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Assessing the Business Case for Standards: An introduction for strategy planning and resourcing committees

a.butterworth@jisc.ac.uk (amybutterworth) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Making a business case for interoperability and standards is a challenging task for those involved in the strategic planning of IT systems in educational institutions. This briefing with its accompanying references is intended to provide advice and supporting materials to help people to incorporate standards in their ICT-related business cases. It assumes some familiarity with the way IT systems are presently deployed and maintained in educational institutions, and will be of interest to Information Services managers and senior managers for strategy planning and resourcing.

Should Universities and Colleges Care About Standards?

It is almost too obvious to state but over the past 20 years, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has become an indispensable part of the operation of all universities. We are utterly dependent on ICT systems for collecting and transferring information in order to survive, yet we often struggle either to exploit the information we have as intelligence to improve our educational offerings and be more effective, or to move ICT systems forward fast enough to adapt to new pushes and pulls in the education marketplace.

The cause of much of that latency in adapting to change, and the failure to exploit untapped information, has its root in the close connection of information to the software applications that store and process it. The information is locked into a ‘black box’. This is no accident but a consequence of the realities of software development and the marketplace: it is easier for software developers to develop applications with their own information formats; buyers do not demand appropriate standards, they specify them too loosely or they do not know what they need; and the migration of data from, and integration with, ‘black box’ systems provides revenue for many suppliers.

There is also an ever-increasing need to exchange information with other organisations, be they peers, companies or government agencies. In the past, these extra-institutional information exchanges were often effectively imposed by funding and accountability arrangements, but the modern trend to a more diverse range of external relationships and partnership delivery models presupposes that the data is usable in more than one system in more than one organisation. In the educational world this is now exemplified in the way universities and colleges are building partnerships to develop foundation degrees, for example, or to create international campuses. If you care about participating in this world, information needs to be separable from applications, and in a common format which can be read and operated upon by many such applications.

Standards codify the boring, so that the exciting can happen on top of them

The best means of separating information from applications are interoperability standards. By storing or exchanging information in a format that is the result of an open consensus process, and that can be freely implemented by anyone (ie it is an open standard), information can be extracted and exchanged from one application to another whenever you want it, ideally without expensive custom code or recourse to a supplier.

Seven key roles can be defined for information standards:

Reduction of re-keying: cost savings and quality improvement are possible when standards are used alongside good information management principles
Reduced maintenance cost and disruption: ad-hoc system integration is more likely to require a rework when new software releases occur and risks disruption to business continuity in the event of loss of the software developers who were responsible
Durability of data: data formatted to a widely supported standard will remain usable for longer and even less-widely supported open standards will be easier and cheaper to migrate
Avoidance of supplier lock-in
Easier development paths: coupled with a strategic approach to technology change, incremental ICT service migration and development of new services is possible
A platform for collaboration: standards are a neutral territory for multilateral business relationships, including institutional mergers. They can enable a more fluid set of relationships and reduce the risk of backing the wrong horse
Whole system economies: shared services without standards are a nonsense

Standards: Liberation or Straightjacket?

In a world where ‘agility’ is a much-used word, are standards a relic of a manufacturing-industry age? There certainly is a view that standards limit freedom; that they close down innovation or impose unacceptable limitations. Incorrectly chosen standards certainly put you at risk of falling into these pitfalls but they do not arise from standards per se.

The liberation of information standards is in not having to make decisions about those parts of ICT systems where there is little or no scope to add value. Time and effort can be applied to those parts that matter most which can lead to either more value realised or less time or cost entailed. It is easy to see that an engineer who has to choose between a set of standard machine screw sizes and materials rather than determine diameter, head size, thread form and pitch ab initio can spend more time designing the machine. The same principle applies to ICT systems – almost no-one cares about how email is exchanged but they do care about the services built on the assumption of an infrastructure that uses standards. In other words, standards codify the boring, so that the exciting can happen on top of them. Using standards doesn’t mean you have to only use standards: that would be a serious straightjacket.

How To Decide Where Standards are Relevant?

If standards are to be a liberation and not a straightjacket, you need to identify where there is consistency or repeatability in your institutional processes. The key idea here is that the ICT systems match your operating processes, and are flexible enough to change to support changes in those processes. This is the realm of ‘Enterprise Architecture’, and from this point of view, the starting point is an understanding of your operating model which can generate the knowledge of your standardised tasks, job roles, systems, infrastructure and data. This kind of analysis naturally supports decisions about standards; it helps avoid straightjackets and should be part of any business case involving standards.

In the context of external relations, a more persuasive case for standards could be made since an analysis can be conducted more cleanly at the level of business models and without the complexity of existing internal operations. If both provider and receiver of data benefit from the transaction, then standards are relevant. Sometimes the standards and their implementations already exist, for example to support the mutual benefit of an institution in exposing the contents of its institutional repository to Google Scholar. In other areas whilst there may be incomplete coverage, for example to support graduate recruitment, there may be sufficient potential to warrant investment. JISC and JISC CETIS can help in driving consensus and supporting innovation in this area.

Interoperability Without Open Standards: a Middle Way?

