The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced that it is funding a major new website launched to help universities reach their prospective students and give those students a taste of university teaching. The move follows Michael Gove's call for universities to play a greater role in the development of A-Levels.
Through The Faculties website, universities are already working to reach A-level students more effectively to improve recruitment and better retain students who understand what to expect from university. In less than three months, the website has attracted over 134,000 page views from 32,000 unique users.
The new site, funded by JISC and supported by the major exam boards, is providing free educational video podcasts by university lecturers on subjects taken directly from the A-level/IB curricula.
The Faculties contains over 360 video podcasts – over 80 hours of material – in English, maths, history, psychology, biology and chemistry. The material is keyword searchable and linked to exam board unit codes.
The project was supported by the JISC Content and BCE programmes, which help universities to use digital content and technologies to engage with other institutions both inside and outside academia.
The podcasts are so-called 'stretch and challenge' resources that explore the richness and complexity of the topics and help students prepare for post-secondary education.
The Faculties is already being used in around 20% of classrooms across the UK and the site has received hundreds of requests for new titles and for similar resources in other fields.
All the resources are licensed under creative commons so other universities and colleges can set up similar sites or reuse the podcasts as they wish.
