By Marc Dobson August 8, 2014
News

Co-design is Jisc’s collaborative innovation model. Steered by customer priorities, it is designed to exploit new opportunities and address pressing issues in higher and further education through technology.

Jisc is holding a series consultation workshops to discuss how to improve the student lifecycle through digital technology in order to address the ‘from prospect to alumnus’ co-design challenge. Two workshops have already taken place in London and Birmingham, and two more due to take place next week in Newcastle and Glasgow are now closed for registrations.

There is however, still time to contribute to the online consultation which is taking place in parallel. This short survey seeks to capture your experiences of systems across the student lifecycle, and your opinions on where Jisc should focus its efforts going forward.

You can access the online consultation here until Friday 22 August

To find out more about this challenge, see our blog post ‘why this challenge?’, and click here to learn more about Jisc’s other co-design challenges.

By Marc Dobson July 4, 2014
News

Join us at one of a series of Jisc consultation workshops and contribute to the discussion about how to improve the student lifecycle through digital technology.

London Tues 29th July only 1 place left
Birmingham Wed 30th July
Newcastle Tues 12th Aug
Glasgow Wed 13th Aug

You are also invited to complete a short online questionnaire on the topic
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/jiscp2a

From initial enquiries right through to graduate employment and alumni, the ‘student’ lifecycle covers all aspects of a student’s interactions with the institution, before, during and after their student life. Information about students throughout this lifecycle is held in multiple systems that are often not joined up, and typically built around the structures and processes of the organisation rather than the needs of students.

Jisc, through its co-design process, seeks input from all stakeholders in better understanding this challenge. A series of events is being held nationally to seek views on how stakeholders, including students, academics, support staff and managers, currently experience this student lifecycle. This will help inform how Jisc will work with the sector to address this challenge through digital technology.

These consultation workshops, from 11am-3pm will be highly participatory, are free to attend, and include lunch and refreshments. Please click on the event links above and complete the booking form to reserve your place.

By Caroline Ingram June 26, 2014
News

‘From prospect to alumnus’ is one of four key co-design challenges agreed by the Jisc Board 2014-15. Through this area of work Jisc aims to help institutions use all the information they have about students to provide a joined-up digital student experience from pre-application to employment for the 21st century. Organisational information about students is often held in several different systems which are rarely joined-up.

The first step for this co-design challenge is to consult with stakeholders to better understand it.

Check out Jisc’s dedicated blog for the Prospect to Alumnus work at: http://prospect2alumnus.jiscinvolve.org/wp/

By Marc Dobson May 22, 2014
News

Marc Dobson from the Jisc BCE Team attended a Technology Strategy Board briefing event in Gateshead on 19 May. This event sought to highlight a new opportunity for project funding and was one of a number held around the UK. A national briefing also took place in London for which a recording is available.

Learning technologies is a relatively new area for TSB support. This competition follows on from the IC Tomorrow programme in 2013 which funded three projects to facilitate SMEs working with large scale partners to deliver technology solutions to aid learning and teaching.

In this current competition, The Technology Strategy Board and the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) are to invest up to £1.1m in exploratory studies into the design of technology-based products and services that will improve learning outcomes.

This SBRI competition seeks to stimulate business performance in an already vibrant education technology sector by supporting high-quality design of commercially viable products and services that can be delivered at scale while being affordable and easy to use.

Proposals are sought for products and services that will improve attainment among learners above five years old (from Key Stage 1) and in formal (primary, secondary, higher or further education) or in non-formal learning environments.

The competition is open to all organisations that can demonstrate a route to market for their solution. Successful organisations will attract a 100% funded development contract of up to £80k (inclusive of VAT) and projects will last up to six months.

SBRI competitions are organised in two phases. Applications are currently only being sought for Phase 1 only – a decision on whether to move forward with Phase 2 (contracts for product and service development) will be dependent on the outcomes from Phase 1.

This competition opens on 12 May 2014. The deadline for registration is noon on 2 July 2014 and the deadline for applications is noon on 9 July 2014.

Find out more about the competition on the TSB website

By Marc Dobson April 25, 2014
News

On 24 April Marc Dobson and Andrew Stewart from the Jisc BCE Team held a lunchtime webinar on the use of Social Media for BCE. Around 50 people from across the spectrum of BCE took part in an interactive and engaging session.

During the webinar, we talked about the different types of social media, offered advice and guidance on its use and presented some examples of effective social media engagement in a BCE context. Topics covered included:

• A brief overview of social media, including some of the platforms available and its use across Education as a whole
• The need for a social media strategy, and what to consider
• General guidance and best practice when using social media channels, including some pitfalls to avoid
• Specific examples of the use of social media in a BCE context

If you missed the webinar, you can access a recording of the session (approximately 1hour 15 mins) which took place using Blackboard Collaborate. Resources and links from the session are available on a Google Doc

You can also access a short briefing paper which summarises the topics covered in the webinar here.

Any suggestions future webinar topics are most welcome – if you have any ideas leave a comment and we will consider running a future session.