Beyond the Technology: The education 4.0 podcast

Work-related learning is increasing its importance in the curriculum landscape. There is evidence that it helps students relate their learning to their current and future working lives. While also offering employers an opportunity to contribute directly to education and training. Work-related learning is involved in a wide range of activities. These include developing awareness of the local and broader economy, seeing connections between the national curriculum and other topics, careers education and learning about the world of work. In this podcast Rebecca O'Brien from Jisc talks to experts in this field who provide examples of the types of support being provided by Jisc and the Academy in this fast developing area.

In this podcast Philip Pothen speaks to the winner of the 2008 'Outstanding ICT initiative of the year' Times Higher Award, University of Westminster lecturer Russell Stannard who created websites which build upon pioneering work using video to mark students' work.

The Strategic Content Alliance (SCA) works with public sector bodies across the UK to develop a framework to share and access information. The SCA is currently running a series of workshops in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to incorporate the regional challenges into this framework. In this podcast Rebecca O'Brien catches up with Stuart Dempster, Director of the SCA, about the alliance's achievements and what the next steps will be.

Supporting the student's learning experience is key to helping students find their full potential and enhance the quality of their learning. Working with partners, Jisc is looking to guide future developments in this area and from October 2008 will be running a series of national workshops. These workshops will discuss the issues around supporting the student learning experience to help institutions and services devise their own strategic responses to supporting learners. In this podcast Rebecca O'Brien talk to Helen Beetham, a consultant supporting the learning experience work at Jisc.

A plethora of resources exist to support and enhance academic staff in their learning and teaching practices. With developing technologies, new learning approaches and changing expectations of learners, academic staff face added time-pressure in their quest to keep ahead in the learning and teaching practices and innovations. Themed syntheses of resources offer suitable avenues to the range available, providing openings to a wealth of information while recognizing the time limitations of today's academic staff. In this podcast Rebecca O'Brien provides examples of the range of resources available to academic staff in their practice in learning and teaching developments, giving some examples of the wealth of information in an area which is often raised as limiting developments in the sector.

As investment continues to be made into new build and refurbishment projects across the country, librarians are playing a key role in the design of buildings more suited to current styles of teaching and learning. In this podcast interview with Philip Pothen, Tim Giles, Librarian at the Norwich School of Art and Design, talks about a major refurbishment project at his college and how it's supporting the needs of a new generation of learners.

Professor John Houghton's work to explore the social and economic impact of open access has had a significant impact on debates in his native Australia. Currently working for Jisc to investigate the UK experience in this area, he talks to Philip Pothen about his work, the wider benefits of institutional repositories and why he thinks the open access argument is now won.

As part of the Jisc funded Digitisation Programme a new system is being developed called EThOS which will enable researchers and higher education institutions to access and share theses online. In this podcast with Rebecca O'Brien from Jisc, Kevin O'Leary, project manager of EThOS, shares how valuable this new system will be when it is fully launched later in the year.

The Google Generation made a major impact when it was published in January of this year. In this podcast interview one of its authors Ian Rowlands of University College London talks to Philip Pothen from Jisc about some of the implications of the report, while Rachel Bruce, Jisc programme director, gives her views on the report and possible next steps.

Jisc is funding a number of projects on reducing the environmental impact of information and communications technology in institutions. Case studies are being complied on current environmentally sustainable practices in the education sector, one of which focuses on work at Cardiff University. In this podcast interview, Xanthe O'Donnell speaks with Dr. Hugh Beedie, the Chief Technology Officer at Cardiff University about a recent sustainable IT workshop.

As technology enables us to share information across the Internet, the subject of Intellectual Property Rights is increasing in its profile. In particular to help address who owns, creates and publishes these works. The Strategic Content Alliance is a project funded by Jisc and is working in partnership with the BBC, NHS, Betca, The British Library, Museum Libraries Archives Council and the National e-Science Centre to create a framework within which public sector organisations can share information and create best practise. In this podcast Rebecca O'Brien speaks to Naomi Korn, the SCA's Intellectual Property Rights consultant about why IPR is important and the progress of the Strategic Content Alliance.

Susan Smith is a learning support officer for Leeds Metropolitan University and Isabel Arreola is one of the students Susan supports. In this podcast interview, they talk to Philip Pothen about the very different challenges they face - for Susan, in mainstreaming support services for disabled students and staff, and for Isabel, as a blind student, in accessing the resources she needs to ensure a level playing-field with her classmates.

Thanks to significant and continued investment ion learning, teaching, research - and ICT - the UK higher education sector is well placed to weather uncertain economic times. So says Professor Rick Trainor, Principal of King's College London and President of Universities UK in this exclusive podcast interview with Xanthe O'Donnell for Jisc Inform.

The library service at Nottingham Trent University is at the forefront of mainstreaming the issue of accessibility across the institution. In this podcast interview with Philip Pothen, Sue McKnight, director of library and knowledge resources talks about the difference her work is making to the university as a whole and why she believes this work is so important.

Richard Everett is responsible for the IT infrastructure for a £100m new build project at Oaklands College. In this podcast interview with Philip Pothen he talks about some of the challenges involved in such a massive project, the support he has received from Jisc services and the difference the new buildings will make to learners at his college.