JISC

Start date: 1 April 2006

End date: 1 March 2009

JISC theme(s): e-Learning

Committees: JISC Learning and Teaching committee

Working Groups: e-Learning capital programme advisory board

Vision statement
JISC’s core e-Learning programme aims to identify how e-learning can benefit learners, practitioners and educational institutions, and advise on its implementation. The e-learning activity within the Capital Spending Review programme will complement and build upon the core activities, with a focus on helping institutions to meet the diverse needs of learners throughout their lives.

The e-Learning Capital programme is an £11.36 million investment to support the sector in harnessing the potential of e-learning to support lifelong learners. A particular area of investigation will be around providing a personalised learning experience, meeting the needs of individual learners in a range of settings through the use of technologies such as e-portfolios and technologies which support assessment and collaboration. The programme also includes work on how technology can facilitate the more sophisticated administration processes needed for this kind of flexible provision.

This programme builds on previous JISC-funded work on supporting lifelong learners and facilitating progression into higher education, (MLEs for Lifelong Learning and Distributed e-Learning programmes) taking the exploration of the technical, administrative and cultural changes needed in institutions further to deliver a personalised learning experience that meets students’ needs. These students increasingly independently select and use a wide range of technologies to support their learning and their social life, presenting a potential challenge for institutions, which may have seen themselves as the providers of the learning environment. The programme aims to support institutions in meeting this challenge and harnessing the potential of the technology.

Providing appropriate opportunities for work-based learning is key in enabling many groups of people to access higher education. The programme will explore how institutions can engage with employers and use technology to support the delivery of learning in ways that meets the needs of employers and learners.

Programme outcomes

The anticipated outcomes of the programme are to:

• Pilot new e-learning technologies to support lifelong learners, including support for HE courses in FE, widening participation, work-based learning, flexible delivery and personalised learning experiences.
• Build capacity, knowledge and skills in the use of e-learning to support lifelong learning through institutional and collaborative cross sector projects; work with subject communities, and knowledge exchange activities.
• Develop, pilot and implement technical models that support the flexible, affordable and pedagogically diverse implementation of e-learning.
• Provide guidance to practitioners, institutions and subject communities on the use of e-learning, in partnership with the Higher Education Academy
• Gain knowledge to inform future JISC e-learning developments, through engagement with the ICT industry and through a collaborative e-learning research programme.

Programme activities

Exploring practical approaches to supporting the sector’s uptake of e-learning technology to support lifelong learning

(April 2006 – March 2009)

Extension of the Distributed e-Learning regional pilots at a lower level of funding for up to an additional year to 15 months.

Projects on the cross-institutional use of e-learning to support lifelong learners, including the provision of personalised learning experiences and flexible delivery to support progression, widening participation and work-based learning. These projects will be carried out in two phases, to enable new developments from within the wider e-learning programme and other JISC programmes to be fed into the second phase.

• See details of  projects from the first phase
• The second phase call for projects was published in April 2007

Technical underpinning of developments to support learning and teaching

(April 2006 – December 2008)

Reference model development, building on existing technical modelling work in e-portfolio and technologies which support assessment, administration and the provision of a personalised learning experience, and developing others as required.

• Information on the reference models funded under the Distributed e-Learning programme

Additional funded activities within cross-institutional collaborative projects to support the adoption of e-Framework technologies to support the administration of learning and teaching.

Demonstrator projects implementing the reference models, working with key sector partners such as UCAS

Collaborative activities with the Higher Education Academy and its Subject Centres

(April 2006 – March 2008)

Two phases (starting April 2006 and April 2007) of projects in the Subject Centres, piloting and feeding back on the use of a number of e-learning technologies and approaches within subject communities. The areas to be explored are:

• Re-use and sharing of learning resources
• Use of the outputs of the Digitisation programme in learning and teaching
• Use of e-portfolios in subject and professional contexts, working with employers, sector skills councils and professional bodies
• Supporting the development of e-learning tools by piloting tools and providing input on the needs and requirements of the different subject communities
• Supporting the e-Learning Pedagogy programme by engaging with the Learner experience study or the Designing for Learning activities 

Virtual e-learning centre

(April 2006 – March 2008)

Joint activity with the Higher Education Academy to support the process of linking development activities with advisory and Academy services to provide a more effective information flow. 

e-Learning research

(September 2006 – March 2009)

Collaborative research activities with the research councils and the Higher Education Academy.

Further information

• e-Learning call briefing (capital circular 03/06) - information about some of the JISC work this programme builds upon
• Presentation from the May 2006 town meeting - very brief overview of the e-Learning Capital programme
• Projects within FE colleges on the use of e-learning technologies, especially e-portfolios and technologies which support assessment, administration and the provision of a personalised learning experience, to support the delivery of HE courses.
  4 workshops were held in June and early July 2006 to provide some advance supporting information to enable colleges to plan their submission under this call
• A consultancy to work alongside JISC to support collaboration with the educational ICT industry. Invitation to tender for this work (now closed) 
• A project to explore models for, and potentially to implement, knowledge exchange within the sector between current and past JISC development projects and other people and institutions seeking to build on their developments.