Information Technology Standards in eResearch: A Conceptual Model of the Primary Adoption Process in Higher Education Organizations

Current research on IT standards tends to focus on their lifecycle: from the development and selection, to their implementation and use. This work proposed an interdisciplinary perspective to analyze primary adoption process in the eResearch domain. As organizations are the core entities in the innovation process, the analysis of IT standards adoption was applied to eResearch infrastructures within higher education organizations. The core argument was built on the adopter s viewpoint as it provides the most explanatory process about adoption. Two international case studies probed the suitability of a model to identify the determinant role of factors like external and internal networks, top management support and organization structure. This dissertation delivers new insights that contribute to bring certainty about one relevant context of standards adoption

Enhancing curriculum design and delivery with OER

This paper reports on the key findings from the EVOL-OER project which aims to develop a deeper understanding of the reuse of open educational resources (OERs) by academics in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This paper builds on the JISC OER Impact study by exploring and expanding on the Ratified quadrant of the study’s landscape of reuse framework (White & Manton, 2011). This paper puts forward a different four-quadrant diagram called ‘OER-enhanced curriculum’ to illustrate different approaches adopted by academics to embedding OER into curriculum design and delivery. Key issues in relation to motivation and challenges in reusing OER are discussed