The hardest part of running any event is getting people to take part and participate fully.

To help us with this, we asked Catherine and Ross from Peanut at Northumbria University to run their ‘Participatory Approaches’ (PA) course, demonstrating that getting people involved really doesn’t have to be such a challenge.

To give some quick background, Catherine and Ross had already helped us facilitate events we ran for the Collaborative Tools project. Wanting to learn more, we got them over for two fun-packed days which were full of activities and tools to get people to fully participate in events.

We were completely blown away with what we learnt and did during the two days. It was centred on including and enthusing people to make better decisions and above all, to make events more enjoyable.

Take for instance, the icebreaker.

These can vary depending on the type of event you’re running, but generally you might not get very much information from it.

At the start of the PA course our icebreaker was drawing a timeline in answer to the question ‘how did you get here today?’

This deliberately was a really open ended question that could be interpreted in very different ways – and we did! We were asked to include drawings of our highs and lows and then explain what we had drawn. From that we got more qualitative information and were able to ask questions – all the time learning more about people than you would normally from a traditional icebreaker.

And that was all in the first half an hour!

Using tons of post-it notes, flip charts, marker pens, and play-doh, we learnt about tools and activities for ranking choices, for grouping people and for understanding the positive and negative aspects of a subject. We did activities on open and closed questioning, on getting people to participate and on making decisions. It was all part of a process of getting the best information by involving people and so leading them to better decisions.

Our group work even took us onto the streets of Newcastle asking questions to people in and around the university – really scary at first!

It was a brilliant two days and we’re really grateful to Catherine and Ross for running the event and showing us how to include people using participatory approaches and activities.

We’ve started to put some of these techniques into some of our recent events and workshops and internal meetings – using H-Forms, graffiti walls, grouping, spider diagrams and impact ranking.

Peanut has given us tons of ideas that we want to explore.

As ever, JISC infoNet, along with other colleagues from JISC Advance, will be on hand with workshops, demos, and exhibitions to help you and your institution get the best out of technology. To help you we’ve put together a quick Google Spreadsheet of all the activities some of our team will be participating in.

This years conference promises to be a fantastic event, with delegates coming from all over the world. The keynotes will be streamed live on the internet and you can join in the conversation using the hastag #jisc11. Some of the team will be tweeting (individually and through our @jiscinfonet account) throughout the day so you can keep you in touch with what we’re up to during the conference.

If you are attending the conference in person, come and meet and talk to us throughout the day at the JISC Advance stand.

We’ve looking forward to a great couple of days of learning, innovation and meeting people. See you in Liverpool!

The workshops included Project Management, Process Review, Risk Management, Change Management, Information and email Management and Managing Multiple Projects in a Complex Environment. Donna Lucas, Head of Human Resources at Shrewsbury, has recently provided an update to this.

She says, “The management of projects here at the college has improved no end. For example we now employ a project management facilitator who works with teams to ensure that they are managing their projects within the disciplines and that individual projects are coordinated from a cross college point of view. We have recently committed to a re build of our engineering block, a 3 million pound project and that will be the first big test of our new approach. Add to this new disciplines for risk management and a range of identified change programmes and the sense of progress is really tangible.”

Details of the events available can be accessed from http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/events/workshops with the related online resources available from http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infoKits.

This year, exhibiting as part of JISC Advance, we’ll be putting on a range of activities in the JISC Services Lounge. To help you find out which activities we’ll be participating in we’ve embedded a quick Google Spreadsheet within this blog post.

Over both days we’ve got surgeries, demos, and sessions on a wide range of topics that we hope will help address your technology needs.

Instead of bombarding you with lots of conference blog posts, we’ll all be tweeting (individually and through our @jiscinfonet account) throughout the day to keep you in touch with what we’re up to during the conference.

So if you are heading QEIICC-wards, grap your conference pass early and join us from Tuesday evening. Look forward to meeting you!

To coincide with the event, JISC infoNet launched their Embedding BCE infoKit.

The infoKit presents all of the findings from the project, as well as some of the methodologies and tools that allowed institutions to carry out a review of their Business and Community Engagement activities.

The five partner instituions were:

• University of Glamorgan
• Keele University
• Newcastle University
• Shrewsbury College of Arts & Technology
• University of Strathclyde

Presentations from the event are available on SlideShare, accompanied by a Diigo list that provides links to associated BCE resources.

