Report against SFC-Jisc Outcome
Agreement AY 2014-15
Executive summary
Jisc has continued to provide efficient and effective support to Scotland’s colleges and universities,
using the grant-in-aid from the Scottish Funding Council. We have supported all eight of the SFC’s
Outcomes. Through the provision of a world class network, relevant high quality digital content, and
sector-specific advice and guidance, Jisc works in partnership with universities and colleges and with
a range of Scottish organisations to ensure our supported institutions can make the most of the
digital opportunities available, whilst making substantial savings compared with doing so
individually.

We develop and operate large-scale shared services that individual organisation in higher
education (HE), further education (FE) and skills can rely on

We select, negotiate and set up procurement frameworks for favourable deals for the
sectors we serve with a wide range of commercial suppliers

We provide advice and support on a range of issues to help make HE, FE and skills more
effective and more efficient
These three areas are underpinned by our Research and Development. R&D is a sustaining activity
for Jisc and leads to the new services that will be needed by our customers in the next few years as
well as enhancement of existing services.
In the previous year, Jisc has ensured that all institutions eligible for and requiring a Janet network
connection have benefitted from fit-for-purpose internet service provision. Significantly, Jisc has
worked on the managed transfer of the regional partner academic networks across Scotland to
direct Jisc operation, giving greater coherence and consistency of support. Where appropriate, Jisc
has also upgraded connections to ensure capacity and resilience meet demand.
In terms of digital resource use, Scottish institutions continue to make good use of the collections
offered by Jisc, and we estimate that the Value, Savings and Efficiency per institution is higher on
average for Scotland than the UK as a whole.
Many Scottish institutions continue to play a leading role in Jisc’s research and development activity,
with involvement in three or more Jisc programme areas by the University of Edinburgh, the
University of Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian University, the University of St Andrews, sparqs, and
Borders College, with a further five institutions involved in one or two projects. The Scottish MIS
project also continues, with data landscape and solution scoping reports due in the following
reporting year (a fuller list of Scottish institutions participating in Jisc projects can be found in Annex
C.)
Jisc has undergone a significant restructuring during the present reporting period, introducing a new
customer engagement model. The transition over the year was managed to minimise impact to
customers, with the Regional Support Centre’s activity being brought to an end, and the new Jisc
Scotland coming into operation on 1 January 2015. The new engagement model is firmly customerfocussed, and concentrates on outcomes rather than activity. A nominated account manager in now
responsible for ensuring a fully-managed relationship between Jisc and each supported institution,
1
making sure that colleges and universities get best value from Jisc, and that Jisc’s offer relates to
each institution’s strategic priorities and, ultimately, its own funding outcome agreement.
The reporting year has entailed some bedding in of the new customer engagement processes, and
completing recruitment of the Jisc Scotland team. The level of activity has nevertheless been high,
with 383 contacts recorded between 1 January and 31 July, with 69 opportunities identified for takeup of Jisc services by supported institutions. This is in addition to wider FE and HE community
engagement activity, such as Jisc’s Digifest UK event, and the Connect More with Jisc in Scotland
event held in June in Edinburgh. A detailed breakdown can be found in Annex B.
Jisc also sponsored The Herald HE Award for Innovating Technology Excellence, recognising cutting
edge use of technology in higher education. Through Jisc’s promotion, this award had a higher
number of nominations that any other category.
In addition to its own activity, Jisc Scotland continues to engage and collaborate with other
appropriate bodies (such as the College Development Network, the Scottish Qualifications Authority,
and the Higher Education Information Directors Scotland group).
Planning for the next reporting period includes increased engagement with supported institutions to
encourage further take-up of relevant Jisc services and involvement, to support involvement in
appropriate Jisc projects, and to ensure each institution has the opportunity to benefit from the
outputs of Jisc’s research and development activity. In order to ensure the input of supported
institutions, Jisc will hold a Scottish stakeholders’ forum, and also consultative fora in the areas of
Network and IT services, Digital content, and Teaching, learning and student experience.
Outcome 1: Efficient and effective regional college structures
The Council is working to restructure the Scottish college sector around 13 college regions, to achieve better coordination between the key organisations in each region and ensure that the needs in each region are identified
and delivered in a coherent way. SFC will play a leadership role in developing outcome agreements in each college
region in partnership with local authorities and other bodies that have an interest in the delivery of education.
Jisc is supporting the integration of information systems in the merged colleges by providing advice,
resources and guidance on reviewing business processes, and on the selection and adoption of
information systems. Key services here have been support provided by Jisc Scotland and Jisc team of
subject specialists. For example:
 The account manager along with the Scottish subject specialist (network technologies and
infrastructure) has worked with Fife College in order to develop its ICT strategy, delivering
advice, consultancy and training.
 Using Jisc’s independent advice and guidance, Glasgow College Group identified £255K
investment savings during their merger as a result of Jisc advice on pre-merger
consolidation.
We also offer network design, planning and continuity management during transition, and
procurement services covering technology and cloud services.
Jisc provides Janet network infrastructure and services to support college regions, e.g. regional
network links and new college domain names. Annex A shows the extent to which these services
have been used by Scottish HE and FE institutions over the last 12 months, including traffic to and
from the Janet network. The average availability of HE and FE services in Scotland was 99.98% over
the 12 month period between July 2014 and June 2015.
2
Outcome 2: Access for people from the widest range of backgrounds
SFC wishes to secure an improvement in people’s life chances, ensuring that all people in Scotland are able to
access all levels of educational provision that match their ambitions and abilities and allows them to reach their
full potential, regardless of their background.
Jisc has supported inclusive practices by providing advice and guidance on accessible technologies
and strategies for inclusion.





