata
Closing Date : 12 July 2010
Date for Interview : 12 August 2010

If you are knowledgeable about the interface between universities/colleges and business or community organisations, you could help transform this vital function. With the aim of helping build and sustain effective relationships with external partners, we’re looking for someone who understands this complex landscape and is enthusiastic about using online technologies like web 2.0, social networking and collaborative online tools, with experience to match.

See the full job details and apply online, ref C698A.

This exciting post is jointly responsible for a wide range of nationally-focused JISC projects and activities exploring the role of innovative ICT such as Web 2.0 to support engagement between universities/colleges and external partners. Examples include SME engagement through blogs and a web technologies toolkit, an online CPD self assessment tool, and support & synthesis to a series of trials exploring open innovation with universities through online marketplaces.

Working across the UK with partners and project managers in other universities, you will provide strategic input and reporting to the national body JISC, through its Business and Community Engagement programme, and JISC Advance, the organisation overseeing 7 JISC national services and the network of 13 Regional Support Centres.

The post is within a small team based in Newcastle, with project managers distributed across the UK. It will involve managing stakeholder relationships within higher and further education, including senior managers and representative bodies such as AURIL (the association of university research and industry links), the Higher Education Academy, and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement.

If you would like to discuss this post informally, please contact Dr Robert Allen at r.s.allen@newcastle.ac.uk

Or see the full job details and online application.

These were just three of the topics covered as around 40 people gathered in hot summery weather in lovely surroundings of the Heaton Mount centre, Bradford University School of Management, to discuss the role of higher education institutions in open innovation and knowledge exchange with business and community groups.

The Engage HEI conference offered a varied programme including the role of leadership in engagement as a keynote from Prof James Powell (Salford University), academic work exploring the researchers role in technology transfer （University of Malaga）, the codevelopment of subsea engineering courses through a regional cluster of small business （Newcastle University）, and several sessions featuring the role of design in innovation, such as a comparison of innovation policies across Europe （Design Wales）.

It was pleasing to note the broad nature of engagement considered, covering all aspects of the dimensions of the JISC Business and Community Engagement agenda: Knowledge Transfer, Employer Engagement, Lifelong Learning and Community, Cultural and Public Engagement, in contrast to a much narrower approach often applied.

Some key issues arising as common themes included the role of trust in inter-organisational collaboration, featured specifically in a paper by Sheffield Business School on this issue with SMEs, of interest to JISC’s BCE projects on SME engagement and e-empowerment but also reflecting findings from consultation events held last year by JISC, such as the barriers of language, speed and access. An interesting point was the recognition of different types of trust such as knowledge driven or emotion driven, reflecting expertise and personal relationships respectively.

JISC’s 2009 Report on  Open Innovation in universities and JISC’s current Open Innovation pilot projects were particularly pertinent for a presentation from Manchester Business School which began by highlighting the two “souls” of higher education, one that displayed ambivalence or worse towards industrial collaboration, the other nurturing research and technology exchanges. The finding that UK universities score poorly as information sources is an issue the JISC Business Information Resources Study highlighted and one that the JISC Access to Resources demonstrator projects will begin to redress. Some of the issues raised as being barriers to open innovation included perceived cost of locating partners, differing objectives, and low priorities (for example from academics).

An interesting piece of work (by Lancaster Business School and University of Milan), included running workshops with a network of SMEs to explore their use of social networks – the actual people that is, not the online version that JISC audiences may be familiar with. Their approach was to help SMEs identify a network of contacts and then plan how to use this network to solve a future problem. Clearly of interest for JISC is how this might be used within an online social networking approach to bring together the people and the technology, and more broadly how the lessons might feed into other work such as the SME Engagement study and the G-Blog at Glamorgan, part of the Trialling Online Collaborative Tools project.

