UK Training Requirements for Research Students

The UK Research Councils issued a joint statement of "Training Requirements for Research Students" in 2001. This was replaced by the "Researcher Development Statement" (RDS) in 2010, as detailed in the "Researcher Development Framework". In the process they seem to have simplified it, down from seven to four domains:

• Domain A: Knowledge and intellectual abilities
  The knowledge, intellectual abilities and techniques to do research.
• Domain B: Personal effectiveness            
  The personal qualities and approach to be an effective researcher.
• Domain C: Research governance and organisation
  The knowledge of the standards, requirements and professionalism to do research.
• Domain D: Engagement, influence and impact
  The knowledge and skills to work with others and ensure the wider impact of research.

Note: the Joint Statement of the Research Councils’ Skills Training Requirements for Research Students (JSS) has been replaced by the Researcher Development Statement (RDS) as the reference document for the professional development of researchers, including postgraduate researchers. The RDS is a strategic statement setting out the knowledge, behaviours and attributes of effective and highly skilled researchers appropriate for a wide range of careers. It has been endorsed by key organisations including RCUK, UK funding bodies, UUK and the QAA.

The RDS updates the JSS and extends researcher development beyond the doctoral experience. All the JSS skills and attributes have been incorporated into the RDS and a mapping of the JSS against the framework and vice versa is available for reference.

The Researcher Development Framework (RDF) underlies the Researcher Development Statement (RDS) and represents a major new approach to researcher development, to enhance our capability to build the UK workforce, develop world-class researchers and build our research base.

For more information on the Researcher Development Framework, associated Statement and related resources go to www.vitae.ac.uk/rdf

From: "Researcher Development
Statement" (RDS), Vitae, 2010.

Preparing Postgraduate Students

The Preparing for Academic Practice website is provided by Centre for Excellence in Preparing for Academic Practice at Oxford University for graduate students. This is intended for research students, in particular those undertaking a PHD, but would also be of use for postgraduate coursework students.

The material is drawn from studies at several UK universities. Unfortunately, as a result it lacks cohesion. As an example, if I click on "Being an international PhD researcher" I would expect to be taken to a web page on that topic, but instead get one asking me to choose from the universities of Warwick or Oxford. The Warwick link goes to "What to expect from your PhD" and the Oxford link goes to "Diversities in Transnational Experience".

1. Becoming a PhD researcher
2. Being an international PhD researcher
3. Getting through your PhD
4. Venturing into teaching
5. Academic career paths
6. From Practice to Academia
7. Access for trainers & developers
8. research projects
9. About this web site

The research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students

"The research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students" is a UK study of higher education research students (those undertaking a PHD). It is a 45 page document (avialable in PDF and as easy to read web pages) and was released June 2012 by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

The study found that students look for text-based secondary material. That is the look for journal articles, books and other published work. A few science students look for published data-sets and in the social sciences, arts and humanities newspapers, archival material and social data may be used. The report's authors suggest this needs further research and may indicate a move away from using original data. But it does not seem surprising, based on my experience of higher education.

E-journals were found to be the primary research resource, with access being an issue for Generation Y students. Unlike older students, almost half of Generation Y will made do with the abstract, if they can't get the full article. The researcher found that open access and self-archived is not understood by the students, with material not published in formal journals being avoided by the students. The researches suggest students are not being trained adequately to deal with these information sources. However, I suggest there is a general failure by academic to accept the new reality of the Internet. This risks the future of academic research, just as the retail industry, newspaper publishing are under threat from new technology.

The researches found that Generation Y students use web technology tools more than older students, but they are still relativity conservative. This seems a reasonable approach to me, given that the students will risk the disapproval of their older supervisors and examiners if they do anything radical, or which is not supported by their institution. As with other professionals, I suggest librarians are still largely in a state of denial about the Internet, propping up obsolete publishing models and effective acting as underpaid marketers for vastly profitable private academic publishing companies.

The researchers found that Generation Y doctoral students generally work alone. This seems to be the major failing with current approaches to the way research supervision is conducted at universities. It contradicts research by CAPA which shows that students collaborating are happier and that most research is now done in teams. This seems similar to the issue with coursework at universities, where many lecturers cling to the idea that the students learn from and appreciate bespoke lectures, which research shows these are a poor teaching technique.

The researchers found that Generation Y students prefer personalize face-to-face support and training. This is not surprising, as we would all like that. Unfortunately the researchers do not seem to have asked the right questions. As an example, I estimated that the amount the student is paying for their higher degree is sufficient to provide them with about eight minutes individual attention from staff, per week. The question then is how to best use that available eight minutes: on individual face-to-face support, or in other ways? In particular, a few minutes of attention goes a lot further when used online, than face to face.

