6.1. University Backbone Network

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/

The backbone continues to operate reliably with traffic levels still rising and showing no sign of abating. Sufficient bandwidth is available to cope with peak loading levels. Similarly, the number of registered hosts connected to the network increases each year and now exceeds 81,000 connections.

6.2. Herald Mail System

6.2.2. Usage

The Herald IMAP service handles approximately 900,000 client logins per day (by approximately 26,000 unique users, with some email clients accessing the service multiple times per session). See Figure 1 and Table 7 for details of login activity.

Figure 1. Login activity over one 24-hour period in 2009

Table 7. Number of unique users using different login methods in a sample 4-week period compared with the previous years

Method	Users in 2007	As %	Users in 2008	As %	Users in 2009	As %
Only Webmail	14,853	64	15,295	59	14,843	58
Only POP and/or Webmail	910	4	992	4	754	3
IMAP and possibly other methods	7,357	32	9,658	37	10.015	39
Total	23,120	100%	25,945	100%	25,612	100%

Figure 2. Herald mailstore usage, broken down by major University constituencies (excluding expired users, whose constituency is no longer known)

It remains the case that students form the primary constituency of Herald users. We are unable to break undergraduate usage down by division, so their usage is included in the “college” category which accounts for approximately 30% of the overall Herald mailstore usage.

Figure 3. Rate of growth of the mailstore

6.2.3. Mail delivery

On a term-time weekday Herald typically handles 35GB of email messages (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Total volume of mail arriving on IMAP servers per day

Of these, the vast majority are delivered to the appropriate mailbox. A significant number are automatically forwarded to other email addresses, and others are filtered into a user’s junk-mail folder based on the Herald filter settings applied by the user.

Figure 5. Count of messages arriving on IMAP servers per day, colour-coded according to their fate

6.3. Access Management Services

OUCS provides a range of access management services to the University. Webauth, Oak LDAP, and Shibboleth are available for general use by ITSS who wish to implement access control for their own resources and services, in addition to being used for centrally hosted facilities.

6.4. Hierarchical File Server

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/hfs/

The Hierarchical File Server (HFS) service provides large-scale central filestore services to the University community. The HFS runs IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) software and supports a backup service for both desktops and departmental and college servers and a long-term data repository service for the University's digital assets.

The constant challenge for the HFS is to meet and absorb the growth in the backup and archive requirements of an ever-increasing number and size of desktop and server machines, and research and digitization projects, around Oxford. As Table 12 shows, growth has been even across all three major service areas:

The figures suggest that files are getting bigger, a consistent 31-33% rise in absolute data stored compared to an increase of around 20% in the number of files stored.

Total Service Growth 2008-09

The total amount of data secured by the HFS (right axis in Figure 6) has grown from 400TB to c. 530TB in the last year. The number of files (left axis) has grown from over 1.4 billion to just over 1.7 billion.

Figure 6. Total Service Growth 2008-09

Behind these figures lies an aggressive and proactive policy of ensuring that data is not unnecessarily backed-up and old, redundant data is removed in a timely fashion. To this end, the HFS has implemented a policy of excluding much of the Operating System files from desktop backup, which would, in the event of a local disaster, be more quickly and consistently restored from a locally-held installation DVD or image.

Usage of the HFS extends throughout the university and is illustrated in Figure 7 with proportionate total backup data stored broken down by division (excludes Archive data).

Figure 7. Proportionate total backup data stored (by division)

Relative use on a divisional basis remains remarkably consistent, with Maths and Medical Sciences accounting for 63% between them.

Major Activities

Major activities in the past year have centred around the move of half of the HFS service from two old host machines to one new host. Happily, the dual-path redundancy built into the HFS systems allowed this to be achieved without any major interruption to service.

The previous year saw the acquisition of two disk servers that have now been brought fully into service. Maintenance of these servers has been a challenge with a level of firmware code from IBM causing a total service crash earlier this year. Disaster recovery procedures were then tested for real and the entire service was restored within 24 hours with no data loss.

Additional data and additional numbers of client users (c. 15%) bring with them additional support requirements and 50% of HFS staff time is now engaged in direct client support. With the loss of one team member (seconded to the University Groupware project0, the team has been extremely busy all year.

In spite of the above, we have still managed to bring online a trial backup over the wireless service (via Eduroam). We have also introduced dedicated client software for backup of Exchange and MS SQL databases. The former has allowed us to provide a dedicated backup service to the Groupware project with a 90-day, 90-version retention of data. At the time of writing we now hold c. 40TB of Groupware mail backup and are taking around 1TB of fresh backup every night.

Future Activities

In the next year the major focus for the HFS service will be on the migration path of the large database systems that underpin the service to a DB2 architecture. This will offer major service enhancements – not least a fully consistent SQL language to query the servers and a proven DB2 database engine to drive them. However, resource disk, CPU and memory requirements will be considerably greater than at present.

Other activities will include continued provision of up-to-date client software to include new software platforms such as Windows 7, 2008R2, Mac Snow Leopard and new versions of many Linux distributions. Other areas of focus will include investigating tape technology and how we can maximise tape usage and the extension of provision of dedicated backup software for MS SQL and other databases.

6.5. IT Security

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/security/

The past year has proven to be a busy one for the network security team (OxCERT), with the need for incident response necessarily taking priority. The number of security incidents handled has more than doubled to almost 1,300, with 261 in October 2008 alone. The majority of incidents affect a single system but some have been serious enough to take major systems or even entire colleges/departments offline pending a thorough cleanup. Additionally the team have handled over 130 reports of copyright violation in conjunction with the ITS3 team.

69 security bulletins (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/security/bulletins/) were issued by OxCERT over the past year, alerting IT support staff and other interested parties around the University to threats of particular note. The format of OxCERT's monthly reports (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/security/reports/) has been revised to include a tabular summary of the types of incidents handled and more details on subjects of interest.

OxCERT continue to be involved in several local, national, and international groups and projects. Team members have attended meetings and conferences in locations from Loughborough to Latvia and have given several presentations, slides from which are available from OxCERT's web pages (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/security/index.xml?ID=links). Staff from OxCERT also played a leading role in the Information Security Best Practice (ISBP) Project, including chairing the Information Security Advisory Group.

Finally, the team has been given funding for a project to automate much of the process of malware analysis, with the aim of identifying network traffic signatures that can be used to detect further instances of the same malware on the University network. Hardware for this project has arrived at OUCS and is in the process of being set up. Time permitting this should replace the team's current malware submission service over the coming year.

6.6. Help Centre

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/helpcentre/

6.6.1. Help Desk

The year has been characterised by preparation work for a number of major changes in centralised University services, all of which the Help Centre is either directly or indirectly involved with. The end of the reporting period found the Help Desk gearing up for supporting new students as they activate Oxford Single Sign-On accounts before reaching the University. The team also migrated to the new Nexus Groupware service in July in order to learn the ropes and be ready to help the rest of the University with the new system.

At close to 1000 extra messages, the increase in queries either emailed to the help desk or submitted via our web form is significantly higher than last year. Staff, senior members and postgraduates continue to be our main customers, with all three submitting more queries than ever before. The demand for appointments with operating system specialists has stabilised at the low level of last year, which indicates that the help desk continues to solve a high percentage of problems during the initial consultation.

Table 13. Help Desk usage (number of emails and appointments)

	2008-9		2007-8		2006-7		2005-6		2004-5		2002-3
	Email	App.	Email	App.	Email	App.	Email	App.	Email	App.	Email	App.
Staff	1784	25	1661	21	1068	46	1200	46	987	55	1178	42
Senior Members	851	13	759	9	494	28	699	27	590	44	572	24
Postgraduates	1156	75	1029	68	584	158	1028	212	896	146	849	204
Undergraduates	484	21	511	11	279	92	559	105	575	72	384	39
Visitors	163	10	132	6	64	8	67	7	62	13	52	12
Retired Staff	101	9	90	8	44	1	68	11	81	4	41	6
Other	2911	3	2295	32	3269	74	2185	47	2466	159	1978	91
TOTAL	7450	156	6477	155	5802	407	5806	455	5657	493	5054	418

The usage of our help form for submitting queries has increased from 31% of electronic queries last year to 44% this year. The data from the form allows us to attribute queries to academic divisions. The colleges and divisions continue to hold the top 5 ranks in number of queries, accounting for 86% of the total.

Table 14. Usage of the help form by division

	2008-9			2007-8			2006-7			2005-6			2004-5
	Total	%	Rnk.	Total	%	Rnk.	Total	%	Rnk.	Total	%	Rnk.	Total	%	Rnk.
Medical Sciences	713	22%	2	412	20%	2	601	21%	2	391	21%	2	151	17%	3
Social Sciences	728	22%	1	465	23%	1	546	19%	3	363	19%	3	197	22%	2
Maths, Physical and Life Sciences	440	13%	4	247	12%	5	413	15%	4	231	2%	5	121	13%	4
Humanities	419	13%	5	260	13%	4	319	11%	5	245	13%	4	109	12%	5
Continuing Education	134	4%	7	99	5%	6	101	4%	7	51	3%	7	34	4%	6
Colleges	556	17%	3	371	18%	3	656	23%	1	502	26%	1	230	26%	1
Academic Service	119	4%	8	72	4%	8	127	4%	6	71	4%	6	33	4%	7
Central Administration	168	5%	6	87	4%	7	69	2%	8	38	2%	8	17	2%	8
Council	4	0%	10	5	0%	10	7	0%	10	8	0%	9	2	0%	10
Health and Safety	0	0%	11	0	0%		2	0%	12	0	0%		0	0%
Other Related Bodies	25	1%	9	4	0%	11	11	0%	9	4	0%	10	4	0%	9
Paying Individuals	0	0%	11	13	1%	9	6	0%	10	0	0%		0	0%
TOTAL	3306			2035			2858			1904			898

In analysing the types of queries the help desk handles, we introduced a few new categories and sectioned operating systems off from the general software category. It is interesting to see that 28% of the total operating system queries concerned Apple Macs. The percentage of queries involving the Oxford account has risen noticeably over last year’s 29% but can be accounted for by the increase in University-wide systems using Webauth for authentication – notably OxLip and the Oracle Student Systems. The modification of OxLip to use Webauth for accessing online journals also accounts for a drop in the percentage of queries relating to VPN. For the first time this year we have also looked at the number of queries we get about services offered elsewhere in the University. Although the overall percentage is very low, the time spent answering these on a best effort basis can be quite significant.

Figure 8. Help desk query type

6.6.3. Hardware Repairs and Upgrading

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/maintenance/

The hardware repairs and upgrade services have handled 17% more machines than last year. Of the manufacturers, Apple figured largest in the numbers repaired and upgraded, with 77 needing attention, along with 71 Dells and 51 HP/Compaqs. We are now able to purchase Apple parts directly from the manufacturer, resulting in a quicker turn-around and often more affordable prices than were previously available. The diagram below shows the full breakdown. Although Netbooks are becoming increasingly popular, typified by Asus and Sony, we have received few that have needed repair. Presumably many of these are still subject to the manufacturer’s warranty. The SSDs (Solid State Devices) that many of these machines use instead of hard drives are in a state of flux at the moment due to frequent upgrades having increased specifications. This has led to supply shortages for those wishing to purchase the latest version. Dell machines seem to be particularly affected by this.

Figure 9. Proportion of machines from different manufacturers

Of the types of machines, the vast majority are laptops, often with luxury specifications, including Lenovos, an IBM brand, and Toshiba Equiums. Many of the desktops/towers were of Dell manufacture. A very small number were own builds. Of the external hard drives we repaired, we’ve found there is about a 50% chance of the data interface being defective rather than the hard drive itself. In those fortunate cases, the cost of a new enclosure restores the data to a usable condition.

Figure 10. Type of machines

A breakdown of the nature of the repair and the number of upgrades are supplied in the Repairs/Upgrades diagram below. Often a particular machine is subject to more than one task. For example, a badly corrupted operating system may require data recovery prior to re-installing the system. Overheating, which is generally caused by ingress of dust, may also be accompanied by the requirement to replace the cooling fan. Laptops with fatally damaged system boards normally have their data retrieved unless the owner has been very conscientious in making frequent backups.

Figure 11. Type of repairs/upgrades

Sadly, a faulty system board normally renders a laptop beyond economic repair as the parts cost of this item is usually a significant proportion of the purchase price. This does not apply to desktops in most cases, where most system boards are of standard design and are therefore easily and cheaply available. Such failures may be due to defective components which will be covered if the machine is still within the warranty period. Liquid spillages, dropping a laptop, or using unsuitable power supplies often account for many failures and these are not covered by most manufacturers’ warranties.

The service has continued to repair and upgrade a wide variety of laptops and desktops, and by adapting to the requirements of emerging technologies, we are able to approach the latest machines with confidence. When they are not viable to repair, we have a suite of software tools to enable us to maximise the chances of recovering data for use with other machines.

6.7. Registration Services

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/registration/

It has again been a busy year for registration. The registration RT queue now only covers the specialized registration services eg. name changes, project accounts generic address creation- the bulk of the general registration queries are now handled on the Help Centre queue. Effort has been put into getting end users and ITSS to do things for themselves through our Self Registration and ITSS Registration services; however, the specialised queries still remain high.

6.8. Information Services

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oucsweb/

Information Services manages the OUCS website, a number of related sites (e.g. WelcomeToIT and ICT), and various intranet services (wikis, blogs etc). The OUCS site mainly provides technical information for staff, students, and IT support staff in the University.

The priority documentation project during this period was the preparation for Nexus, which has involved staff across OUCS preparing technical documentation.

The course booking system has been gradually enhanced, and now includes the ability to send SMS reminders to attendees.

The internal workflow for writing pages in semantic XML was simplified by introducing a tighter schema, customization of the oXygen editor, and a fixed mechanism for publishing pages. We have also been introducing more automatic auditing and content checking. The Axkit-specific XSP pages which have been used to provide dynamic content are now more or less extinct.

6.9. Research Technologies Service

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/rts/

Help for IT related research issues is offered for all departments and divisions within the university and for individual projects. Contact should be made initially via the RTS email address. Initial consultation is free and further help should be costed into grant applications, RTS can also give advice and figures for this aspect.

New projects started during the past year include Steeple, Erewhon, Enriching the First World War Poetry Archive, and Open Spires. Ongoing research projects across OUCS include the Low Carbon ICT project now extended with a Benefits Realisation award from JISC, the Groupware project and internal projects concerned with developing our service provision such as Core User Directory, an OUCS blogging service, and the refurbishment of the Data Centre; all of these are detailed in the report section. The RTS has continued to provide specific research services through the provision of the Intute Arts and Humanities services and with OSS Watch — the Open Source advisory service.

Work is also continuing on the British National Corpus and the TEI initiative. Several European projects are being undertaken by OUCS with a range of European partners. These include CLARIN, DARIAH, and ENRICH; and others are under consideration by the European Commission.

Projects that have finished during the year include eIUS Infrastructure Use Cases and Service Usage Models, Modelling4All, and the Bridging the Interoperability Divide (BID). Projects have been funded by a number of research organisations including the AHRC, JISC, ESRC and Eduserv.

Staff contributions to other projects within the University include: Low Carbon ICT; Scoping digital repository services for research data management (with OeRC); and Virtual Research Environments. Research links with the Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC) have continued with joint research funding applications, liaison and director posts, and collaborative projects such as Shibboleth deployment, digital repositories, and e-infrastructure usage. Several departments and the Oxford Internet Institute have also been involved with joint bid submissions.