In July 2015, we published new guides on digital exam papers for people with print disabilities
and making the most of accessible exam papers. Existing guides relating to accessibility were
also updated during the last academic year.
Jisc produced podcasts on related topics, such as making resources accessible for those with
disabilities (July 2015) and taking advantage of digital exam formats for print-impaired learners
(June 2015).
In the DART Project, Jisc assisted Borders College to develop and promote inclusiveness through
the use of ICT, and specifically the use of “roaming profiles” for students with additional support
needs. Jisc has provided assistive technology mentoring, training and support throughout
2014/2015 to the Assistive Technology Assistant and Extended Learning Support (ELS) team. In
addition, Jisc DART delivered discrete enabling technology training (mobile learning, free and
open source technology) to support staff at Borders College.
Jisc helped Forth Valley College to evaluate apps for learning support, and to build staff capacity
and confidence before they used the apps with learners. Assistance was also given to library and
learning resources staff to consider approaches to provide accessible library services.
Jisc provided advice, guidance and consultancy to Glasgow Clyde College. This allowed it to
develop an appropriate job description and person specification for their emerging assistive
technology post.
Outcome 3: The right learning in the right place
SFC wishes colleges to improve the range and spread of provision within and across each region, ensuring that
provision (and infrastructure) is targeted towards the needs of the communities and employers in the region. SFC
also wishes college to ensure a coherent spread of national/specialist provision (i.e. provision which meets a need
that is much wider than that of a single region).
Jisc supports the delivery of more coherent patterns of provision by advising on college learning and
teaching strategies supported by technology, e.g. meeting regional learner needs through offcampus learning and online assessment. Last October we launched a call for examples of mobile
technology for learning. The best of these were added to our updated mobile learning guide. It is
one of the top five guides in terms of visits from Scottish institutions over the last year (see Annex
D).
Our Customer Services team includes subject specialists to provide support in embedding access and
inclusion into strategic and operational practice.
Outcome 4: High quality, efficient and effective learning
SFC’s vision for high quality learning includes involving learners as partners, fully engaged in their learning and in
the life of their institution, and with access to high quality learning materials and online resources. SFC also aims
to ensure that learners’ journeys through the learning system are as short, efficient and effective as possible,
including improved retention, and enhanced articulation (or progression) from colleges to universities.
Jisc supports high quality learning and increased efficiency across a range of areas, including access
to scholarly resources and learning materials, open educational resources (OERs) and impartial
advice and guidance on platforms to support online learning. Jisc offers a wide range of digital
resources for the FE and HE sectors, for example:
3

Jisc secures value, savings and efficiency gains for digital content for Scotland of approximately
£8.25m annually. We support the work of the SHEDL consortium both in negotiations with
publishers on their behalf and also by collecting payments from their members and making a
single payment to the publisher.
Significant agreements negotiated with major journal publishers in the last 12 months (note
price increases are forecast at between 5% to 7% in 2015) include:
Wiley: price rises limited to 2% with an offset on APC costs worth up to 60% included
Taylor and Francis: price rises limited to 3.75% with an offset on APC costs of 75% included
Sage Publications: price rises limited to 3.2% with an offset of 90% on APC costs included