When you start to look at colleges and universities in great detail you begin to understand the huge depth and breadth of work they carry out.  Forging new partnerships and relationships is vital in terms of both funding and knowledge exchange.  Knowledge exchange pretty much means what it says on the tin and could be summarised as doing three things:

1. Providing a solution to a problem – Pull rather than Push
2. Providing practical experience to teaching/academic staff
3. Informing learning/research material

Developing and maintaining networks can help bring those partnerships to fruition.  The sound bites below provide some examples of where this is already happening.

University of Glasgow, Innovation Network – Bill Leeming (Project Manager), Marion Anderson (Knowledge Transfer Manager)

University of Glasgow, VentureNavigator – Pete O’Neill (Project Manager)

University of Strathclyde, Strathclyde Entrepreneurial Network – Fiona Ireland (Project Manager)

When most people think of colleges/universities they often think of lecturers, students, academics and some may even mention support functions such as IT, Libraries etc.  One role that will very rarely get a mention is that of Business Development Managers or Knowledge Transfer Managers.

These roles are vital in developing partnerships and exchanging knowledge across organisational boundaries whether that’s with businesses, SMEs, Charitable or Public organisations (and probably many more categories).  In some cases you could, perhaps, argue these people are social artists. The following sound bites provide an insight into these roles.

University of Glasgow, Lynne Brown & Fraser Rowan – Business Development Managers

University of Strathclyde, Fiona Young – International Programmes Officer

University of Strathclyde, Linda Wallace – Business Development Manager, Yvonne Kinnaird- KTN Manager

London College of Communication played host to a lively and interactive one-day conference (12th May 2010) offering 100 delegates from both Further and Higher Education (FE/HE) a chance to examine the theoretical and practical composition of Communities of Practice (CoP).  With a focus on Business and Community Engagement (BCE) and the way in which FE/HE staff traverse the online landscape to engage community and business organisations alike, delegates were able to discuss the subject in depth with some of the great minds already working in this area, not to mention the fruitful conversations had by all during breakout sessions.

• Etienne Wenger – thinker, researcher, consultant, author, and speaker;
• Paul Lowe – E-Flections;
• Brian McCaul – University of Leeds, Business and Enterprise;
• Jeremy Davenport – Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network;
• and Simon Whittemore – JISC BCE Programme Manager.

Etienne began the day with a keynote presentation, providing an overview of his work and current thinking around CoPs.  Some of the key statements and highlighted summaries from delegates via twitter, include:

• The role of moderators/technology stewards or CoP facilitators is critical in any effective, lively CoP;
• A new type of hybrid role: academic-business practitioner is emerging as a particularly effective enabler of cross-boundary CoPs. This individual is a translator, facilitator, PR expert, educationalist, business person all rolled into one;
• Technology is not a replacement or a model for brain consciousness, but a part of how we learn and construct knowledge;
• That we need to create spaces of meaningfulness where we can explore our identity with questions raised about how we create those spaces;
• The idea of CoP as learning partnerships;
• That we need to recognise the social artists within our organisations and value the work they do;
• That 45 degree walkers are essential to cope with vertical/horizontal axes of accountability!
• To get value from CoPs the narrative (CoP stories and experiences) needs to be combined with some form of measurement.

A full overview of tweets from the day are available thanks to TweetDoc – Mediating Boundaries TweetDoc.

In the second session, Paul Lowe, Brian McCaul and Jeremy Davenport provided delegates with an overview of their practical experiences from building online networks and CoPs that focus on engagement with external organisations.  Paul Lowe spoke about Open-i, the CoP he’s developed for Photojournalists which has completely transformed learning and the tri-lateral relationship of students, academics and professionals in that field.  Brian McCaul gave a high-paced talk highlighting his thoughts on Knowledge Transfer 2.0 and what that means to the Business and Enterprise function at the University of Leeds.  Jeremy Davenport gave an update on the exciting developments of his Creative Industries Network and the way in which he is developing that community.

In the afternoon the World Café, ’popcorn’ session, debate and Q&A session provided the opportunity to further conversations on the day … but they certainly didn’t end there!  Numerous blog posts have been written by attendees, such as Forging identity and learning in Professional Practice by Rosemary McGuinness, and Apprenticeship and Transformative Learning by Lindsay Jordan.  Emails are also being received with reflections after the event. Even an audioboo has being produced!

