Morning presentation made at the JISC Report Writing Workshop on 10 December 2008.

1. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | | Slide 1
eLearning Programme Report Writing Workshop
10 December 2008
Infohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/opendemocracy/575778823/
Welcome!

2. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 2
Workshop Agenda
Clare Groom, JISCCommunicating Project Outputs14.00
Ros Smith, JISC
Consultant
Final Report Expectations
Activity
12.00
Lunch13.00
Heather Williamson
& David Kernohan,
JISC
What does JISC Want?10.30
Close - tea/coffee16.00
Heather Williamson,
JISC
Workshop Review15.30
Tea/coffee break11.30
Paul Bailey, JISCRealising the benefits11.10
Paul Bailey, JISCWelcome & Introductory Activity10.00

3. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 3
What is JISC looking for?
 Using the post-it notes
on your table, write
down what you think
JISC is looking for in
terms of final reports.
 Use as many post-its
as required
 Write down whatever
comes into your head!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artbandito/3038952914/

4. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 4
What does JISC want?
tea/coffee break11.30
Paul BaileyRealising the benefits11.10
Questions11.00
David Kernohan,
JISC
The programme manager
view
10.50
Heather
Williamson, JISC
JISC templates & general
guidance
10.30

5. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 5
JISC templates & guidance
 generic JISC templates & guidance is
available from the main JISC website
 specific guidance for eLearning
projects will be found on the Report
Writing Workshop page
 expected that this may be updated
to reflect your feedback from today
 you will receive an email when this is
available
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/proj_manguide.html
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearningcapital/programmesupport/reportwritingworkshopDec08.aspx

6. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 6
A tale of two reports
 The end of your project
requires two reports to be
submitted to JISC
– The Final Report
– The Completion Report
 These reports have different
audiences and will need to
be written accordingly
http://www.flickr.com/photos/machado17/139365709/

7. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 7
the final report
Audience:
HE/FE institutions, the wider community and
JISC
Consider:
Your audience.
What will interest them?
Do not assume technical knowledge, or knowledge of
your institution or of the acronyms that you use
How your project contributes to the
programme/strand it is funded under.
Your evidence – your report needs to include
information on (or point to) all of your project
deliverables.
Merging or adding extra headings/sections to
your final report if this will help the flow.
The length or your report.
Navigation. Make it easy to navigate.
Draft version required (usually at least a month
before the final version is due)
Format:
Exec Summary
Background
Aims & Objectives
Methodology
Implementation
Outputs & Results
Outcomes & Impact
Conclusions & Recommendations
Implications for the future
http://www.flickr.com/photos/e06158/2956432732/

8. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 8
deliverables, outcomes & impact
 Deliverables:
– Reports
– Products
– Services
 Outcomes: changes resulting from
the project, in:
– behaviour
– knowledge
– skills
 Impact:
– Fundamental change in organisation/
the wider community in the longer
term [How does this manifest itself?]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/karoluslinus/2487021800/
Remember:
All outputs and deliverables need to
be made available on your website
which must be maintained for at least
3 years following project completion.

9. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 9
a little bit about the draft final report
 This is used to give you some steer
and feedback before you submit
your completed version
 Usually needs to be sent to your
programme at least one month
before your Final Report is due (often
earlier than this)
 Needs to provide your programme
manager with a good idea of the
scope, layout and content of your
report
 The draft does not need to be
detailed - headings with bullet points
beneath would be acceptable, but
you can use more detail if you like
http://www.flickr.com/photos/youngandwithit/3083062189/

10. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 10
the completion report
Audience:
JISC
Overview:
 private between you and JISC
 not intended to be onerous
 brevity is encouraged
 not all questions will be relevant to all
projects
 answers to questions may be used in
evaluating whether the programme
has produced benefits to the
community but all identifying
information will be removed
 a draft version is not usually required
(do check with your programme
manager)
££

11. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 11
contact details
Your programme manager is your first point of contact for any queries you may
have:
Paul Bailey p.bailey@jisc.ac.uk (Sarah Davies)
Myles Danson m.danson@jisc.ac.uk
Lisa Gray l.gray@jisc.ac.uk
David Kernohan d.kernohan@jisc.ac.uk
Sarah Knight s.knight@jisc.ac.uk
Laura Pachkowski l.pachkowski@jisc.ac.uk
Heather Williamson h.williamson@jisc.ac.uk

12. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 12
“Project Truthiness”
Cartoon not available due to copyright reasons,
use link below to view
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pchow98/396532989/

13. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | | Slide 13
8 out of 10 Programme Managers who expressed a
preference said that their cats preferred it…
Infohttp://www.flickr.com/photos/opendemocracy/575778823/

14. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 14
the ASSPOO project final report
Please note - this is not a real project, nor an example
of a bad project, just a poor final report.
Methodology: The project board met quarterly and formed
working groups around MIS data validation, ontology
development and project testing. This board was serviced
by the Project Officer (grade 5, 0.9FTE), who also had
oversight of the project working group, which consisted of
the Project Officer, Project Developers 1 and 2, and admin
support from departmental staff...
Methodology
This section gives a lot of (mainly unnecessary) information
on project management activities, but nothing on the
methodology of the project.
In this section we would have like to have seen a summary
of the overall approach and why it was taken (e.g. why
Ruby on Rails was chosen) followed by a description of the
methodology in more detail.
Outcomes: This project was a complete success. We
made presentations at the CETIS Enterprise SIG,
prepared a draft SUM for the eFramework and had a
paper accepted for a forthcoming issue of the European
Journal of Management Processes in Higher Education...
Outcomes
Apart from not giving information on why this project was a
complete success, and why presentations for the CETIS SIG
and drafts for the SUM were good for the project, the
details given here relate to project outputs, not outcomes
of the project.
Executive summary: this report details a JISC funded
project (under the Tools and Widgets Programme 4/09)
which supported holistic modifications of the institutional
MIS /VLE interface based on using a Ruby on Rails SOA
tool (ASSPOO) combining APIs from external resources
with departmental student data. The tool is available online
along with the source code and limited documentation. The
development of the tool, which is now used in both the
Department of Cephalopod Behaviour and the Research
Centre for Semantic Modelling, has allowed us to prepare
a draft SUM for the Framework.
Executive summary
Take a few minutes to read this summary. Then ask yourself
the following questions:
•What did this project do?
•What are the achievement highlights of the project?
•What were its aims and objectives?
•What was its main findings?
•What are its conclusions and recommendations?

15. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 15
we asked the programme managers...
What would you like to see in a good final report?
 real-life examples of benefit realisation
 user comments
 information on sustainability or further planned work
 how were your initial assumptions challenged
 what did you find didn’t work
 the project situated in a real-life environment, a problem
identified and addressed, and the success of the intervention
evaluated.

16. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 16
we asked the programme managers...
What would you not like to see in a good final report?
“difficult” to read without prior knowledge
including sections for the sake of it
chunks of the project plan!
poor executive summary
“the kind of thing that JISC like to hear”
written without a clear understanding of how it would be used.

17. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 17
Realising the benefits
 Need to identify where
projects have addressed
or contributed to any of
the eLearning Programme
wider intended outcomes
or benefits.
 Projects will need to
describe how the outputs
and outcomes of their
projects have addressed
or contributed to these.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/elearning/programmeelearning.aspx
The vision is of a world where learners,
teachers, researchers and wider
institutional stakeholders use technology
to enhance the overall educational
experience by improving flexibility and
creativity and by encouraging
comprehensive and diverse personal,
high quality learning, teaching and
research.

18. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 18
eLearning Programme Evaluation Framework
 The evaluation of the e-learning
programme focuses on three key
questions:
– What have we
done/built/achieved, to what
quality, and how efficiently?
– What has been learned or
confirmed through
development activities?
– How has the learning been
acted on or fed back in?
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearningcapital/evaluation.aspx
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beyond_engagement/2865358766/

19. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 19
workshop review
 What did you say at the
beginning of the day?
 Has your understanding of
what is needed changed at
all?
 What (if anything) will you do
differently?
 Any messages for JISC?

20. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 20
what does JISC want from a final report?
Source: workshop delegates, morning activity (& http://www.tagcrowd.com/)

21. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 21
what does JISC want from a final report?
Source: workshop delegates, morning activity
Lots of
words
Context – how
what you did
relates to your
HEI
Almost right, but what we are really
looking for is how what you did
relates to the wider community, so
other HEI’s, not just your own.
Benefits:
Sub regional
National
(dissemination)
This post-it has been picked out as it was the only
one that mentioned ‘benefits’. These are important
and we would like to see you all include the
benefits of your project within your report.
What actually
happened during
the project
Absolutely! Just the kind of
thing we are looking for.

22. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 22
 much clearer on how to
structure the reports and who
they are for
 how to structure my final
report
 to share what went well and
what didn’t go so well
 complete change of
understanding
 better understanding of
reporting requirements - lots
of clarity
 useful to hear a national
perspective and links to the
JISC vision
 importance of story and
personalisation and linking
this with lessons learned
what have you learned?

23. Joint Information Systems Committee 12/01/09 | slide 23
 be less wordy
 draft the final report much
more carefully
 include a ‘reflections’ section
in the report
 be more bold and creative
 separate outcomes from
outputs
 cross reference the final
report with appropriate links
 use critical friends
 think about the different types
of audience
what will you do differently?