Resource discovery services enable researchers, teachers, and students to discover digital
content for use in education and research. For example, Jisc provides a wide range of reference
collections such as MediaHub and SALSER, maps and geospatial resources like DigiMap.
Library support and analytic services: expert negotiation, licensing, data creation, normalisation,
analytics and the collection of usage statistics at a national level provide efficiencies for the
sector and enable support staff to assess the impact of digital content locally and nationally.
Service name
Higher Education
Further Education
Number of
institutions
using the
service
% of all
Scottish HE
Number of
institutions
using the
service
% of all
Scottish FE
National Academic Archive
18
100%
14
56%
Digital media
17
94%
13
52%
Jorum
16
89%
14
56%
Journal Archives
8
44%
4
16%
Historical Texts
7
39%
4
16%
MediaHub
7
39%
13
52%
Archives hub
17
94%
14
56%
Copac
17
94%
4
16%
SUNCAT
17
94%
--
--
Zetoc
16
89%
--
--
Jisc Collections
18
100%
12
48%
Journal Usage Statistics Portal
17
94%
1
4%
The Keepers Registry
6
33%
--
--
Theme
Digital
content and
collections
Discovery
Library
support
services
We are developing a large-scale learning analytics service for the HE, FE and Skills sector that will
enable teachers to identify students at risk of dropping out and allow them to intervene early. This
will be one of the most significant new services to be developed in the coming year.
We are also developing an app for students that will allow them to track their learning data and
compare it with their peers. Both of these services will adhere to the learning analytics code of
practice to ensure student data is used ethically and with their consent.
Outcome 5: A developed workforce
SFC wants institutions to develop students’ skills and ensure students are aware of the skills they possess and
how best to use them. We wish to see institutions working with employers to ensure their employees use their
skills effectively. SFC also wishes to see an increase in the percentage of Scottish-domiciled graduates entering
positive destinations.
4
Jisc provides leadership and enhance the sector’s capability to use technology by running innovation
programmes to explore new ICT issues and model potential solutions. Our guide on developing
digital literacies was updated in December 2014, and is one of the top 5 guides visited by Scottish
institutions (see Annex D).
We are also developing a digital capabilities service. This will include diagnostic tools to help
individuals identify where they can enhance their skills and a course for leaders to help them
become exemplars in promoting digital capabilities. It will be entering limited trials by the end of
2015.
We estimate that staff productivity in Scottish higher and further education sectors benefits from
Jisc’s services by at least £6 million annually. This is a conservative figure as it is based on the use of
just 14 of Jisc’s services.
Outcome 6: Sustainable colleges and universities
SFC expects institutions to have appropriate and effective governance structures with clear ownership of
institutional sustainability; to have robust and coherent plans and processes for performance management and
monitoring institutional sustainability; and to explore and exploit opportunities to improve efficiency and
effectiveness through collaborations and shared services.
Jisc’s shared services are used by Scottish HEIs and FECs to improve their efficiency: shared services
create opportunities to deploy available budgets on mainstream teaching and research provision.
Jisc also supports the development of shared services in institutions through the advice and
guidance we provide. We updated our guide on practical steps towards shared services in January
2015.
Jisc provides a range of shared services, such as its network, Janet, EDINA, and the
videoconferencing service vscene that are inherently energy efficient.
Jisc supports reductions in energy costs and carbon emissions by providing advice and resources on
‘green’ ICT. Key services here are Janet cloud brokerage, archiving and datacentre advisory services.
We also provide guides on the topic, such as our guides on efficient buildings and on engaging users
to reduce energy use (both updated in February 2015).
Outcome 7: A research base that is internationally competitive
SFC uses the Research Excellence Framework (REF) as the primary indicator of research quality, and wishes to see
an improvement in the university sector’s performance in REF2014 compared with RAE2008. From AY 2014-15,
SFC will require institutions to capture the impact of research activity in terms of the amount and percentage
share of income achieved from UK Research Councils, major research charities, and the European Commission.
Jisc provides the Janet6 core network backbone, a key part of the UK research infrastructure,
supporting innovation and links to international research networks). In 2014-15, Jisc collaborated
with the Scottish wide area network (SWAN) to provide local access links for institutions (and access
to Jisc’s network, Janet), supporting migration from the current primary Janet connections to main
campuses.
Through Janet, researchers in Scotland are connected to the Europe-wide research and education
network GÈANT, enabling intensive research collaboration across national boundaries. Specialist
research network services include Lightpath.
Jisc helps to boost the international research profile of institutions by providing tools and advice to
help progress research data management, open access, open data and other strategies. Jisc also
advances the exploitation of information, analytics, and ‘big data’ for research projects. We
published a report on a national monograph strategy in September 2015.
5
Jisc provides a range of Open Access services. OA publication is essential to comply with research
funders’ policies, and Jisc services are used by Scottish HEIs to check publishers’ OA compliance, to
reduce costs of Gold OA publishing by using Jisc-negotiated agreements that offset Article
Processing Charges (APCs) against journal subscription, and to monitor APC payments.
Jisc provides services to support research data management in universities to help them meet
funder mandates. Services include advice and guidance and tools such as the Data Management
Planning online service used by a number of Scottish universities. We are working with universities
across the UK to provide a national research data discovery service, so research data can be
accessed and re-used. We are developing new shared services that will support discovery through
solutions for active data management and long-term access with suitable preservation services that
are cost effective.
The services that underpin both OA research articles, monographs and data will enable re-use by the
academic sector but also audiences beyond this such as industry, and we are making links with the
National Centre for Universities and Business whereby SMEs and industry can easily access and make
connections with the universities sector.
We have featured Edinburgh and St Andrews in our HEI case studies of how they are tackling the
EPSRC research data policy mandate.
Outcome 8: University-Industry collaboration
SFC encourages knowledge transfer from universities to industry, supported by a grant scheme and a set of
metrics to measure impact. SFC also wishes to see leverage of investment at the UK and European level
maximised to enhance HEI/industry collaboration particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Jisc has invested in a number of strategic areas in BCE, including in opening up online marketplaces
and sharing institutional resources through the open innovation and access to resources initiative. It
has also supported the professional development of staff working in enterprising and externally
facing roles through the development of a professional development diagnostic tool which allows
HEIs and FECs to assess their knowledge and skills, and find relevant resources.
The Janet Reach service provides industry connections to the Janet network in order to encourage
collaboration between industry and academia in the use of e-infrastructure resources. It does this
through provision of a high-capacity connection to the Janet network for industry partners in
projects which have been assessed and accepted within the scheme. Rolls-Royce (which has a
number of operations in Scotland) was announced as the first firm to connect to Janet under this
initiative.
Jisc has invested £500,000 in providing high-capacity connections to the Edinburgh-based ARCHER
High Performance Computing service, which is open to industry as well as academia.
6
Jisc Scotland Customer Engagement Activity
In the first half of the reporting period, Jisc continued to operate through the existing Regional
Support Centre hosted by the University of Glasgow. Disruption due to the implementation of a new
engagement model was mitigated through the commitment of staff, and ensuring ‘service as usual’
insofar as possible. A summary of Jisc Regional Support Centre activity is provided in Annex G.
From 1 January 2015, Jisc brought its customer-facing teams, including the Jisc Regional Support
Centre for Scotland and the Jisc advisory services, in house. It had been recognised that the
fragmented, hosted model of service delivery had ceased to be the most effective and efficient way
to deliver Jisc’s customer engagement.
The new model retains focus on practical, regionally-delivered support, ensuring that each
supported institution in Scotland gets best value from all relevant parts of Jisc.
With a full complement of staff in place at the end of the reporting period, Jisc Scotland operates
with:




