University of Leicester wins UCISA-Eduserv Award
16 February 2012
The 2011 UCISA-Eduserv Award for Excellence has been won by the University of Leicester. The Award seeks to recognise and highlight levels of excellence and best practice that currently exist and are demonstrated by UCISA members within the UK higher and further education sectors.
The submission from the University of Leicester focused on a project to develop, at minimal cost, high quality training material on information security suitable for all staff in a higher education institution. The project sought to ensure that the material would to meet the specific needs of the higher education sector, could be delivered online and for which completion was auditable. The material was developed collaboratively with Cranfield University, Imperial College London, the University of Leeds and the University of York delivering a far better result than could have been achieved by a single institution.
The successful collaboration, engaging with a commercial company with expertise in the development of e-learning material, aligns with many of the themes picked out in the recent report from Universities UK’s Efficiency and Modernisation Task Group. Not only does it highlight an effective way of producing quality training material, it also promotes more efficient delivery of training to the wider university population.
On hearing of the University’s success, Mary Visser, Director of IT Services at the University of Leicester, said “I’m delighted! This is a well deserved Award. The team really applied their imagination and have brought a dry but very important subject alive. This has helped to raise the profile of information security and it was an added bonus to save money by collaborating. I hope other institutions will now take advantage of this simple shared service idea that has really produced results.”
Stephen Butcher, Chief Executive of sponsors Eduserv, commented, “Eduserv is delighted to be associated with this Award, which recognises the real difference initiatives such as this can make to the institution and the sector as a whole. The University of Leicester’s submission is an outstanding example of collaboration on a critical issue. We were impressed by the quality of the training materials and the cost effective manner of their production.”
Submissions from the University of Manchester and the University of Bristol were highly commended by the judging panel. The University of Manchester’s Award entry focussed on the implementation of an automated process to rapidly produce high quality podcasts of lectures. The submission from the University of Bristol described the development of an open source, geo-spatial smartphone application to permit crowdsourcing and remote validation of research data.
All Award for Excellence submissions are available from the Awards section of the UCISA website. Members of the University of Leicester will give a University Showcase session at the UCISA Annual Management Conference.
The successful collaboration, engaging with a commercial company with expertise in the development of e-learning material, aligns with many of the themes picked out in the recent report from Universities UK’s Efficiency and Modernisation Task Group. Not only does it highlight an effective way of producing quality training material, it also promotes more efficient delivery of training to the wider university population.
On hearing of the University’s success, Mary Visser, Director of IT Services at the University of Leicester, said “I’m delighted! This is a well deserved Award. The team really applied their imagination and have brought a dry but very important subject alive. This has helped to raise the profile of information security and it was an added bonus to save money by collaborating. I hope other institutions will now take advantage of this simple shared service idea that has really produced results.”
Stephen Butcher, Chief Executive of sponsors Eduserv, commented, “Eduserv is delighted to be associated with this Award, which recognises the real difference initiatives such as this can make to the institution and the sector as a whole. The University of Leicester’s submission is an outstanding example of collaboration on a critical issue. We were impressed by the quality of the training materials and the cost effective manner of their production.”
Submissions from the University of Manchester and the University of Bristol were highly commended by the judging panel. The University of Manchester’s Award entry focussed on the implementation of an automated process to rapidly produce high quality podcasts of lectures. The submission from the University of Bristol described the development of an open source, geo-spatial smartphone application to permit crowdsourcing and remote validation of research data.
All Award for Excellence submissions are available from the Awards section of the UCISA website. Members of the University of Leicester will give a University Showcase session at the UCISA Annual Management Conference.