6.10. WebLearn (Virtual Learning Environment) Service

http://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/site/

2008-09 saw the introduction of the new WebLearn service (“WebLearn Beta”) albeit in pilot phase. The pilot year saw 66 different people or units (split across all academic divisions and including 9 colleges, UAS and ASUC) begin to use the new system and over 4,500 separate users logged in to the system. Many of these units do not have a presence in the production service. During this period over 250 people attended OUCS WebLearn Beta training sessions.

Almost all departments and colleges continued to use the production WebLearn service for the majority of their day-to-day work but OUCS ran a large number of awareness-raising initiatives to ensure that the University was kept well informed of the upcoming changes.

There has again been an increase in traffic over the previous year which is excellent considering that some units opted to use the WebLearn Beta pilot service.

Figure 12. Weekly sample of traffic (week 1, Trinity) year by year

There was virtually no change in the number of units using old WebLearn. This is because new users were directed to the new service.

The distribution of traffic across the divisions has remained more or less the same as in previous years.

Figure 13. Distribution of requests between divisions for Trinity week 1

The new WebLearn dual service was launched by Dr Stuart Lee to an invited audience of senior University staff on 30th June 2009; this service comprises the old and new WebLearn running in parallel. This dual service will last for two years at which point the old WebLearn system will become read-only for a year before being decommissioned.

6.11. The IT Learning Programme (ITLP) 2007-08

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/

6.11.2. Developments in the Year 2008-9

The IT Learning Programme (ITLP) is part of the Learning Technologies Group (LTG). Led by a team of experienced teachers, the ITLP offers a wide range of IT courses and events. We work to ensure that the course programme reflects the needs of the University and meets the requirements of staff and students. This year the ITLP team delivered over 600 courses and the level of bookings for 2008-2009 is comparable with academic year 2007-08, even though the renovation of two rooms interrupted our programme. It is notable that the Fundamentals series, which are free, saw an increase of over 60% in bookings.

As an integral part of the taught programme, the teachers also provide consultancy and solutions on request, primarily to academics and staff of the University. These contacts mostly arise from courses. We provide advice and guidance on the use of educational technology by academics and educators, and pass our experience of teaching and room design to other areas of the University.

The 2008-2009 programme saw a number of additions and changes. In response to feedback we offered courses out of term as well as in full term. Our collection of study materials became available through WebLearn where any member of the University can use them at anytime.

We introduced several one-day workshops on topics such as Copyright, Digital Imaging and Microsoft Project. We took the decision to end the core European Computing Driving Licence (ECDL) at Oxford. As IT skill levels increase we aim to meet the need for certification by expanding the Advanced ECDL training programme to provide an internationally recognised computing qualification for staff and students.

Behind the scenes, the course booking system has been developed further and we held a successful trial of new communication methods such as SMS text messaging.

Table 27. Course bookings (bookings via the online booking system and manually collected figures)

Course	Number of bookings
Advanced ECDL	42
ECDL	378
Computer 8	80
Breakfast	143
Wiser sessions	1011
Lunchtime	925
3 hour sessions	4227
Fundamentals	791
Podcasting	228
WebLearn	314
Full day workshops	153
Closed courses	449
Inductions	2926
Strategies for Research	424
Skills Toolkit	218
Total Bookings	12309

Our courses are open to all University members and other affiliated groups. The following charts show bookings by status and by affiliation (figures from the ITLP online booking system).

Figure 14. ITLP bookings by status

Figure 15. ITLP bookings by affiliation

6.12. Learning Technology Group Services

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/

Learning Technology Group (LTG) Services provides the backbone to many LTG activities, offering advice on and expertise in the use of technology for learning and teaching to departments around the University. We have particular expertise in audio-video multimedia, learning design, systems interoperability, and gathering user requirements. Key 2008-09 work has included preparing the transition for departments to move to the next generation of the institutional learning environment WebLearn Beta. This pilot work has involved the selection of early adopters, and running training sessions and outreach activities to pilot all the new features of this institutional VLE software.

A major initiative in this period was preparing the technical architecture and content for a University-wide podcasting service and from October 7th 2008 launching the service in partnership with Apple as Oxford on iTunes U. The free Oxford on iTunes U service features audio and video podcasts aimed at the general public, including potential applicants and those interested in Oxford research. Highlights include lectures by senior academics; information about Oxford's world-leading research projects; a film about Oxford’s major fundraising campaign featuring Michael Palin; and podcasts about how to apply to the University, including choosing a college and a course and preparing for interviews.

The August 2009 usage statistics from the iTunes U portal show that the university podcasts have been downloaded 1,003,534 times in the first 44 weeks since the launch. The success of this initiative has meant that many more departments are now using the service to disseminate their public activities with over 1,000 items available to download by September 2009. To make sure all users can access the material, a parallel website has been created to meet the needs of those restricted to web only access (http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk). The service is continuing to produce world leading content with unique value, resulting in between 30-50,000 podcasts being downloaded each week, and several talks appearing in the global top 20 downloads with around 3-5,000 downloads per week. This initiative has created a unique portfolio of teaching and outreach material and for the first time allowed access to key audio and video material through a single University presence benefiting the students within the University and also a wider audience interested in Oxford’s activities.

Figure 16. Statistics supplied by Apple Inc for iTunes U

Since the launch the section has continued to improve and expand the help, support and services offered by the Podcasting Team at OUCS, including regular briefing sessions run fortnightly and by providing a framework, OXITEMS, that allows departments to adopt a standard workflow for releasing audio and video content into these global portals. The core of the work has been made possible through additions to the RSS service OXITEMS by the OUCS Information Services Team.

LTG Services is involved in several national ICT projects funded by external sources such as the JISC. Funding was received for the section staff to work on Steeple (http://steeple.oucs.ox.ac.uk/) — a study exploring enterprise-level technology for audio and video processing. Steeple is a collaboration with the University of Cambridge and The Open University, sharing technical knowledge and skills. LTGS also received funding from the HEA and JISC for OpenSpires (http://openspires.oucs.ox.ac.uk), a one-year pilot project finishing in May 2010, to instigate and document the process of creating more open content from Oxford’s institutional podcasting activities. This project involves working closely with academics from a range of departments who wish to release more of their content to a global audience. The team also started the Learning Design Support Environment for Lecturers (LDSE) project, which is developing an interactive learning design tool to support teachers who are moving to blended learning. The LDSE project (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/) is led by the Institute of Education, London and is funded by /ESRC/EPSRC.

LTG Services also plays a role in disseminating best practice in learning and teaching. Activities include: running IT seminars; occasional workshops such as copyright for teaching and learning; the annual ‘Show and Tell’ OxTALENT event; and a regular series fortnightly series on communication techniques for podcasting and iTunesU. The section also runs two annual ITC conferences in the spring, which this year attracted international speakers and were both oversubscribed. This year’s Shock of the Old conference focused on Digital Literacy, and the Beyond Walls conference looked at developments in enterprise level audio-visual technology and podcasting. Finally, LTG Services lent its expertise to teach on and help support the Master’s degree course in e-Learning at the Department of Educational Studies.

6.13. Software Licensing

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/sls/

OUCS administers a number of software agreements for commonly requested software packages for personal computers. The University is thus able to make considerable savings against the individual purchase cost. A total of 26,743 software licenses were issued this year.

A Campus agreement enables us to rent the most popular Microsoft products, eg Windows upgrades and Office Professional. Work-at-home rights are also included in this agreement. 4,010 licenses were added during the year; the rental charge was £313,944.

A Microsoft Select agreement, operated via the Computing Services Shop, allows for the purchase of other Microsoft products. 2,392 licenses were added during the year.

The budget for site-licensed software used throughout the University currently stands at £101,296. Products include SPSS, EndNote, Exceed, and Sophos for which 4,305 licenses were added this year. Following a review of software funded from this budget we were able to add Matlab and Reference Manager, previously funded by departmental contribution. Two new products: Sigmaplot and PDF Convertor Pro have been added, each has funding secured for three years.

OUCS also administers various software contracts on behalf of groups of departments to assist in gaining more favourable pricing; this year £53,169 worth of software was purchased and subsequently paid for by contributing departments.