The researchers ask if institutions can have the students support each other. This would not seem to be a question at all, as that is the way online education is already routinely done at university, with students encouraged to learn together. There are well established techniques which online course designers and tutors are trained in. These same techniques should be able to be adapted for research students. Given that most research students are being prepared for a career where they will work in teams, it would seem natural to teach them team skills.

One curious aspect of the report is that I could not find any mention of who wrote it, nor how to cite the report. Given the significant and scholarly nature of the undertaking, this seems a curious omission.

Contents

• Executive summary
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Setting the scene
• 3. Finding and using research resources
• 4. Take-up of technology and applications
• 5. Collaborating, sharing and disseminating research
• 6. Institutional services and facilities to support research
• 7. Conclusions
• Annex 1: Research methodology
• Annex 2: The Researchers of Tomorrow student cohort
• Annex 3: Background and research context
• Annex 4: References
• Annex 5: Bibliography
• Annex 6: List of tables & figures

UK Professional Standards for Higher Education Staff

The UK Higher Education Academy has issued a "UK Professional Standards Framework" (UKPSF) to define the roles of teaching and learning support staff in UK universities. The framework has three Dimensions of Practice: Areas of Activity, Core Knowledge and Professional Values.

The Academy also provides four levels of accreditation, in increasing order:

1. Associate Fellow AFHEA
   
2. Fellow FHEA
3. Senior Fellow SFHEA
4. Principal Fellow PFHEA

The only formal qualification required seems to be a certificate in higher education teaching and similar Academy-accredited professional development.

Computing in Schools

The Royal Society issued "Shut down or restart? The way forward for computing in UK schools", 13 January 2012. This topic was discussed in "Open Submission to the National Curriculum Consultation" (by Pia Waugh for Senator Kate Lundy, 22 April 2010). In my National Broadband Network Submission, I suggesting making educational materials available free on-line, so we teach digital literacy (amongst other things) digitally. It should be possible to bootstrap this process: that is we train the course designers on-line to train the teachers who then teach it to the students.

Executive summary

Background

This report is the outcome of a project initiated by the Royal Society in August 2010. The project was prompted by a high degree of concern, expressed in many quarters and documented in several earlier reports, about aspects of the current provision of education in Computing in UK schools. That such concern had been expressed by so many with such different perspectives – including in schools, in business and industry, and in universities – was indicative of a significant problem. The project was guided by an Advisory Group that brought together individuals and representatives with a wide range of professional interests and views, and it sought and achieved a good level of consensus

The main findings and recommendations of the project are set out below. First, however, a word is needed on terminology. In this report, the term ‘Computing’ is used with a very broad sense

Computing is concerned both with computers and computer systems – how they work and how they are designed, constructed, and used – and with the underlying science of information and computation

The influence of Computing in shaping the world in which we now live has been profound, and it is hard to imagine that Computing will become less important in the future. It is argued in this report that it is essential for all school pupils to gain some familiarity with aspects of Computing and for there to be opportunities for pupils to develop their aptitudes in the subject, for their individual benefit and for the future prosperity of the nation

Main findings

1. The current delivery of Computing education in many UK schools is highly unsatisfactory. Although existing curricula for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are broad and allow scope for teachers to inspire pupils and help them develop interests in Computing, many pupils are not inspired by what they are taught and gain nothing beyond basic digital literacy skills such as how to use a word-processor or a database

   This is mainly because:

   1. The current national curriculum in ICT can be very broadly interpreted and may be reduced to the lowest level where non specialist teachers have to deliver it;
   2. there is a shortage of teachers who are able to teach beyond basic digital literacy;
   3. there is a lack of continuing professional development for teachers of Computing;
   4. features of school infrastructure inhibit effective teaching of Computing

2. There is a need to improve understanding in schools of the nature and scope of Computing

   In particular there needs to be recognition that Computer Science is a rigorous academic discipline of great importance to the future careers of many pupils. The status of Computing in schools needs to be recognised and raised by government and senior management in schools

3. Every child should have the opportunity to learn Computing at school, including exposure to Computer Science as a rigorous academic discipline

4. There is a need for qualifications in aspects of Computing that are accessible at school level but are not currently taught. There is also a need for existing inappropriate assessment methods to be updated

5. There is a need for augmentation and coordination of current Enhancement and Enrichment activities to support the study of Computing

6. Uptake of Computing A-level is hindered by lack of demand from higher education institutions

...

