JISC Collections: e-books for skills Anna Vernon

I’m not Hugh Look

A disclaimer

About JISC Collections

We exist to save our members time and money in their use and procurement of online resources

Our dedicated licencing team negotiate the best prices on your behalf, and work with as many suppliers as we can.

We always welcome suggestions for suppliers that you would like us negotiate with

We have invested in purchasing resources as well – these resources are then made available either at a low price or wherever possible, free of charge.

E-books for Skills

•Builds on JISC Collections’ highly successful E-books for FE project. The collection supports change

• 87 colleges joined UK Access Management Federation – enabling off campus access

• JISC Collections negotiated preferential terms • Collection is not vendor device dependent – can be used on

learners’ personal devices – easing pressure on college PCs and infrastructure– 40 million pages viewed

The e-books for Skills Project aims to reach new types of learner and learning provider

E-books for Skills: Who’s eligible ?

– Any learning provider receiving SFA funding (also some other forms of public funding)

– Learners in the community (ACL)– At work (WBL)– Offenders

Starting with subset of E-books for FE catalogue, 60 titles

– Licences allow very flexible use—e.g. cut-and-paste extracts to VLE

– Identify and license further titles in consultation with LPs

How we want to do it

Identify some active, innovative learning providers willing to try something new for their WBL/ACL learners

Identify the content that will work best for their learners

Work with the providers and publishers to go through all the processes and technical steps needed to deliver the content*Including authentication!

How we want to do it cont..

Reduce barriers to accessEncourage the use of e-books

Working with providers and tutorsMonitor usage carefully

Follow up with tutors and learners on the benefits and any problems they encountered.

Immediate objectives

• Get some demonstrators up and running– Identify learning providers willing to jump through a few hoops

to provide additional resources to their ACL/WBL learners– Set up (and fund if necessary) small demonstrators

• Identify content, areas of most interest to ACL/WBL learning providers and check our list against them– Need to start negotiating with other publishers– E.g. for materials on functional skills– Up to £400K to spend on licensing new resources

• Work out authentication strategy– Publishers require individual authentication for using e-books– This is a complex problem– Needs learning providers to be able to give individual students

credentials

What’s in it for learning providers?

• The opportunity to work with JISC Collections and publishers to identify the best way to get e-books to ACL and WBL learners– Find out how to overcome the challenges involved in doing

so.• Acquire vital knowledge of how to improve learning using e-

books in WBL and ACL– And the practical steps needed to do so.

• Access to free e-books during and beyond the demonstrator• A small budget for development or process reengineering

• Set-up of authentication infrastructure for future use with WBL and ACL

The questions we need to ask learning providers

We need to speak to a wide range of learning providers as soon as possible, Including private learning provides, FE Colleges, Adult Education Services

To hear about real needs and issues for ACL/WBLTo get a sense of their technical capacity to deliver (especially authentication)To find out what e-books they would like to provide

What e-resources do you offer them at the moment?And how do they access the resources?Do they use PCs regularly?

Last questions

What additional e-resources do you want for them?Do they want to change or enhance the way they access them?How do you record and maintain contact with your WBL/ACL students?Registration/enrolment systems linked to MISs?

What websites/blogs/Twitter feeds/mailing lists do learning providers follow/read?– We will need to publicise a couple of short surveys and

the demonstrator programme

Contact information

Hugh LookProject Manager, E-books for Skillshttp://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/E-books-for-Skills-project/hugh.look@jisc-collections.ac.uk