Loughborough College: Badges mean progress in English GCSE

GCSE English resit students at Loughborough College learn difficult vocabulary by testing themselves on their mobile devices with the language learning app, Memrise. Competing with each other to earn badges for each completed test motivates students to tackle less appealing aspects of the curriculum. This innovative assessment-for-learning approach helps staff track individual learners’ progress so they can provide more support to those who need it.

Swindon College: Getting the most from e-portfolios

Students of art, computing, business, media, sports therapy and education from levels 1 to degree level are among those benefitting from Swindon’s College’s introduction of the e-portfolio tool, Mahara, which has provided learners with greater choice and flexibility over how evidence is presented for assessment.

South West College: A whole-college approach to online learning and assessment

In 2013, South West College created a virtual college running synchronously alongside the physical college. Three years later, significant progress has been made towards offering online learning and assessment to learners based at home and abroad.

Technology for employability toolkit

This toolkit distills the ideas and guidance from the Jisc ‘Technology for employability’ http://bit.ly/technology_for_employability report into a useful and usable toolkit that can be used by Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) educational providers to aid dialogue, decision-making and planning in respect of developing student employability and use of technology for employability.

Highbury College: interview with Stella Mbubaegbu

Thought leadership interview with Stella Mbubaegbu, Highbury College Portsmouth. Stella started her career teaching in schools before turning her attention to further education. She has been principal and chief executive of Highbury College Portsmouth since 2001 and was awarded the CBE for services to further education in 2008.

Student digital experience tracker 2016: results from the pilot project

Building on funded work on the experiences of today’s digital students http://bit.ly/jiscdigistudent (2014-2015) and feedback from stakeholders, Jisc piloted a tracker tool with 24 education providers in Higher education (HE) and Further Education (FE) and skills. The aim of the tracker is to provide a snapshot of learners’ digital experiences at a training provider, college or university so that education providers can better understand this aspect of the learning experience. This survey report highlights key findings from the tracker pilot.

Persistent identifier Studies

The studies have aimed to overcome the confusing variety of existing persistent identifier systems, by; analysing the current national URN:NBN and other identifier initiatives providing guidelines for an international harmonized persistent identifier framework that serves the long-term preservation needs of the research and cultural heritage communities advising these communities about a roadmap to gain the potential benefits. This roadmap also includes a blueprint for an organisation for the distribution and maintenance of the Persistent Identifier infrastructure. These studies are connected to the broader PersId project with DEFF, SURF, DANS, the national libraries of Germany, Finland and Sweden and CNR and FDR from Italy. A number of organisations have been involved in the process: Europeana, the British library, the Dutch Royal Library, the National library of Norway and the Ministry of Education, Flanders, Belgium. PersID - III: Current State and State of the Art (IIIa) & User Requirements (IIIb) (Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-9g4-i1s) PersID - IV: Prototype for a Meta Resolver System/ Work on Standards (Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-wt1-6n9) PersID - V: Sustainability (Persistent Identifier: urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-o4p-8py) Please note that there are also two broader reports on the project as a whole: PersID - I: Project report and II:Communication. For further information please visit the website of the Persistent Identifier project: www.persid.org

Knowledge Exchange Institutional Repository Workshop

The workshop took place on 16-17 January in Utrecht, with Seventy experts from eight European countries in attendance. The workshop was structured in six sessions: usage statistics research paper metadata exchanging information author identification Open Archives Initiative eTheses Following the workshop, the discussion groups were asked to continue their collaboration and to produce a report for circulation to all participants. The results can be downloaded below. The recommendations contained in the reports above have been reviewed by the Knowledge Exchange partner organisations and formed the basis for new proposals and the next steps in Knowledge Exchange work with institutional repositories. Institutional Repository Workshop - Next steps During April and May 2007 Knowledge Exchange had expert reviewers from the partner organisations go though the workshop strand reports and make their recommendations about the best way to move forward, to set priorities, and find possibilities for furthering the institutional repository cause. The KE partner representatives reviewed the reviews and consulted with their partner organisation management to get an indication of support and funding for the latest ideas and proposals, as follows: Pragmatic interoperability During a review meeting at JISC offices in London on 31 May, the expert reviewers and the KE partner representatives agreed that ‘pragmatic interoperability' is the primary area of interest. It was also agreed that the most relevant and beneficial choice for a Knowledge Exchange approach would be to aim for CRIS-OAR interoperability as a step towards integrated services. Within this context, interlinked joint projects could be undertaken by the partner organisations regarding the areas that most interested them. Interlinked projects The proposed Knowledge Exchange activities involve interlinked joint projects on metadata, persistent author identifiers, and eTheses which are intended to connect to and build on projects such as ISPI, Jisc NAMES and the Digital Author Identifier (DAI) developed by SURF. It is important to stress that the projects are not intended to overlap, but rather to supplement the DRIVER 2 (EU project) approaches. Focus on CRIS and OAR It is believed that the focus on practical interoperability between Current Research Information Systems and Open Access Repository systems will be of genuine benefit to research scientists, research administrators and librarian communities in the Knowledge Exchange countries; accommodating the specific needs of each group. Timing June 2007: Write the draft proposal by KE Working Group members July 2007: Final proposal to be sent to partner organisations by KE Group August 2007: Decision by Knowledge Exchange partner organisations.

From policy development to effectiveness and alignment: An analysis of the UK’s Higher Education Open Access policy landscape

The number of Open Access (OA) policies that have been adopted by universities, research institutes and research funders has been increasing at a fast pace. The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) records the existence of 724 OA policies across the world, of which 512 have been adopted by universities and research institutions. The UK is one of the leading countries in terms of OA policy development and implementation with a total of 85 institutional1 and an estimated 35 funder2 OA policies. In order to understand and contextualise how OA policies are developed and how they can be effectively implemented and aligned, this brief looks at two areas. The first section provides an overview on the processes evolving around policy making, policy effectiveness and policy alignment. In particular, it summarises the criteria and elements generally specified in OA policies, it points out some of the relevant steps informing the development, monitoring and revision of OA policies, it outlines what OA policy elements contribute to policy effectiveness, and highlights the benefits in aligning OA policies. The second section revisits the issues previously discussed within the context of the UK institutional (universities) OA policy landscape.

Monitoring Compliance with Open Access policies

In the last few years, academic communities have seen an increase in the number of Open Access (OA) policies being adopted at the institutional and funder levels. In parallel to policy implementation, institutions and funders have also been engaged in developing mechanisms to monitor academics and researchers compliance with the existing OA policies. This study highlights a few of the cases where compliance is being effectively monitored by institutions and funders. In the first section, Open Access is briefly overviewed and the rationale for monitoring OA policy compliance is explained. The second section looks at best practices in monitoring policy compliance with OA policies by funders and institutions. The case studies reflect on compliance with the UK Funding Councils and the USA National Institutes of Health OA policies. The third section makes recommendations on what processes and procedures universities and funders should adopt to monitor compliance with their OA policies. The final section recapitulates some of the key ideas related to monitoring policy compliance.