From: Shut down or restart? The way forward for computing in UK schools", The Royal Society, 13 January 2012

Energy Reduction in UK Universities

Greetings from the University of Sydney, where Nicola Hogan, from the UK SUSTE-TECH project is talking about ICT Energy Reduction by universities.

Nicola is the the Sustainable ICT Project Manager for the SUSTE-TECH Project at the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC). SUSTE-TECH is a UK Government funded project (JISC), which aims to measure and reduce energy use of ICT systems in universities.

She explained how JISC funded the development of the SUSTE-IT Tool which can be used to estimate the energy and carbon footprint of ICT in an organization. The tool is free on-line and can be set to work with the energy costs and emissions in countries other than Australia. JISC is funded by the UK government (perhaps Australia needs a similar body).

The ANU is relatively well placed, having a Green ICT Project
Project Management Plan, preapred by Samuel Fernandes (one of my former ICT Sustainability students). Other Australian universities appear to be less well advanced. Australian federal government agencies are required to report energy use and savings measures in their annual reports. Perhaps universities should be required to do this as well as part of their compulsory reporting for the "My Unviersity" web site.

Nicola explained her SUSTE-TECH project in therms of weight loss: first weigh yourself, then decide what diet changes to make and measure the gains at the end. For IT the methodology is to estimate power use, then introduce changes, such as using centralized printers, power down and virtualisation and then estimate savings. However, experience has shown that diet programs do not work for many people and similarly energy loss programs quickly go out of fashion. In my view we need to find financial savings or other incentives, which have energy savings as a by-product.

Nicola gave the example of the use of single sided printing at a university, which turned out to have been a policy from decades ago when double sided printing did not work well.

There was a question about how much energy cloud suppliers, such as Google use. It would seem to make sense that Google, Amazon and Microsoft would report how much energy and CO2 resulted form the services you used. I could not find any figures for this, but I found "Google’s Green Computing: Efficiency at Scale".

One of the applications to reduce energizer use discussed was video conferencing. Many universities now have the "Access Gird" advanced video conferecne system. However, it can be difficult to operate and so may be underutilized.

Nicola commented that while many UK institutions were interested in using the SUSTE-IT tool but only 10 sent in reports. Perhaps it would be feasible to use the IT system itself to carry out an on-line census of equipment. An application could search across the computer network and record what equipment was found.

In my view a shift to on-line processes would make larger and more lasting savings than peace-meal energy initiatives. Rather than use double sided printing for students, stop printing handouts. Instead of putting the PCs in the lecture theater into sleep mode when not needed, eliminate the lectures, lecture theater and the PC. Instead of trying to get teaching staff to be more energy efficient in their individual offices, put them in open plan, with one quarter the space each.

One important point was that Nicola mentioned energy saving could be made as part of designing new learning centers. So the university does not need to stop having classrooms completely. Instead they can save energy while setting up the new learning commons.

Another approach would be to address the issues which IT manager have day to day. These are about security, funding and support.

For Vice-chancellors what attracts students is of interest. I found "If Universities want to attract the best students, they must Go Green.". Also university look at "league tables" so perhaps we need a green league table pr green issues built into the tables commonly referred to. Thgere is a USA universities Green Honor Roll.

ICT Energy Reduction at University of Sydney

Nicola Hogan, from the UK SUSTE-TECH project will talk about ICT Energy Reduction by Universities, at the University of Sydney, 4th October 2011.

Nicola is the the Sustainable ICT Project Manager for the SUSTE-TECH Project at the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC). SUSTE-TECH is a UK Government funded project (JISC), which aims to measure and reduce energy use of ICT systems in universities.

The SUSTE-TECH Project

Location: Darlington Centre Conference Room, University of Sydney.
Date: 4th October, 2011.
Time: 1:30pm – 5:30pm.

Hear about the UK’s JISC funded SUSTE-TECH Project and how FHE institutions across the UK have reduced their ICT related energy costs and carbon emissions.

Learn of the various energy saving initiatives employed by SUSTE-TECH Project participants as part of their Green ICT Action Plans.

Learn about the user friendly carbon accounting, Suste-IT tool and how it calculates energy use, carbon emissions and cost savings.

Hear about JISC’s other Greening of ICT projects that are leading the way in which technology is used in an effort to help end users become more sustainable.

Gain a better understanding of the technologies available to help your institution make sustainable ICT changes at minimal cost.