1 full-time head of nation/region (shared with Jisc Northern Ireland)
3 full-time account managers
3 full-time subject specialists dedicated to Scotland
(in addition to the UK subject specialist support)
2 part-time community engagement officers (0.6 and 0.4 FTE)
Each supported institution has a nominated account manager who has undertaken engagement
planning to best meet the customer’s needs. The account manager has knowledge of the breadth of
Jisc’s services and expertise, and therefore acts as an effective and efficient route to take up of
relevant support. In order to ensure that each institution gets best value from Jisc, the account
manager works with a strategic contact nominated by each college and university.
In order to ensure accessibility of Jisc’s advice and guidance, staff in Scottish supported institutions
can access the Jisc customer contact centre and the Janet network service desk, whilst still
permitting direct contact with relevant Jisc specialists.
Jisc Scotland draws upon expertise from across the organisation and has direct access to events,
training, communications and marketing, sector intelligence and subject expertise on all areas within
Jisc’s remit, including:











Accessibility and inclusion
Teaching learning and assessment
Technology and the law
Online learning and the digital student experience
Technology to support enterprise
Research
Research data management
Scholarly communications
End user learning resources engagement with digital resources
Strategy and business process in further education and skills
Systems, tools and information management
Jisc continues to work to bring its guidance together more coherently within the Jisc website, rather
than, as previously, spread across a large number of service and product websites. To date, some 83
guides and 45 quick guides have been revised and published.
7
Value, savings and efficiencies
Below is a short summary of the Value, Savings and Efficiencies that Jisc delivers in Scotland (based
on £291m across all nations.)
Element
Definition
Amount
(£ Million)
Value
Value of services where customers would be unlikely to pay
market rates but still get considerable benefit from using the
service
£9.7
Savings
Where there is a reasonable expectation that the customers
would have paid market price to access or obtain the service
£8.3
Efficiencies
Other costs saved for customers, such as staff time and other
costs: these are often the costs of the transaction
£1.9
Subtotal
£19.8
Productivity
Increased productivity for paid users (academics, researchers;
not students) arising from use of Jisc services
£6.0
Return on Project
Investment
Annualised view of the value projected from investment in
Futures projects and other R&D
£2.8
Total
£28.6
8
Service usage by Scottish institutions
See Annex E for a description of the services listed below.
9
10
Janet network traffic for Scottish HE and FE, July 2014 to June 2015
11
Participation in Jisc events by Scottish institutions
Total numbers from Scottish HEIs and FECs attending events in the year
Since July 2014 there were a total of 345 attendees from Scotland who registered to attend Jisc
events (note that some attended multiple events); 90 from Further Education institutes, 242 from
Higher Education institutes and the remaining 13 from HEFCE or the Scottish Funding Council. The
events ranged in focus from technical subjects such as getting to grips with 3D or making better
audio recordings; to sessions on the electronic management of assessment and mobile learning in
practice for SEN. There were also networking evens, such as Jisc learning analytics and the business
intelligence data expert group workshop.
Top 5 events in terms of Scottish attendance, with numbers
Event
Connect more with Jisc in Scotland (4 Jun 15)
FE Digital Student consultation event – Edinburgh (4
Mar 15)
Higher Education Classification of subjects webinar (23
Apr 15)
Jisc Digital Festival 2015 (9-10 Mar 15)
Keeping Learners Safe Online – webinar (5 Nov 14)
12
Other (eg,
HEFCE, SFC)
1
FE
27
HE
28
Total
56
1
17
13
31
5
12
21
14
8
25
20
20
4
1
Participation in Jisc projects
This is a selected list of Jisc projects with significant participation from Scottish HEIs and FECs.
Digital Curation Centre
This is an ongoing activity established by Jisc in 2003 which involves a collaboration between Edinburgh and
Glasgow universities to provide advice and guidance on research data management and also tools such as Data
Management Planning on line tool. Jisc funds the large majority of the DCC’s work
[https://www.jisc.ac.uk/dcc].
Research Data Spring initiative
We have brought together HEIs and others to create research data solutions and funded projects with
promise:





