JISC RSC YH Exchange News

The latest addition to the Excellence Gateway – the online portal from the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) – is a collaborative workroom to improve communication and joint working across teams and projects within the sector.

Comparable to an online classroom, the new collaborative workroom allows people to take part in joint planning and online discussions about key areas of work, by sharing documents, tracking progress and chatting with colleagues. Strict version control ensures efficient and confident project management – it’s ideal for organisations with regional offices, allowing teams to work as one in a secure and strictly private online environment. 

The collaborative workroom is intuitive and easy to use and requires no IT investment or support – a web browser is all that is needed to start accessing the following key services:

• Discussion forums: – where members are invited to take part in discussions, to mark-up contributions and to ask and answer questions about each others’ inputs. A likely outcome is the lessening of e-mail overload, improved understanding of issues and more effective project management.

• Shared library: – for uploading files relevant to a particular project or area of work. The library will be a repository of information that can facilitate knowledge transfer and its management.

• Task setter: – enabling the host to assign tasks and then track progress to completion. By providing a `single status record’, tasks can be constantly tracked with accurate, real time project information that is easily accessible to invited members. 

Registered users should simply log on to http://excellence.qia.org.uk, visit the Excellence Gateway Community section and click on “create a work room” to start collaborating. It takes less than a minute to set up, and for those who haven’t already registered on Excellence Gateway, this is simple and free via the homepage.