Network with peers from other universities and colleges who are experiencing similar problems managing their ICT systems and learn how they are tackling the most pressing issues.

REGISTER: Contact Nicola Hogan, nhogan@eauc.org.uk to secure your place.

THIS IS A FREE EVENT!!!

An Event Organised by the Environmental Association for Universities and UK SUSTE-TECH project and in collaboration with JISC’s Suste-IT project.

Tweed Hat for Canberra Winter

A few weeks ago I lost my tweed hat. So I ordered a new Harris Tweed Grouse / Fishing Hat online direct from Harris Tweed and Knitwear on the Isle of Harris. This is the second one I have ordered, having lost the previous one at CeBit Sydney last year.

These hats are called Grouse or fly fishing hats or less poetically "bucket" hats. I ordered the Brown/Blue herringbone, but it looks grey/brown to me. The hat is made by Failsworth Hats.

A few weeks ago I told my optometrist I was having trouble with glare outside during the day, but tests showed no eye problems. As soon as the new hat arrived I put it on and waked outdoors to find the glare gone. Then I recalled I had been wearing a knitted beanie in place of my lost hat. The beanie has no eye-shade and had not been blocking the glare from cold, but sunny, Canberra winter days.

Community Recovery from Disaster

Dr Rebecca Whittle from Lancaster University gave an entertaining and informative talk on "Flood Recovery in the UK" at University of Western Australia, yesterday. She described research into the June 2007 floods in Hull, England, where 8000 families were displaced. A longitudinal study using diaries and group discussion was carried out. As well as papers published (Whittle, Rebecca and Medd, William and Deeming, Hugh and Kashefi, E. and Mort, Maggie and Walker, Gordon and Watson, Nigel (2010) After the rain - learning the lessons from flood recovery in Hull. Final project report for 'Flood, Vulnerability and Urban Resilience: a real-time study of local recovery following the floods of June 2007 in Hull'. Project Report, Lancaster UK) and input to the UK Government Pitt Review into the flooding, a game to help policy and operations staff was created.

Also the event I picked up a copy of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility newsletter. Also at the event was Frank Yardley, Manager Climate Change Adaptation, RMIT.

The key point Dr Whittle made was that while the first response for the Hull floods was good, the community felt abandoned after the emergency workers left. The following period, of having to deal with insurance companies and builders was as stressful as the flood emergency itself, and for this there was little coordinated support. It occourred to me that the web could be used to provide some such support. This could be via individuals smart phones and other portable devices and also via community centres, particularly the local library.

However, in accordance with good ICT practice, before building a an online system, it is best to simplify the manual process first. The problem here is that while emergency response is coordinated by government, recovery is largely left to individuals to sort out with private companies.

In a major disaster, this is inefficient and stressful for those involved. That situation could be improved with standard terms in insurance contracts and standard processes, both on paper and online. Dealing with builders could similarly be standardised. This may need legislation to allow provide companies to coordinate their activities without fear of prosecution for collusion. It may also require some level of financial reward or compulsion for parties to comply. As an example, small builders would be reluctant to coordinate their activities.

Insurance and building staff would need training in how to use online systems to coordinate their work in an emergency. But this could have benefits in making their work practices more efficient even when there is not an emergency. This would reduce the customer frustration when they do not know when the person is going to arrive or what stage their work is up to.

Flood Recovery in the UK

Dr Rebecca Whittle from Lancaster University will speak on "Flood Recovery in the UK" at University of Western Australia, in Perth, 4pm 19 April 2011.

In June 2007, the English city of Hull was devastated by flooding which displaced over 8000 families from their homes. A real-time longitudinal study was undertaken to document the long term experiences of flood recovery. The study used an action research model to document and understand the everyday experiences of individuals following the floods. The project has fed into policy in a number of ways. It provided evidence to the Pitt Review of the nationwide 2007 flooding. Staff from the UK Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies’ Secretariat were very involved in the project steering group, which led to the development of good working relationships between the Secretariat, research team and a number of the participants. Several of the project’s participants have since set up as independent flood consultants.

Dr Rebecca Whittle is a senior research associate in the Lancaster Environment Centre at Lancaster University in the UK. She has spent the past four years studying natural disasters from a social science perspective. She is particularly interested in using ideas of resilience and vulnerability to explore adults’ and children’s experiences of longterm disaster recovery. Rebecca has also worked with CapHaz-Net, a European project on a range of natural disasters.

Dr Whittle’s presentation will be followed by comments on recovery in Australia and discussion.

