17 December 2010
BUSINESS & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
The 13 regional JISC RSCs act as a gateway to expert advice and information, facilitate the sharing of innovation and practice, and support managers in developing institutional strategies. In the current challenging conditions, the requirement for educational providers to engage effectively and efficiently with businesses and the communities in which they are located is of principal importance.
JISC Regional Support Centres (RSCs) Supporting BCE By Caroline Ingram
The Challenge for BCE The JISC RSCs support a wide range of post-16 education providers: FE, 6th Form, Adult Education and Specialist Colleges, HE Institutions, Adult & Community Learning (ACL) and Work Based Learning (WBL) providers. The breadth of this remit requires distinct strategies, and Evan Dickerson from RSC London believes they have developed this through their cross-sectoral approach. BCE is an emerging agenda for all the JISC RSCs. In May 2010 JISC RSC London ran its first event focusing on the Business and Community Engagement (BCE) agenda. The event was open to all supported learning providers in London. BCE covers a wide spectrum of different activities, often referred to in different ways by different institutions, e.g. business engagement, third stream activity or knowledge transfer. JISC RSC London feels that in order to effectively overcome the challenge this presents in getting the BCE message across to providers appropriate strategically placed contacts need to be identified, working relationships established and communications tailored to fit the exact context of the institution.
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The feedback from participants on the day was largely positive. Some of the key messages from the day included: prioritising areas for improvement of practice in BCE; the production of a development plan in the form of a template for institutions to review their BCE activity; the lack of connection between teams within providers such that knowledge of BCE activity was not shared, and embedding BCE was not seen as a priority. These issues have also been highlighted by the JISC infoNet Embedding BCE project. The JISC RSC role, in part, is to understand and distil information from the JISC Advance services back to who needs it within institutions. In this way the function of the JISC RSCs is slightly different to that of the other services, as they are a conduit for resources from the other services. JISC RSC London has carried out consultations with institutions following the event to help them identify opportunities for BCE work. They have major plans for the future in helping institutions to identify the questions they need to ask themselves. The objective is to find a cross organisational viewpoint of the aims of the institution with respect to BCE
and to tailor advice from the JISC RSC to respond to institutional needs. Ideally advice will be built on what institutions already do or know. The JISC RSCs will be in the unique position of knowing how BCE strategies are developed, and issues addressed, across a range of institutions, and will seek to share this experience appropriately. Facilitating engagement JISC RSC London will be carrying out more work across the sectors to address these issues and to maintain the momentum on this agenda by collaborating with providers and partners and drawing on existing BCE expertise and resources to offer the best advice and support to enable providers to embed BCE in their various contexts. The JISC RSC strategy as a whole for the rest of 2010 and 2011 includes wider engagement with academics taking part in BCE. It is likely that the JISC RSC role will involve both a top down and a bottom up push, dependent on the institution and its position in BCE activities. Continued overleaf...
www.jisc.ac.uk/bce
BUSINESS & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT 17 December
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provides a framework on which social environments can be built, At JISC RSC South-West, Dan was chosen. McCaffrey has been working with The Enterprise Enablers group at the Enterprise Enablers group at the Plymouth is drawn from a crossUniversity of Plymouth. The section of academic and University has an active enterprise professional services staff, agenda, and is leading Plymouth’s representing a range of disciplines, campaign to win the Government’s levels and responsibilities. The team Enterprising Britain award. They has been working to embed the have established a network of enterprise vision at the university “Enterprise Enablers”, self and support people in taking it nominated individuals from across forward. For this group, the Elgg all aspects of provision with an platform (dubbed “Enterprise interest in Enterprise who are in the Space”) drew together all the process of establishing informal existing enterprise activity within the networks to develop their ideas. The University. Whilst the platform itself group is supported via the provision was developed within the University, of termly face to face meetings, but it was argued that the business case it was felt that a virtual forum would and assistance with roll out and also be beneficial to participants training would be handled by the given the distributed nature of JISC RSC South West. working locations, times etc. The JISC RSC staff developed a Consequently, the JISC RSC SW User Guide, which explained the were invited to participate in the basic functionality of the platform development and role-out of a and how to get up and running by suitable platform; as an organisation creating a profile, uploading working within the Institution who resources, and initiating and routinely interface with other contributing to Forum discussions. providers, the JISC RSC were Additionally, a suite of Camtasia perceived as trusted agents and/or clips were created, demonstrating critical friends who could percolate basic requirements for successful the experience and knowledge use of the system such as creating gleaned therein back to the a profile, posting a resource etc. University. Elgg, an open source Members of the JISC RSC team online social networking engine that Continued...
also worked with parts of the Enterprise Enablers group to discuss the conceptual purpose of Social Networks and to demonstrate the functions of Elgg. They also helped to seed the network with pertinent documents, resources and discussions to help catalyse usage. The net result has been very successful, with in excess of 80 members now regularly using the network in some capacity. The use of “Enterprise Space” to develop relationships and build projects across the Institution has resulted in the establishment of a number of BCE related activities, whose constituent members would possibly not have been aware of each others concomitant interests had the platform not existed. www.jisc.ac.uk/rsc
www.jisc.ac.uk/bce