While open standards are the ideal way to separate information from applications, they are not the only way to achieve that goal, and are frequently either not available or not implemented by suppliers. It will often be the case that an intermediate technology is a pragmatic choice.
One such alternative is to use what has been termed ‘glueware’; this is software that can take data in one format and translate it into another. This means that the differences in the way two or more applications handle information can be compensated for. The approach presupposes that the formats are reasonably similar, so that no important information gets lost in translation. Glueware is frequently used to ease the transition from proprietary formats to open standards.

Proprietary standards may not offer all of the safeguards that an open standard does, and they may be used as commercial weapons, but they can be of value for most of the ‘seven key roles’ described above.

Another approach is to negotiate collectively with a vendor. A consortium of customers and potential buyers with a common need could provide the justification for commercial investment in either a proprietary or an open standard. One aim of the JISC Flexible Service Delivery programme is to support the formation of such consortia and their subsequent negotiation with suppliers.

Generic (Web) Standards or Education-specific Standards?

As is often remarked, the great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. There are many reasons for this, but one of the main ones is the difficulty of striking the right balance between generic versus domain-specific functionality (eg web-wide versus education-only), and the widest possible reach versus politically practicable consensus.

All other things being equal, the more generic, web-wide standards have proven to be preferable to education-specific ones. Part of the reason is that generic standards get implemented more widely, and are therefore more likely to be mature and implemented in a wider range of applications and so have more momentum. Both older and more recent web specifications for documents and security apply just as well in education as they do anywhere else; so it is advisable to use these as a foundation with domain-specific standards or bespoke technology built on top.

Education-specific standards can then be reserved for education-specific requirements such as information on course offerings or question and test assessment items.

What To Do Next?

It is worth noting that the business case for standards is often a mix of considerations that may be directly expressed in financial terms, and those that may be less tangible yet equally important enablers of future institutional success (see table above for some examples of these). However, even for those considerations that may be directly expressed in financial terms, the robust costing of the current situation and candidate scenarios is not an area where there is yet much experience in educational establishments.

The Strategic Technologies Group of the JISC Flexible Service Delivery programme is addressing exactly these questions. The JISC CETIS publication Technology Change in Higher and Further Education delves into some deeper technology strategy considerations and provides guidance. Also, JISC CETIS represents the sector on international standardisation bodies and works with the educational community to facilitate the use of standards-based e-learning.

What are standards?

What do we mean by ‘interoperability standards’?

Interoperability is the capacity of different ICT systems to communicate information. This is more than communicating numbers or text: it must be meaningful to the recipient. Interoperability standards may be created by formal bodies such as the British Standards Institute or the International Standards Organisation or by consortia. They may also be entirely proprietary.

Interoperability standards may be usefully divided into standards for data and standards for message protocols. The web has only been possible thanks to a data standard for the pages (HTML) and a protocol for getting them (HTTP). The incredible success of the web is one reason why we are encouraging you to consider standards.

Other classes of standard that are not considered in this briefing are: service-level, process or quality standards; platform standards (eg ‘in our institution we use Viglen computers running MS Windows’); best-practice standards or codes of conduct.

What do we mean by ‘open standards’?

The term open standard is commonly used loosely and care should be taken to determine how a given author is using it. Our usage adopts the meaning given in the European Interoperability Framework for Pan-European eGovernment Services; to be ‘open’, a standard should possess the following minimal characteristics:

It is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation
Ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
The standard has been published and the specification document is available for access, use, copy and distribution either freely or at a nominal charge
The intellectual property is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis

Standards and models…

The complexity even of one sector of the education system makes the negotiation of a single set of technical standards, each with its own scope and purpose, a practical impossibility. Furthermore, often there will be no existing technical standard to meet your needs. In both cases, a foundation of clear and thoroughly developed models can be a significant mitigating factor; ICT systems built to support common models of process or information are likely to be much easier to adapt to work with other systems or to use standards, should these become available. Thus, even when there is not a convincing case for adoption of a technical standard, there will be a case for adopting designs that enshrine common models.

Standards everywhere?

Here are some indicative strategic concerns for the key functional areas of a higher education institution where standards, and interoperability generally, offer value:

Research and scholarship: longevity of data and publications; the intrinsically extra-institutional nature of research
Teaching and learning: avoid content and assessments becoming locked-in to a supplier’s product; enable a best-of-breed approach to match your various needs; break down the monolithic Virtual Learning Environment and improve your ability to adapt to an ever-changing educational technology landscape
Administrative systems: efficiency and data quality; agility in implementing new models of delivery, both internally and partnership delivery models

Further Information and Reading

JISC CETIS is the Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards. It supports JISC and the educational community and runs a website which provides journalism, news, events and resources in this area
British Standards Institute White Paper: Standardization as a Business Investment. This paper takes a general view on standardisation, thus presenting a background to our briefing
Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution, 2006, ISBN-10: 1591398398
Enterprise Architecture: an introduction. A JISC briefing paper
European Interoperability Framework for Pan-European eGovernment Services v1.0, 2004
Strategic Technologies Group, JISC Flexible Services Delivery programme
Technology Change in Higher and Further Education. An online guide for those involved in strategic planning, deployment and implementation of IT systems in educational institutions
eXchanging Course Related Information (XCRI): a specification to support the exchange of course related information
For more information, visit the JISC CETIS site, email cetis@bolton.ac.uk or go to the e-Learning programme page.