Clipper: enhancing time based media for research (City of Glasgow College and Open University)
[http://clippertube.wordpress.com]
Develop a DataVault (University of Edinburgh and Manchester)
[http://Libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/jiscdatavault/]
Software reuse, repurposing and reproducibility (St Andrews University and STFC) [http://keith.cs.standrews.ac.uk/RRR/]
Jisc is working with EPSRC to develop a national sustainable service for equipment data and therefore
sharing. Currently data from University of Glasgow and The Roslin Institute is included.
[http://equipment.data.ac.uk/]
Extending OPD – organisational profile feed (http://opd.data.ac.uk/checker) ( to cover RDM (DCC at
Glasgow & Edinburgh universities) [http://www.dcc.ac.uk/projects/opd-for-rdm]
Projects in standards for research information management
Jisc is working with a wider range of sector representatives to formalise key standards for research
management, mainly through CASRAI, an international body. Jisc is the lead and has scoped, facilitated, funded
and managed the process. Scottish HEIs involved in the work include: University of Strathclyde, University of
Glasgow, St Andrews University and University of Edinburgh.
Scottish universities have been consulted on research at risk, the overarching research focused co-design
challenge [https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/research-at-risk]. In this we are developing a consensus on a
common research data metadata profile. This involves the University of Glasgow and St Andrews, which are
very concerned strategically with research information management.
Glasgow, St Andrews and other UK universities participated in a first workshop in July 2015
[http://researchdata.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2015/07/21/research-data-metadata-workshop/]. Glasgow and St
Andrews have been supported financially by Jisc to help with the practitioner input to the development of a
metadata schema for research data.
Open Access Working Group
http://casrai.org/standards/subject-groups/open-access#.VeBxmpcQiio
MacGregor, George
University of Strathclyde
McCutcheon, Valerie (co-Chair)
University of Glasgow
Data Management Plans Working Group
http://casrai.org/standards/subject-groups/data-management-plans#.VeBxh5cQiio
13
Clements, Anna (co-Chair)
St Andrews
Davidson, Joy
University of Glasgow
MacDonald, Stuart
University of Edinburgh
Organisational Identifiers Working Group
http://casrai.org/standards/subject-groups/organizational-identifiers#.VeBxbJcQiio
Mewissen, Muriel
University of Edinburgh
Walk, Paul
Jisc funded via EDINA at Edinburgh University
Learning analytics
Glasgow Caledonian University and Strathclyde University are both involved in the early tests of our learning
analytics service [https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/effective-learning-analytics].
Summer of student innovation
We have funded student teams from Dundee University and Borders College to work with us over the summer
on their innovative ideas [https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/summer-of-student-innovation].
Digital capabilities
We have engaged widely in Scotland, particularly with Glasgow Caledonian
[https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/building-digital-capability].
Prospect to alumnus
We have consulted Scottish institutions including Glasgow University
[https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/prospect-to-alumnus].
The electronic management of assessment
We have consulted many Scottish institutions [https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/electronic-management-ofassessment].
Business intelligence
We have received input and sign up to engage from a number of Scottish institutions
[https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/business-intelligence-project].
Orcid pilot
The pilot was closely watched by HEIs in Scotland and they took part in the meetings and workshops. We also
have now moved to deliver an ORCID National Consortium and a number of Scottish HEIs are joining that.
Those that are involved include: Glasgow, Dundee, Strathclyde, St Andrews, Edinburgh Napier & Robert
Gordon [http://orcidpilot.jiscinvolve.org/wp/blog/].
14
Further education-related projects
The projects funded under the FES DRP programme have all been completed. The outputs from these
projects are made available through a variety of methods. Where appropriate outputs are being taken up and
incorporated into ongoing Jisc R&D projects such as the FE Online Academy. The following table outlines new
activities by the Futures directorate which will impact the FE and Skills sector in the future.
Project name
Description
Timescale
Jisc Elevator
A website that allows people to pitch ideas and other
Beta Spring 2015
people to vote on the ideas that they like. The site will Service 2016
be able to support multiple concurrent competitions and
will be able to be used by people inside and outside of
Jisc to support open innovation.
http://elevator.jisc.ac.uk/
FE Online
A CPD service for FE & Skills practitioners that will
Alpha Autumn 2015
Academy
enable every member of the teaching and leadership
Beta Spring 2016
workforce to become a professional digital practitioner. Service 2016
Based on Moodle.
Online Course
A directory of UK online courses for institutions to
Alpha July 2015
Directory
publicise their online offerings in the UK and overseas, Beta Winter 2015
and for students to find courses that meet their needs. Service 2016
http://scalinglearning.jiscinvolve.org/wp/
Digital Leadership A set of resources including a beta course that will run in Alpha Autumn 2015
Programme
Autumn 15 and a revised beta in Spring 16. The course Beta Spring 2016
will be blended, consisting of two face to face events, a Service 2016
series of webinars and online materials.
Diagnostic Tool
