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Project Evaluation March 11, 2010

Posted by Andrew Stewart in : Project , add a comment

The project team are pleased to announce the appointment of Belanda Consulting to undertake two areas of work associated with evaluation.  Dr. Jacqueline (’Jay’) Dempster will be working closely with the project team to:

Consultant Helen Beetham will be working with Jay on the overall evaluation, and providing links to other areas of JISC work where appropriate.  These are exciting times; as the trial projects are close to completion, the project team will be synthesising project outputs/outcomes and disseminating key findings across UK further and higher education.

The project team will meet with Jay and Helen in the near future to refine plans for the two evaluation activities; if any of the trial projects have any comments or questions please feel free to add them below or email the project team directly.

On a final note, we’d like to thank everyone that submitted an expression of interest to undertake the work.  The quality and diversity of bids was exceptional! The marking process was certainly difficult for us, but the outcome is sure to be beneficial for the project as a whole.

Online Communities of Practice: maintaining interest February 23, 2010

Posted by Jacquie Kelly in : Collaborative Tools, Trials, BCE, Project , add a comment

The first cluster meeting was held on 19th January 2010 and hosted by The University of The Arts London. The theme was ‘Online Communities of Practice: maintaining interest’ and 5 Trial projects were represented.

Paul Lowe introduced the topic drawing upon the work of Etienne Wenger. He made the point that Communities of Practice describe a social discipline of learning and the terminology is often misused as a buzzword. Communities of Practice focus on learning and knowledge exchange. The group discussed Wenger’s various models before relating these to their own practice.

Paul showed the group the OPEN-i site describing how they had started the community and maintain interest. It is a very active site with regular well-attended webinars which also attract high viewing numbers post-event. Practitioners (community members) include academics, industry professionals, aspiring entrants (students) & alumni - all brought together for a global network. He also runs ‘Wave Day’ each Tuesday with his students, using Google Wave for project management brainstorming. The team are currently involving the practitioners in the review of the site.

Brain McCaul, University of Leeds, gave an outline of the Leeds Innovation Network and how the Trial Project is working in a number of different areas with the premise of ‘Innovation Division of Labour’. Many different communities are being brought together allowing technology transfer officers to organise external skill sets enabling people to be employed on short term contacts for specific pieces of work/research. Leeds is working with institutions in Reading, Manchester and Liverpool, using social media to find experts and outreach work.

Chris Parkin, University of Huddersfield, provided some background to his Trial Project which is working with the West Yorkshire Lifelong Learning Network, a national network with huge hierarchy attending monthly face to face meetings resulting in a lot of time being invested. They are trialling Elluminate, working with vocational training providers and encouraging online practices to save time and money. This involves breaking down the preconceptions of Elluminate etc and identifying ways of removing barriers.

There followed a general discussion about the range of tools being used within the Project and it was suggested that this could be the topic for a blog post (this will follow shortly).

The group decided to continue the discussions online (using Google Wave) and share their ‘Top Ten Tips for generating and maintaining an online community of practice’. Some of the group had not used Google Wave before and so this was also seen as personal development.

This is the first in a series of three BCEct Cluster Meetings looking at the common themes which have emerged from reports submitted, discussions and the project blogs.

The next two cluster meetings are:
• University of Huddersfield 25th February 2010 – Theme: Culture (Institutional & External)
• Birmingham Metropolitan College 31st March 2010 – Theme: Technical & IT Barriers

Expression of Interest – Evaluation and Support January 8, 2010

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The Trialling of Collaborative Online Tools for Business and Community Engagement Project (BCEct Project)

The overall project aims to enhance the use and awareness of web technologies in collaborative practice undertaken by BCE practitioners across Further and Higher Education. The project is funded by the JISC BCE Programme, and runs from 1st July 2008 to 31st July 2010.

