RSC Newsletter Autumn 2011

R S C Newsletter Autumn 2011

Stimulating and supporting innovation in learning

Contents 2 E-Safety 3 E-Safety / Mobile security 4 E-Maturity & the E-Progress Review 5 Efficiency in the LRC / Digital literacy 6 Online events 7 Open resources / HE Forum

E-Safety:The key facts E-Safety is crucial for every organisation. Aside from the obvious moral and statutory obligations associated with safeguarding your learners, staff and corporate reputation, you will also want to educate them around responsible internet use for use in, out and after college or education. OFSTED are also looking at e-safety closely so it is important that it is addressed efficiently and urgently.

This issue of RSC Newsletter looks at key areas of e-safety, such as formulating your e-safety policy, protecting your online reputation and mobile security. We have a series of e-safety online events coming up that will help those starting to address the issue, as well as those that already

have an e-safety strategy and are exploring wider issues.

This academic year sees the full launch of our new online events programme. With your time and money at a premium, our online events will provide an easier way to join in the discussion. Turn to page 6 for more details.

We also look at other key current themes for FE and Skills. Find out more about how we can help with e-maturity, digital literacy, and Open Educational Resources.

We also focus on efficiency in the LRC with our latest case study.

Finally, we held a successful summer conference and received some great feedback. Turn to page 8 for the review.

8 Summer Conference 2011 10 News round-up 12 Ask the expert: Cloud computing

E-Safety: Online reputation

Strategy basics

E-Safety Series - The Ins and Outs of E-Safety E-Safety isn’t just about learners - how staff behave online (in and out of work) is crucial to the safety of learners, themselves and the institution they work for.

Furthermore, social media is full of people commenting on all kinds of things - possibly about your staff and your organisation.

So, how do you protect your staff and monitor the dangers facing your institution?

The head of Public Relations at Walmart UK (ASDA) has not only set up a process for monitoring all internet comments around ASDA, was involved in the developing of a staff conduct policy and sits on the CIPR committee on social media. He will explain how ASDA do this and how this could be translated into actions of FE institutions.

Twitter: #safeYH

EVENT INFORMATION Dates: 17, 19, 21 October (the same event repeated three times) Location: Online Cost: FREE (to supported providers) Bookings: www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/events

Learning providers must develop policies that help to support learners and employees online, beyond basic guidelines regarding use of ICT equipment.

We provide comprehensive support for organisations exploring e-safety. Contact us to find out how we can tailor this support to you: • We provide guidance on writing e-safety policy and strategy • We point to a variety of resources for inducting staff and learners around e-safety and e-responsibility • We provide exemplar policies around e-safety, social media and responsible internet use by staff and learners • We provide tailored workshops for senior and middle management around e-safety issues We are also running a series of three online events on e-safety, each one repeated over a week

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to maximise availability.

E-Safety Series - Getting the Measure of E-Safety A chance to find out the basics of e-safety – what do you need to consider when putting together a strategy and policy? Is it just about teaching and learning?

What do OFSTED look for?

This short webinar will run through the basics of e-safety, help you audit where you are, introduce you to the JISC Advance E-Safety Tool and show video of two OFSTED inspectors speaking at recent JISC RSC YH events.

Twitter: #safeYH EVENT INFORMATION Dates: 26, 28, 30 September (the same event repeated three times) Location: Online Cost: FREE (to supported providers) Bookings: www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/events

Mobile security

E-Safety: Useful links Visit http://groups.diigo.com/ group/jiscrscyh for our new Diigo weblinks covering e-learning topics such as digital identity, sustainability, federated access management, mobile learning and more.

For our e-safety links, visit: http://groups.diigo.com/group/ jiscrscyh/content/tag/e-safety

The technical debate around e-safety has broadened beyond questions of whether to simply block websites or not.

As technology has moved on and learners have smartphones and iPods allowing them to access the internet anywhere, what responsibilities do learning providers have?

The third event in our online e-safety programme focuses on the technical aspect of e-safety.

E-Safety Series - Safety in their hands Protecting your college infrastructure is central to e-safety. But in a day and age when learners and staff use mobile devices, how does your wi-fi measure up?

