JISC

Start date: 1 May 2003

End date: 30 April 2005

Funding programme: Portals programme

JISC theme(s): Information environment

Introduction  

The Connect Learning and Teaching Portal (see http://www.connect.ac.uk) will be a network service that brings together content from diverse distributed resources using technologies such as cross searching, harvesting, and alerting, and collate this into an amalgamated form for presentation to the user.  This presentation will be through a web-site dedicated to meet the needs of a target group of users and through embedded portal services in other web and institutional environments.  For the users, Connect will become a personalised, single point of access where searching can be carried out across one or more resource and the amalgamated results viewed. Other portal services will, in the first phase, include community building fora, a database of funding opportunities in learning and teaching and an agency mapping database. 

Aims and Objectives  

Connect will become a set of services, promoting and fostering good practice in learning and teaching in FE and HE and across the UK, and a means of resource discovery for learning resources and materials held in disparately located services.  It will be based upon partnership and collaboration, and reflect the shared vision, remit and experience of stakeholders and partners. 

More specifically Connect aims to:

• Support the work of the quality enhancement agencies in building capacity in learning and teaching
• Make existing and future electronic resources for learning and teaching more accessible, regardless of format, type or location
• Widen access to the range of learning resources and materials
• Build online communities
• Provide services that become a key part of the whole learning and teaching community from practitioners to senior management
• Become a widely used service in support of learning and teaching practice and scholarship
• Be based upon and use the most appropriate technologies and methods
• Be integrated into other services and portals in the learning and teaching community including subject based services
• Be integrated with institutional environments, including institutional portals, MLEs and VLEs