Alliance Learning: Revolutionising the way they work with an online learner management system

Since May 2012 Paul Cocker, Operation Executive and the Senior Management Team of Alliance Learning have introduced an online learner management system for every learner, requiring significant investment in systems, hardware, acceptance by staff and above all, time and commitment from the management team. This organisation has taken the radical step to overcome one of the major barriers to achieve its goal by dedicating three periods of two weeks where the business has closed for staff CPD training. A total of 500 man hours were invested to implement the online system. This is an excellent model of how to make these major changes effective in the shortest time.

SUSTAINABILITY OF OPEN ACCESS SERVICES: Phase 3: The Collective Provision of Open Access Resources

The report ‘Sustainability of Open Access Services - Phase 3: The Collective Provision of Open Access Resources’ discusses the economic and institutional issues faced by those sustaining free infrastructure services. It also identifies strategies to coordinate the collective provision of infrastructure services. These considerations are valuable input for the phases 4 and 5 of the project ‘Sustainability of Open Access Services’. This body of work will lead to practical recommendations for funders and project planners to consider when initiating an infrastructure service. The report was written by Raym Crow and funded by SPARC. Several key messages from the report are of interest. Providing infrastructure services as a public good imposes specific requirements on the design of the sustainability model. The challenge is to get enough institutions to reveal their demand for the service and support this. Arguments for an institution to support can be altruism or reciprocity or there being sufficient benefit to the institution for supporting a service. Institutions can also work together on a service through collective action (collecting voluntary contributions) and cross subsidies (funding collected by offering exclusive benefits to contributors).

Questions and answers - copyright for work based learning

This Q and A provides an overview of copyright law and how it applies in a variety of scenarios relevant to work based learning (WBL) providers.