Digitisation of special collections: Mapping, assessment, prioritisation

k.down@jisc.ac.uk (kerrydown) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:11:07 GMT

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JISC, in collaboration with the Research Information Network (RIN), commissioned a study to identify the key priorities for future digitisation of content held within UK Higher Education institutions.

Executive Summary

Traditionally, digitisation has been led by supply rather than demand. While end users are seen as a priority they are not directly consulted about which collections they would like to have made available digitally or why. This can be seen in a wide range of policy documents throughout the cultural heritage sector, where users are positioned as central but where their preferences are assumed rather than solicited. Post-digitisation consultation with end users is equally rare. How are we to know that digitisation is serving the needs of the Higher Education community and is sustainable in the long-term?

This project aimed to:

Identify priority collections for potential digitisation housed within UK Higher Education's libraries, archives and museums as well as faculties and departments
Assess users' needs and demand for Special Collections to be digitised across all disciplines
Produce a synthesis of available knowledge about users' needs with regard to usability and format of digitised resources
Provide recommendations for a strategic approach to digitisation within the wider context and activity of leading players both in the public and commercial sector

The project was carried out jointly by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR) and the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) and has taken a collaborative approach to the creation of a user-driven digitisation prioritisation framework, encouraging participation and collective engagement between communities.

Between September 2008 and March 2009 the DiSCmap project team asked over 1,000 users, including intermediaries (vocational users who take care of collections) and end users (university teachers, researchers and students) a variety of questions about which physical and digital Special Collections they make use of and what criteria they feel must be considered when selecting materials for digitisation. This was achieved through workshops, interviews and two online questionnaires.

Although the data gathered from these activities has the limitation of reflecting only a partial view on priorities for digitisation – the view expressed by those institutions who volunteered to take part in the study - the project was able to develop a:

'long list' of 945 collections nominated for digitisation both by intermediaries and end-users from 70 HE institutions (see p. 21)
framework of user-driven prioritisation criteria which could be used to inform current and future digitisation priorities; (see p. 45)
set of 'short lists' of collections which exemplify the application of user-driven criteria from the prioritisation framework to the long list (see Appendix X): Collections nominated more than once by various groups of users; Collections related to a specific policy framework, eg HEFCE’s strategically important and vulnerable subjects for Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics; Collections on specific thematic clusters; Collections with highest number of reasons for digitisation.

Profile of the long list

From the data collected a profile of the long list of collections emerged, including:

Curatorial environment

53% of collections are housed within Libraries; 39% within Archives; 7% in museums and 1% are departmental collections (see p. 25)

Institution type

51% of the collections are from UK pre-1960 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs); 15% are hosted in Post-Robbins HEIs; and 8% are hosted in Post-1992 HEIs; in addition although DiSCmap targeted HEIs, 27% of the nominated collections – 252 in total, are stored in institutions outside of the HEI sector (see p. 26)

Age range

The highest number of nominated collections is from the first half of the 20th century (366 in total) followed by 340 collections from 19th century and 300 collections from the second half of 20th century. Amongst the nominated collections were 237 collections dated before the 18th century; and 100 collections from the 21st century. The total numbers are higher than the total number of nominated collections because some collections cover wider time spans. It is worth noting that oldest collections do not come as most popular nominations, as one could expect; the interest in modern materials is evident (see p. 27 for more details on the age range distribution)

Subject area

Top 5 subjects are History, Economic and Social History (219 collections), Combined subjects (168 collections), Creative Arts, Design and Music (130 collections), followed by Languages and Literature (79 nominated collections) and Social, Economic and Political Studies (53 collections). These most popular subjects confirm the better expressed need in digitised materials in the Humanities and Social Sciences (see p. 28)

IPR status

It is worth noting that almost half of the collections had unknown copyright status (409); the IPRs for 141 collections are held by the institution and for 184 collections are held by another party (see p. 29)

Material type

The most popular materials across the nominated collections included archival materials (in 178 of the nominations), books (172 nominated collections), manuscripts (135 nominated collections) and images (122 collections). Audio, maps, serials and video are nominated in a considerably lower number of cases (between 15 and 35 collections), see p. 30

Key findings

The analysis of the data from the long list and the criteria for digitisation advanced by both user communities shows that:

The communities of both intermediary and end users are willing to express their view on prioritising digitisation of special collections; the participation in the project was a matter of good will and the good response (see p. 25) makes evident that there is definitely interest of the professional communities to express their opinion on the matter of digitisation needs. It should be noted here that the community of intermediaries sees collections on a finer level of granularity; end users often refer to super-collections such as the holdings of an institution
The top user-driven priority criteria that emerged from consultation with both intermediaries and end users are: Improve access; Enhance impact on research and/on studies; Enhance impact on teaching; Allow for collaboration; Improve access outside
The geographic and institutional boundaries of collections nominated for digitisation are wider – this study was aimed at the higher education institutions in the UK, but 14% of the nominated collections were from institutions outside of the higher education sector, and 6% were from overseas (see p. 27)
The complementarity of collections is strongly favoured by both users’ communities (see section 5)
The criteria for digitisation nominated by intermediary and end users include general criteria but also a number of criteria where metrics can be applied; thus allowing to establish a ranking mechanism (see p. 45)

Recommendations

Based on the analysis of the data gathered, the following recommendations are made in three areas: collections and prioritisation framework; resource discovery; and use and impact of special collections:

Collections and prioritisation framework

The long list of collections should be harmonized and sustained into the future

The long list as it currently stands illustrates the feasibility of applying a user-driven framework as a component of prioritising digitisation. The list was created from five different data sources and could potentially be even more useful if the data were harmonized and further expanded. The maintenance of the list through a web service is one possible approach to develop the current static list into a sustainable dynamic resource.

