Supporting further and higher education

Swani Programme Meeting 3

Cardiff

2

Programme Progress

• Common themes– Difficulty in producing use cases

• Too little too late?

– Difficulty with vendors• Communication• Keeping to timescales• Willingness to participate

– Despite initial promises

– Complexity• Much greater than most had imagined

– Staff• Organisational pressures

– All have full time jobs

3

An overview

• The JISC perspective– The need for conformance testing

arena to achieve plug and play– Addressing working with vendors as

a matter of priority• Being addressed at strategic level

– Recognise need for support for FE projects in particular• Lack of research culture• Lack of available staff

4

What’s happened to Northern Ireland

• Unable to fund any programmes within SWaNI timescales– Procurement of single MIS/SIS– Supplier unable to commit to projects

whilst rolling out to 16 institutions

• What are we doing for the sector?– Plans to provide targetted workshops in

preparation for interoperability and the development of appropriate use of the VLE within the sector

– Workshop materials will become a national resource for RSCs

5

Feedback from project visits

• Projects in the main well-managed– Time is an issue for all– Funding not sufficient?– Budgets well managed

• Cross project communication– Very limited awareness of what others are

doing, even those close by

• Dissemination– Very few plans in place– Needs driving and guidance from JISC– Web sites “sketchy”

6

Feedback from project visits

• Evaluation– What formative evaluation from within the

project is ongoing?• This is a funded stream

– External consultants• Awaiting interim report following all project visits

• Reporting– Not evaluative– Not in enough depth– Not technical enough– Constrained by form?– Consideration of final report

7

Feedback from project visits

• General (but consistent) observations– Technology driving change

• Very little consideration of the underlying need for change of business processes

– Difficulty of running this type of project within an FE institution(s)

• Lack of senior management understanding• Operational issues are paramount

– Lack of understanding of the MLE concept (not unique )

• “when will JISC give us our MLE?”

8

Dissemination Strategy

• The JISC– National conferences

• JISC• Alt-C• NILTA• AOC

– Posters and flyers– JISC Services

• CETIS etc

– Website– Briefing papers– Reports– Articles– RSCs

• The projects– Local website– Cross project– RSCs– Posters and flyers– Articles– CETIS SIGs– Reports– JISC National conference– Word of mouth– Internal dissemination

• Staff newsletters• Website• Word of mouth