During February and March 2006, OSS Watch conducted a survey of UK Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) institutions. The purpose of the survey was:
A large amount of the work for the survey was done by Ellen Helsper. In particular, Ellen designed the survey, analysed the data of the replies, and wrote the report. OSS Watch would also like to thank members of the EU's FLOSSWorld project and especially its team at the Oxford Internet Institute for giving us access to their HEI survey questionnaire and allowing the questions to be adapted for the purposes of our survey.
OSS Watch Survey 2006 - press release (pdf)
To perform the survey, OSS Watch sought the help of Dr. Ellen J. Helsper. Ellen is currently a Tutorial Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She lectures in research methods (survey and interview design) and in theories of media and audience studies. In the past three years, she has been involved in the UK Children Online project (at LSE) and the World Internet Project (at Oxford University and Universidad Catolica de Chile en Santiago). She has also been involved with research into the use and development of open source software in Higher Educational Institutions in 12 developing countries (FLOSSWorld), the effect of advertising on young people (OFCOM), and the effect of R18 sexual material on young people (OFCOM). Before coming to the UK, she worked as a media research consultant for universities, governmental and commercial organisations in Santiago de Chile, Mexico City, and New York (USA). Ellen obtained her MSc in media psychology at Utrecht University (the Netherlands). Her PhD research is related to the use of the Internet by socially excluded groups.
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OSS Watch is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee.