University of Glamorgan are hosting the 2nd Annual ESCalate Student Conference on Friday 16 April 2010, and the theme this year is Students as Stakeholders: take an active part in your own learning. Several things about this event look very interesting: firstly it’s excellent value at £30! Secondly it is a student conference with a keynote from Aaron Porter, Vice-President of the NUS (Higher Education) on The Importance of the Learner Voice in 21st Century Higher Education. Thirdly the topics (eg impact of new technologies on the learning process) complement well the work RSC Wales is currently doing to take our free Learner Voice Learner Choice Roadshows round the country (by the way we’re still taking bookings for the dates in Mold and Bangor but hurry, the South Wales dates are already fully booked!).

Anyway, back to the ESCalate conference: it is open to staff and students in all fields of education. RSC Wales have gained great benefit from joining in past ESCalate events and we’ll look forward to attending this conference too. The deadline for bookings is 19 March.

One of the best things about being part of a Regional Support Centre is that if you don’t know something, or can’t get to an event, there is often someone who does know, or has been there, and can pass on the knowledge. I wasn’t able to get to the JISC Techdis/ALT event Rewiring Inclusion recently, but a colleague at Swansea University went along and and kindly sent details of some simulations (a recurring theme this week!) which are being designed  to give the user experience of what it is like to experience difficulties with computer interaction when you have certain disabilities.

The disability awareness tools are being developed by the Accessibility Research Centre at Teesside University.  They are still in progress (apparently a tool based around dyslexia is coming soon) but you can try out the tools for cognitive disabilities, motor disabilities and visual disabilities at http://rime.tees.ac.uk/ARC/simulations/. The project team would welcome your help with completing their questionnaires (available from the home page) so they can further develop the tools.

The recent Higher Education Leadership Summit “Leading the Agile University” saw the launch of a new set of free resources for leaders in UK Higher Education. The resource, entitled JISC Portfolio for Senior Managers: employ technology to support your business goals, covers five areas:

.    Strategies for agile institutions: scenario planning

.         Relationship management and business intelligence

.         Research rigour, accessibility and impact

.         Alternative business models for higher education

.         Enhancing the student and staff experience

The publication is available for download here both as a simple pdf and as an interactive version with video. Alternatively, you can view a summary page with invitations to ‘take three steps’ plus video clips on the JISC website.

Ewart Woodridge CBE, Chief Executive of the Leadership Foundation for Higher
Education, welcomed the publication, commenting that the agile university  required “a strategic and entrepreneurial approach to the use of technology”.

As well as providing food for thought for leaders, this resource provides a clear summary of some of the key tools available from JISC to support university managers, and brings home the importance to the ‘agile university’ of integrating IT strategy across the organisation.

The Simshare project, one of the projects under the HEFCE-funded JISC Academy Open Educational Resources programme, has been looking at bringing together simulation resources and enabling them to be shared. Simshare is based in the UK Centre for Legal Education at Warwick University, and evolved from an earlier project SIMPLE, which focussed on legal education and attracted various awards . Now Simshare has taken this work beyond the field of law to include simulation learning in all subject areas.

The Simshare team, whose partners include University of Glamorgan, are now offering a series of free one-day workshops. One is taking place in Cardiff University on 15 March and is designed for academics in any discipline who are interested in knowing more about simulation learning and how to share resources. You will:

1. Learn about OER (Open Educational Resources), and how you can be a part of it.

2. Have access to a wealth of free resources for teaching.

3. Have help in getting started in using simulation as a form of teaching, learning and assessment.

4. Practise assembling a simulation on paper and have access to online resources to help you do this.

5. Know how to download and upload resources to the OER website.

Full details are available at http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/simshare/workshops.html and the contact for more information is patricia.mckellar@warwick.ac.uk. You can also download an event flyer.

I’m grateful to Karen Counsell at University of Glamorgan Law Department for letting me know about this event (she also put me on to an evaluation which her department carried out for JISC Techdis, of the accessibility benefits of the SIMPLE law simulation in assessment – thank you Karen!

Here at RSC Wales we’re very pleased to be involved with a new round of HEAT funding that is specially for Wales. HEAT is HE Assistive Technology, a programme funded by JISC Techdis with the Higher Education Academy, and you can find out all about the HEAT4 programme on the JISC Techdis website.

We know from the feedback from our current Barrier Busting Roadshow events about Accessibility and Inclusion - attended and enjoyed by staff in all supported sectors, HE included – that lots of people are interested in how to use technology to improve effectiveness around inclusion and accessibility, not just for ‘disabled students’ but for all students and staff.

Not only is the HEAT4 funding highly relevant to current concerns, it also has the big advantage of enabling small, manageable projects within the reach of any staff. A HEAT project can achieve great benefits without demanding large amounts of time or resources in the application process or the running of the project. Take Newport University’s HEAT3 project for example, which got staff using vodcasting to give students feedback, or Lampeter’s, where staff in Classics digitised image collections to make their teaching materials more inclusive and engaging.

The JISC Techdis website offers full details of previous projects so you can see the kind of thing that’s possible. So if your reaction to project funding is “but I don’t have time to bid” or “we’ve never done anything like this before” then I suggest think again – HEAT4 could just be the way in.

Proposals are particularly welcome in these areas: Lifelong Learning, Work-Related Learning, Employer Engagement and Business & Community Engagement (see www.jisc.ac.uk/bce for more information about this whole agenda) but no theme is excluded. Funding of £1200 is available per project and is to purchase technology.

We’re looking forward very much to working with colleagues at JISC Techdis and Academy Wales on evaluating the bids (due in 22 February), and seeing projects evolve and share their experiences with the sector so we all benefit.