The user-driven framework developed by the project can be seen as a tool to support a flexible approach to prioritising digitisation of Special Collections

Rather than applying the framework to the “long list” in order to generate one single 'short list' of prioritised collections, a flexible use of the framework is proposed. This would allow for the testing of multiple different hypotheses and could be supported by a specialised decision making tool which allowed for the selection of priority criteria and their application to the “long list” of collections.

A suitable infrastructure which would offer services for nomination of collections, discovery of collections and prioritising collections is not available currently

Such an infrastructure could implement recommendations 1 and 2 above in one common solution.

Resource discovery

A comprehensive collection description and finding utility is needed in the UK

The availability of multiple collection description services, portals, and inventories (such as Archive Hub, AIM25, Michael UK, SCONE) aids resource discovery, but in ad hoc fashion. These services are either not scalable or lack essential functionality and, therefore, what is now needed is an ad modum, cross-sectoral, UK-wide collection description resource and finding aid.

Granularity issues of collection description facilities need to be revisited

The above services describe collections at different levels of granularity and structure relationships between collections – in hierarchical or derivational ways. It is recommended that a standard approach to collection description be adopted where the relationships between a collection and its 'super-collections' and 'sub-collections' are clearly presented. This would support resource discovery. In addition, facilities to allow the creation of virtual collections, mash-ups or contextual groupings should be introduced. The appropriate model for doing this needs to be identified.

Metadata issues for collection level description need to be better addressed

It is commonly accepted that the key to resource discovery resides in the availability of high quality metadata. However, our research reveals that even elements such as the collection title are not unified across different electronic resources. A common collection description and discovery facility could address this issue in a systematic fashion.

Use and impact of special collections

A stronger connection should be established with the actual use of digitised resources in the wider context of research/learning/entertainment

The lack of clarity as to how the digitisation of collections might transform their use for teaching and research has contributed to the large amount of digitised materials currently fulfilling mainly a preservation function. Wider involvement with communities of end users prior to digitisation and a greater transparency as regards possible uses, such as within an institutional Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or specialised Virtual Research Environment (VRE) would help increase the chances for a more intensive use of the digital resource. The identification and promotion of good practices on collaboration between VLEs/VREs and digitisation projects might boost future use of digitised content in research and teaching.

Information literacy related to resources presenting collections can be further enhanced

More work needs to be done in improving the skills of the end users in resource discovery and the subsequent use of digitised collections.

Further work can be done on the impact of 'to-be' digitised resources (qualitative and quantitative methods)

The project revealed a number of quantitative and qualitative measurements which represent facets of user demands. More detailed research into these to discover better ways to evaluate the impact of a resource nominated for digitisation would be beneficial.

This project has analysed a comprehensive range of end user digitisation priorities that are directly related to teaching and research. In doing so it has made considerable advances in identifying and understanding the actual digitisation needs of the scholarly community. It has done so with the aim of removing the element of guesswork and assumption hitherto inherent in our understanding of user requirements in this area. Additionally, its combination of intermediary and end user studies provides a richness of view points which highlight the many important and differing aspects related to the end user dimension in digitisation.

Report available electronically only

Pre-Raphaelite resource site

k.down@jisc.ac.uk (kerrydown) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:39:43 GMT

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This project digitised the Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery’s Pre-Raphaelite collection and created a Pre-Raphaelite online resource that is fully accessible to the education community.

Executive Summary

The primary audience for the website was defined as students, lecturers, historians, art librarians and other members of the education community. The general public are a secondary audience.

Images on the website can be used freely for educational purposes by schools and further and higher education, but they cannot be used freely or without permission for commercial purposes.

Audience Research was commissioned for this project to inform the development of the online resource for the education community. The main concern of students and lecturers was to access reliable, relevant content and information. One of the most important lessons to come from this project is the importance of undertaking audience research to find out what users want.

The management of the project was undertaken by core museum staff and broken down into work packages and areas of responsibility.

It has been advantageous to the project to be able to build on previous and current work by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery related to the Pre-Raphaelite collection and the existing partnership with the University of Birmingham.

Images and metadata created as part of the project will be managed and preserved for the future as part of the core work of Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery to document museum objects and preserve electronic records.

Photography standards and digital preservation of images that have been developed as part of the project have been adopted by Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery.

The knowledge, skills and experience gained by staff are added value for Birmingham Museums & Gallery and can be carried forward to future projects.

