National Learning Network - History

History

The seeds for the UK's National Learning Network (NLN) were sown in the spring of 1999 through the collaboration of the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and agencies like Becta, NILTA, FEDA and JISC. This government-funded project resulted in three main developments:

  • The Joint Information Services Committee (JISC) that had been managing the Joint Academic Network (JANET) on behalf of UK Universities and Research Councils would now be part-funded by the Further Education Funding Council. Consequently, all UK Colleges of Further Education would be connected to the JANET network and benefit from the data sets and learning resources available through it.
  • Support for the newly connected colleges would be provided by the JISC Regional Support Centres (RSC), set up by university and college partnerships to cover all FEFC funding areas. The RSCs' initial brief was to manage the connection of FE colleges to the JANET network, train local IT staff and provide high level technical support. As soon as the connections programme was over, emphasis shifted to promoting e-Learning and the electronic resources made available by the JISC.
  • A massive programme of learning materials development would be set up under the name of National Learning Network (NLN) to enable Further Education and the Adult and Community Learning (ACL) sectors to make best use of JANET and the enhanced ICT resources that these sectors enjoyed. A substantial body of work was developed by colleges, universities and commercial organisations and were made available to all qualifying parties. NLN has played a significant role in the adoption of Information and Learning Technology (ILT) by the post-16 education sectors in the UK.

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