A tool that will allow Jisc to build diagnostic surveys to Alpha Autumn 2015
Builder
assess institutional and individual digital capability. This Beta Spring 2016
will be a key part of our digital capability service. This
Service 2016
will initially focus on staff but could be expanded to
students
Employability
A website designed to help address the education to
Alpha Winter 2015
Skills Match
employment gap, by bringing learners and employer
Beta Summer 2016
groups together on a dynamic online platform, using
Service 2016
Open Badges to recognise and endorse soft skills.
http://prospect2alumnus.jiscinvolve.org/wp/
Learning Analytics A dashboard and app that students and staff can use to Alpha Winter 2015
Dashboard and
track students’ learning progress and get warnings when Beta Summer 2016
Student App
students are at risk of dropping out so that interventions Service 2016
can be planned.
http://analytics.jiscinvolve.org/wp/
App and Content An app store for Jisc services and content and for third Alpha Winter 2015
Store
party services that comply with basic Jisc criteria. The Beta Summer 2016
app store will make educational technology and content Service 2016
easy to find and easy to use for Jisc customers
15
Use of web resources
Website analytics
The following table shows the most pageviews for websites relating to the new Jisc structure and
events between 1 July 2014 and 30 June 2015 – they all fall within the top 30 viewed pages.
Sites
Pageviews
www.jisc.ac.uk/scotland
/blog/towards-a-new-look-customer-service-function-for-jisc01-jul-2014
/events/connect-more-with-jisc-in-scotland-04-jun-2015
/website/legacy/rsc
/events/fe-digital-student-consultation-edinburgh-4-mar-2015
1,004
Unique
Pageviews
584
249
801
223
217
213
345
125
190
Visits to www.jisc.ac.uk/scotland between 1 July 2014 and 30 June 2015 (the figure in brackets are
the figures between 1 January 2015 and 30 June 2015):
From
Scottish .ac.uk domains
all domains
Pageviews
2,647 (1,690)
4,067 (2,302)
Use of guides by Scottish .ac.uk domains
The guides on the jisc.ac.uk website most used by those from a Scottish.ac.uk domain are shown
below between 1 July 2014 and 30 June 2015 – they all fall within the top 50 viewed pages. The
figures in brackets show the figures between 1 January 2015 and 30 June 2015 when the Scottish
server was no longer available. These proportions imply that prior to this date the Scottish server
would have been used but we do not have access to the RSC statistics prior to January.
Guides
Pageviews
Enhancing the student digital experience: a strategic approach
Developing students’ digital literacy
Mobile learning
Developing digital literacies
Feedback and feed forward
427 (321)
354 (224)
328 (317)
213 (158)
148 (96)
16
Unique
Pageviews
279 (196)
220 (135)
148 (147)
108 (83)
89 (55)
Glossary of Jisc services
Theme
Service name
Service description
Cloud and data
centre services
Amazon Web Services
A web portal to enable you to effectively manage user access to
Amazon Web Services in one central area.
Providing a highly secure, easy-to-use and cost-effective data archiving
service for research and education.
We have negotiated amendments to the Microsoft Office 365
agreement, covering areas related to standard liability and jurisdiction.
Janet txt is a secure SMS messaging service, enabling you to manage
and distribute messages to specific individuals or groups via their
mobiles, landlines, email or pagers.
JiscMail helps groups of individuals to communicate and discuss
education and research interests using email discussion lists, with
currently over 1.5 million subscribers
Our videoconferencing service helps you bring colleagues and
collaborators closer - whether you want to share resources with
another institution, bring content in from remote locations or just
convene a meeting
Janet 3G is designed to give academic and support staff network access
on the move.
Covers the primary and secondary nameservers for DNS names
registered under .ac.uk and provides a 'whois' service that provides
additional information relating to allocations of names registered under
this domain.
Serving over 18 million users, the Janet network provides UK research
and education with a highly reliable and secure, world-class network,
enabling national and international communication and collaboration.
Lightpath provides dedicated point-to-point network connections
between Janet connected organisations.
Giving you peace of mind by providing full service management of the
router on your premises that connects your network to the Janet
network.
Helping your organisation to reduce the risk of information security
breaches and reduce the costs of prevention, management,
remediation and audit activities.
Safeguarding your current and future computer security, with a primary
function to monitor and resolve any security incidents that occur on the
Janet network.
Access to a number of leading blacklists and whitelists, keeping you
secure from email abuse or spam.
Providing advice, guidance and training on the effective creation,
delivery, storage and use of digital media to support teaching, learning
and research activities in colleges and universities.
One platform, over 350,000 late 15th to 19th century texts.
Data archiving framework
Microsoft Office 365
Collaborative
technologies
Janet txt
JiscMail
Vscene
Connectivity
services
3/4G
Domain registry
Janet network
Lightpath
Managed router service
Cyber security
services
ESISS automatic
penetration testing
Janet network CSIRT
Digital content
and collections
Security blacklists and
whitelists
Digital media
Historical Texts
Jorum
Journal Archives
MediaHub
National Academic Archive
Discovery
Archives hub
Providing access to thousands of learning and teaching resources
shared by the UK higher and further education community
One platform, archives of over 600 journals.
Providing access to a wide range of digital image, video and audio
