Speaking at the close of the two-day Jisc Digital Festival Jisc's chief executive, Martyn Harrow highlighted the organisation's continued support in enhancing digital capabilities within the education and research communities.
The event which took place at the Birmingham ICC, saw over 650 delegates attend with 286 more following the coverage online.
In its inaugural year, the Jisc Digital Festival drew together 132 speakers from the sector to share best practice on a number of topics focused on enriching student experience and boosting research excellence. In addition to speaker-led sessions and workshops, the event offered an exhibition showcasing the practical teaching and research applications of technologies including augmented reality, 3D printing and cloud computing.
The event which has already been confirmed for March 2015, gained huge participation with an online audience, attracting over 16,000 tweets and #digifest14 trending in the UK. Online participants who logged on to watch the live stream of the event represented countries including Japan, Canada and South Africa.
Supporting Martyn Harrow's assertion that the best of digital is yet to come, keynote speaker Diana Oblinger, CEO of EDUCAUSE, also addressed the pertinent issue of higher education using data activity to monitor 'at risk' students and intervening with personalised support to avoid them failing their degree programme.
Other keynote addresses were delivered by City University London's vice-chancellor, Paul Curran and educationalist Sugata Mitra, who shared the success of his schools in the cloud experiment. Also presenting at the Jisc Digital Festival was futurologist Ray Hammond, who spoke about need to create a language of the future and how educators and researchers were in the privileged position to drive innovation and shape the digital future.
