Policy and Strategy

The IT Policy and Strategy wing of SCROLLA, based at the Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh, was concerned with a wide range of issues surrounding the introduction and integration of ICT into education. Our main focus was on higher education policy, but the issues involved affect all levels of education from primary onwards.

Projects with which we were involved included:

  • ERADC, an ePortfolio research and development community devoted to learning about and contributing to ePortfolios and their development;
  • The SEUSISS survey of staff and student ICT skills, a multinational project funded by the European Commission under the Socrates Programme collecting information about the ICT experience, skills, confidence and attitudes of students and academic staff at seven partner universities across Europe;
  • The SPOT+ project on students' perspective on technology in teaching and learning in European universities;
  • EUCEBS (European Certificate in Basic Skills), a pilot project covering communication, ICT, numeracy, learning to learn, interpersonal skills and citizenship;
  • The UniGame project examining the concept of game-based learning with a focus on higher education sector and lifelong learning, funded under the Socrates Programme;
  • An evaluation of the use of ICT in the University of Edinburgh Scottish Qualification for Headship;
  • The EU-funded HECTIC project exploring strategies for e-learning in European higher education;
  • The SEEQUEL project (Sustainable Environment for the Evaluation of Quality in eLearning);
  • A one year collaborative project funded by the European Social Fund to further develop the Virtual Learning Space as a Scottish cross-sectoral research forum.

SCROLLA co-director Dr Jeff Haywood's research focused at the time mainly on the evaluation of large national, international or institutional ICT initiatives (as leader of the teams which evaluated used of Teaching and Learning Technology Programme materials for HEFCE and the Learning Technology Dissemination Initiative for SHEFC, and a member of an EU-funded project to evaluate institutional ICT strategies); and on students' attitudes towards and experiences of ICT during their undergraduate years.