collections for educational and research use.
Jisc Collections negotiates with publishers at a national level to procure
and license affordable digital content.
Supporting researchers, students and educators by providing access to
content from over 220 UK institutions.
17
Theme
Service name
Service description
Copac
Over 70 UK and Irish academic, national and specialist library
catalogues in a single search.
A free tool to help researchers and librarians locate print and electronic
serials held in UK libraries, including the British Library and the national
libraries of Scotland and Wales.
The monitoring and search service for global research publications.
SUNCAT
Zetoc
Geospatial
Digimap Ordnance Survey
Collection
Environment Digimap
Geology Digimap
GoGeo
Marine Digimap
Library
support
services
Institutional Repository
Usage Statistics UK
Jisc Collections
Journal Usage Statistics
Portal
Knowledge Base+
OpenURL Router
The Keepers Registry
UK LOCKSS Alliance
Open access
support
CORE
Open DOAR
SHERPA FACT
SHERPA JULIET
SHERPA RoMEO
Professional
services
Technology advisory
services
Training
Professional
skills
e-books for FE
Hairdressing Training
Trust and
identity
Assent
Certificate service
The most comprehensive maps and geospatial data available in UK
higher and further education.
The most comprehensive maps and geospatial data available in UK
higher and further education.
British Geological Survey mapping and data products
Providing users in UK education and research access to geospatialrelated information and services.
HydroSpatial vector data and charted raster marine maps
A national aggregation service, containing details of all content
downloaded from UK participating institutional repositories
Jisc Collections negotiates with publishers at a national level to procure
and license affordable digital content
Provides a single home for libraries to view, download and analyse their
usage reports - essential for evidencing the value of journals.
Shared community service aiming to help UK libraries manage their eresources more efficiently.KB+ provides publication data for all NESLi2,
SHEDL and WHEEL agreements along with subscription and licence
information.
The OpenURL Router offers a central registry of institutional OpenURL
resolvers to all UK higher and further education institutions
A global monitor on the archiving arrangements for electronic journals.
Helping you discover which of your e-journals are being archived and by
what organisation
Sustainable continuing access to scholarly literature.
Open access research outputs and metadata from over 600 repositories
and journals worldwide
The world's authoritative and quality-assured directory of open access
repositories
Advice to UK authors on compliance with funder's policies in their
journal of choice
Registry of open access policies from research funders worldwide
Analysis of publisher policies for authors' rights when using open access
repositories
Unbiased technical advice on equipment and issues relating to video,
wireless, voice over IP (VoIP) and telephony technology.
As part of Jisc's national and regional customer services, Jisc customers
have opportunities to participate in a variety of accredited training
courses relevant to the Janet Network and Associated Services
A collection of e-books specially selected to meet the needs of FE and
skills (accessed through the ebrary platform)
An online resource for hairdressing students and teachers mapped to
the NVQ hairdressing curriculum and openly accessible to all.
Allowing you to effectively manage and control access to a wide range
of web and non-web services and applications
A registration authority for issuing SSL certificates to secure all your web
services.
18
Theme
Service name
Service description
eduroam
Allows users to access to the internet through a single Wi-Fi profile and
set of credentials, wherever the service has been made available by
participating organisations. Connection can be seamless and
automatic. Janet is the UK provider of eduroam
Provides education and research with a method to access online
resources and services through federated identity solutions
UK Access Management
Federation
19
List of Scottish institutions included in this return
Higher Education institutions
UKPRN
Further Education institutions
UKPRN
Edinburgh Napier University
10007772
Ayrshire College
10009170
Glasgow Caledonian University
10007762
Borders College
10009177
Glasgow School of Art
10002681
City of Glasgow College
10013192
Heriot Watt University
10007764
Dumfries and Galloway College
10009204
Queen Margaret University Edinburgh
10005337
Dundee and Angus College
10009205
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
10005561
Edinburgh College
10010606
SRUC
10005700
Fife College
10009238
The Robert Gordon University
10005500
Forth Valley College
10009217
University of Aberdeen
10007783
Glasgow Clyde College
10009186
University of Abertay Dundee
10007849
Glasgow Kelvin College
10009256
University of Dundee
10007852
Inverness College UHI
10009230
University of Edinburgh
10007790
Lews Castle College UHI
10003896
University of Glasgow
10007794
Moray College UHI
10009249
University of St Andrews
10007803
New College Lanarkshire
10009251
University of Stirling
10007804
Newbattle Abbey College
10004594
University of Strathclyde
10007805
North East Scotland College
10009159
University of the Highlands and Islands
10007114
North Highland College UHI
10009291
University of the West of Scotland
10007800
Orkney College UHI
10011130
Perth College UHI
10008702
Sabhal Mor Ostaig UHI
10005607
Shetland College UHI
10010390
South Lanarkshire College
10008741
West College Scotland
10009193
West Highland College UHI
10003972
West Lothian College
10009295
20
Jisc Scotland Activity Report
Advice, Guidance and Consultancy
Input to steering groups/project boards