Location: Robert Street Lecture Theatre
Contact: Bryan Boruff bboruff(a)cyllene.uwa.edu.au
Start: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:00
End: 18:00

Green ICT Handbook

The "Green ICT Handbook: A Guide to Green ICT" from the non-profit UK Global Action Plan provides a useful guideline to measuring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from computers and networking equipment.

... Carbon Measurement

Measuring carbon is a straightforward process, but many people feel mystified by the concept. Within three steps an organisation can quantify their carbon emissions from ICT and establish a baseline measurement.

Carbon emissions can be calculated from the energy consumption of your ICT department’s infrastructure, which is then useful in planning and prioritising projects. Step 1 – Establish a measurement team. Creating a team to measure the carbon footprint is important.

Asking each team member to carry out the measurement activity relevant to their responsibilities is key to measure correctly and to spark sustainable thinking.

Step 2 – Define a measurement timeline. It sounds basic, but putting a timeline in place will ensure that this activity, which may not be viewed as business critical, is completed in a timely fashion. Step 3 – Undertake and collate measurement activities. The rest of this chapter explains what and how to measure and how to convert energy consumption in to a carbon footprint.

This process will calculate a carbon footprint for the energy consumed by ICT and its supporting equipment. The environmental impact of manufacturing and shipping ICT equipment is a much more complicated issue and more difficult to assess, due to complicated and opaque supply chains. See the Beyond the Energy ICT Consumes section of this handbook.

What to Measure

Take an inventory of all equipment. Below is a guide to the equipment you should look to measure - the list is not exhaustive and should be tailored to your organisation. Desktop end user environment

• Desktops
• Laptops
• Monitors
• Thin Clients
• Printers
• Multi-Functional Devices Telecommunication and networking
• Routers
• Wireless devices
• Boosters Data Centre
• Servers
• Storage Drives
• Any telecoms equipment housed within the data centre
• Switch gears
• Cooling, lighting and other facilities
• Backup power supplies

You should note the total numbers, the make, model, specification and capacity (where appropriate) for each equipment type.

For some equipment types it may not be practical or cost effective to measure actual energy consumption, in which case a theoretical measurement can be used. Ensure that the source of the data is documented for future reference, for example supplier or equipment specification information. Use of theoretical data should be kept to a minimum to improve overall accuracy. When the detailed inventory is complete, the next stage is to measure the energy consumption for each equipment type while in its various states – for example in use, standby and off.

How to measure

Using the inventory, initiate a data collection exercise to capture the required consumption data.

Source any necessary energy meters. There are many types of devices available from sophisticated energy management systems that log electricity consumption over time to a central web console, plug in devices that display the current energy usage of equipment and clamp on meters that can measure the usage without having to unplug critical equipment e.g. servers. Select the most appropriate type of energy meter / monitoring tools for your organisation according to organisation size, your budget and type of ICT equipment.

• Involve facilities personnel who should be able to provide information on the organisation’s total energy consumption and may have breakdowns by site, floor, department etc.
• Measure the rate of electricity consumption of equipment in its various modes of operation and calculate how long those types of equipment are in each operational mode during a year. Using this information you can calculate the amount of electricity that will be consumed in a year.
• When the total electricity consumption has been established, the CO2 it is responsible for can be calculated by multiplying kWh by 0.537 to give kg of CO2 per kWh of energy22.

Please note that this multiplying factor is the 08/09 figure and it will change each year. Please check the Defra guidelines23 for subsequent years.

This exercise will take time to complete, but it is worth doing it as accurately as possible to establish your baseline.

Is Your Data Centre Efficient?

The data centre energy consumption is complex to measure accurately, because a number of different servers are often present and many data centres are housed in multi use buildings without separate data centre energy metering.

The data centre manager must obtain the total baseline consumption for the data centre and then divide it into the various components within the data centre, such as servers, cooling and lighting. If possible, load variations during the day should also be measured to obtain peak load versus average load. An assessment can then be made on where to focus efforts and prioritise areas for improvement.

A useful thing to do to understand the scale of potential benefit is to take the total measured energy consumption and cost it. Then set the bar high and assume (if you are starting from scratch) that you could save up to 50% – what financial saving does that equate to? Bear in mind that some organisations such as BT have committed to 60% savings on ICT energy usage!