Furthermore, if learners use GPRS or 3G to connect, do you have any responsibility at all? What if that content is being used to degrade or harass other students?

This event explores these issues with presentations

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Facebook’s own guide to privacy settings

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Parents and Facebook

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Safeguarding learners in a digital world

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JISC Legal’s e-safety background video for England

Twitter: #safeYH

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JISC Legal e-safety resources

EVENT INFORMATION

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Using Facebook in the classroom

Dates: January 2012 (TBC)

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The social media background check

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Google+ identity crisis: what’s at stake with real names and privacy

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Digital Tattoo

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Mobile phones have made some young people more vulnerable than ever - The Guardian blog post

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Safeguarding FE learners in a digital world

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Social media policy

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E-Safety case studies

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Benefits of online interaction for teens outweigh danger, Professor says

from several experts.

Location: Online Cost: FREE (to supported providers) Bookings: www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/events

E-SAFETY ON RSC TV Watch our new YouTube video “60 Seconds on E-Safety”.

Kevin Campbell-Wright, our e-Learning Advisor for Adult & Community Learning, gives a quick outline on what e-safety is and how we can help you address it in your organisation.

And many more...

View the video on our new YouTube channel: www. youtube.com/jiscrscyh

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Book an E-Progress Review

Achieving e-maturity

Our E-Progress Review helps you benchmark your e-learning provision across the entire organisation.

After an initial consultation, we use the LSIS Technology Improvement Leadership Tool, Generator. This provides answers to a series of questions to benchmark where your organisation is on an e-maturity timeline. Once the Generator has been completed, we then: •

Facilitate a meeting of key staff to interpret and analyse the results

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Help to identify areas of strength and areas of improvement

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Work with the group to develop an action plan and any resulting strategies

The success of the E-Progress Review is that it involves key people across the whole organisation, ensuring that the skills profile of the whole organisation is raised, rather than leaving enthusiasts working in isolation.

We can also use our knowledge of good practice in the region to help identify next steps.

So, to help you raise the e-learning profile of your organisation, contact us to arrange your E-Progress Review.

We often use the terms “embedded and e-mature” but what exactly does this mean?

All teachers confidently using technology in all of their lessons?

Well, no. Learning technologies are just another tool in the teachers toolbox. Appropriate use of technology depends on a number of factors: subject matter, resources available, the infrastructure of the organisation and, most importantly, staff skills and confidence.

If an Ofsted inspector asked the question of all your staff “why did you not use technology within this lesson?” could all your staff answer? How do we ensure that all staff have the skills and knowledge to know which tool/technology to choose (or not choose)?

All learning providers have pockets of good practice but how can we ensure that all staff are appropriately skilled in order to raise a whole organisation’s skills profile?

As a foundation for establishing e-learning, providers can:

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• Ensure that infrastructure enables the use of technology • Ensure that new employees are skilled in the use of e-learning • Establish a base level of skills that a tutors should have • Establish a staff development strategy from which a programme of staff development is created From this baseline, providers can progress by reviewing their provision alongside examples of good practice and this is where we can help. One of the services we provide to help you with selfassessment of e-maturity is our E-Progress Review. This involves one of our Advisors visiting your organisation and facilitating a cross-organisational review to identify areas of excellence and areas for improvement. The Advisor then helps you take the next step as you progress along the ‘e-maturity timeline.’

Contact us to arrange your E-Progress Review by emailing support@rsc-yh.ac.uk or phone 0113 343 1000.

Efficiency in the LRC

Digital Literacy What does it mean for you?

How important is digital literacy for your organisation, staff and learners?

A new case study from our region has been published on the Excellence Gateway.

Read about how Wyke 6th Form College has transformed processes, saving time and money, by introducing fingerprint scanning in the library.

Due to the time involved in creating student library cards and problems caused by lost and forgotten cards, Wyke Sixth Form College integrated biometric (fingerprint) scanning technology into its library processes. This change has significantly improved account generation and response times, enabling resources to be borrowed immediately, and reduced the potential financial and time impact caused by lost and forgotten cards.

Keith Mawer, Librarian at the College, outlines how students find using the library quicker and easier because they “don’t need to bring anything with them to be able to borrow resources and other students cannot use ‘borrowed’ cards”.

