IT news in brief

High wired
Loughborough University has completed a £1 million five-year project to provide high-speed internet access for all its hall-based students. More than 5,100 rooms in Loughborough's 15 halls of residence now have Ethernet points, giving students access to the university intranet and to the web. Students are charged Pounds 3.10 a week for 24-hour access to the network.

Board talk
Reuters, Tesco and BAE Systems are among international businesses backing the United Kingdom's first masters degree in corporate communication. The part-time course, run by Umist's Manchester School of Management, will focus on getting effective communication into company boardrooms. Paul Jackson, professor of corporate communications, said: "Chief executives spend up to 75 per cent of their time communicating, yet with dramatic advances in information technology, the result is often worse, not better communication."
Details: www.umist.ac.uk

More than words
Talan Memmott, an artist and writer from San Francisco, has won the second trAce/Alt-X New Media Writing Competition organised by the trAce Online Writing Centre at Nottingham Trent University in partnership with the Alt-X Online Publishing Network.  Born in 1964, Mr Memmott has worked in video, installation art, painting and performance art, as well as working as a professional chef.
Winning site: ht tp://trace.ntu.ac.uk/newmedia/lexia/index.htm

Supply side
Key information on supply and demand in Scottish further education is available on the Scottish Further Education Unit's website. The SFEU headed a consortium, which includes Napier University's applied statistics department and the Centre for Research in Lifelong Learning at Glasgow Caledonian and Stirling universities. It mapped further education provision across the country alongside demand.
Details: www.sfeu.ac.uk/networks/resdevnet/supply_demand.htm

Hubs expand
The Resource Discovery Network is planning to expand and hopes to include further education centres in the move. The RDN is calling for proposals to establish subject catalogues or "hubs" in arts and the creative industries and sport, tourism and leisure. The Joint Information Services Committee-funded network provides access to more than 23,000 internet resources for learning, teaching and research communities.
The closing date for proposals is February 2.
Details: www.rdn.ac.uk/ publications/calls

Canal work
One thousand university teachers will take part in a three-day event about the future of education in Amsterdam next week. The event is being organised by Oro/Oro TeachersLab, an initiative from Amsterdam University of Professional Education.
Details: www.teacherslab.hva.nl