The industry has also adopted a number of metrics which may add some value in assessing your position. Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) PUE is used to assess data centre efficiency. It is a ratio that shows how much of the total energy consumed by a data centre is directly used to power the servers and other ICT infrastructure within it – i.e. a PUE of 2 means that for every watt your ICT equipment uses, the infrastructure to support it needs 2 watts. The average data centre has a PUE of 2.524 and best practice PUE has been quoted as 1.325, but whatever the starting point the aim is to continually reduce the PUE through data centre initiatives and energy efficiency improvements. If using PUE to assess data centre efficiency do not lose sight of the ultimate aim by focusing entirely on PUE to the detriment of the overall energy consumption.

Data Centre Infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE)

DCiE is the direct ICT equipment power expressed as a percentage of the power consumed by the data centre, which can be shown to be improving over time as it increases towards 100%. DCiE = (ICT Equipment Power / Total Facility Power) x 100% For an average data centre with a PUE of 2.5, the DCiE is 40% and a PUE of 1.3 would mean a DCiE of 77%.

What are the solutions?

Once measurement has taken place and a baseline established, the next steps are prioritising, planning and implementation. This should factor in the time and resources required for implementation of each project, the potential benefits and any existing or future regulations that will need to be met.

Recommended Approach

1. Measure the energy usage of all ICT assets and the associated facilities such as the data centre or machine room 2. Identify the quick wins for your organisation 3. Assess the value of longer term projects for your organisation 4. Develop a Green ICT Strategic Plan

At the end of each project or phase of projects we recommend that you measure the energy, carbon and cost savings achieved so far. By reporting financial savings made to date and projected savings, it will be easier to obtain backing and secure budget for further initiatives to green the ICT in your organisation.

Project Management Templates

Here are two links to management tools for Green ICT strategies which you could use to help manage your Green ICT initiatives. The Cabinet Office has produced the CIO Roadmap for Green ICT: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/greening_government_ict.aspx John Lewis Partnership uses an acorn diagram to manage their Green ICT initiatives: http://www.greenict.org.uk/upload/documentstore/GreenAcorn.pdf ...

From: "Green ICT Handbook: A Guide to Green ICT" from the non-profit UK Global Action Plan, 2009

UK Universities Get £1.05m for Capacity Building in Green ICT

The JISC has announced £1.05m is available to UK universities for the Greening ICT Programme.

Organisational Support
Greening ICT – Phase 2

Released: late September/early October 2010
Funding £1.05m (from £20,000 -£125,000 per project)
Start January/February 2011
Duration 6 -18 months

Environmental sustainability is a key priority for JISC and a number of activities have already been funded as part of JISC’s Greening ICT Programme.6 Phase 2 builds on this work and activities to be funded as part of this call include:

Capacity Building in Green ICT - This activity will build on past JISC work in Green ICT. The intention is not to fund new innovation work but to help institutions build on existing known good practice and to facilitate the building of effective relationships between IT and other functions such as estates and finance. This strand of work will be linked to other JISC work relating to business efficiency and building capacity. The intention is to start to embed sustainable development across the range of institutional activities. (Projects of up to 18 months duration will be funded. £50,000 per project. Total funding available £300,000).

Exemplars of the Sustainable Campus - Much of JISC's work to date on Green ICT has been concerned with the carbon agenda - i.e. reducing the carbon footprint of ICT. However, ICT has the capacity to be a significant enabler of a move to the sustainable campus that will be required in the future. This call will seek proposals that will provide exemplars of new ways of delivering the business of the institution in ways that significantly reduce the environmental impacts of these activities. (Projects of up to 18 months duration will be funded. £100,000 - £125,000 per project. Total funding available £500,000).

Rapid Innovation in Green ICT - This strand of the call will fund small pieces of technical innovation with the aim of helping to solve some of the existing technical issues that are hindering the move towards more efficient ICT, buildings and processes. (Projects of up to 6 months duration will be funded. £20,000 - £40,000 per project. Total funding available £250,000).
Eligibility to bid

All UK HEIs, FE Colleges in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland.

(FE Colleges in England that teach HE to 400+ FTEs are also eligible to bid provided in can be demonstrated that the bid supports the HE in FE agenda

New Tweed Hat Direct from Outer Hebrides

A few weeks ago I lost my tweed hat at the CeBit exhibition in Sydney. So I ordered a new Harris Tweed Grouse / Fishing Hat online on the Isle of Harris. This location in Scotland, about as far away from where I am in Canberra as you can get on the planet, but even so the hat took only two weeks to arrive (in time for the Fly Fishing Film Festival)

These hats are also called fly fishing hats or less poetically "bucket" hats. They have a small brim and a cylindrical crown. The brim is enough to keep rain off while fishing (I have used my trout fly fishing in the Snowy Mountains). They can be rolled up to put in a pocket. When made in tweed they are very warm, even when wet. Over time the tweed softens and also hides dirt.

