JISC (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/) inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies. JISC invests heavily in research and development, offering over 18 million users access to quality assured resources through their secure network. They provide expert advice, help to save money through national content license agreements and work with colleges and universities to realise the potential of their existing technologies. Everything JISC does has one aim – to maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in education.
Through CETIS, a national UK education innovation support centre, JISC has been participating in the Learning Registry by maintaining a watching brief on the project, and by setting up an experimental node, the JLeRN Experiment, at Mimas the national UK data centre. Utilising the expertise and content available from JISC, Mimas and CETIS, the JLeRN Experiment explored the feasibility of setting up an LR node and contributing and analysing data, in order to better understand the potential of the Learning Registry in the UK Higher Education context.
Funding for the JLeRN Experiment has now come to an end so the JLeRN team together with CETIS have drawn together some of the experiences and lessons from the project. In late October, the JLeRN team held a final meeting to bring together colleagues and projects from across the UK who had engaged with JLeRN to share their experiences and discuss the future potential of the Learning Registry. Various people summarized their involvement with JLeRN for that meeting, and some summarized the meeting itself. Sarah Currier (JLeRN project manager) and Phil Barker (CETIS Learning Technology Advisor) posted a summary of these summaries on the JLeRN blog:http://jlernexperiment.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/rounding-up-the-jlern-experiment/
A report into the wider potential of the Learning Registry has been commissioned, which is available from the JLeRN blog http://jlernexperiment.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/wider-potential-summary/ Case studies from various people who have used, or have ideas for using, the experimental node have also been commissioned and these will also be posted to the JLeRN blog.
Press Release: JISC to pioneer the use of social media technologies to improve the discovery of educational content