The Colleges e-Assessment Group (CEAG)
Creating Innovative Technology Enhanced Assessment (CiT-eA)
Colleges Development Network (CDN) Professional Development Network
College Development Network Inclusion forum
Assistive Technology Advisors Network HE group
Hosting and contributing to forums



Staff Development/e-Learning Annual Consultation
e-Assessment forum
Open Badges in Scottish Education Group (OBSEG)
Consultation included



Advice on e-assessment strategy
Advice on the implementation of open badges
Sharing of knowledge and good practice via iTech case studies
Project Work
FE & Skills Projects






Assistive technologies for FE and skills
Augmented reality for FE and skills
Mobile learning in FE and skills
Online delivery in FE and skills
Staff and institutional development in FE and skills
Student development and employability in FE and skills
Other Projects









In-Folio ePortfolio Project support for students with learning disabilities
InBook Safe Social Networking Project support for students
Disseminating Assistive Resources & Technology (DART) Project support
ULib Project on library management systems and open source tools
CLEAR Project on copyright permission clearance
Electronic Management of Assessment
Digital student FE Consultation
FE and Skills Window Project (pilot phase)
Jisc assistance with FELTAG recommendations
Digital Resources





Digimap for Colleges service, run by EDINA
Scottish FE consultation regarding price banding for Jisc Collections to ensure best methods
for measuring banding and cost per institution.
eBooks for FE
Launch of the hairdressing training app, developed by Mimas
John Wiley and Jisc new open access agreement
21