We thank everyone who attended for their contributions to the day!  For those who didn’t make it, the ‘collaborative online tools for BCE‘ project team are working frantically to pull all of the information together including video from the day and a write-up of the World Café and popcorn session.

Overall, it was an innovative, high energy and successful conference. The venue was in some ways ‘alternative’ in comparison to many JISC events, a welcome change for some, but perhaps a shock to the system for others. One delegate noted:

“I hope you don’t get any negative feedback about the food and the rooms; I thought your catering and room choices were inspired, and I wouldn’t expect anyone there would have chosen to forfeit such an inspiring speaker in favour of fancy food and waitress service.   Everyone keeps whinging about how money is so tight in HE and we can’t do anything decent anymore; you’ve shown everyone that yes, you CAN run a truly good, catered conference on a minimal budget – and raise money for Haiti at the same time… great stuff ”

The JISC Developing Community Content Call, Grant 13/09, a joint initiative between the Digitisation and Business and Community programmes, was designed to enhance institutional two-way engagement with the public and commmunity groups, through co-development of rich and innovative digital resources.
We recently announced the successful bids from Strand I of this Call (Rapid user innovation projects)

Below are the five succesful proposals from Strand II (two are currently conditional awards):

My Leicestershire
University of Leicester (Ben Wynne)

This project will create a base digital archive comprised of historical texts from the University of Leicester Library’s Special Collections complemented by video recordings from MACE, oral history recordings from EMOHA and private collections of historical photographs of ‘ghost signs’, buildings, bridges and other architecturally significant sites from across the county.

Welsh Voices of the Great War Online
University of Cardiff (Gethin Matthews)

This project will work with the families of those in Wales who fought, or otherwise served, in the First World War in order to collect and make available online the range of artefacts that are held in private hands.   The results will be presented via the People’s Collection website, a Welsh Assembly Government funded project.

Community Cafe Projects
University of Southampton (Alison Dickens)

The project will address the scarcity of up to date, online resources for community languages (see here for definition: http://www.cilt.org.uk/community_languages.aspx )  The aim of the project is to co-create a community collection of online language and cultural materials which will significantly enhance existing materials to support community languages.

OurWikiBooks
(Conditional Award)
University of Manchester (Alexandria Walker)

This project will undertake co-development, with teachers and GCSE and A-level students, of a new digital collection of key concerns and knowledge in computing education.  In the process, the project will build a community that collaboratively creates digital collections of imaginative educational materials for use in learning and teaching computing, with this content being made available to the computing education community in the UK and worldwide.

Media and Memory in Wales, 1950-2000
(Conditional Award)
University of Aberyswyth (Dr. Iwan Rhys Morus) 

This project will collect and archive oral testimony relating to the age of television in Wales.  It will solicit memories of significant televisual moments in politics and culture.  By focussing on four distinct geographical and linguistic communities, it will seek to provide a spectrum of memories that represent a national collective memory of television in Wales.

Succesful projects will be linking their digitisation activities with their BCE capabilities, with the help of the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/, the Beacons for Public Engagement and successful precedent projects especially RunCoCo http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/econtent/runcoco.aspx which developed the Great War Archive: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa/

JISC Legal are pleased to announce the release of new resources around the theme of Business and Community Engagement (BCE).  Their resources provide comprehensive guidance on the legal implications of BCE through examination related laws and recommendations for action.

Guidance documents include:

• How to Play Fair – A User’s Guide
• Competition and State Aid – What is the Law?
• Providing Funds for Business and Community Engagement

Guidance videos include:

• Data Sharing and Research
• Creating Intellectual Property Together
• Using Intellectual Property Together
• Keeping Confidential
• e-Marketing

All of the resources are available from the BCE theme page of JISC Legal’s website: http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/Themes/BusinessandCommunityEngagement.aspx.

Using Intellectual Property Together from JISC Legal on Vimeo.