6.14. Computer Hardware Breakdown Service

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/breakdown/

The Computer Hardware Breakdown Service offers a very economically priced breakdown service for personal computers and their peripherals such as printers. It is available to University institutions, colleges and associated institutions. It is also available to University members, including students, on a personal basis for their privately owned equipment. In essence, for a modest fixed fee, the service provides for an engineer to visit on-site, anywhere in the mainland UK, by the next business day after a fault being reported; the fault should be fixed within a further 8 working hours, or an equivalent item of equipment will be offered as a loan until the repair is completed.

OUCS monitors call-outs and reports of unsatisfactory service, and the service (offered by an external company) has been extremely good. The number of items registered continues to fall, caused by a general trend in the industry of providing at least three-year warranties as standard; in the case of equipment purchased by the ICT Support Team, a four year warranty is purchased. However, there is scope for encouraging a greater student and staff uptake for their personally owned machines as there is evidence that this group is less likely to have alternative breakdown cover and is often critically inconvenienced by hardware failure.

Table 29 shows the numbers of different types of equipment registered, and their ownership.

6.15. Printing Services

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/printing/

The Ryobi 512H two colour printing press provides the department with the ability to produce very high quality full colour print runs for its publications as well as the capacity to take on work from other departments and colleges.

The printing jobs range from leaflets, forms and stationery up to books, in single and full colour. A total of 800,000 impressions were made during the year.

6.16. OUCS Data Centre and Operations

The OUCS Operations Team manage the day to day running of the Data Centre at 13 Banbury Road. This includes environmental monitoring in the facility. Many environmental conditions are monitored to ensure optimum conditions for equipment, such as air temperature, air-flow speed, and humidity. The graph below shows a snapshot of temperature over a 24-hour period on the 6th June 2009 on air conditioner 5’s hot inlet in the data centre at 13 Banbury Road.

Figure 17. Temperature, OUCS Data Centre, 6th June 2009

A reconfiguration of the air-flow into the data centre was carried out in the spring of 2009. Modern data centres introduce cool air via a raised floor plenum and hot exhaust air is extracted via the ceiling (either in a plenum or just from the free space at ceiling height). The OUCS data centre has an air conditioning system which was designed in the opposite configuration. Cold air is introduced via the ceiling plenum and waste heat is extracted via the floor plenum. In a modern centre this is obviously inefficient as waste heat will always try to rise. Extra floor grilles and ceiling vents were fitted as part of this exercise which has reduced the overall temperature in the data centre and reduced “hot spot” areas.

The lighting in the data centre will be converted to motion sensing passive infrared (PIR) detection (October 2009). This will reduce the lighting bill for the centre and also reduce the heat load by around 9-10kW which will make the air conditioning more efficient.

During Michaelmas term 2009 a tender will be put together to carry out a feasibility study into refurbishing the facility. This will look at the viability of refurbishing whilst the facility is operational.

A new Data Centre is being constructed in the basement of the Oxford Molecular Pathology Institute (OMPI) Building in the University Science Area. The building is currently under construction and the data centre space is due to be handed over to OUCS in the first quarter of 2011.

6.17. NSMS

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/nsms/

NSMS are a team of IT professionals who, as part of OUCS, works throughout Oxford University, within departments, colleges and associated institutions. The team offers a wide range of chargeable IT services which are aimed specifically at departments (which may or may not have an IT officer), colleges, associated institutions and any member of the University in need of specific IT services to supplement existing internally provided services or as the primary source of IT support. The team has the flexibility to act quickly and aims to bridge the gap between what an organisation wants to achieve and what its time and resources allow. SMS activities have continued to expand over the last year.

This is the first year that the team has had the benefit of a full time administrator and it has taken the opportunity to develop its billing procedures into a more streamlined process.

The requirement for Apple Mac workstation and server support continues to expand within the University so in order to meet this demand, a new member will be recruited to the team to assist in this area.

The capacity for the VM for rent service had to be increased last year and at the same time this led to an improvement in the resilience of the service with more storage and a further server.

The shared virtual infrastructure that was developed for BSP and the ICT ST during the first half of 2008 went into service in mid July 08. This was a major new venture for BSP and the ICT ST, involving a highly resilient system design split across two sites. It exploits virtualisation technology to provide a highly resilient, high availability infrastructure that can be seen as a proof of concept for an internal cloud infrastructure. The NSMS team is managing the underlying infrastructure (VMware ESX, storage and network), leaving BSP and ICT staff free to concentrate on the transfer of existing services and the development of new services into this highly resilient virtual environment. Currently there are over 160 servers running in the infrastructure, at this time consisting of only 14 physical servers. As might be expected, the system has reached capacity and new storage has been purchased, with plans for more physical servers in the near future.

Colleges and departments continue to consider virtualising their infrastructure and the NSMS team has been involved in a number of these projects, advising on system design, implementation and trouble shooting.

NSMS services are currently being supplied to 75 different departments, 21 Colleges and 6 associated institutions.

Table 30 shows the distribution of NSMS income by University division, college and other groupings. The Central Administration group includes the following departments: Careers Service, Counselling Service, Development Office, Examination Schools, Occupational Health, Oxford Learning Institute, PRAS, Public Affairs Directorate, Safety Office, Sheldonian, Sports, and University Club.

6.18. IT Support Staff Services (ITS3)

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/its3/

The ITS3 service level description was last updated in May 2009 and may be consulted at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/internal/sld/its3.xml.

ITS3 has recruited a new 50% FTE technical assistant (Rob Zachlod) who started in January 2009 and another member of staff (Elsa Smith) has taken on ITS3 administration on a part-time basis. Both have made excellent starts to their work with ITS3.

The Head of ITS3 continues to serve on UCISA Staff Development Group (SDG) and its subgroup for distributed IT Support Staff. ITS3 acts as the contact point for the Oxford University British Computer Society Group which now available to all registered IT Support Staff. The Head of ITS3 has in the reporting period undertaken a large-scale review of IT provision, management and support in a college and in the department of Chemistry. The Head of ITS3 has taken part in several recruitment exercises with colleges and departments as well as helping the Help Centre in recruiting a new advisor.

ITS3 has been working closely with the Groupware Implementation Team, taking a major role in planning and consultation with IT Support Staff and has hosted a large number of briefing and training sessions to prepare support staff for the mass migration in Autumn 2009. ITS3 has worked with the Office of the Director of IT on the Conditions of Connection exercise, helping to define the scope for the project, making the financial bid, and hosting five briefing events to enable ITSS to engage properly with the process.

ITS3 continues to handle copyright infringement notices on behalf of the University and acts as a broker for the Janet SSL server certificate service. To date around 700 certificates have been issued saving Oxford in the order of £250,000 at average prices. ITS3 remains extremely grateful for the help provided by ITSS in dealing promptly with copyright infringements and the reduction in risk to the University this represent.

ITS3 web resources continue to grow and ITS3 is particularly grateful to all ITSS (including those in OUCS) who have made valuable contributions to the ITSS Wiki: there have been edits to just over 100 distinct pages during the reporting period.

ITS3 continues to provide seminars and information sessions for IT Support Staff in the reporting period around 50 distinct sessions of about 1 hour, with an average of 10-20 IT Staff attending, were delivered. Topics have included technical training on MS Exchange 2007 and Windows 2008; Linux administration; VMWare; 3Com Switches, Cisco CCNA and ITILv3. ITS3 ran three new IT Staff induction seminars and a roundup of news and plans from key OUCS service providers in advance of Michaelmas term.

The principal events organised during the year were the IT Suppliers’ Exhibition in December 2008 and the 2009 ICT Forum conference in July, with a record 343 attendees. Social events also continue to gain in popularity, many of these being arranged by ITSS outside of OUCS. The ITSS Summer Barbecue, once again held at the Institute of Anthropology in August, was a huge success despite the awful weather on the morning of the day it took place. The Christmas dinner at Pembroke College attracted a higher than usual number of guests.