1. Evaluation (Max. Funding Available £8,000)

JISC infoNet  would like to commission an evaluation of the BCEct project following guidelines (evaluation handbook 2007) provided by JISC .  The project team expect the evaluation project to:

An overall evaluation framework exists for the BCE Programme and any successful bidder will be expected to work effectively with both the programme evaluator(s) and project team.  The project team estimate this work to take approximately 15 days (111hrs).

Where applicable the project team will be willing to support reasonable travel and accommodation costs (outwith maximum funding given above), however we envisage most of the work to take place remotely.

2. Supporting Trial Projects (Max. Funding Available £6,000)

The BCEct project includes eight trial projects  from across Further and Higher Education in the UK.  JISC infoNet would like to commission an organisation to support each trial project in the evaluation of their individual work.  The project team envisage this support in the form of one day workshops.  Workshops will:

The project team estimate this work to take approximately 10 days (74hrs).  The project team will support travel, accommodation and facilities where applicable (outwith maximum funding given above).

Deadline and Submission

The deadline for expressions of interest is 12th February 2010.  It is envisaged that bidders will be notified of the outcome of the marking process by 19th February 2010 and that work will commence on or around 1st March 2010.  JISC infoNet will accept one overall proposal for the above areas of work if an applicant wishes to combine them.  Proposals should be submitted to jiscinfonet@northumbria.ac.uk using the subject line ‘BCEct EOI‘.

JISC infoNet may require clarification on your bid and therefore require contact during the week commencing 15th February 2009.  A template for submitting your proposal is available for download here:  Expression of Interest Template.

Structure of Proposals

Proposals will be evaluated using the following criteria:

Pitch & Perfect March 12, 2009

Posted by Andrew Stewart in : Collaborative Tools, Project , add a comment

When planning the ‘Trialling of Online Collaborative Tools for BCE’ project our team discussed various methods for identifying and selecting the nine trials required to take part.  After much deliberation the team decided upon a model/method/framework (call it what you will) of ‘Pitch & Perfect’.  We must stress the pronunciation of perfect as ‘puh-fect‘.  The overall approach can be defined as follows:

(more…)

Project Partners Announced February 2, 2009

Posted by Jacquie Kelly in : Collaborative Tools, Trials, BCE, Project , 1 comment so far

We are pleased to announce that the following have been chosen to be partners in this project:

Unfortunately, the University of Hertfordshire (contact - Paul Findlay) have had to withdraw from the project.

The Project Team would like to thank Jane Aldred who set up the trial project at The University of Huddersfield.

The 8 partners are working on ‘Perfecting’ their trial proposals and further details will be posted here in early March.

The 8 represent a range of institutions, BCE contexts and tools to be trialled. We are really looking forward to working with them over the next 18 months and the Showcase event scheduled for June/July 2010 should be well worth attending.

Collaborative Tools to Support Business and Community Engagement January 27, 2009

Posted by Jacquie Kelly in : Collaborative Tools, Trials, BCE, Project , 1 comment so far

Business and Community Engagement (BCE) is the strategic management of interactions, partnerships and transactions with partners and clients external to the institution. The scope of engagement includes the commercial sector, the public sector (including charities and trusts), the cultural landscape and the social and civic arena.

JISC, through its Advisory Services, is running a project to trial online collaborative tools to support Business and Community Engagement (BCE) activities within a range of institutional contexts. We are looking for partner institutions with an open and proactive outlook willing to run a trial in order to identify good practice, challenges and issues and to share lessons learned. Funding of up to £30,000 is available to partner institutions to contribute towards the cost of participating in the project. For further details of the call for Expressions of Interest (now closed) visit http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/bce/collab-tools-ceoi.

We  held our second round of  the selection process last week in Birmingham. This was in the form of ‘Pitch and Perfect’, where the proposers gave their Pitch and then through discussions with a panel we started the Perfect process. We intend to write-up this process as it proved to be a very useful technique in the selction process. So watch this space!

In the first week of February we will be in a position to publish the list of those institutions who have been successful in their bid to be part of this really exciting project.