Notes on the JISC-CETIS Service inaugural meeting held in Manchester – 16/17 May 2006
The first day of the all-cetis meeting saw us split into three groups covering “content” “People and systems” and “programme support”
Our group – “programme support” – identified and discussed a range of issues around supporting JISC, the Projects and the wider community – and the overlaps therein.
Tracking projects was seen as a difficult problem whether refmodels or toolkits or whatever. The primary responsibility should really be with JISC – as they have no project management system or information available to the world. There are around 160 projects in the e-learning space and dealing with this is just impossible without some decent infrastructure.
There has been a push from jisc for reference models to be owned by the community – via the sigs. There are major issues with this as the sigs are effectively self-organising communities and may or may not be interested or in the same head-space as the original authors. On a practical level, this extends some of the discussion at the meeting in birmingham – how to transfer the information in the reference models and sustain them with community involvement – technically they are all very different – eg FREMA on php-symantic thing – COVARM on Tomcat – XCRI on ELF site etc.
Creating capacity – new projects really need a big leg-up to get on a par with other players (in terms of technical, framework, x-project and organisational knowledge). We proposed that we set up a two day induction course covering at least:
e-frameworkproject management skillssupport resources & community spacesDocumentation and UMLThere was a lot of general discussion of the SIGs and how they could or should be structured. What they are doing at the moment, how to foster sustainable, useful communities and how to support them through the co-ordinators and various online resources. The other process that was discussed was how the progsupport team liase with the sigs – either us feeding them info or them contributing to elfocus etc.
Websites – tools for community building is a perennial isssue….
There was a proposal for an e-learning Mash-up – Giving practitioners a chance to see and imagine the potential for joined-up-learning through webservices, nice interfaces etc.
The JISC/CETIS relationship is getting yet-more complex in terms of where the boundaries are and how we are seen by projects
Are we evil or are we nice?
Are we going to clobber them over the head if they don’t deliver?
Are people going to perceive us as “just about jisc stuff” and we won’t get non-jisc projects coming to our events?
Second Day
Oleg talked about the service, funding and the general growth of CETIS… And outlined the new team structure and that the new teams (eg comms, management etc) will all do one scheduled conference call per month. Each team will include a convener (who gets everyone there, sets agenda, takes some notes for the group blog) and a manager to take any issues forward to the management team.
Group X
On the question of whether the team approach is workable, we had a good look at the team matrix as proposed and made amendments.
some teams which are too similarStategy & Standards and Comms & Supportand some lacking in overlapComms & Community
Prog-support & Community
This is seen as very important keeping the projects in touch with the sigsThere is the general issue of Clive and our engagement with FE
So what are the teams actually supposed to do?
The comms team has been charged with organising the conferences and that this should be shared the community and strategy teams. Also use of external event organisers should be non-negotiable.
Co-ordination with JISC and making sure the different teams know what is required from the JISC end – the information will trickle around the teams. Directives (eg report writing) come from JISC via the management team and more grass-roots information about projects – bubble up from the community/sigs. This is of particular relevance for the support team – and will have implications for how projects get funded.
Conveners role
Setting the agendamaking sure that taking notes happensmaking sure scheduling is sensible, that everyone can attend, FrequencyOnce a month sounds about right
Platform for calls
Proposal (sam&scott) to use Skype and the hosted multi-user service
Getting credits paid for centrally
Gives us the flexibility to have free break-out discussion
Rowin suggested that we use Breeze – which she gets on with quite well – but it is expensive
What support do the groups need?
They good channels of communication to management group.
Tools – blogs etc – important that this can be private.
JISC prog-managers will need to engage with our teams on occasions
There are also the issues that JISC don’t have sensible groupware infrastructure
Blogs
Some concern from Christina about use and adoption
Oleg – it’s mandatory – we must all write our blogs but they are about communication and not “looking busy” and will be enforced by Doctor – x
In terms of the blogs, any public views will need a bit of care in terms of sensitivity.
We are now going to be seen as more jisc-ish and must be mindful of speaking for them.
Paul: Reporting
The admin team is Paul, Julie and Oleg
The service has a formal reporting requirement which should mean less reporting than previously. The negotiation of what is expected from jisc needs some care. It can either be too much of a burden for cetis staff or result in jisc being completely disconnected from us. We will have an advisory group to report to the ctte for us.