High resolution images created for the project are generating income from Picture Library clients who wish to licence the images for use in commercial publications. It is anticipated that this revenue stream increase will increase. This will help to guarantee sustainability and create support for future digitisation projects.

Download the full report below. Report available electronically only.

InView: Moving images in the public sphere

k.down@jisc.ac.uk (kerrydown) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:01:49 GMT

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This 2-year project run by the British Film Institute (BFI) has provided access to 600 hours of digitised archive video, documents and associated resources for the enhancement of learning, teaching and research within the areas of the arts and humanities. Much of the content selected had never previously been available for general academic use.

Executive Summary

The project (InView) ran from April 2007 until March 2009 and sought to deliver content that would illustrate how some of the key social, political and economic issues in Britain had been represented, expressed and articulated through moving image media forms. The project has delivered a contrasting range of film and video content that has been assembled from currently dispersed collections, to create a unique resource to serve to a broad audience and serving the specific needs of Higher and Further Education and the wider learning, teaching and research community.

Efficient and economic resource consumption throughout the course of the project resulted in a significant underspending. This enabled the BFI to propose extending the range of moving image material that could be made available. JISC warmly supported the proposal and BFI subsequently concluded an agreement with Fremantle Media that allowed the project to serve up to 200 hours of television current affairs material, thus extending the range and type of moving image material made available through InView. The total volume of moving image material that will be served by BFI InView, by the end of September 2009, will amount to approximately 1,000 hours, or 67 percent greater than the original project target.

InView delivers to an exclusive academic audience digitised moving image material drawn from the holdings of the BFI National Archive. The material selected for the project sought to illustrate how some of the issues that helped to shape contemporary Britain had been depicted through the mediums of film and television. For too long academic access to such moving image resources had been difficult, and even though that has been changing in recent years, the unique approach taken by InView has been to bring together moving image material derived from a diversity of ownership sources, and to facilitate access to material that, in some instances, would not otherwise have been available for serious academic study. The unifying approach has been to serve the varied materials through a single website. The project was built as a partnership between several content owners and it has been this element that has enabled differing perspectives to be assembled, each of which, potentially, has its own story to tell.

The report provides details about the:

project background
aims and objectives
methodologies adopted to ensure that the assets were delivered in good quality, and to the agreed specification
licensing issues

Download the full report below. Report available electroncially only.

From inputs to impact: A study of the impact of JISC funding on universities

a.butterworth@jisc.ac.uk (amybutterworth) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:00:00 GMT

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The application of technology to enhance learning and the wider activities in which universities in the UK are engaged is a source of interest not only to universities, their staff and the Funding Councils but also to Ministers and Government Departments. Universities are only too aware that the UK’s global position as a world leader in higher education will only be maintained by the innovative use and application of digital technologies to learning, teaching, research and administrative and operational activities. Technological innovation in universities in the UK has been supported by JISC.

In its role as a university think-tank, million+ has investigated the impact of funding awards from JISC to 28 UK universities over a six-year period. This report confirms the value of JISC funding but importantly, also provides recommendations to inform JISC’s future strategy and procedures. There are also valuable lessons for universities which will benefit from the analysis and should be better equipped to optimise the important opportunities offered by JISC funding as a result of the report’s recommendations.

The case-studies which are included are also instructive and provide a sample of the innovative projects undertaken and developed by universities. They demonstrate yet again that these universities support innovation and collaboration and reach far beyond their own academic communities to benefit a range of learners, providers, partner organisations and, in some cases, community-based projects. For all of the latter as well as for students and staff, JISC funding has been highly beneficial and assisted, sometimes through relatively small awards, the technological innovation that has helped to maintain the world-class reputation of the UK’s universities.

Pam Tatlow
Chief Executive, million+

Executive Summary

This report presents the findings of a project commissioned by the university think-tank million+ with funding from JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee). It investigated the impact of small to medium-sized JISC funding (less than £1 million) over a six-year period to the 28 UK universities which are members of million+, the university think-tank.

The research was undertaken by Leeds Metropolitan University in partnership with the Universities of Bedfordshire and Middlesex. Since million+ universities have had varying degrees of success in bidding for JISC funding, the project team undertook a survey of the 28 universities to assess the extent and impact of projects using JISC-funded technology enhanced learning, and to identify recommendations for JISC and for universities to optimise access to JISC funding.

The research identified barriers to success in bidding for JISC awards and why some universities have been successful in achieving JISC funding while others have not.

Researchers found

relatively small amounts of funding enable higher education institutions (HEIs) to reach beyond their own academic communities to benefit a wide range of learners, providers, partner organisations and the wider community
in HEIs without access to substantial research funding streams, even sums of £30,000 can have a profound impact on project activity and individual careers
funding has enabled institutions and individuals to undertake exploratory projects in a low-risk context, with opportunities to experiment that might not be possible within routine university systems
the impact of projects can be higher and broader than initially envisaged in the bid, leading to changes in university policies in relation to technology enhanced learning
networking between institutions and individuals is a key incidental outcome of projects, often with sustainable and productive contact between HEIs whose staff would not normally encounter one another
collaborative working between HEIs is likely to be crucial to maximise co-learning and ensure cost-effectiveness
69% of projects met or exceeded all their objectives, and a total of 44% of projects provided additional benefits beyond the projects’ objectives
over a third of project findings were directly used by bodies outside the lead HEI, and project results not directly implemented have nevertheless influenced, or generated considerable interest in, the lead HEI (30% of the case studies) and the wider sector (19% of the case studies)
transferability of learning between subject areas and levels of learning has taken place in a number of projects
many of the project teams were successful in obtaining further funding or generated associated projects (36% of the case studies)
those HEIs which have a formal or co-ordinated approach to responding to calls for bids, with appropriate facilities and staff, tended to have a higher likelihood of obtaining JISC funding.

