The Eduserv Research Programme aims to enhance engagement between Eduserv and the higher education community by retaining valuable activities while addressing previous issues such as funding and alignment. It focuses on internal research and pilot services to better inform and impact Eduserv's offerings, with planned studies on topics like web content management and cloud computing. Success will be measured by the programme's demonstrable influence on Eduserv services and contributions to the higher education sector.

1. Eduserv Research Programme

2. what is the Eduserv Research Programme?

3. what was the Foundation?

4. a way of giving value back to the education community

5. or cynically... a way of giving money back to the community a way of keeping the charity commission happy (but I think that would be unfair)

6. a programme of activities that included grant-giving, studies, meetings, the annual symposium, sponsorship, advice on good practice, standards work, …

7. reasonably high-profile and reasonably well-received by the community but…

8. we had issues…

9. lack of critical mass as a funding body

10. lack of alignment with Eduserv services (resulting in lack of engagement internally, little impact on the areas where we have most charitable benefit, and therefore less impact than we might have wanted)

11. overall negative impact on external perception of Eduserv as a non-profit organisation with a charitable mission

12. so… what is the Eduserv Research Programme?

13. an attempt to keep the good bits of Foundation activity whilst cleverly side-stepping the issues

14. that’s the idea anyway!

15. retain some of the old activities – the symposium, the meetings, the studies, the advice on good practice, the standards work

16. drop the major grant-giving

17. add more internal research work, and the development of pilot and demonstrator services

18. most importantly…

19. much greater alignment with Eduserv services

20. i.e. the Eduserv Research Programme is explicitly intended to have an impact on, and be informed by, the services we deliver for learners and researchers

21. what does success look like?

22. a demonstrable impact on Eduserv services (“that pilot project led to this new service” or “that study made us re-think this activity”) a demonstrable impact on the HE community (“your research helped inform our thinking” or “your contribution helped this standard come to fruition”)

23. so, what are we planning to research?

24. several areas in the pipeline – data centre (procurement models for HEIs and standards horizon scan), studies into the management of Web content and use of Sharepoint by HEIs, Web preservation and the management of research data, Semantic Web and open science, AIM futures (OpenID and Information Cards), 2009 symposium, impact of ‘cloud computing’ on licensing models, e-assessment, …

25. suggestions for areas of activity are welcome

26. but remember – the output of this work is intended to be open and of value to both the HE community and ourselves

27. who is involved?

28. the old Foundation ‘team’ (Ed, Pete, David and Andy) but this is a programme of activity, NOT a team of people… so the programme can include people from outside the team … and we hope to second research staff into Eduserv from HEIs

29. how are we going to communicate this change to the HE community?

30. the ‘plan’ is to announce formally at the symposium in May – but the change is already public knowledge we are collaborating with Lisa on how we surface programme activity through the Web site

31. questions? http://xkcd.com/167/