CTImusic
News

Summer 1996

What Do the Letters Stand For?

A brief guide to government-funded organisations which facilitate the use of new learning technologies in Higher Education in the UK

Lisa Whistlecroft

After seven years, there seems to be one thing (at least!) that CTI Music, and the CTI as a whole, seems to have failed to achieve - and that is to explain adequately what it is that we do (and, indeed, what we are not funded to do), how we are organised and how we relate to the plethora of other initiatives that have started up in recent years. This article attempts to describe the work of CTI, and of CTI Music in particular, and then to give a brief overview of the other major players in the field of information technology in Higher Education. Information about these other initiatives is mostly gleaned from their World Wide Web pages and a contacts list for further information is provided at the end.

CTI

CTI, in its present form, was set up in 1989. There are 24 subject-based CTI Centres sited in academic departments in universities around the UK. All centres have the same aim - to improve and enhance the quality of teaching and learning in their discipline area through the appropriate uses of new learning technologies - which in most cases, for most of the time, means through the use of some sort of computer technology. The subject centres are coordinated from Oxford by the CTI Support Service, usually abbreviated to CTISS, which has, for most of CTI's existence, been directed and staffed by Jonathan Darby, Joyce Martin and Sue Peacock. Each subject centre has a director - in our case Anthony Pople - who is honorary in the sense that they do not get paid anything in addition to their normal salary for all the extra work they do for their CTI Centre. In addition, each centre employs a coordinator or manager who is also a subject specialist and usually full time, and most have additional administrative and secretarial help. At CTI Music, these roles are undertaken by Lisa Whistlecroft and Barbara Hargreaves.

CTI is funded directly by the Higher Education Funding Councils of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Most centre staff are employed on annually renewed contracts and each centre is required to provide the same core services. The total budget for the whole of CTI is around £1.25 million per annum - CTI Music receives £40,000 per annum which covers staff salaries and enables us to fulfil our remit regarding the service we provide for the music community. This includes:

We are, primarily, providers of information. We are not funded to undertake original research or to write software. A major part of our day-to-day work involves keeping up to date with developments in the application of computers to the teaching of music and we naturally have a close relationship with academic software development projects such as the TLTP Music Consortium.

TLTP

The Teaching and Learning Technology Programme started in 1992 when the then Universities Funding Council launched the first phase by making available £7.5 million a year over three years and inviting universities to bid for funding for projects to develop new methods of teaching and learning through the use of technology. The aim of the programme was 'to make teaching and learning more productive and efficient by harnessing modern technology'.

43 projects received funding under this first phase. Around one quarter of these projects addressed problems of implementation within single institutions, with staff development being a major component. The remainder of the projects were concerned with courseware development and involved academics from different institutions working in consortia. The projects covered a wide range of subject disciplines, including the one in Music.

In April 1993, the four new national funding bodies agreed jointly to fund a second phase of the programme. This was launched with the same aim as the first but with the intention of building on the work already being undertaken by the Phase 1 projects. A further 33 projects were funded, totalling £3.75 million in their first year. Both phases of the programme were intended to run for about three years, and most are now coming to fruition, with software becoming available to the Higher Education community.

TLTP is coordinated by Sarah Turpin at HEFCE in Bristol, assisted by Jo Tiley and Jill Frape.

TLTP Music Consortium

The TLTP Music Consortium is directed by Anthony Pople at Lancaster. Detailed articles about the project can be found in earlier issues of CTImusic News and software from the Consortium is now being despatched to UK HEIs. The CD Tour Generator was officially launched at a seminar for Music Conservatoires in London in April this year, the Studio Module at the Electric Spring 96 Conference at the University of Huddersfield later in April, and the Medieval Module at the 23rd Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Music at the University of Southampton in July. Enquiries about the Music Consortium's software should be addressed to Deborah Birchall at Lancaster University.

TLTSN

The Teaching and Learning Technology Support Network aims to apply the experience of the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme to support and encourage UK Higher Education institutions to integrate technology into teaching and learning to enhance the quality of provision. Like the other programmes, TLTSN is jointly funded by the four Higher Education funding bodies. It comprises eight support centres which have arisen from eight of the original TLTP institutional projects. The main aim of the institutional projects was to encourage and stimulate a new approach to the integration of learning technology into mainstream teaching and learning, within their own institutions. The TLTSN exists to disseminate the experiences of the institutional projects, in the area of learning technology, to the wider academic community. Centres can offer advice and guidance to all institutions in the UK HE sector. Advice on the use of learning technology is offered through a combination of activities, such as meetings with institutions' teaching and learning committees and workshops/seminars for heads of departments or support staff. Through such activities the TLTSN seeks to bring a focus to the many institutional issues which need to be addressed if learning technology is to be effectively integrated into mainstream teaching. In addition to general advice and guidance, each of the eight centres can share their experience in specialist areas.

Like TLTP, the TLTSN is coordinated by Sarah Turpin in Bristol.