Perceived barriers to obtaining funding

HEIs not possessing sufficient expertise in or resources to devote to bid writing
a perceived short timescale in which to complete bids and the amount of work and detail required for success.

Recommendations to JISC & universities wishing to increase their success in bidding

JISC could broker contacts between HEIs without success in JISC bidding and others with experience in achieving funding
a single named person in each HEI should be identified to ensure effective communications between the HEI and JISC
HEIs should invest in the expertise to draft thorough and detailed bids, and build time for bid writing into staff workloads
new bidders should look out for an appropriate call for bids which matches their HEI’s expertise and aspirations, and not compete in calls where they have limited chances of success
workshops should be offered giving guidance on JISC bid preparation, and examples of successful and unsuccessful bids should be made available, together with the feedback received by the bidders
JISC could be less demanding of fine detail in the first stages of bidding
further follow-up funding could be made available for work to build on the successes of the original bids.

Versatile digitisation framework

k.down@jisc.ac.uk (kerrydown) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:50:02 GMT

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The main aims of this project (VERDI) were to create functionality which could be used to allow holders of digital images across the University of Kent to catalogue and store the material in line with current standards and to allow the material to be easily accessed via the web.

Executive Summary

The idea was to extend the architecture developed under the JISC-funded British Cartoon Archive Digitisation project (BCAD) by making the architecture more generic and then to demonstrate the applicability of the framework in a range of scenarios. The BCAD architecture is comprised of a propriety database used to catalogue the material and open source programs to make the material available on the internet. It was believed that any database could be used for the cataloguing and then the architecture of open source programs could be used to make the material accessible. The expectation, which has been realised by this project, was that an adopter of the resulting framework would be able to use it to digitise, catalogue and present the digital resources to JISC standards via a searchable web-based interface that can be embedded into existing special collections and departmental or project websites.

Three unique and important collections were selected from different departments at the University of Kent to provide the scenarios:

Sporting cartoons by Tom Webster (1886-1962)

The British Cartoon Archive (BCA) holds 3735 of Webster’s original Daily Mail drawings along with 404 unique cartoons in annuals which form a major resource for the study and understanding of British sports history in the inter-war period, from 1919 to 1939. Sports history is a growing research interest among UK academics, and will continue to expand as the 2012 Olympics approach. This material needed to be catalogued and digitised and then integrated with the existing digital images from the BCA website.

Renfrew Orkney Islands archaeological excavations

In the 1970s Professor Lord Colin Renfrew performed early excavations of the Orkney Islands and photographed his work. The photographs are held by the University of Kent’s Centre for the History of Archaeology. The Centre is interested in understanding how archaeology developed historically, directing knowledge through the creation of tools and procedures and formulating questions, theories and agendas and these photographs are an invaluable tool in this research area. The photographs were already digitised and metadata was record in an Access database but the images were not being securely stored nor were they easily accessible. The material needed to be transferred into the VERDI framework and then code snippets were incorporated into the Centre’s website which allow the material to be searched.

Muggeridge collection of windmills and watermills

The University of Kent’s Special Collections holds a unique collection of mill photographs dating from he early part of the 20th century onwards. It is particularly rich in black & white photographs of indmills & watermills, and other aspects of rural life, from a time just prior to the enormous changes which took place in agriculture and its associated technology during the latter part of the century. Cataloguing and digitising the material needed to be brought up to current standards, imported into the framework and the code snippets enabling searching needed incorporated into the collections website. Also, since the material lends itself to geographic positioning, a proof-of-concept page utilizing GIS information was developed.

Through the extensions of the existing architecture not only have the exemplar collections been successfully made available but additional material held by Special Collections, which was already catalogued and often digitised, was also incorporated into the generic framework. The next steps are to see how the generic presentation of the data is used, to receive feedback and to look at how the framework can be rolled out to other departments in the University.

Report available electronically only

Only connect

k.down@jisc.ac.uk (kerrydown) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:30:04 GMT

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To serve the needs of Bolton’s diverse student body, we have created a new communications environment with the aim of strengthening the bonds between individual learners and the university through the provision of better support, and learning information.

Executive Summary

The new learning environment, based on eCommunications and engagement, is part of a wider university change programme, trying to use new technologies and person centred approaches, including personalised learning to address some of the challenges of the changing student body and curriculum. The new challenges for Bolton’s Professional University model are to communicate effectively with students who are not based on campus or who visit only periodically, say for one three hour session per week; who may be based in a work place or studying at a partner institution.

