BT Higher Education awards

UNIVERSITY OF TEESSIDE Pounds 66,300

Connecting to Success

Seeks to use information and communication technologies to help to raise aspirations among ten to 14 year olds in central Middlesborough, where statistics show a legacy of underachievement. The university plans to involve 900 children in creative learning activity using virtual reality, email, internet radio, and personal web page tools. The technology will support remote mentoring of pupils, where the university''s students act as mentors and role models.

UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER Pounds 99,798

NEAT - Networking for

Enterprise and Agribusiness Training

Aims to develop a model for flexible business development education for SMEs in Northern Ireland's Agribusiness, enhancing access to online training and support through a gateway service for farmers . The project will involve the institutes and agricultural colleges across the six counties of Northern Ireland. The University of Ulster will serve as a flexible learning centre.

HERIOT-WATT UNIVERSITY Pounds 94,520

Digital Resource Base

and Study Facility for Sign

Language Interpreting

There is national shortage of sign language interpreters and specialist interpreters who make a critical contribution to opening up access. This project will create a digital resource base and a study facility for sign language interpreters for reference, directed study and personal study. The project will tackle some of the issues of using videoconferencing for sign language training and remote interpreting in sign language.

DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY Pounds 99,872

REALITY - Real Time Access to Learning IT

The aim is to establish and test a model for increasing access to and widening participation in higher education through community-based, real-time learning networks. Target groups are adult learners, under represented and disadvantaged groups including Muslim women and girls, Hindu community members, young people with mental problems and young offenders. REALITY will link learners with university tutors via telecommunications networks.

Middlesex University Pounds 56,000

Return to Nursing: A Distance Learning Introduction

Using laptops and modems, offering a mixture of distance learning and web based packages. This will enable 70 per cent of theory-based updating to be undertaken remotely. The project aims to attract back to nursing groups unable to access a full time course delivered at Middlesex University.The project will be run by a project team and managed on a day to day basis by the assistant director of nurse education and training for the Whittington Hospital (a joint appointment between the hospital and university).