The infoKit is also being presented at a number of other events across the UK, including last weeks JISC Winter Fayre, and the New Engineering Foundation Conference in January.

Look out for more BCE related additions in the New Year, including some new workshops.

Charlie Leadbeater, influential innovator and adviser to companies, cities and governments, is opening the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2009 conference live in Elluminate on 24th November. In 2007, Charlie was ranked as the most outstanding innovation expert in the UK by the Financial Times. Read more about this exciting development on the JISC website.

Register now: next week is Reading Week!

Innovating e-Learning 2009 takes place online on 24-27th November with sessions based around the theme of Thriving, Not Just Surviving! The Reading Week begins very soon (Tuesday 17th November) and gives delegates time to browse, read, watch and listen before joining in discussions when the conference opens.

Sarah Knight, JISC programme manager and conference organiser, offers some advice for those taking part for the first time:

‘My top tip for making the most of the conference is for delegates to use the Reading Week to browse through the sessions and identify the ones they particularly have an interest in and want to follow closely during the conference.’

James Clay of Gloucestershire College and mobile learning expert and conference blogger, has also recorded a useful podcast of tips for new delegates. You can also view his exciting video trailer, ‘Wherever you are’ for the conference.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The two themes of the conference are Finding the Way and Meeting the Challenge. These include live keynotes in Elluminate and a variety of sessions, many using multimedia presentations. Alongside the main conference are a range of alternatives: the Have-a-Go, Social and Resource-Sharing areas, guided tours in Second Life led by staff from the JISC Regional Support Centres (RSCs) not to mention chilling out in the Virtual Coffee Shop and posting your very own comments on the conference blog.

Innovating e-Learning 2009 is a simply unmissable conference experience! Register now and let us know your top tip for making the most of an online conference. If you have not yet registered, please hurry. The conference programme and booking information are available at the JISC website.

You can follow the conference on Twitter, using #jiscel09

Originally, my first thoughts were that we would just focus on writing style and the right/wrong way to do things, but the course took a slightly different approach that proved to be a fun learning experience.

First task of the day was to describe ourselves, through a description of the shoes we were wearing. Sounds simple enough, but it was a really useful exercise in imagination, as each person’s individuality was evident in those descriptions.

It was a fun and informative exercise, and a great way to start the day.

The tutor, Dr Michael Green, then went on to describe creative writing as imaginative writing and then set us the task of freewriting. This involved writing everything that came to mind about the day so far, without taking pen off paper.

This seems a really good technique if you are struggling to start writing, to start developing ideas rather than trying to structure everything.

We also had a session on blogging (which I’m putting into practice) run by Dr Carolyn Jess-Cook, and a valuable session for us, as a service, around common writing problems with Dr Mimi Huang. Looking at examples from materials we have produced, it was a real insight (shock in some cases!) to see some of the language and writing styles used and we gained a few tips to take us forward, so keep a close eye on our resources!

One of the most prominent examples was the use of the phrase ‘of course’ across our materials. A quick Google Search after the event revealed 380 cases of its use across our website. This was, of course, a bit of a surprise

The course was incredibly useful as personal staff development, very refreshing and gave us some useful pointers for the future.

This week I attended the Blended Learning Conference (organised by the Blended Learning Unit) at the University of Hertfordshire. An excellent 2 days with a good range of keynote speakers, paper presentations that informed and challenged. Sarah Knight, JISC programme Manager, and myself enjoyed discussions with many of the conference delegates (new and old friends).

Randy Garrison, University of Calgary, opened the conference with a presentation that really set the scene for the conference, discussing a Community of Inquiry Framework together with 7 Principles of Blended Learning that can be used to shape the implementation of a blended learning programme.

I particularly enjoyed the keynote by Gregor Kennedy, University of Melbourne that was transmitted live using Elluminate (more about this use later). Gregor presented some of the findings from a project funded by The Australian Learning and Teaching Council that challenged some of the assumptions made about the Net Generation. We are constantly being told by Ed Tech researchers and managers, and the press that the ‘Net Gen’ demands that ICT play a BIG role in their college and university learning. Also the press uses headlines that make some lecturers feel totally incompetent if they cannot use these ‘easy-to-use’ Web 2.0 technologies. But do the Digital Natives want to use Web 2.0 as part of their learning experience? Gregor’s project findings would seem not to support the usual digital divide rhetoric. The results from the project can be found in the Handbook of Findings for Practice and Policy available from the project website.

