Here’s an interesting article on PLEs from Scott Wilson. As you would expect from someone who was a core member of the CETIS team that looked into PLEs for JISC, and the person who originated the ubiquitous future VLE, it contains a lot of the ideas that have informed our thinking on Isthmus. However the comment that intrigued me, which I have not seen so explicitly elsewhere was

“On a more basic level, the use of commercial third-party services has risks, such as a change in charging, or even services disappearing completely, and so there could be a role for universities in offering a free secure archiving service to that students would never lose access to things they have published. It is also increasingly on the agenda of universities to make access to basic administrative processes and information available through multiple channels and devices, such as using mobile phones, iPod, and RSS feeds.”

These are all things we are looking into for Isthmus – we’re drafting the survey at the moment so it will be interesting to see what our (admittedly non-standard) students make of these sorts of ideas.