How to go about purchasing a new tweed had proved a challenge. I purchased my previous one for ten pounds on sale at Stow-on-the-Wold (near Oxford) in 1994.

Strand Hatters in the Strand Arcade and the Irish Shop in Paramatta Road, Sydney, have tweed hats for under $AU100. Searching on-line I found The Spectator offering a Harris tweed hat similar to the one I lost for 35 Pounds (about $AU62). There seemed to be numerous similar offerings for around this price.

Looking further I found hats for 26 Pounds (about $AU46), including delivery (the included postage was 6.63 Pounds). This was less than I could buy one locally. But there were some catches. This was described as a "sale", but the web page seemed to have been unchanged for years, so were these still on sale? The web site offered only Pay Pal for payment and the Pay Pal system refused to let me use my credit card, which caused some suspicion.

There were three colours of hats offered, but only tiny photos of each and no text description as to which colour was which. The Spectator included a useful photo with three different colour hats in it with each colour labeled: Loden Green, Gunmetal, Brown Grouse. I wanted a Brown hat, but ended up ordering a Green one (Ref G102) from Harris Tweed and Knitwear as I could not tell one colour from another.

Hat sizes is also a complex issue. Different countries use different measuing systems, so working out exactly which I needed was difficult. I ended up choosing "Medium" which was fine.

I ordered the hat and it arrived. It is much the same as my previous one from 16 years ago, complete with a quilted interior. While I wanted a brown one and got a grey-green one, it looks fine, fits well and is perfect for wet Canberra wintry weather.

ps: Tweed hat makers might like to consider a model with a brim 10mm wider, similar to the "boonie hat" (giggle hat or bush hat), issued to US and Australian troops (I borrowed one to go on a military exercise). The extra shade would be particularly useful in the Australian Alps and in Northern Europe, where there is increased risk from UV radiation, even in winter.

Report on Web 2.0 in Australian Universities

The UK's Higher Education Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has released a report on Australian universities use of computer networking: "A Landscape Study of Shared Infrastructure Services in the Australian Academic Sector". This concludes that Australia lags the UK a little in the use of Web 2.0, but this may be advantage as new commercial tools can be used in place of early academic bespoke ones.

Executive Summary
The Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) are administering a number of ANDS [1], ARCS [2] and NeAT (National eResearch Architecture Taskforce) [3]
projects funded through the Platforms for Collaboration [4] component of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and more recently through the Education Investment Fund (EIF) [5]. A range of e-Research services are being developed and promoted through these programs. Examples of such services include data registration and identification services, authentication services (AAF) [6] – as well as general collaborative services such as the EVO videoconferencing service, and shared content management and messaging services such as Sakai, Drupal, Plone and Jabber [7].

In parallel with these investments, it has become evident that users in the higher education and academic sectors in Australia are choosing to use main stream Web 2.0 technologies in their daily work activities. However there is limited knowledge about who is using which Web 2.0 technologies and for what purposes. Moreover there is little information about why specific tools and services are chosen when institutional or nationally-funded services are available. ...

Although the UK leads Australia in the development of collaborative eResearch services, the results of the survey indicate that the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the higher education sector in Australia is not significantly dissimilar to the situation in the UK. Users prefer to use Web-based services that are already adopted by the wider community and that are free, robust, simple to sign on to, and easy to install and use. Examples include: FaceBook, YouTube, Skype and Twitter. Although the most active use of Web 2.0 has been by early adopters (people who are not afraid to try out new tools, experiment with them and promote them to colleagues and peers), this situation is changing as more Web 2.0 technologies are becoming broadly adopted by mainstream users. Because Australia has not had the same level of investment in cyberinfrastructure and lags behind the UK in the development of services, it has been able to take advantage of services developed in the UK and USA (e.g., RoMEO, Shibboleth) – as well as the recent explosion of free, open source Web 2.0 technologies. In some ways, this delayed investment has been an advantage because there is not an established pool of services that is being superseded by commercial and open source Web 2.0 technologies.

The survey has also shown that not all Web 2.0 tools and services are used to the same extent. The most popular services are the current market leaders: Facebook, YouTube, Wikis, Blogs and Twitter. As in the UK, the primary factors governing choice of service are: cost, ease of use/interface design, wide-spread adoption. The important factors in continuing use are reliability, efficacy and how much it is used by the user’s peer group.