Objectives

Create the means of delivering information to students through their preferred channels via a message brokering service e.g. via email, MSN, RSS, or through widget and gadgets
Link this messaging service to information systems that produce messages e.g. timetable changes
Give students the ability to choose delivery channels for different types of communication

The project took a web services, service oriented approach to creating the system and processes, where components are reusable. The core systems such as the Student records, library or timetable can be linked into the communications environment via connectors. The project sought to establish a connector for the CELCAT timetable to notify students when a room change occurred as an initial exemplar.

This service oriented approach has allowed other services to be developed that were not originally planned for the project. For example a simple messaging portal has been added to allow students or groups of students to be contacted by staff or administrators, without the need to know contact details or preferences. This is also being lined up as an emergency announcement service for critical events – site closure due to swine flu outbreak.

Report available electronically only

British newspapers 1620-1900

k.down@jisc.ac.uk (kerrydown) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:49:26 GMT

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This report describes all of the stages and issues that occurred during a second complex mass newspaper digitisation project. The project was an innovative and challenging example of a public/private partnership between Gale Cengage Learning, CCS and the British Library.

Executive Summary

The workflow begins with the selection of content and pre-generated metadata elements from the newspaper catalogue with the original newspapers repaired and stabilised and additional metadata captured direct. An internal British Library (BL) department then creates new microfilms from print for 90% of the content and another internal department scans from originals for the other 10% of content. The digitisation supplier scans the microfilm to create master images and produces the xml and METS files. The supplier sends results to the BL for QA and sign off. It does not address in detail the development of the website as one already exists and the upload of this content is managed by a separate team within the library.

The British Newspapers 1620 – 1900 project was an innovative and challenging example of a public/private partnership between Gale Cengage Learning, CCS and the British Library. Different cultural emphases between the three project partners were managed in order to allow a free flow of communication. As in the first project 'JISC 1', there were many discussions between the partners about efficiencies and this second phase of newspaper digitisation funded by the JISC in 2007 has been a major success. All of the selected titles were digitised except for the Irish sub cluster, which had to be dropped as it was in too poor condition to be handled. The final list of titles to be delivered will be confirmed by Cengage Gale when they complete the upload of the content in autumn this year.

The project has left a good legacy for the future. At the end of the project an inventory of digitised pages has been created and archived both within the host organisation and the web hosting partner. We know the number of items, pages and articles that have been digitised and where there is duplication and gaps in the runs (1,157,349 pages including 18th century material; 192,030 issues and 2,266 reels created).2 We have extended provision of access to dispersed material and contributed to the development of technical standards through improvements to workflows, enriched metadata and evidence of best practice. As in BL’s approach to 'JISC 1', the second project engaged with users through academic representatives on the project board and user consultation during the bidding process.

The overall approach can be summarised as retaining best practice from the first project model of engagement with the source material and front loading QA at the start of the workflow, plus recognising the added benefit of using opportunities offered by new public/private partnerships. The workflow was changed during the shape phase to allow for direct scanning of one original newspaper, (The Standard) by a new digitisation studio set up at the BL. Also, the direct ingest of BL captured metadata by the vendor and a review of the existing vendor and QA processes was felt to be necessary. This resulted in a complete reprofiling of the budget to ensure this change was budget neutral. The search for an ideal ‘core’ workflow of automated processes continues, and it is the experience of the project that suppliers will continuously improve their workflows as they work with innovative solutions to exceptional content.

An alternative future workflow needs to be more flexible in order to adapt to the diversity of any source material. Consideration should be given to using digital cameras as well as flatbed scanners to improve quality and preservation microfilms could be generated later. Also, consideration could be given to disbinding the thicker bound volumes into smaller bound sections, as they have done in KBL for handling items in their newspapers digitisation project. This allows them greater control over reduction of gutter shadow and any subsequent loss of text due to skew.

It is possible to experience a wide range of inconsistencies in both scanning and the preparation of xml which might be due to high turn-over of personnel or variations between different production facilities. Often, the vendor’s solution can be to automate more, but there will still be cases were there are many more questions which are better addressed at the start of production with a pilot or at key break points in the contract. Creation of a workflow that allows for assessment of the collection as a whole, such as reviewing all of the scans before zoning and OCR is recommended. For example, a break point after scanning allows a decision to be made on which images must be rescanned.

Including some user-defined metadata would help to continually increase the searching capabilities of the source material. This would also increase the popularity of the resource and help create a sense of ownership amongst users.

Report available electronically only

Quality tracking at Ravensbourne

k.down@jisc.ac.uk (kerrydown) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:37:39 GMT

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The project set out to support the process of institutional transformation as Ravensbourne College moves to purpose-built premises in North Greenwich. We aimed to demonstrate how emerging technologies can be used to help make institutional processes such as quality assurance and enhancement more efficient, engaging and effective.

Executive Summary

We sought to develop greater understanding of how 'Web 2.0' technologies can support the effective use of, and access to, administrative information and increase the efficiency of administrative processes by eliminating duplicate activities, and streamlining progress monitoring. We have also started to explore whether, if these processes are made more transparent, and are provided with more structure, better participation will follow.

The project implemented a small-scale platform for managing and tracking quality assurance and enhancement actions through standards-based aggregation. A commodity issue tracking system was adapted to manage action items from relevant quality assurance processes with a simple web-service client facilitating the extraction of actionable items from narrative documents into time delimited actions and tasks.