6.19. ICT Support Team (ICTST)

http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/team

The ICT Support Team (ICTST) is a free-standing department within the Academic Services and University Collections (ASUC) division which collaborates closely with OUCS and delivers some University-wide services on their behalf.

The ICTST department was formed in January 2006 and is responsible for desktop IT services for the Computing Service (OUCS), The Library Service (OULS) and University Administration and Services (UAS). The services we provide to these departments include a centralised helpdesk, computer authentication, server management/support, network filestores, backup/restore services, building data networks, IT equipment purchasing/disposal, printing, PC/laptop management/support and computer security.

We are also responsible for some University wide services including Sophos Antivirus, WINS service, OUCS VPN and computer management as well as support for the OUCS lecture rooms and help centre. In addition to these services the ICTST department is delivering a number of IT service improvement and development projects aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of desktop IT services or in order to meet the changing requirements of the departments we support.

2008-09 was another busy year for the ICTST department. The following paragraphs summarise some of the highlights.

Our purchasing team organised a tender for desktop and laptop computers. These tenders were awarded to Dell and Lenovo respectively. We have opened these contracts to staff across the University so that they can take advantage of the price discounts when ordering new PCs or laptops.

We have expanded our desktop administration team to improve the packaging and management of applications. This has allowed us to keep on top of the increased numbers of application security vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited. We now fully manage a core set of applications and update them on staff computers in the three central departments when security vulnerabilities are announced. The same team has helped with the development and support for Apple Mac computers in the new Cherwell lecture room at OUCS.

The infrastructure team has improved services in OULS by delivering wireless coverage for 32 reading rooms across OULS. We have also built the server infrastructure for the new Search Oxford Libraries Online (SOLO) service and have implemented scanning to email in the Law, Social Sciences and Radcliffe Science libraries.

The Enhanced Computing Environment project (ECE) continued to deliver improvements for the three central departments of the University. Last year we built, with the assistance of NSMS and BSP, a highly resilient Virtual Infrastructure with the aim of improving server reliability and to consolidate systems. This year we have continued to move critical services from ageing hardware onto this more reliable and cost effective Virtual Infrastructure. We have also developed an identity management system to automate the management of computer user accounts and this has deployed in OUCS.

Although the ECE projects were delivering significant improvements for UAS staff, some problems remained and a more accelerated approach was requested. We have collaborated with BSP in the delivery of several projects aimed at modernising UAS IT systems. Notable projects include an XP upgrade, data network improvements, a Citrix remote access service, MS Office 2007 upgrade and printing improvements.

6.20. Marketing

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/publicity/

This year the OUCS Marketing section has been focusing on using existing methods of communication and publicity to promote new and upgraded services. Leaflets, posters, web pages, Blueprint adverts, newsfeeds and banners have been used within OUCS, at specific events and around the wider University to promote diverse items such as the introduction of Nexus groupware, OUCS becoming a certified Apple centre, the launch of the new WebLearn service, the demise of long form email addresses, and developments in mobile computing. With all these advancements and changes, OUCS is very grateful for the continuing support, co-operation and high level of expertise provided by distributed IT Support Staff, for example in scheduling email migrations.

OUCS regularly provides reports to University committees and groups, such as the ICT Forum. This year has seen the development of an email list, oucs-news, which any member of the University can sign up to and which provides termly updates of news from OUCS plus special notices and features. Next year, we plan to develop a podcast about the work of OUCS for download and display at events such as the UAS Conference, ICTF Exhibition and Freshers Fair. OUCS News continues to be produced once a term and distributed to all colleges and departments.

6.21. Web Design Consultancy

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/webdesign/

The Web Design Consultancy (WDC) was established in September 2007 to provide support for the University in its web-related activities. The service was in part established in order to replace the discontinued Academic Computing Development Team which formerly provided support in this area. WDC provides a central point of guidance on Web design within the University, helping to ensure that Oxford-affiliated websites are attractive, usable, accessible and fit-for-purpose, and that they adhere to the relevant guidelines. The WDC also aims to ensure that these goals be achieved at an appropriate cost.

WDC has continued to make progress over the last year. The service assisted approximately 65 groups within the University, including divisions, colleges, departments, research groups and research projects. This is an increase from the approximately 45 units assisted in its first year of operation. The vast majority of these groups have received at least one consultancy meeting.

The service has also undertaken design and development work for 13 clients and has assisted a dozen groups in finding freelance developers. WDC has also provided in-depth consultancy on a number of Web projects, including a detailed scoping project for the Ashmolean Museum.

To evaluate this new service, the WDC produced a survey that was sent to all WDC's clients from its first year of operation (2007-08). The survey indicated that clients find an initial consultancy meeting extremely useful. Respondents reported that advice given during consultation meetings was very useful; 95% of respondents indicated that the assistance they received saved them time. This is a clear indication that time spent meeting individuals to discuss their Web projects is time well spent. The survey also indicated that specific advice on Web design was very useful.

6.22. Human Resources and Administration

OUCS has seen many changes this year with the formation of the Nexus team, the i-Tunes U project and external funding being secured for many new projects. The total number of staff has increased to 148, made up of 109 Academic related staff and 39 Support staff grades.

We have carried out 27 recruitment exercises during the period that resulted in 15 new members of staff (some recruitment campaigns were hard to fill and so were re-advertised). We also said goodbye to 7 members of staff, including one who returned to his native Australia and others who returned to full-time study. It proved hard to find staff with the relevant skills and expertise to fill some of the Nexus posts which resulted in secondment opportunities for some of our existing staff.

Changes in UK Border regulations meant having to put into place extra procedures to deal with visa requirements. In addition to this the University has introduced a new recruitment protocol; all new recruitment and existing posts are now subjected to a rigorous approval process, specifically designed to challenge the affordability of recruitment and to ensure that the department’s needs are being fully met.

6.23. Report on open source involvement at OUCS

OUCS staff make extensive use of open source software to deliver services, and take advantage of the freedom to examine the source code, fix it, and enhance it. The department recognizes that participation in community open source development is valuable for both staff development and enhancement of the University’s reputation, as well as improving the software itself for the benefit of all. However, the copyright in code created during this process by University staff typically belongs to the University, and is not distributed outside the institution without due permission.

Staff who wish to contribute to open source projects seek the permission of the Director before doing so. Requests are normally approved if the software is relevant to departmental work, and the Director is satisfied that the University is free to contribute the software in question. A catalogue of open source involvement approved in 2008-2009 is listed below.

7.1. British National Corpus (BNC)

http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

The British National Corpus (BNC) is a major linguistic resource, developed at OUCS and widely used by language learners and teachers worldwide as a unique snapshot of British English at the end of the 20th century.

During the year 2008-9, distribution of the BNC and of BNC-baby has continued stable, with about 250 new licences sold worldwide. The number of support queries handled has also remained fairly steady, varying between 10 and 30 a month. There have been two upgrades to the software, but no change in the corpus itself, access to which is now also available from several other sites on the Internet.

In April Lou Burnard gave an invited keynote speech on using the corpus in second language learning at the Taiwan National University of Technology.

7.2. Core User Directory Project (CUD)

http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/projects/coreuser/

The Core User Directory (CUD) Project, operating under the aegis of ODIT, is developing a pilot directory service, aiming to make available a minimal set of attributes and a unique identifier for any individual who has a defined relationship with the University. The work of the project is directed by the CUD Working Party, with representation from across the collegiate University.

The CUD pilot implementation consolidates and reconciles personal data dynamically from five major central data sources: the University Card database, the Oracle Student System, the OUCS Registration database, Staff Records, and University Telecomms. As proof of concept, the CUD also includes data feeds provided by two University departments (DPAG and Earth Sciences), and by a college (New). All the data is refreshed daily.

The usability of the system was evaluated against a range of use cases, proposed when the project was initiated. The final report on the pilot (available from http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/projects/coreuser/Pilot/finalReport.xml) describes the conduct of the project in more detail and proposes a successor service to continue it in the future.

