Enabling project teams to experiment and
learn in a safe, honest environment.

At JISC, we do not underestimate the importance of experimentation and
exploration by enthusiasts and experts within our community as a way of increasing the numbers of people within institutions that have the skills to be able to use new and emerging technologies in innovative ways that support and enhance learning, teaching and research.

For this reason, JISC development programmes do not have the production of market quality outputs as their main objective.  Often, the resources that are produced are in the form of prototype tools, exemplars, case studies and templates.  We encourage our project teams to produce user guides and reports at every stage in the development process to explain in an honest way, not only how their learning materials were achieved, but also where mistakes were made and how things could be done better.  These can be found on the individual project websites.  All these outputs are intended to empower and inspire teachers and other key staff to create things themselves that suit the particular needs of their course and the individual needs of their learners and hopefully avoid many of the mistakes and pitfalls.

Key measures of success of the X4L Programme are expected to include:

• increasing the number of staff with the skills to repurpose learning materials
• the forming of communities of practice, perhaps within institutions or
  among subject specialists across institutions
• teachers, library staff and IT/technical staff working more closely together
• to foster sustainable relationships between FE and HE staff in different institutions
• research studies into the use of online learning materials with
  students from both the teacher and learner perspectives.

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