Issue times are speeded up and staff time is used efficiently.

For full details on how the system works, including set-up costs, view the full case study at www. excellencegateway.org.uk/326250 View all e-learning case studies produced by the JISC Regional Support Centres on the Excellence Gateway at www.excellencegateway. org.uk/casestudies Or browse all case studies using our Delicious tag cloud at www.delicious.com/ elearningcasestudies Contact our Information Officer, Christine Comrie, if you have an example of effective working with technology in your learning provider - whether organisationally or in teaching and learning and you could be the subject of our next case study! Email c.comrie@rsc-yh.ac.uk

Issues around e-safety, digital identity and developing staff competencies with digital tools continues to be a trending topic for organisations wishing to enrich teaching and learning, yet still ensure the safety of its learners. That’s why we will make digital literacy a key focus over the coming year.

Whether you want to ensure the safety of your learners by developing an e-safety policy, equip your staff to take advantage of the range of mobile and digital technologies available or embed digital literacy into the heart of teaching and learning, why not contact us to see how we can help?

Digital Literacy will be a key theme for our Learning Resources Conference taking place on 20th October this year.

Keep an eye on our website for details: www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/events You can also follow our Diigo links on Digital Literacy at http:// groups.diigo.com/group/digitalliteracy-jisc Image: Orbmiser (http://www.flickr.com/ photos/orb9220/5622461135/)

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Events programme

Free headphones!

Book via our website: www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/events

September 8 Sep - Introduction to Online Course Delivery 14 Sep - Cloud & Consumerisation - a Strategic Guide for Managers 26, 28, 30 Sep - Getting the Measure of E-Safety 27 Sep - Inaugural HE Forum

October 6 Oct - Introduction to Online Course Delivery 6 Oct - Moodle User Group 12 Oct - Excellence in E-Learning 13 Oct - E-Assessment 17, 19, 21 Oct - The Ins and Outs of E-Safety 20 Oct - LR Conference

November 1 Nov - HE Forum 2 Nov - Challenges, Solutions & Support for FE & Skills 3 Nov - Introduction to Online Course Delivery 14 Nov - Excellence in Learning Resources 22 Nov - Inclusivity Forum 24 Nov - Closing the Quality Loop 29 Nov - Sourcing Free to Use Digital Media

December 1 Dec - Introduction to Online Course Delivery 7 Dec - Visioning Event NB. Dates of events may be subject to change - please check our website www.rsc-yh.ac.uk

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We are practising what we preach!

Our Regional Consultation in July outlined a different way of approaching online learning.

Will Stewart of the University of Bradford demonstrated his democratic approach to teaching distance learners. He focuses less on a static VLE and more on collaboration and interaction amongst the learners, integrating tools such as Skype and Diigo.

We, therefore, launch our new programme of online events.

Using Blackboard Collaborate, delegates can contribute and interact online, as they would face to face, and other tools such as Twitter hashtags and Diigo links are used.

We realise that it may be harder in the current economic climate for you to travel to events so, as long as you have an internet connection and some headphones, we are able to bring the event to you.

We simply send you a link once you’ve signed up. Click on the link to enter the webinar at the date and time specified. All events will be open before the start, giving you the opportunity to try out

your connection and resolve any problems. If you’re new to online events, our friendly advisors are there to help you along the way!

If you want to know more, we’re running an Introduction to Online Course Delivery as part of our online programme.

The event takes place on the first Thursday of every month until the end of the year. Book at www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/events.

And to make the process even easier, we have over 100 sets of headphones to give away to attendees of our online events! Once you have booked on to an online event, simply email support@rsc-yh.ac.uk to claim your free set. Please note, there is only one set per person, while stocks last.

We are currently developing our events programme for the Spring term. If there is specific training you want available, or if there are general topics you would like future events to focus on, please get in touch: email support@rscyh.ac.uk, phone 0113 343 1000 or tweet us @JISC_RSC_YH.

Open resources

New forum for HE e-learning community Would you like to be part of an online HE group?

We are launching our HE Forum this term – a twice termly online meeting place for HE managers and staff in FE colleges and small HEIs. The first HE Forum takes place online on 27 September 2011 between 12:30 - 13:30.