Also take a look at the blog Net Gen Skeptic which is of the same view.

There are, of course, projects that demonstrate that learners do enjoy using Web 2.0 tools to support their learning in informal and formal contexts and recommend further use.

So where does this leave us? Perhaps we should listen to the learner voice – the JISC publication gives us a wonderful insight. The students in the Melbourne Study were first years – I suggest that some were not yet mature learners and still coming to terms with university study. The course team are to be commended on their approach to the design and support available but perhaps without the social bonding and networking that takes time to develop, the collaborative functionality of a Wiki was not fully exploited. We may see a very different result from the same set of students on their second or third year of their course.

Conclusion? Strange as it may seem (!) – utilise technology in a way that is appropriate to the task, will support and enhance the learning experience, is appropriate to the learners’ maturity and the tutors’ expertise. Anything that I’ve missed? I suppose – don’t let the hype rule or in Gregor’s words More Understanding, Less Seduction!

The conference team are to be congratulated on once again using Elluminate throughout the conference. The link with the University of Queensland worked very well, with only minor hiccups.

An animated case study was delivered by Wiltshire County Council (as was) regarding ‘gaining user buy-in’ and ‘reaping what you sow’. This session caught my eye as the project that I am working on with JISC infoNet is about measuring the benefits to records management, so I was intrigued to know how the council set about their harvest, so to speak. Unfortunately only a taster of the measures were covered in the session, but when approached the people from Wiltshire were more than happy to share the detail out of conference. Interestingly the facilitator for ‘user buy-in’ had a marketing and communications background, was the concept of records management given the hard sell? Either way Wiltshire is enjoying the benefits of the change of culture, as it moves on to its next challenge of merging with 4 other district councils to become a unitary authority.

Wiltshire was also a case study in a later session around Records Management and the merging or dividing of organisations. The second case study of this session, by the Northern Ireland Office, provided a great insight into the assistance RM can give to support the significant organisational change affecting people, processes and technology when establishing a new government department. This case study provided a very tangible application of RM and illustrated to me the benefits of metadata, a term I am only just coming to grips with. The presenter of this session very much saw people at the heart of an organisation and referred to the support that must be shown to them during a change in organisational structure, a sentiment I very much echo, and illustrated how RM could assist this.

A confusion of terminology meant that I happened upon ‘Electronic Discovery and Records Management’, rather than the expected ‘Electronic Documents and Records Management’, but a session which gave food for thought none the less. The presentation centred around being able to retrieve information from structured database systems. Familiar territory to me I thought, as I am used to working with large student record databases. The perspective of the session was one of being able to scope, acquire and analyse relevant data in the case of a dispute or investigation. The session highlighted that the ‘black box’ or operational database should be fully documented and accessible, especially those that had been superseded and were no longer in active use. From an initial impression that structured data is easy and takes care of itself, the session left me thinking that in the here and now this may be the case, but historically the ‘black box’ could prove problematic.

In a similar vein a later session gave a brief introduction to Digital Forensics and went on to discuss similarities in the development of this field to that of RM. The speaker talked of the growing need for clear communication between Records Managers, IT and Legal Departments and the language barriers that may exist between these groups. The speaker suggested that the new field of Information Assurance and its growing terminology may provide a common language and Records Managers with an opportunity to be involved in the right meetings, at the right time, and be part of the discussions regarding an organisation’s infrastructure. An interesting session, not least because of the strategies illustrated to support communication between professions.

I found the event very informative and entertaining, but with this new outlook on Records Management the question of how do we ‘Create a common research framework for measuring the impact of records management’ only seems to grow.

Staff from all the services will be in attendance – JISC infoNet, JISC Digital Media, JISC Legal, JISC Netskills, JISC Procureweb, JISC TechDis.

If you are unable to attend the conference in person, the sessions will be streamed throughout the day over the internet at www.jisc.ac.uk/jiscconference09

Hope you enjoy the conference.