Discover and share good practice for smarter working universities

Data-driven approaches to teaching excellence

Jisc is developing a service allowing universities that don’t routinely collect and analyse learning data to begin to do so. Jisc's Phil Richards writes in Universities Business how learning analytics already offer a practical way to demonstrate student engagement and could bring more benefits in the future.
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Higher education data project to focus on the student journey

Open data's role in helping institutions and students understand more about the journey through higher education will be the main focus of a project to demonstrate the value of open data to universities, Universities UK policy researcher William Hammonds has revealed in a blogpost.

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.

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.
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Open data mashup challenge

Do you have a brilliant idea for an app that uses open data sets to support university students through their learning journey? Enter the open data mashup challenge, organised by University UK, Jisc and the Open Data Institute, for the chance to participate in an immersive day exploring the value of working with open data with development support of up to £5,000 to be won.
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Open Data as Open Educational Resources 

This collection of case studies put together by Open Education and Universities UK aims to demonstrate the enormous potential for openly-licensed and accessible datasets to be used as Open Educational Resources. The book can be viewed free of charge online.
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Putting open data into practice

Video of presentation given by Harvey Lewis, Director of Insight and Analytics at Deloitte LLP, on 15 July 2014 as part of UUK's 'Creating value from open data' seminar series. More on open data in higher education.

Student surveys are a waste of everyone’s time

"Students have to answer 25 questionnaires a year and they are sick of it", an academic complains. In a post for the Guardian's Academics Anonymous blog, the unnamed physiology lecturer asks why universities are so obsessed with pointless data.
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Welcome to the intelligent campus

As 'smart homes' become more and more sophisticated, universities are harnessing technology to improve the campus or classroom experience for students. Now institutions are planning on taking it to the next level, by using data from sensors, tracking and the internet, combined with information from other sources, as Jisc's James Clay describes in this blog.
Ian Powling

Open data mashup day – speakers and agenda

Enhancing the student journey will be the focus of today’s open data mashup hosted by Universities UK. Find out more about the participants in today’s event and how the open data agenda relates to higher education.