7.3. Embedding institutional data curation services in research (EIDCSR)

http://eidcsr.oucs.ox.ac.uk

The EIDCSR project is funded by the JISC from April 2009 until September 2010 and builds on the work undertaken as part of the ‘Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data Management’ project. The project aims to scope and address the research data management and curation requirements of two collaborating research groups in the University of Oxford that generate and share data.

The project is an intra-institutional collaboration led by OUCS that brings together the Cardio Mechano-Electric Feedback Group, the Computational Biology Group, OULS, OeRC, and Research Services. IBM are also contributing to the project.

7.4. e-Infrastructure use cases and service usage models (eIUS)

http://www.eius.ac.uk/

The e-Infrastructure Use Cases and Service Usage Models (eIUS) project operated from 1 April 2007 to 31 July 2009. The project documented, though use cases and videos, how e-infrastructure is being used to facilitate research across a variety of subject areas. In total, sixteen subject areas including archaeology, bioinfomatics, electrical engineering, and organic chemistry have been documented with experience reports, use cases and short videos.

The overall methodology employed by the eIUS Project was designed to capture authentic examples of e-infrastructure usage. The use cases serve to demonstrate the ‘normality’ of using advanced IT within research, by anonymising the scenarios and focussing on the processes rather than the technologies per se. The eIUS videos are intended as ‘research trailers’ lasting from 3-5 minutes, viewable online via a dedicated youTube channel, and provide a visual means of engaging researchers with the possibilities offered by e-infrastructure.

Both the use cases and the videos proved to be attractive outputs for the participants in the project and the methodology, especially for the creation of use cases, was used by other projects within the lifetime of the eIUS Project. The creation of authentic ‘stories’ the substance of which can be traced back to experience reports (in turn derived from interviews) is a viable means of engaging with different communities, especially in order to give recognisable form to the unfamiliar.

The project outputs, including a detailed final report, are available from the eIUS Website. The project was one of three projects funded by the JISC within its Community Engagement strand and was undertaken in partnership with the National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS) in Manchester.

7.5. ENRICH

http://enrich.manuscriptorium.com/

OUCS is a project partner on the EU-funded project ENRICH. RTS staff working on this are Lou Burnard, James Cummings, and Sebastian Rahtz, with assistance from Elizabeth Solopova in the Bodleian.

The objective of the ENRICH project is to create a base for the European digital library of cultural heritage (manuscript, incunabula, early printed books, archival papers etc.) by integration of existing but scattered electronic content within the Manuscriptorium digital library.

The final project meeting was in November 2009.

7.6. Erewhon

http://erewhon.oucs.ox.ac.uk

Erewhon has a staffing of 3 FTE within Information Services at OUCS.

7.7. University Groupware Project

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/nexus

Groupware is software that helps users to work collaboratively within groups, and includes: email, on-line calendar, shared documents, workflows, web pages, shared contact lists and on-line collaborative tools.

7.8. Intute: Arts and Humanities

http://www.intute.ac.uk/

Intute is a free online gateway to the best websites for students, teachers, and researchers in UK higher education. It employs a distributed network of subject experts to find and review websites appropriate for academic use, which may then be searched and browsed via the website or searched via a Z39.50 server.

Intute: Arts and Humanities is led by the University of Oxford with staff at Oxford, Manchester Metropolitan University, and the University of the Arts London. The service is primarily funded by the JISC.

The most significant development in the services over the last year was the relaunch of the website in July 2009. The new site presents a more integrated service structure and a cleaner interface. Whilst previously each of the four subject groups had their own home page, the emphasis is now upon presenting the entire catalogue to the users as an integrated whole. The front page provides an entry into nineteen broad subject areas, such as the ‘humanities’, ‘modern languages and area studies’, and the ‘creative and performing arts’. Each broad section allows the user to drill down into specific disciplines, sub-disciplines, and topics of study. The metadata behind the service has been standardised and streamlined, and features such as the subject-specific virtual training suites have been updated and redesigned.

Other highlights of the year 2008-2009 included:

• Creating two ‘Critical Thinking’ tutorials to help develop students' academic and digital literacy skills;
• Producing eight new or updated Virtual Training Suites, for American Studies, Archaeology, History, Modern Languages, Performing Arts, Philosophy, Photography, and Religious Studies;
• Recruiting several new cataloguers to support modern languages;
• Adding to the catalogue new records for materials deposited with the former AHDS;
• Offering internet research training to students at the University of Oxford and beyond, via various workshops and presentations;
• Publishing a journal article on fostering the effective use of Web resources;
• Integrating the Arts and Humanities Group's modern languages and area studies catalogue with the Social Science Group's overlapping European studies catalogue;
• 7,284 records reviewed and updated; 3,481 new resources added to the database.

7.9. Information Security Best Practice (ISBP)

http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/projects/ISBP/

The ISBP activity was governed by the ICT Forum's Information Security Advisory Group (http://www.ictf.ox.ac.uk/siaags.html), supported by the Office of the Director of IT and OUCS, and endorsed by the PRAC ICT Sub-committee (PICT).

The ICT Forum's Information Security Advisory Group was tasked with producing a Self-Assessment Questionnaire, which asked units to assess their own approach to Information Security against a set of best practice recommendations: http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/projects/ISBP/selfassess/questionnaire.pdf. The questionnaire was based on the two policy documents written by the Office of the Director of IT: Conditions for Connection (http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/ITgovernance/conditionsforconnection.xml) and Security of Information (http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/ITgovernance/securityofinformation.xml). These documents complemented reports produced by the University’s Internal Auditors. They address the issues relating to effective and secure operation of services across a devolved ICT infrastructure (such as exists within the collegiate University).

The questionnaire was designed to help units within the University to assess their approach to IT management, security and operations. Returns were received from 60 units: 18 Colleges and Halls, 32 Departments/Faculties and 10 Central Service providers and Museums. Each of these units will receive a confidential report based on the answers provided, to help that unit identify its strengths and weaknesses. (Information provided remains confidential and is anonymised within the reports.)

An individual report shows a unit’s responses as compared with the responses of similar units (e.g. Colleges and Halls, Departments/Faculties or Central Service providers and Museums) The report focuses on areas where further resources may need allocating and is intended to be the first step in helping units to identify and deploy such resources.

When the self-assessment exercise began, the Director of IT committed to supporting units that identify where resources are required. The extent of that support is dependant upon the resources made available from PICT. The possibility of this follow up support was brought before PICT at its meeting in Michaelmas term 2009); PICT were supportive of a follow up activity which gave further support to units. The Budget Sub-committee have therefore been asked to consider funding in this area whilst PICT considers the appropriate framework for the follow up activity.

7.10. Low Carbon ICT Project

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/greenit/index.xml?ID=desktop (detailed information about the service at Oxford); http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/lowcarbonict/ (public project website)

The low-carbon ICT project was funded by the JISC Institutional Exemplars Programme and ran from October 2007 to May 2009. The remit of the Project Team was to:

• Develop a production-level institutional wake on LAN service
• Develop a prototype desktop power management monitoring service
• Host two open-invite conferences on the theme of green computing
• Conduct further research into low-carbon ICT (see eg paper by Noble, Curtis and Tang: http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/GreenDesktopComputingattheUniv/182037)

The final event organised by the team – Keeping IT Clean – was held at Said Business School in May 2009. It brought together experts from Higher and Further Education to discuss how educational organisations can reduce IT-related greenhouse gas emissions. This event built on a conference held in the previous year to stimulate discussion on the practical measures that can be taken to build ICT services that both reduce carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate the effects that higher energy prices have on our institutions.

During the course of the low-carbon ICT project, the team developed tools and techniques to reduce energy consumption and costs in networked desktop computing environments. By installing a ‘FiDo’ server software, IT support staff can plug into two new services:

The power management monitoring service (PMM) plots a graph of how many computers are switched on at any moment; as the expression goes, ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’. This facility helps groups to see how many devices are consuming electricity during the day and night, which in turn supports the objective of reducing the number of devices that are switched on when they are not doing useful work.