The term “Open Educational Resource(s)” (OER) refers to educational resources that are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing. The OER movement seeks to stimulate, facilitate and catalyze growth of learning resources, thus improving education as a social good and encouraging the development of communities of learning.

With OER you are free to: 1. Reuse - Use the work verbatim (unaltered), without having to ask permission 2. Revise - Alter or transform the work to meet your needs 3. Remix - Combine the (verbatim or altered) work with other works for enhanced effect 4. Redistribute - Share the verbatim, reworked, or remixed work with others.

Many educational institutions have been making use of these in teaching and learning to augment their own teaching materials. By using these resources students

have the opportunity to increase their knowledge by developing skills in self directed learning as well as an understanding of judicial use of sharing and reusing material. Teaching staff are able to save time and make financial efficiencies by not developing materials from scratch. Finally, some OER can widen access to the work of leading institutions and world-renowned teachers.

In addition to using any resources available on the internet there is the possibility for teaching staff and students to develop own materials and make these available under creative commons license.

The advantages to the author include raising your personal profile which can lead to career enhancement and increased employability. The institution benefits from knowledge and research transfer, marketing, and internationalisation.

Our new HE Forum will be addressing some of these ideas (see right) and we have a forthcoming case study featuring OER developed in the region: www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/casestudies.asp

The forum will provide the opportunity to discuss current HE topics, e-learning, share practice from your organisation and explore how you can collaborate with other people in the region.

Our launch looks at the recent HE White Paper and the impact it will have on the future for HE and FE. There will be an interview with a guest speaker with time for questions.

We don’t want to set the whole agenda and would very much welcome your input and ideas for future topics of discussion.

Who should attend? Managers and staff of HE in FE and HEI staff How much? FREE (to supported learning providers) What do I need for the event?

An internet connection and headphones How do I book? Information and bookings are at www.rsc-yh. ac.uk/events Twitter: #heforum

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Preparing Learners...

Our annual e-learning summer conference - Preparing Learners for the Future - took place on 16th June at the Rose Bowl, Leeds.

“A very welcoming and informative day with good interactive workshops...”

BBC journalist Bill Thompson was the keynote speaker (opposite page, with Marion Miller, JISC RSC YH Manager).

He outlined how “The Future Has Already Arrived: Learning in the Age of Electronics.”

Bill argued that technology should now be invisible and if you see the computer, there is something wrong. It is no longer valid to talk about online and offline as separate - it is all a continuum. His talk proved very popular and stimulated

“It was wonderful to hear Bill Thompson, in person, enthusing about technology...”

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discussion throughout the day.

Over a hundred delegates had a choice of several workshops on areas such as social media, cloud technology, 3D technology, e-books, e-pens, mobile devices and more. One workshop had a group of delegates leaving the conference on a geocaching trail.

Several of the workshops will be the subject of our case study series for the Excellence Gateway.

Keep an eye on www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/ casestudies.asp for details.

“[The event was] a big motivating factor for me...”

The day ended with a debate on whether we are preparing learners for the skills and knowledge they require for their future. It included ‘Jamie’s Dream School’ headteacher, John D’Abbro, and had many in the room feeling that we are not.

Delegates reported an enjoyable and informative day, with many using the Twitter hashtag #future11 to give their feedback

...for the Future

Reflections

“A day out of the library to ‘play’, generating new ideas and inspiration, is always the sign of a good conference. A QR Code treasure hunt in the Interactive Exhibition Area really highlighted the possibilities of this tool, whereby I think my library may find itself covered in QR codes in the near future.

We have already started looking at how these can be used in inductions and in marketing material. and interact with each other.

We had a few winners. Chris Workman, Chemistry Lecturer and Departmental e-Learning Mentor at Leeds City College, won a place on a JISC Netskills workshop after completing our Communications Survey.

@nathancobb Thanks to all involved in #future11 - a really thought provoking day...

Emma Hadfield, Learning Resources Manager at Thomas Rotherham College, won a Kindle for her summary of the day (right, with Scott Hibberson, e-Learning Advisor for Learning Resources).

Emma found the conference “really useful because it shows you loads of different tools, gives you loads of ideas, and you come away with loads of things you want to play with... On the back of the e-learning conference, we are using QR codes in the library and we have one on our Moodle aswell. It’s something different

@dreadnought001 Really enjoyed #future11 lots to reflect on and it’s appealing to students.”

The event amassed 564 tweets, brought together on the conference LiveBlog. Images from the event can be seen on Flickr : www.flickr.com/photos/jiscrscyh/ So, as we start a new academic term, what have you put in place as a result of our conference?

We would love to hear from you - email: support@rsc-yh. ac.uk or tweet us: @JISC_RSC_YH. When can we answer the question: Are we preparing learners for the future with a resounding yes?

@ChrisCousins On the train home now. It’s been a pretty interesting day, learnt some things, shared some things.

Good stuff :) #future11

I couldn’t believe how easy it was to set up a quiz using the Turning Point voting software.

This tool will really appeal to young people and I’m looking at using this within various information skills sessions, as a way of increasing student interaction and involvement.

A Brave New World, generated a lively debate, that enabled me to reflect on the impact that social media has on learning, to ensure I can effectively harness the benefits of these tools.

The Augmented Reality session was fascinating and a lot of fun. I’m not convinced I fully understood the concept, but by the time I had left this session I had downloaded several new apps and had begun to think about how these can be incorporated into education.

The question for the day was whether we are preparing learners for the future. Having been introduced to so many exciting tools and devices, with so many benefits to the learner experience, I think we are definitely on the right track.” EH

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Staff news We welcome Jo Hargreaves to the JISC RSC YH team!

News round-up Working in partnership JISC Advance has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NIACE (The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) The MOU sets out how the two organisations will work together to raise the quality of learning experiences for adults across the UK. Guy Lambert, Managing Director of JISC Advance, said: “Combining our expertise in technology with NIACE’s deep understanding of adult learning provides a unique capability to support learning providers and learners to get the best results from their endeavours.”

You may have seen Jo looking very calm and collected during our Summer Conference, complete with clipboard in hand.

Jo joins us as Events Officer, responsible for organising the practicalities of our events programme. If you have a special dietary requirement or questions about parking, then Jo’s your woman!

After graduating from the University of East Anglia, Jo returned to her native Yorkshire to start her career in the Press Office at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. She then moved to the Press Office at ITV Yorkshire, initially working on events and programme publicity for dramas such as Heartbeat and The Royal. Jo’s next move took her to ITV Yorkshire’s Corporate and Community Affairs department, where she worked on a range of corporate campaigns, community projects and events.

We’re really pleased to have Jo join the team!

Jo works Wednesday to Friday.

Contact her direct on 0113 343 0362 or email j.hargreaves@rscyh.ac.uk.

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DM & Copyright

JISC CEO retires

How does copyright impact on the use of digital media?

JISC Advance brings you a one-day seminar to help you navigate around intellectual property and copyright law, using real-world scenarios.

After 35 years of working in post16 education and research, Dr Malcolm Read executive secretary at JISC will retire in January 2012. His achievements include setting up the UK’s academic computer network JANET(UK) and being a passionate advocate of making publicly funded research widely available for everyone to benefit. HEFCE is now looking to recruit an executive secretary (CEO) for a fixed term for JISC’s transition period.

The event takes place in London on 7th December and costs £100. More details on this and other JISC Digital Media training is at: www. jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/training.

Legal advice JISC Legal has launched the JISC Legal Plus service, delivering practical, relevant, in-house training in ICT law.

They aim to meet the growing demand for professional in-house training on ICT law issues, including copyright, data protection and e-safety, with competitively-priced staff development packages designed to bring you and your team up-to-speed with the digital age.

The training service has been built upon a decade’s worth of experience in providing up-to-date legal guidance. More information is at www.jisclegal.ac.uk/Training/JISCLegalPlus.aspx

Skills for Life materials

Mobile learning infoKit JISC infoNet has launched a Mobile Learning infoKit to augment the new JISC guide Emerging Practice in a Digital Age. It is a developing resource and constitutes a practical guide for educational institutions planning to implement a mobile learning initiatiative.

At launch, the Mobile Learning infoKit comprises a wiki-based resource collating information and guidance from JISC and other sources.

