What, or who, is shaping the market for continued innovation? The increasing number of part-government funded knowledge transfer partnerships (KTPs) that are springing up between universities and industry may be a significant factor (Ron Cooke, JISC Chair). This was good to hear as we’re hoping to develop a KTP programme as an extension of the development work we’re currently doing with the distance learning masters programmes in Engineering at the University of Bath. A KTP programme could transform the relationship between the university, the students and their employers, and would be a driving force for continued development in technology-enabled learning, communication and stakeholder collaboration.

Future-gazing beyond the boundaries of HE, it seems likely that more websites will take on a tiered access structure as adopted by the Financial Times, where subscriptions are offered for access to deeper content (Lord Puttnam, OU Chancellor) The demand for more reliable information is causing user-generated content sites such as wikipedia to target their energies towards the peer-review process, and static, ‘approved’ versions of the online encyclopaedia will become available (Angela Beesley, Wikimedia Foundation)

And finally… visual aids such as media projectors are still not allowed in the House of Lords. I envy the lords and ladies for never having to endure a speaker reading word-for-word from a powerpoint slide. However, I do feel a little concerned that the people deciding on the Climate Change Bill have to do so by drawing graphs in the air with their hands. Luckily Lord Puttnam is trying to persuade them of the potential benefits of allowing a little technology into the room.