BT cash source for small projects

Builders all carry mobile telephones, but they have reason to hate British Telecom.

Peter Thompson, head of BT Education Services, says that when dealing with university requests for funds the company has one principle: "no buildings".

Instead, BT has thought up another approach to its non-commercial dealings with higher education, which sit alongside a range of research contracts with many different university departments.

The result is not the BT Library or the BT Block but the BT University Development Awards, which have just reached their second year with Pounds 500,000 given to six projects from 80 submissions.

BT decided to award the money in sizeable lumps - up to Pounds 100,000, although some applicants bid for much less - against criteria which include extending access to higher education, expanding distance learning and enhancing existing courses.

The biggest winner this year is medical education, with one grant of the full Pounds 100,000 to Hertfordshire University and another Pounds 79,438 to Aston. The Hertfordshire award will be used for a project called Concourse, which works with health trusts to develop multimedia links between nursing academics and student nurses. A nursing tutor can have students at up to 40 sites, which makes it impossible to provide the support most students take for granted.

The other medical award will allow Aston to pioneer interactive, computer-aided learning for clinical pharmacy. For example, multimedia patients can be created for whom students can recommend therapeutic strategies - without having to face the malpractice suit later on.

Other projects being funded include Glamorgan University's move into distance education in the valleys, concentrating on engineering, mathematics and computing, work at Kent on multimedia methods for language skills, a project at Queen's in Belfast on higher education access for deaf people, and a collaborative project with the Open University, De Montfort and Humberside on supporting student projects and secondments.

Mr Thompson says the scheme may be expanded into higher education colleges with more external refereeing, possibly via bodies like the Association for Learning Technology. But there will be no turning back from one rule adopted this year for all entrants: "No faxes. Last year the machine ran red-hot on the final day."