The wake on LAN (WOL) service allows computers to be switched on remotely, which makes it possible to switch them off more often. For instance, computers don’t need to be left switched on (a) just in case users need their computer when away from the office; (b) so that the HFS service can perform a backup; (c) to avoid users waiting for a computer to boot up each morning.

At the time of the 2008 conference it was policy or simply common practice for most departments and colleges to leave desktop computers switched on all the time. This need no longer be the case: the tools developed through the project allow desktop computers to be powered down when not in use with, importantly, no inconvenience to the user nor to their IT support teams.

7.11. Learning Design Support Environment (LDSE)

http://www.ldse.org.uk

The Learning Design Support Environment (LDSE) project began in September 2008. Funded by the ESRC/EPSRC’s TLRP-TEL programme, it builds on previous research into ways to support learning design, including the Phoebe Pedagogy Planner tool developed by the LTG and TALL. Specifically, the project is researching and designing an online environment that will allow lecturers in HE to experiment with innovative approaches to the curriculum and the creative possibilities opened up by digital technologies. The aim is to make it easier – and more appealing – for them to draw inspiration from good practice by other teachers and to gain access to the fruits of research into teaching and learning. The conceptual design of the LDSE is underpinned by a model of online collaborative learning, with teachers developing their practice through reflection, discussion and sharing of ideas and materials within and across institutions.

The project is a collaboration among six institutions: Institute of Education, Birkbeck University of London, LSE, Royal Veterinary College, London Metropolitan University and the University of Oxford. Its working patterns and relationships are underpinned by the notion of interdisciplinarity, in line with the objectives of the TLRP-TEL programme. Its team members are a mixture of experts from the learning sciences, computer science, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. The research activities are led by the Oxford team, which now has extensive experience of research into learning design; however, the computer scientists have been actively involved in the workshops in which the project has gathered data on lecturers’ current practice. These data have provided some of the raw materials for the more technologically focused activities, which have been investigating how knowledge about learning design can be represented computationally as an ontology and prototyping the user interface (see illustration).

Figure 18. “Paw print” visualisation of the overview screen for the LDSE created in PowerPoint for evaluation with lecturers at London Metropolitan University in June 2009

7.12. OSS Watch

http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/

OSS Watch is a JISC-funded innovation support centre. We provide advice, guidance and support to UK Further and Higher Education wishing to engage with open source software development and use. OSS Watch has been hosted by OUCS since its inception in 2003.

This year saw the introduction of strategic projects, which receive additional support from the OSS Watch team. This has been highly successful with, for example, the OpenCast community receiving grant funding from the Mellon Foundation and Wookie, from the University of Bolton, being accepted into the Apache Software Foundations Incubator.

In the last year we have published many briefing notes, conference reports, and case studies covering issues such as sustainable open source development, community management and engagement, IPR management, and commercialisation of open source solutions.

OSS Watch have also been successful in securing funding from the European Commission to extend their reach into teaching open source development practices within higher and further education.

7.13. Oxford Text Archive

http://www.ota.ox.ac.uk/

The Oxford Text Archive continues to collect, archive, preserve and distribute literary and linguistic resources in electronic form, providing repository services not only for researchers in Oxford, but nationally and internationally as well. As well as access to the archive, scholars within Oxford can also benefit from advice and support in the planning, creation, description and use of electronic resources. The OTA works within the Research Technologies Service to support research within Oxford, and also to investigate and build the research support infrastructure. The key initiative in which the OTA is currently involved is CLARIN, the major pan-European research infrastructure for language resources and technologies. The OTA's current workplan within the CLARIN framework involves building the technical underpinnings for large-scale collaborative research with the many diverse datasets and tools in repositories and across across Europe and beyond.

The OTA co-ordinates an informal network of people interested in working with linguistic corpora in Oxford, runs an OUCS course on methods in corpus linguistics in Hilary term, and also works closely with the Oxford e-Research Centre in developing research projects in the Humanities, in particular through the Digital Humanities at Oxford initiative. It is one of the key repository services within the emerging frameworks for research data management across the University. Through these numerous connections and ventures, the OTA seeks to constantly renew and revitalise its connections with research in the University, and ensure that it not only preserves the data in the archive, but makes its services relevant to the constantly evolving needs of scholarship in the digital age.

7.14. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) Project

http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/pgp/

Following the progress report written in April 2008, a service level definition (SLD) detailing the conditions under which the trial should run was agreed with the Proctors in August 2008. Following the configuration of the server, an induction session was arranged at OUCS in October 2008 for IT support staff from the 4 volunteer units. With one unit dropping out on the day of the induction the numbers were reduced to 3 units taking part in the trial. Each unit was offered between 10-15 licences and, based on the induction session, the local ITSS were asked to assist with the rollout of the software within the unit. This would include assisting users with the installation process then providing local support to the end users. Support was provided on a best efforts basis to the IT support staff themselves. The ITSS taking part were asked to provide any results/feedback by the end of Hilary Term. Despite initial enthusiasm, the numbers of end users taking part in the trial has proved to be low with only 10 licences being used, in total, specifically for the exam papers project with an additional 7 licences being used internally for initial testing. Only the Faculty of Law provided a report at the end of the trial period. OUCS ran the PGP Universal Server for the management of policies and cryptographic keys.

The Units taking part and the number of users involved were therefore as follows:

• Faculty of Law (4 licences)

• Medical Sciences (4 licences)

• Physics (2 licences)

This service is not currently being widely used, and decisions now need to be made on whether, and how, to offer the service. This could be solely for the use of exam papers in preparation, or it could be adopted by the Groupware programme in order to offer a more widely available encryption service. For the purposes of this trial the project is now complete and a full report will be posted to http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/pgp/

7.15. OpenSpires project

http://openspires.oucs.ox.ac.uk

In April 2008, the Learning Technologies Group received national funding from the JISC and HEA for OpenSpires, a one-year pilot project investigating the release of open educational resources.

The OpenSpires project will build upon the success of Oxford on iTunes U by releasing more audio and video material from Oxford as ‘Open Content’. This means that the material will be free to re-use and redistribute provided it is used non-commercially and the creator is attributed.

7.16. Steeple Project

http://steeple.oucs.ox.ac.uk/

On October 2008 the JISC agreed to support a collaborative project between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge along with the Open University, to build on and disseminate their experiences of setting up a podcasting service for an institution. The overall aim of the project is to streamline processes involved in podcasting on an institutional scale and is largely a technical project. To that end, work packages have been created and distributed amongst the core partners on topics ranging from hardware and systems to legal policies and frameworks, institutional change, data aggregation systems, and more.

The success of the work has generated a wide community of UK HEI partners who are learning from and working with us to develop the project further. The project has also received further funding from the JISC to support a Benefits Realisation programme that is being led by the Cambridge partners. Within the next year, the initial project will have completed its objectives to document, report, and disseminate its findings and the BR programme should be reaching the end of its initial funding.

Reports, software and podcasts from the project are available at http://steeple.oucs.ox.ac.uk/

7.17. Modelling4All

http://modelling4all.org

The Modelling4All Project is developing a web-based tool designed to support teachers, learners and researchers, including those with little or no programming experience, to build, share, and discuss computer models. From within a Web browser, users assemble model components. Biology students build models of epidemics that spread over social networks during a single lab session, Said Business School students build models of artificial economies. All of this is tied together within a Web 2.0 community. The project is funded by the Eduserv Foundation from August 2007 to July 2010.

7.18. First World War Poetry Digital Archive

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

On the 11th November 2008, the joint project between OUCS and the English Faculty went live – launching the web site of the First World War Poetry Digital Archive and the Great War Archive (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit). This was a two-year project funded by JISC (completing in March 2009) presenting free to the world, primary source material related to the poetry and history of the war for anyone to use. It also placed this in an historical context, and created a series of teaching tools. The project also created the Great War Archive which was an experiment in engaging the public in a University research project by contributing material they personally owned. Overall the site exposed over 12,000 objects consisting of digital images, audio, and video.