It will develop to include a section on future trends, incorporate additional examples, and be made available in a variety of formats.

View the resource at https://mobilelearninginfokit.pbworks.com

JISC TechDis success JISC TechDis is part of the In-Folio implementation team which was awarded the Learning Technology Team of the Year Award at the 2011 ALT-C dinner.

In-Folio is an e-portfolio system that enables learners, particularly those with disabilities or learning difficulties, to record and present their achievements and abilities. The open source, accessible, simple interface allows learners to store, arrange and organise multimedia content in simple online pages.

In-Folio has now been successfully implemented across the sector having been installed onto the servers of all 44 ISCs. www.jisctechdis.ac.uk

Free mini e-learning resources To expand on some of the key areas of their popular Instructional Design workshop, JISC Netskills are rolling out additional web resources this autumn. It is to offer an accessible and stimulating way for anyone to find out more about some of the subjects introduced at their workshop. Each of the modules is about 20 minutes long with subjects varying from storyboarding to pedagogy and e-Learning development tools. The next workshop is on 8th November.

More information is at www.netskills.ac.uk/content/products/workshops/ range/idelrn.html

All the materials from the ReadWritePlus site have been moved to the Excellence Gateway. Improvements have been made to content organisation and presentation so that it is easier for you to find what you are looking for. These materials will be of interest to a wide range of practitioners in all settings, including Skills for Life, functional skills and key skills.

Visit http://rwp. excellencegateway.org.uk

WBL selfassessment resource A new section on Work Based Learning has been published on the Excellence Gateway. It shares a set of self assessment tools and materials developed by 12 providers, and aims to help other providers develop their own improvement plans.

Visit www.excellencegateway.org. uk/323350

News If you wish to receive a fortnightly e-bulletin of major items from Exchange (our news blog), email support@rsc-yh. ac.uk with your name, job title, organisation and email address.

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What’s your question?

Feedback from the Communications Survey at the Summer Conference indicated you wanted more ‘basic guides’ on a wide range of topics.

We, therefore, introduce this ‘Ask the expert’ feature. Feel free to drop us an email to support@rsc-yh.ac.uk with suggestions for further questions for our resident experts to answer - simply write ‘Ask the expert’ in the subject title - or tweet us: @JISC_RSC_YH This issue sees Ken Scott, our e-Learning Advisor for Technical and Infrastructure, outline the basics around cloud computing.

Contact Us JISC RSC YH University of Leeds 44 Clarendon Road Leeds LS2 9PJ

Ask the expert What is cloud computing?

You will probably have heard the term ‘The Cloud’, ‘Cloud Computing’ or a similar term a lot recently, but what does it really mean?

Searchcloudcomputing.com has this nice simple definition: “Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet.”

So it’s in fact anything that you don’t host on your own systems - examples you probably use already are GMail (googlemail), MSN, Yahoo, and a vast array of what used to be called ‘Web 2.0’!

The change that has happened over the last couple of years is that cloud services have started to be seen as a real alternative to running services yourself.

Why have an email system to buy/maintain/upgrade/backup when Microsoft or Google will do it for you? In times of financial constraints, saving money and staff time is crucial.

So should you go to ‘the cloud?’

Some questions to consider: 1. Control - are you happy to let an outside party look after

Tel: 0113 343 1000 Fax: 0113 343 4652

Look out for...

support@rsc-yh.ac.uk

New case studies from the region: www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/casestudies.asp

@JISC_RSC_YH www.rsc-yh.ac.uk

Our new YouTube channel of helpful videos: www.youtube.com/jiscrscyh

your data or email? Will they do as good a job as you can?

2. Responsiveness - what support is available if anything goes wrong? Timezones can be important here 3. Data Protection - if data is held outside of the EU then there may be issues of compliance 4. Culture - don’t forget that staff will need training, IT departments will have to ‘let go’ of systems If you would like any more details, email Ken Scott on k.scott@ rsc-yh.ac.uk or join our Technical mailing list for discussion with similar colleagues in the region: email RSC-YH-TECH@ JISCMAIL.AC.UK to join.

Our Twitter tags: #safeYH for e-safety #heforum for our new HE Forum #lrcon11 for our LR Conference on digital literacy