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Champions Digifest

How 2024’s community champions are making a difference

Jisc’s 2024 champions share what motivates them and why community matters. What inspires our newest cohort of community champions? They help the education and research sector share knowledge, become more inclusive, while removing feelings of isolation and supporting learners and teachers through their communities. This year, champions are involved in creating practical tools for AI […]

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Top tips

How the right values and strategy help shape our communities

How important is having the right values in your community? Do you have a common vision? How do you know when you are meeting your community’s needs? Our community member’s time is precious, with their attention constantly divided our communities need to be useful and relevant. With the right strategy, we put community members at […]

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engagement

Why do people join communities, and what makes them stay?

We want to create vibrant and safe community spaces. Spaces where people are heard, understood, and feel supported. We also want our communities to succeed. Whether that’s working together to solve shared problems, improve student outcome, or challenge out-of-date thinking. By creating resources and sharing good practice together for everyone’s benefit. How do we meet […]

The UKEducamp unconference – how Sheffield University created buzzing conversations while connecting education professionals.

If you work in further or higher education, Sheffield University was the place to connect with likeminded professionals at their education unconference in June. I found out about the event when UKEducamp asked Jisc to help with promotion. Having been to similar community unconferences, I was keen to learn more about how in-person meets can […]

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engagement Top tips

How innovation helps our communities

What does it mean to innovate? What happens when communities are free to experiment? I have been tackling these questions to look at how we support community growth in education and research, raise their profiles and keep ahead of the next big thing. Community rarely grows without experimentation. Trying new things can be daunting, but […]

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Co-creation Top tips

Collaborative content projects – what we’ve learned so far

I have been interested in how to co-produce content with communities for a long time. I know that there are many benefits of facilitating communities, as a space for conversation, mutual support, and learning, to name a few. For me there is something about producing collaborative content that takes it to another level. My first […]

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Co-creation

Copyright advice for project owners of co-production or user-generated content projects

It is essential to tackle the issue of copyright at the outset of any co-production or user-generated content project. Providing assurance for users as to what the work can be used for, and in what ways, is critical especially where content is produced by a number of authors and consists of work from a variety […]

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Co-creation

Creating open resources for accessible maths

This blog has been contributed by Lilian Joy, University of York and Jenny Hughes, University of Sheffield. Our Jisc accessible maths community started in September 2021 with 6 members from 5 universities. It grew over time as we each invited other people to the group so that there are now about 33 regular members from […]

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Co-creation

Cocreating an advocacy toolkit using a writing sprint

Advocacy is a vital part of scholarly communication. It helps researchers and institutions get their message out to the wider world and engage with the communities that matter to them. But creating effective advocacy materials can be a challenge, especially when you’re trying to create something that’s useful to a wide range of institutions. The […]

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Top tips

Tips for using Microsoft Teams as a community platform

The right platform can make or break a community. For many education and research communities, Microsoft Teams is a common choice. It allows users to collaborate internally and externally, chat, host events, share documents, and create engaging pages to share information. No platform is perfect, but Microsoft has been improving the functionality and capabilities within […]