LTR220408 LTR08/03/04

Software and user-owned

technology
We envisage that a greater role will be played by user-owned
technology when the institution relocates to North Greenwich.
During the current academic year a “laptop pilot” is underway to
assess the technical implications of making use of user-owned
technology in teaching and learning. For academic year 2008-2009
Foundation Degree students will receive “laptop bursaries” so that
the institution can continue to encourage a shift to user-owned
technology prior to the eventual relocation to Greenwich.

By the time the institution relocates, all programmes will have a

mandatory technology specification for learners, with a bursary
scheme available to support learners without sufficient means to
meet the technology specification.

Infrastructure challenges
The current laptop pilot is addressing three areas of generic
infrastructure: printing from user-owned machines, wired and
wireless network access, and digital presentation facilities. These
areas are being addressed on three axes: technology, support, and
documentation.

As well as providing students with computers, the laptop pilot has

provided students with software. It has proved problematic for the
College to be a middleman in the provision of software. For
example, problems with serial numbers have bedevilled the process,
and fall to the institution to resolve (at considerable cost of staff
time). If software had been a student’s purchase, the College would
have had no need to involve itself.

The role of software

Providing software for students implies two things that are not
necessarily true: that a course offers training in the software, and
that mastery of the software is a success factor in the course. Both
of these implications are problematic. Let us consider Adobe CS3
Design Premium, which contains the products InDesign, Photoshop,
Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Flash. Each one of these products
requires around a minimum of 40 hours of training to reach
intermediate proficiency. This equates to 120 hours each of course
time, which totals half an academic year of teaching simply to
provide skills that are not in themselves directed to any particular
creative output.

There is not the space in Ravensbourne’s curriculum to deliver this

training. Even if such space could be found, would providing this

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training support the aims of the current validation? If it would, it

leads us to ask why the space for software training wasn’t then
created in the first place. It is unlikely that we would consider
mastery in Photoshop as a criterion for awarding first class honours.

Software training as income stream

If we accept that software training exists outside the curriculum –
that is, it is broadly assumed that a learner will acquire the relevant
software skills under their own steam – we can imagine that vendor-
certified software training could be offered as an extra-curricular
activity for learners through a commercial CPD programme. Of
course this sort of commercial training could be as easily offered to
industry or to individual CPD customers, and could take advantage
of our existing training infrastructure through Enterprise and
Innovation and its RaveTrain activities.

Learners with sufficient software skills would not have to waste

course time studying a software unit. Alternatively, learners with
skills in software packages other than the ones offered for training
could happily create outputs in ways familiar to them, rather than
being required to learn new skills simply to express their creativity.

Functional software and standards

Software that is used for creative production is known as functional
software1, that is, it is software that makes the execution of stand-
alone tasks more efficient. In the context of user-owned technology,
users have free choice of functional software: one word processor is
not objectively “better” than another at producing a printed
document, and may be freely selected according to the user’s
preferences, temperament, and taste.

In practice, what matters with functional software is interoperability

of output formats. At Ravensbourne this may not always be a
requirement – for example, flat work produced for assessment is
typically printed out rather than submitted electronically. In other
cases, such as the submission of moving image and video work,
output formats matter for assessment unless the end product is
hosted on an extra-institutional sharing service (such as Blip.TV). In
all cases, standardised formats are essential for archiving student
work.

A set of standards for submissions empowers learners to make a

free choice of tools, whilst keeping assessment manageable.
Standard formats have been previously discussed2 and the adoption
of these formats through submission requirements is strongly
1
After McAfee:
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbrsa/en/issue/0611/
article/R0611J.jhtml
2
LTR070104

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recommended.

For the following classes of output, free choice of functional software

and electronic submission standards is entirely appropriate
(suggested file formats in brackets):

 Text documents (DOC, ODF)

 Page design and layout (PDF)

 Presentation (PDF, M4V, FLV)

 Web design (HTML)

 CAD model (DXF)

 3D model (X3D)

 Vector illustration (PDF, SVG)

 Bitmap image (PDF, JPEG, PNG)

 Audio recording (MP3, M4A)

 Video clip (M4V, FLV)

The software needs of most Ravensbourne programmes can be met

through a free choice of software.