The 20 JISC Relationship Management projects gathered in the convivial surroundings of York St John (YSJ) University for a milestone event just before Easter. This was the final gathering for these 13 CRM process improvement  and 7 SLRM (Student Lifecycle Relationship Management) projects and it proved to be an excellent forum for reflecting on the achievements of the projects http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/bce/relationshipmanagement.aspx

Organised by Sharon Perry - with colleagues from JISC CETIS http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/support/relationship-management- who has provided unfailing support for the projects throughout their term, the day provided an opportunity for the projects to present common findings in groups of four or five, exchange lessons learnt and consider next steps, in the august auditorium of the YSJ chapel. Insights from subject matter experts engaged in the programme (who have previously contributed to JISC work in this area) – Mark Stiles, Martin Haywood, Peter Kawalek and Alan Paull – enriched the discussions and provided alternative perspectives.

Time has passed all to quickly since the start-up meeting held at Aston University.  Early on, some projects had helpfully published videos describing their work:

It’s probably fair to say that, in general, there was widespread under-estimation of the challenge involved in these cross-institution process improvement projects at the programme initiation – a challenge exacerbated by the rather volatile economic and funding climate which has dominated senior managers attentions. On the other hand some projects (e.g. Bournemouth, Coventry and Birkbeck) reported that the current climate had focussed minds and for senior management, interest in projects which would improve the effectivenss of processes across departments and functions in support of better partner/client/student engagement was a ‘no-brainer’. Several projects took an inspired approach in rising to the challenge, making good use of other JISC resources such as the Embedding BCE InfoKit in so doing: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/embedding-bce

These ambitious projects required extensive cross-departmental and cross-functional exploration just in order to derive process maps and blueprints, so inevitably previously buried/invisible barriers were unearthed as well as great moments of clarity achieved.

The CRM projects were guided by the CRM Self-analysis Framework http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/crm-tools/, a good practice resource which will be enriched through these case studies; each CRM project was a journey on the maturity path from Peripheral to Tactical to Strategic use of CRM processes. The SLRM projects were exploring service design approaches and there was much collegiality among the projects; the University of Derby, for example, had previously hosted a service design workshop.

Some of the key themes from the day were around:

• transparency
• data/information sharing (including cultural barriers to), management (reliability) and ownership;
• the holy grail of interoperability;
• the difference between having a database & knowing/agreeing the purpose of it;
• transforming individual value into collective value for the institution;
• better managing partnerships e.g. in the growing distance learning market;
• processes which flexible delivery of learning and knowledge opportunities;
• the vital role of marketing and finance;
• a shared conceptualisation of the ‘customer’ or ‘partner’.

Some interesting innovative approaches and opportunites were highlighted, such as:

• the ‘high road, middle road and low road’ alternative strategies to BCE (Roehampton),
• the senior management desire to be able to ‘take a slice’ across the organisation and review/promote it (Loughborough),
• the difference between cultural and behavioural change (YSJ);
• opportunities to include student and staff with external partners within a CRM (UCLan);
• CRM 2.0 and an open approach to managing relationships through web technologies (CETIS).

On CRM, all agreed that essentially it is a business philosophy rather than a system and if viewed as such there is a much better chance of success than if a system is implemented in an imprecisely defined business environment. Training will also meet less resistance as people will understand the shared objectives behind the system. On SLRM, all agreed that the goal was to enhance the student experience, an increasingly complex challenge as it involves creating compatibility between existing student admin systems and new remote student and employer engagement interactions.

Pride of place for the most appealing reflection goes to a delightful image, which emerged from project discussions, of information hamsters, determinedly retaining more and more info in already stuffed cheeks – not one to aspire to!

Finally, an encouraging endorsement from the project sponsor of one of the SLRM projects: http://goslurp.blogspot.com/2010/02/message-from-our-project-sponsor.html

Further details and all presentations from the day - including the context with potential next steps for JISC Relationship Management from the programme managers Simon Whittemore and Myles Danson - can be found here: http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Final_RM_Meeting_26th_March_2010#Thursday_25th_March