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.

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.

Over 70 records professionals from the F/HE sectors and beyond gathered to discuss some of the most challenging issues facing us today and to hear from an array of speakers including leading practitioners, vendors and – critically – representatives from the stakeholder groups that records manager’s either work with or for, including Deputy Vice Chancellors, IT Managers and Administrators. What emerged was a truly 360 degree view of our profession.

Its always a good sign if the discussion continues outside the conference venue and judging by the general hubbub at the evening drinks reception at The Sage Gateshead delegates had found plenty to get their teeth into (aside from the canapés!).

Day 2 focused around the thorny issue of whether records management needs- particularly in the current economic climate – to be able to quantifiably demonstrate its impact. After all, lots of claims are often made about how improvements to the way you manage information and records will reduce overheads and increase productivity, but there seems to be precious little evidence to demonstrate that this is, indeed, the case. A great deal of interesting discussion was had about measuring the impact of records management, focused around a JISC-funded project that we are currently engaged with (of which more in later posts). The general consensus was that we do have a great deal to offer in this regard, but that quantifying it is not easy.

Perhaps, on second thoughts, an ‘efficiency’ of Records Managers is as accurate a collective noun as any!

Duncan and Robert told stories from a range of courses that have embedded e-portfolios into the curriculum and learner personal development. Most powerful were the voices of the learners – available from YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EasqDlr-C4 . They clearly demonstrated the power of e-portfolios in supporting, and being an integral part of, the learning process. The feedback from local employers is also very positive; they feel that by looking at a learner’s e-portfolio they can get a real picture of their skills and knowledge. Dumfries and Galloway College use an implementation of WordPress which they’ve linked to college information systems to enable efficient management of the e-portfolios. They also make the system available to learners after they have left the college and provide a service for copying/transferring material.

Sarah is involved in staff development and support with a research interest in e-Portfolios. Their YouTube video is an excellent introduction for staff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B3tujXlbdk . Cumbria University use PebblePad as their e-portfolio system and key to staff engagement is that the system is externally hosted by PebbleLearning. One of the lessons learnt from the University of Cumbria’s JISC funded project (Flourish http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2008/10/flourishcpd.aspx ) is that staff engagement and their use of e-portfolios is important for learner take-up – being able to demonstrate how an e-portfolio has been used to support staff CPD enables learners to understand to relevance to them.

The workshop had a hands-on session where participants were able to look at, and compare, a few e-portfolio systems.

All the presentations will be collated and made available via the JISC website. Some, I’m sure, will also find their way into the JISC infoNet e-Portfolios infoKit. I’m now looking forward to the workshop in London. We are also organising a similar event to take place in Northern Ireland (this will be advertised by the RSC and JISC Netskills).

Twitter has really taken off in the mainstream media with a number of celebrities, including Stephen Fry and Jonathon Ross, starting to use the service. Even The Sun and the Daily Mail have joined in, writing articles about celebs picked up from celebrity ‘tweets’.

Whether you think Twitter is a good or bad thing, the JISC Advisory Services will be looking at the potential of Twitter by trying out the micro-blogging technology at its awayday next week.

For those who don’t know, Twitter is a messaging service that allows people to post short (140 character) messages of their thoughts and opinions. A number of people in the JISC Services have already been using Twitter for a while so it will be interesting to see how successful it is next week.

If you wish to follow our ‘tweets’ the hashtag being used for the event is #ASaway09. (PDF – Further information about using Twitter)

You can follow some of the JISC infoNet team who are already on twitter:

Steve Bailey
David Cornforth
Jacquie Kelly
Andrew Stewart

Some other interesting twitter feeds you might also be interested in:

BBC Technology
Guardian Technology
mStonerBlog