The project now moves into a new stage – entitled RunCoCo (Running a Community Collection) – funded by JISC, to train and promote people in seting up online contribution sites to engage the public.

7.19. System Aided Compilation and Open Distribution of European Youth Language (SACODEYL)

http://www.um.es/sacodeyl/

The aim of this three-year project, which concluded on 31 September 2008, has been to develop an ICT-based system for the assisted compilation and open distribution of European teenagers’ talk in the context of language education. The project compiled spoken corpora for seven European languages and made these available in text, sound, and video format, together with language learning exercises based on the corpora. Tools, methods, and techniques developed for the project are also made available to facilitate future creation and use of similar corpus resources.

The project was supported by the European Commission within the Socrates/Minerva scheme (http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/socrates/minerva/index_en.html), bringing together researchers from seven European institutions, led by the University of Murcia, Spain. OUCS played an important part in designing the strategies and methods for the corpus collection, creation and annotation and also created the English component of the corpus as well as a portion of the English language learning material.

7.20. Scoping digital repository services for research data management

http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/projects/digitalrepository/

This scoping study was performed between January 2008 and March 2009 with the overall aim to scope the requirements for services to manage and curate research data generated at Oxford. The project interviewed researchers and service units across the university and organized three internal workshops. In addition to this, the project contributed to the UK Research Data Service feasibility study and the JISC funded DISC-UK DataShare project.

The project was led by the Digital Repositories Research Coordinator, based in the OeRC, who reported to the Head of Infrastructure Systems and Services, OUCS and the Keeper of Special Collections (Associate Director), Bodleian Library. The project was funded by the John Fell Fund through the ODIT.

7.21. Thema: Exploring the Experiences of Master’s Students in a Digital Age

http://thema.oucs.ox.ac.uk/

The Thema project (1st March 2007 to 30th November 2008) investigated the experiences of taught Master’s students at Oxford University in 2007-8, with specific reference to the role of digital technologies in supporting their academic and social lives. The project conducted a longitudinal exploration of the holistic experience of 23 students in order to uncover their learning strategies, the relationship between personally-owned and institutionally-provided technologies, changes in their use of technology and their significant learning experiences. The primary outputs from the project were 11 narrative case studies, supplemented by two online surveys gathering data from a larger sample of students on the same programmes.

Thema was funded by the JISC Learner Experiences of E-learning programme.

7.22. Text Encoding Initiative

http://www.tei-c.org/, http://tei.oucs.ox.ac.uk/

Oxford is one of the four host organizations of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Consortium, an international project creating detailed guidelines and XML schemata for the encoding of texts.

The editorial support team at Oxford (Lou Burnard, Sebastian Rahtz and James Cummings) have guided and implemented the decisions of the TEI Technical Council, and prepared releases of the TEI in November 2008, February 2009 and July 2009. These staff are also elected members of the TEI's Board of Directors (LB) and Technical Council (SR and LB).

Eight two- and three-day courses on the TEI were taught by one or more of the above in France, Ireland, Russia and Taiwan, and a week-long summer school with over 30 participants was offered in Oxford in July 2009.

Working through the RTS, staff have given assistance to University projects in History, Politics, English, and Classics, and to the Bodleian Library’s Shakespeare Quarto project. Arno Mittelbach and James Cummings created a new tool for comparing two editions of Holinshed's Chronicles, and Sebastian Rahtz worked with the CLAROS project to produce RDF against the CIDOC CRM for the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names.

Sebastian Rahtz and Arno Mittelbach worked from April 2008 to November 2008 with the central secretariat of the International Standards Organisation to define a TEI profile for authoring ISO standards, and developed tools for conversion to and from Microsoft Word 2007. This resulted in a successful proof of concept system demonstrated to other standards bodies, and a second stage pilot was commissioned for delivery in October 2009.

7.23. VLE Service Development

http://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/

From August 2008 to July 2009, the VLE team has been developing two separate systems: the pilot WebLearn Beta service (based on the Sakai CLE) and, to a minimal extent, the current WebLearn service (based on Bodington VLE).

Enhancements to the current service have included a few bug fixes and user requests, as well as the introduction of new tools to allow content and user group information to be moved to the upcoming new service.

Enhancements to the pilot service have centred on configuration, adding functionality to replicate facilities already available in the current service, services to aid the interoperability between the old and new WebLearn services and adding features that have been requested during user pilots or are required due to the unique nature of Oxford University.

Examples of work undertaken include: the further development of the hierarchy service to support the devolved IT model used at Oxford; integration with the OUCS Oak LDAP “people” service; integration with the JISC’s Turnitin plagiarism detection service; basic integration with OLIS; secure https access; the introduction of a Tutorial Sign-up tool; the ability to restore deleted files; and general bug fixes and improvements.

There have also been a number of initiatives on the user support side. A formal ITLP training course called “WebLearn Fundamentals” has been developed and successfully run several times. Two sets of user guides have been produced covering the majority of new WebLearn’s tools. These are known as “Step-by-step” and “Least You Need to Know” guides. All the guidance and training is coordinated through a combination of the completely revamped WebLearn area of the OUCS website and the “WebLearn Guidance” site hosted in the new WebLearn service. The latter site also contains case studies, showcase sites and information about accessibility, copyright and plagiarism detection.

Throughout the pilot year approximately 40 units or individuals were involved in the WebLearn Beta pilot program. The pilots have been drawn from each of the four academic divisions and cover both graduate and undergraduate courses. The pilot year has been judged a great success and has provided valuable feedback to the central team.

The new WebLearn production service was formally launched by Dr Stuart Lee to an invited audience of senior University staff on 30th June 2009; this service comprises old and new WebLearn running in parallel and will last for a two years at which point the old WebLearn system will become read-only for a year before being decommissioned.

7.24. UCISA

http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/

The Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) is hosted by OUCS. UCISA represents those responsible for delivering information systems and technology services in universities, colleges, and related institutions. UCISA’s main aims are to promote best practice amongst its members through events, awards, publications, and a network of contacts; and to represent the interests of its membership through lobbying, responding to consultations, relationships with other groups, and taking part in appropriate working groups and committees.

UCISA ran sixteen events last year. These ranged from one day seminars covering subjects as diverse as the implementation of the points based immigration system, supporting users with disabilities and electronic document and records management, to three multi-day conferences for directors of Information Services, heads of Corporate Information Services, and user support staff. The second leadership forum for heads of service was held in January.

UCISA published the results of its survey on technology enhanced learning in September 2008. The survey has been cited in publications by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, HEFCE and the JISC.

UCISA represented the community in discussions with a number of Government departments and its agencies during 2008-09. The implementation of the points based immigration system was a key topic during the year with UCISA representing the interests of both the higher and further education institutions and suppliers of student records systems. Work on shared services has continued during the year continues to top the agenda with UCISA being represented on the HEFCE Shared Services Advisory Group and taking part in discussions with suppliers. UCISA is on the steering group of the MIAP (Managing Information Across Partners) Programme and has worked closely with the JISC on their Green ICT and Flexible Service Delivery programmes.

Finally, UCISA responded to a number of consultations on behalf of the community on various topics including HEFCE’s sustainability policy, the Digital Britain paper and the proposals for legislation for addressing illicit peer to peer filesharing (Department of Business, Innovation and Skills) and the Inquiry into Higher Education launched by John Denham.

7.25. XAIRA

http://www.xaira.org/

XAIRA is a text searching program originally developed at OUCS for use with the British National Corpus (BNC) and subsequently revised as a general purpose open source XML search engine, usable on any corpus of well-formed XML documents.

At the end of this year, we announced a new stable release of the system. Version 1.25 fixes several outstanding issues and has been updated to work with the most recent versions of the underlying ICU and XERCES-C libraries.