Lancaster University graduate wins the open data mashup challenge
A graduate trainee from Lancaster University has been named the winner of a competition organised by Universities UK, in partnership with the Open Data Institute and Jisc, to design an app that uses open data to help students at key points in their learning journey. His prize is expert support worth £5,000 from Jisc to develop his idea into a prototype.
John Lacey: ‘my perception of value for money has definitely improved’
Some 20 universities have joined forces to create a more defined path for graduates interested in a career in higher education with the Ambitious Futures programme. John Lacey, who has had placements at two universities in the north west of England, describes how these experiences have offered him new perspectives on the student journey.
‘Creating value from open data’ programme launches today
Open data can help increase universities' efficiency, says Paul Clark, launching UUK's 'Creating value from open data' joint programme with the Open Data Institute. UUK is already leading a programme of work which supports efficiency and modernisation in the university sector, and open data can play a key role in this. Opening data on, for example, procurement costs, energy costs and usage, or space utilisation will allow institutions to benchmark one another and drive down costs. There may also be opportunities through transferring good practice from one part of the sector to another.
Business intelligence and benchmarking can help universities make better decisions
We heard from Chris Hale of Universities UK about how universities use benchmarking to understand their management data. As a follow-up, the Efficiency Exchange asks Dr Giles Carden, Director of Strategic Planning & Analytics at the University of Warwick, for his views.
WHAT DOES GDPR MEAN FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
Rob Hunter is Managing Director and Founder of Hunterlodge Advertising. In this piece he draws our attention to the changing landscape of personal data management and the need for the HE sector as a whole to prepare for effective compliance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
Shared services – Jisc shared data centre – case study – June 2015
Jisc has joined forces with Infinity SDC and six anchor tenants to provide a shared data centre for research and education. Potential benefits significant cost savings through aggregating requirements across tenants.
The right tools for the job: harnessing the power of student voice through HearNow
In this blog Jo Clarkson, Market Research and Insight Manager at the University of Warwick, shares how the HearNow project increased students’ feedback while minimising survey fatigue. The project by gathering students’ opinions as ‘snap-shot’ sentiments through technology and Gamification raised the number of active users from 200 to 13,000 with an average of 50% response rate.
Partnership expands for Jisc’s open research data shared service
Jisc's research data shared service pilot now involves 17 partners after four more institutions joined in with the project. A blog by Jisc's Rachel Bruce says the service aims to serve a variety of needs, including providing repositories for deposit and access to research data and encouraging data reuse in the long term.
Translating the potential of open data into practice
"Data is the next oil. Data is the new capital of the 21st century. Data will spur innovation and drive growth." We’ve all heard statements like these over the last few years. And in many ways they’re true. As the volume and richness of data rapidly increases, so does the demand for insight into strategies that can be implemented to harness its full value, says Harvey Lewis of Deloitte LLP. Harvey talks about translating the potential of open data into practice at 5pm Tuesday 15th July at Woburn House, Tavistock Square. Includes video and presentation.
Not engaging with open data is ‘a loser’s game’
Following Universities UK’s (UUK) recent open data mashup day in partnership with Jisc and the Open Data Institute, Ian Morton of UUK reflects on how smarter use of data by universities could play a significant part in answering the objectives of the government’s green paper on higher education – and also much more.