LTDI

The Learning Technology Dissemination Initiative is a project funded by the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council to promote the use of learning technology and computer-based learning materials. All of LTDI's services, and attendance at LTDI events, is free to academic staff and departments in SHEFC-funded institutions. The support offered by LTDI is wide-ranging - covering methodological issues, integration into existing courses, potential learning outcomes & assessment, choice of software, hardware specification, implementation planning, the implementation itself, evaluation strategies and future plans. LTDI offers support in specific subject areas each year, focussing in the last three years on Business & Management, Education, Life Sciences, Mathematics & Statistics, Economics & Business Studies and Modern Languages. Physical Sciences will be added in 1996/7. In addition, LTDI deals with generic issues such as curriculum development, assessment, study skills and evaluation. They have also run a series of workshops to aid the dissemination of learning technology and to raise awareness of the potential for improved communications and resource access afforded by the new Scottish Metropolitan Area Networks. LTDI also publishes directories, implementation guidelines and a newsletter.

LTDI is directed by Roger Rist at Heriot-Watt University . Their development officer is Nora Mogey and they have a number of subject specialist implementation support consultants.

ITTI

The Information Technology Training Initiative was first funded in 1991, when the joint funding councils provided £3 million for 3 years to improve the availability of training materials for the use of IT in UK Higher Education institutions.

The initiative has now funded 29 projects at universities throughout the UK. These projects are, in the main, producing quality paper-based and computer-based products in areas such as IT application skills training (for example, in Geographic Information Systems, Statistics and Graphics), basic IT skills, multimedia & hypertext courseware development tools, and training and professional IT skills training for UNIX, X-Windows and networking. ITTI's national co-ordinator is Brian Shields at the University of St Andrews and product ordering is handled by Jean Burgan of UCoSDA at the University of Sheffield.

eLIB

The Electronic Libraries Programme grew out of the recommendations made in the Follett Report of 1993. One of the key conclusions of this report was 'The exploitation of IT is essential to create the effective library service of the future'. The Higher Education funding bodies in the UK invited proposals for projects which would 'transform the use and storage of knowledge in Higher Education institutions'. £15 million was allocated to eLIB, which is managed on behalf of the funding bodies by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) via the Follett Implementation Group on Information Technology (FIGIT). 30 projects, lasting up to 3 years in duration, were announced in July 1995 and other projects have been approved since - bringing the current total to around 60, though this number changes as some projects are completed while new ones are funded. Projects are running in several programme areas, such as access to network resources, digitisation, electronic document delivery, electronic journals, electronic short loan, images, on-demand publishing, pre-prints, quality assurance, supporting studies and training & awareness.

eLIB is directed by Chris Rusbridge and coordinated by Kelly Russell at the University of Warwick.

NCET

The National Council for Educational Technology evaluates, promotes and supports the effective use of information technology to enhance learning and raise educational standards. NCET works across all sectors and all subject areas both in the UK and abroad. In the past it has focussed mainly on schools-level education but is now working with all sectors of education. It is unique in its association with HE in that it is funded directly by the Department for Education and Employment rather than via the HE Funding Councils.

ALT

The Association for Learning Technology was launched in April 1993 at the CAL '93 conference in York. ALT is a membership organisation which seeks to bring together all those with an interest in the use of learning technology in Higher Education. The launch of the association was made possible by a grant of £24,000 from British Telecom. ALT contracted CTISS to provide a membership and administration service and this enabled the appointment of Rhonda Riachi as programmes manager. ALT aims to promote good practice in the use and development of learning technologies in Higher Education, to facilitate interchange between practitioners, developers, researchers and policy makers in Higher Education and industry, and to represent the membership in areas of policy such as infrastructure provision and resource allocation.

CTI Music's relationships with other initiatives

CTI Music is a part of CTI as a whole and, whilst Music departments may not have much contact with the other CTI Centres, much of our strength comes from being part of a national organisation. Our relationship with TLTP is naturally focussed upon the TLTP Music Consortium, though CTI as a whole cooperates closely with the TLTP, holding joint conferences and participating in joint events around the UK. Our relationship with the TLTSN will also be close as we integrate our subject knowledge with their understanding of institutional functions. The LTDI has not yet turned to Music but when they do, we shall look forward to working specifically with Scottish HEIs. ITTI's expertise is complementary and almost non-overlapping with CTI's, as ITTI addresses the needs of Computer Centres and support staff. The activities of eLIB will hopefully improve access to all fields of study and we look forward to increased access to musical resources as a result of their work. NCET and ALT are both long-term bodies interested in all aspects of new learning technologies. Their support of the European Acdemic Software Award is an indicator of their influence both in the UK and further afield.

Contacts

Contact names and addresses for all the initiatives described here can be found next.

And no, I never did expand the CTI acronym. It actually stands for the Computers in Teaching Initiative but is now rarely used in its full form. Buzz-words come and go - computers are subsumed in the concept of 'new technology'; teaching loses emphasis as HE focusses on issues of student learning, and the definition of 'initiative' as a first step misses the importance of continuous integration of new ideas for the enrichment of the educational process.

CTImusic News is © 1996 CTImusic, Lisa Whistlecroft. All rights reserved

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