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The Jisc Award for Effective Use of Digital Technology in Further Education

Guidance notes for application form

This year, applicants are invited to complete a bespoke application form for each Beacon Award. This form will give applicants the opportunity to address all the criteria that will be assessed: the Beacon Award criteria, and the bespoke sponsor’s criteria that is tailored for each award.

AoC Beacon Awards Criteria:

The Beacon Awards celebrate exemplary practice. In all applications you should evidence innovation, sustainability and impact, ensuring that you clearly show there are features which promote exemplary teaching and learning, and that the initiative has wider relevance and applicability. The application should demonstrate:

Bespoke evaluation/quality assurance to influence continuing development of the initiative
Regard to the promotion of equality and diversity in the delivery of the programme.
That there is clear evidence of impact and sustainability.
That it has features which actively promote exemplary teaching and learning
That it is of benefit for one or more groups of students, recipients or trainees
That it has wider relevance and applicability which makes it of significant value to other colleges as an example of outstanding practice or innovation.

Jisc Sponsor’s Criteria:

Jisc is the UK higher, further education and skills sectors’ not-for-profit organisation for digital services and solutions and champions the importance and potential of digital technologies for UK education and research. This award seeks to celebrate an outstanding example of the ‘Use of Technology’ carefully designed to improve the student experience - in a digital age. Underpinning the project are likely to be enhancements to teaching, learning and assessment and/or the creation of business efficiencies. In every case, changes made will be valued by learners and easily evidenced. The innovative use of technology might be applied across specific provision or support a college wide approach. The project will be above and beyond what is the ‘norm’ and applications are not restricted to a specific type of course, for example ‘Information Technology’. Outstanding use of technology might be targeted at specific age groups or more generally those who study for all their time at a main campus or remotely.

Colleges wishing to apply for this award should be able to provide evidence for most, if not all, of the following:

Effective new models of delivery and/or assessment which enhance the learning experience and are supported by sound quality improvement strategies resulting in a significant increase in learner success, including learner retention, achievement, progression and satisfaction;
The use of technology which has resulted in improvements in the quality of teaching, learning and assessment and enriched the curriculum;
Effective use of technology which enables the development of increased organisational efficiency and has achieved significant quantified savings, in business processes and delivery of learning and other services, and/or released time and money; the model is transferable and has wider applicability
Effective leadership, management and governance, responsible for developing and sustaining a digitally capable institution via the wider use of technology to support learning and institutional development; such leadership will involve clear promotion of equality and diversity;
Innovative use of technology focused on the development the digital skills that successfully target particular groups or individuals.

The Jisc Award for Effective Use of Digital Technology in Further Education application form