This paper is the final report of the JISCdescribes a high level domain map of higher education, and the creation of a proof-of-concept version.  It would allow a wide variety of practitioners to gain a better understanding of the higher education domain, support business analysts in their work and provide a business view onto the e- framework. Also available in Word.

This report looks at the use of Web 2.0 for content creation in teaching and learning, and makes recommendations to the JISC.  The final report is now available in Word and pdf , together with JISC's response and our comments on the response.

This paper for the Personal Learning Environments (PLE) experts working group in Manchester discusses the drivers that may enable PLEs to be adopted, together with the system and institutional factors that militate against their successful use.

This brief paper looks at the way that some of the issues around e-learning, in particular that the creation of a divide between e-learning and learning is itself a problem.

This Chapter for a forthcoming book (title to be decided), to be published by Facet Publishing, Editor Andrew Cox, describes portal architectures and some of the issues that need to be considered for people implementing them.

Chapter, by Tom Franklin and Jill Armstrong, is published in Personalizing Learning in the 21^st Century, Ed Sara De Freitas and Chris Yapp, Network Educational Press, 2005.  It looks at the need for spaces where learning can be personalised, rather than spaces that can be personalised, and looks at some metaphors that can help to create more usable spaces.

A series of reports describing how a wide variety of different technologies can be used to connect remote sites back to the main campus. the following reports have been published so far:

All the reports can be found on the multi-site connectivity page at http://www.ja.net/services/network-services/mcas/casestudies.html

This paper looks at what mobile learning might mean for a student in 2012 by exploring what they are doing and how they are doing it.  Full text here

Published in Interactions, University of Warwick, Issue 25, 2005 http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/cap/resources/interactions/

Ubiquitous computing can be defined simply as all staff and students having networked computers at all times that they are studying, allowing them access to communication, office productivity and (re)search tools.

Three papers outlining the issues are available:

Closely related to ubiquitous computing is the idea of mobile computing, whereby the computer (laptop, PDA or smartphone) can be used anywhere including on the move.  A discussion paper on the issues is available here

The use of wireless networking is becoming increasingly important in education and opens up a wide variety of possibilities for enhancing teaching.

Portals are the latest in a long line of technologies that universities have been told will solve all their problems. Portals are designed to enhance work and learning processes by making work flows simpler and information more readily available in a form in which it can be processed. However, like many other technologies portals will not live up to all the hype currently surrounding their promotion. The report describes the main features of portals in higher education, and explores how an institutional portal might affect the work of a typical academic. The author sets portal development in the context of ‘web services’, an attempt to move away from a ‘monolithic’ approach to computing applications (entailing duplication of function, excessive complexity and user knowledge of multiple interfaces) to a integrated model, where smaller, discrete ‘services’ are combined for specific users and purposes. This improves customisation and productivity. The range of portal ‘types’ are reviewed (proprietary higher education specialist, corporate generic and open source), and the implications for institutional adoption considered.

The full report can be found on the Observatory for Borderless Higher Education at http://www.obhe.ac.uk/products/reports/publicaccesspdf/February2004.pdf

This brief report discusses the options for connecting outreach centres to the Internet and helps you to choose the most appropriate ones for you

This report evaluates the projects in the JISC MLE Programme covering further education in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  The projects covered interoperability around student records (primarily between student record systems (SRS) and virtual learning environments (VLEs), content sharing and Personal Development Plans / Records and 1 at the re-use of learning objects.

This loks at the technology options available for implementing an MLE.  The choices made here will have a long term impact on the MLE as no technology or system will support everything that you might wish to do at an affordable cost.

The current version is available at http://www.cetis.ac.uk:8080/frameworks

Many institutions are buying VLEs based primarily on a technical evaluation. This briefing paper looks at the issues involved in buying a VLE that will meet the long term needs of the institution

An Informal debate with Rachel Ellaway on the virtues of custom versus generic VLEs

This report looks at the impact that national services and programmes have had on teaching and learning, and in particular the factors that have led to nationally provided services having a greater or lesser impact on teaching and learning. 

See the report and appendix listing the areas that services cover

This report proposes a model for the whole life-cycle of elearning, from the formation of initial ideas through planning, development, delivery, review, revision and so on until the course is terminated, that explicitly supports evaluation.  One aim is to identify the critical points for evaluation.  By critical points, we mean those which can have the desired impact on quality enhancement. The reason to focus on evaluation in developing a life cycle model is that there are good reasons why the evaluation process should drive the development of any elearning product. 

The first report outlines possible models to provide secure funding for the Reload toolset.  These open source tools have been developed with funding from JISC and the European Union, as open source tools and a means is needed to keep them up to date and to continue to develop them.  The second report develops one model further.