Open ICT Tools
Open ICT Tools was one of eight projects funded by JISC infoNet under its ‘Trialling of Online Collaborative Tools for Business and Community Engagement’ programme. The Trialling of Collaborative Online Tools for BCE JISC-funded project investigated the use of collaborative online tools to support Business and Community Engagement (BCE) in a number of trials in colleges and universities within the UK (Kelly & Stewart, 2009). The The Open ICT Tools project explored the use of open source Web 2.0 applications to facilitate collaboration between Northumbria and its international business and university partners. Using the Global Studio as a research site, the project examined the utility of various ICTs for enabling collaboration with community and industry partners. The Open ICT Tools project was a practice-led enquiry that was generated from experiences gained from projects previously undertaken in collaboration with external partners within the Global Studio at Northumbria University.
In the video below, Chris Turnock briefly describes challenges to the university IT infrastructure posed by external collaboration and then present the nature of student collaboration and solutions that have been tested as part of the project.