We have succeeded in modelling a Web 2.0 workflow to sustain diverse actionbased activities involved in the institutional administration and assurance of the quality of learning and teaching. This provides a demonstrator of the use of emerging technology to improve the efficiency and openness of administrative procedures. Specifically this has confirmed the benefits of RSS 2.0 and the possibilities offered by better structuring of information and narrative documents. The project has also highlighted a range of significant issues related to such institutional change and implementing innovation and enhancement generally.

Report available electronically only

Researching emerging administration channels

k.down@jisc.ac.uk (kerrydown) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:03:43 GMT

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Many institutions recognise challenges in making their administrative processes accessible to students increasingly portrayed as confident with a range of personal communication technologies, and influenced by service expectations set by an increasingly e-enabled society. This project has developed opensource software to enable announcements placed on a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to be delivered via web 2.0 feeds and through text messaging to a student’s personal mobile device. In addition the project has delivered a number of research outputs which evaluate both student and staff attitudes to these newer forms of communication channel.

Executive Summary

The approach of the project was to develop open-source software which could use news and enrolment information stored within an enterprise Virtual Learning Environment (Blackboard/WebCT Vista) to deliver personalised text messaging and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) web feeds. The approach to the project research was to look at two issues via online survey and interview:

How do students currently use existing communication channels and what will their reaction be to these emerging channels?
What institutional issues will be encountered when attempting to embed these technologies in normal working practices?

Main outputs of the project

Open Source software which has been successfully trialled in Manchester Metropolitan University and has been provided to one other site with two other sites likely to trial it within 2009. This has been made available under a GSR2 licence
Over 1600 students were invited to take part in the trial of these new services with a diverse range of courses – the original coverage of Law, Biology and Computing was extended during the study to cover students in Business & Sociology
Research on the project which has been disseminated via the project website, at the JISC Conference, at Blackboard World Europe 2009 (a trade show around the Blackboard VLE) and has been submitted as a contribution to mLearn 2009

Although the project has exceeded its original set of deliverables, introducing these new channels to students and institutions is not as simple as it would appear. Whilst its is true that students have a favourable reaction to these new services when described to them, they don’t necessarily engage with them in large numbers – about 15% of students at MMU signed up. Many still prefer to rely on traditional methods of word-of-mouth to find out about information and events on their courses and these new channels still appeal to a minority. Furthermore some students may see their own mobile phone as their space and not want it utilised by the university.

It is also clear that there are a number of areas of university administration which might want to use these channels including administrators, tutors, finance people and librarians. Each of these audiences has subtly different requirements and unless these are mapped into a clear strategy there is a danger that solutions will proliferate within a single institution leading to confusion amongst staff and students. Like any other new IT-based initiative there needs to be a clear institution-wide strategy which encompasses these new channels if their potential is to be realised fully.

Report available electronically only

JISC Publications Web Feed

Assessing the Business Case for Standards: An introduction for strategy planning and resourcing committees

Should Universities and Colleges Care About Standards?

Standards: Liberation or Straightjacket?

How To Decide Where Standards are Relevant?

Interoperability Without Open Standards: a Middle Way?

Generic (Web) Standards or Education-specific Standards?

What To Do Next?

What are standards?

What do we mean by ‘interoperability standards’?

What do we mean by ‘open standards’?

Standards and models…

Standards everywhere?

Further Information and Reading

Digitisation of special collections: Mapping, assessment, prioritisation

Executive Summary

Profile of the long list

Curatorial environment

Institution type

Age range

Subject area

IPR status

Material type

Key findings

Recommendations

Collections and prioritisation framework

The long list of collections should be harmonized and sustained into the future

The user-driven framework developed by the project can be seen as a tool to support a flexible approach to prioritising digitisation of Special Collections

A suitable infrastructure which would offer services for nomination of collections, discovery of collections and prioritising collections is not available currently

Resource discovery

A comprehensive collection description and finding utility is needed in the UK

Granularity issues of collection description facilities need to be revisited

Metadata issues for collection level description need to be better addressed

Use and impact of special collections

A stronger connection should be established with the actual use of digitised resources in the wider context of research/learning/entertainment

Information literacy related to resources presenting collections can be further enhanced

Further work can be done on the impact of 'to-be' digitised resources (qualitative and quantitative methods)

Pre-Raphaelite resource site

Executive Summary

InView: Moving images in the public sphere

Executive Summary

From inputs to impact: A study of the impact of JISC funding on universities

Pam TatlowChief Executive, million+

Executive Summary

Researchers found

Perceived barriers to obtaining funding

Recommendations to JISC & universities wishing to increase their success in bidding

Versatile digitisation framework

Executive Summary

Sporting cartoons by Tom Webster (1886-1962)

Renfrew Orkney Islands archaeological excavations

Muggeridge collection of windmills and watermills

Only connect

Executive Summary

Objectives

British newspapers 1620-1900

Executive Summary

Quality tracking at Ravensbourne

Executive Summary

Researching emerging administration channels

Executive Summary

Main outputs of the project

Pam Tatlow
Chief Executive, million+