Constraints on choice
An approach that allows the free choice of software is problematic in
two particular cases, one where it is expected that learners will fit
their outputs into an industrial workflow provided by the college, the
other where software applications have not become so
commoditised that a generic file format specification is sufficient.

Examples of the former case may be found in the animation and

moving image programmes, and in broadcast post-production.
Examples of the latter may be found in the fashion programme.

In the animation and moving image, and broadcast post-production

programmes, learners must create software artefacts that
interoperate with the College’s render-farm and video-editing SAN.
These high-end technologies have been provided through HEFCE
capital funding in part to make it possible for the institution to
leverage user-owned technology. They are flexible tools, however,
as high-end professional solutions they offer limited flexibility for
interoperation. In these cases, software must be prescribed, or
learners will not be able to make use of the high-end facilities.
Detailed requirements will be made available once the new
resources are commissioned, however, animation students are

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LTR220408 LTR08/03/04

expected to need a student edition of Maya3 (not Maya PLE) to use

the render-farm4, and post-production students an academic edition
of Final Cut Express to use the video SAN.

Although much Fashion design work can be done using commodity

vector and bitmap illustration software, the College also uses
Lectra’s fashion software. Fashion design and manufacturing is not
as mature a market for software automation as other areas of
design, and there are not the CAD standards in the fashion industry
that there are in architecture and product design. Although Lectra’s
software interoperates at the most basic level with Photoshop,
Illustrator, and various CAD packages, learners need access to
Lectra’s tools.

Access to software
There are three cases when learners require access to specific
software:

 Software training for certification or CPD;

 Software required to interoperate with College professional

workflows;

 Software that is part of a non-commoditised industrial process.

Software for CPD

The College will continue to provide computing resources for
commercial training. Learners participating in extra-curricular
software training will have access to standard installs during the
training.

 It is expected that learners who are serious about developing

software skills will purchase student licences for the software
they are interested in learning.

 Where technically possible5, a limited number of downloadable

software packages will be made available for use in training
sessions on user-owned computers. The software will be “keyed”
to ensure that it may only be used in an authorised way.

 We recommend software purchase is supported through

bursaries in addition to laptop bursaries.
3
We note that animation students would need correspondingly more
powerful hardware to support Maya.
4
In fact, it is possible to use the open source 3d package Blender
with the render-farm, however, this option isn’t available “out of the
box” from the developers of the render-farm software.
5
Not all software vendors are willing to support this kind of usage. In
these cases, learners will need to buy licences to use software on
the own equipment.

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 We recommend that the availability of competitive student

licensing deals is one determinant of what software is offered for
commercial training.

 We recommend that the Ravensbourne software platform is

slimmed and standardised to allow the institution to develop
expertise, and to create a stable platform to build training on6.

Software for interoperation

In planning resources that are complementary to users’ own
technology, IT has selected technology where interoperable
software is available at relatively low cost.

 It is expected that learners will acquire suitable software at

academic licence discount rates. ICT will provide details as
resources come on stream.

 We recommend software purchase is supported through

bursaries in addition to laptop bursaries.

 We recommend training is made available to support the

College’s professional resources, with certification7 where
appropriate.

 We recommend that academic and support staff are

appropriately trained in the workflow processes, so they are able
to communicate best practice to learners.

Software for non-commoditised processes

At present, software of this nature only impacts the Fashion
programmes. The software required by these programmes is not
affordable for individuals, and has only limited interoperation with
commodity software.

 Non-commoditised software should be available for commercial

training and certification.

 Downloadable software packages will be made available for use

in training sessions on user-owned computers. The software will
be “keyed” or “dongled” to ensure that it may only be used in an
authorised way.

 Learners may have to licence non-commoditised software for use

on their own computers. In these cases, we will work with
vendors to ensure learners are offered an affordable deal.

6
Naturally, this “platform” should be under regular review, and
flexible enough to adapt to new commercial opportunities.
7
That is, accreditation offered by the software vendors.

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