The fallout has been that users don’t choose to use technologies that have specifically been developed by and for the eResearch community (e.g., Sakai, EVO) – unless they have been mandated by their research/peer group or institutional IT service providers or if there is nothing else available through the Web. The SWORD APP Profile [8] and RoMEO [9] are examples of such services not available elsewhere. Generally the perception is that services developed by and for the higher education and research sectors are less robust, problematic, difficult to use, poorly documented and not widely interoperable.

The lack of support in universities for freely available Web 2.0 technologies has led to tension between users, IT support and central management. University IT departments are often seen as “controlling” and obstructive. Users want to be able to download, install and use software services such as Skype onto their desktop computers or laptops – but often they do not have administrative rights to do so. There also exists a level of tension between mandated technologies (e.g., EVO) and widely adopted mainstream technologies (Skype) that both serve essentially the same purpose, but have different levels of support and security implications.
Many Australian institutions and faculty IT support are struggling to maintain both the security of content and services whilst also maintaining the flexibility required to support changing users’ needs. Slowly universities in Australia are beginning to adopt and support Web 2.0 services through their libraries and IT service departments. This is expected to grow over time in response to user demand. Universities also realize that although many staff and students are familiar with using Web 2.0 services, there may also be a need to provide training and support in these new technologies to more mature staff members or those staff and students from less technical disciplines. ...

From: "A Landscape Study of Shared Infrastructure Services in the Australian Academic Sector", Jane Hunter, Director of the eResearch Lab, The University of Queensland, for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK Higher and Further Education Funding Councils, December 2009

Railway standardisation a lesson for the NBN

"The World's First Railway System: Enterprise Competition and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain" by Mark Casson, OUP, 2009 looks at how efficient the investment in railways in the the 19th century were. There are lessons in this for Australia's planning for the National Broadband Network.

The conclusion drawn by Casson is that there was duplication of railway infrastructure and some inefficient placement of capacity. He concludes that this was due to a failure of the political process, with MPs not having the courage to make decisions for the good of the national as a whole, unable to choose between competing local interests and so making suboptimal decisions. Casson argues that private enterprise with some government planning could have resulted in a more efficient railway system and that this was done in India. This work provides some insights for Australia, with Casson also commenting that Australia failed to learn from the UK's problems and introduced three different railway gauges, a lack of standardisation which is a problem 100 years later.

The National Broadband Network is similar to the model Casson suggests, with central government planning and private investment. I suggest that the Internet protocols are the equivalent of the standard gauge which was missing from Australian railway planning. With it we will be able to have a meshing of multiple private and public networks, seamlessly carrying data round Australia and around the world. Without it we will have a series of little branch lines, with packets of data having to be loaded and unloaded between different data standards, just as goods still have to be transferred between different gauge railway lines in Australia today.

ICT Energy, Carbon and Cost Tools from UK

The UK's university ICT consortium (JISC) is providing a free ICT Energy and Carbon Footprinting Tool and a Cost and Carbon Comparison Tool. These were developed for assessing university campuses, but may be more widely applicable. The comparison tool is not as flexible as it may first appear as it just compares desktop PCs with thin clients.

1. An ICT Energy and Carbon Footprinting Tool to estimate the energy and carbon footprint of your ICT estate. Contains a worked example from the University of Sheffield. An updated version (August 2009) is designed to be more user friendly and incorporates changes based on feedback from other institutions. Detailed commentary by Chris Cartledge on how the University of Sheffield's energy and carbon footprint was calculated can also be downloaded.

2. A Cost and Carbon Comparison Tool for thick vs thin clients (Beta Version). An Excel tool designed to help Further and Higher Education Institutions estimate the costs and carbon emissions of thick (PCs) versus thin clients over a given evaluation period. An updated version will be posted by the end of August 2009.

From: Sustainable IT Tools, SusteIT, 2009

Sustainable ICT in UK Universities

The UK JISC (equivalent to Australia's AARnet, providing ICT services for universities) has issued "Sustainable ICT in Further and Higher Education: SusteIT Final Report" by Peter James and Lisa Hopkinson (14 January 2009). This estimates that UK universities and colleges have 1,470,000 computers, 250,000 printers and 240,000 server, and will produce an electricity bill of £116m and cause 0.5Mt of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2009.

The report recommends ‘Thin client’, distributed/outsourced/shared services, information on life cycle management, sustainable data, consolidation and virtualisation. The full report is 137 pages of PDF (891 kbytes).