NetAcad

What is NetAcad?

NetAcad  is an international CSR (corporate social responsibility) programme, provided by Cisco . It is designed to help educators and students develop world class employment focussed skills, in Network Engineering, Coding, Operating Systems, CyberSecurity and much more. At the Open University, around c5000 students per annum access some form of Cisco NetAcad resource to enhance their industry skills and employability prospects. Being able to gain a degree as well as a variety of technology sector certifications and digital badges.

You can review our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes to learn more, where the School of Computing and Communications has worked with Cisco NetAcad since 2005. Selecting content from this integral academic and industry collaboration, based on the principally vendor neutral nature of the resources provided and ensure that our students are given academic opportunities to develop their employability prospects.

Cisco present their resources for free, as a resource (or gift) in kind donation to educators.

What is the ASC?

Cisco select leading members of their academic community to support the leadership and development of other organisations, known as Cisco Academies. In 2014, based on the reputation of the Open University (OU) Cisco teaching team and their already active outreach. The School of Computing and Communications was asked to transition from being a conventional Cisco Academy, to an Academy Support Centre (ASC), which led by Andrew Smith and supported by a range of leading academic staff within the school.

Currently the OU Cisco ASC ranks outright as the largest in Europe, the Middle East and Africa combined. Remaining in the top #10 globally and winner of several consecutive Premier+ awards from Cisco.

To learn more about our ASC – who we support and current scope, please visit our independent community facing microsite or review this map. Our community is based on an open model, free for all participants.

Our Mission

The OU Cisco ASC, from OU C+C is focussed on community development and community engagement as an external outreach and knowledge exchange activity. We work with schools, further education colleges, higher education, apprenticeship providers and education-based outreach charities.

Our work is wide ranging, from supporting a typical schoolteacher, a WorldSkills UK coach, an apprenticeship trainer, a university academic, standards experts within UK awarding organisations, to co-developing outreach for an armed forces veteran’s charity. We link our work to our validations and partnerships arm of the university, as well as the essential work of our business development unit and outreach development office units.

Our mission is to ensure that there will be more digital technology enabled students out there, for the OU, for our community   and for education in general. Upskilling the workforce of the future as well as the present. This is accomplished by supporting all educators from all backgrounds and education organisations, including our own outstanding workforce of associate lecturers.

Since becoming an ASC, the school has seen an approximate 10x growth in student numbers using Cisco content; within our community, we have also seen similar representative collective growth. Presenting external engagement and knowledge exchange as tools for long term growth and development.

Outreach and engagement projects:

Teaching the teachers – the challenge for all educators in the digital technologies sector is remaining current as well as ensuring they access world class resources, designed to ensure.

funded by the IoC, CompTIA and Cisco since – we have engaged, supported, and taught over 18,000 educators, with over 40% of these based in the UK. The teaching of teachers has ranged from covering entry level networking, to advanced CyberSecurity, DevOps and Coding.

Teaching the teachers has transitioned post initial IoC funding. We won additional funds, from Erasmus+ in collaboration with ENSICO (Portugal) and Colectic (Spain) to develop our model for teaching school and further education teachers.

Currently, we are working with another Cisco ASC – at the University of Wales Trinity St David to maintain outreach twice a year, where we still attract over 800 unique educators on each presentation.

Disability support – Cisco funded the OU C+C to provide CSR based outreach and development for educators reaching and teaching students with a variety of accessibility needs. This helped Cisco improve their platform, simulation software and content for a range of diverse needs. Improving prospects for students globally, as well as our own students at the OU.

Computing at Schools – Cisco funded and commissioned the OU, working with leading academic experts, to develop a range of network engineering and cybersecurity resources for Key Stages 3 and 4. Helping teachers upskill and find alternate ways of teaching these topics. Currently, the OU and Cisco are engaging with STEM Learning and NCCE.

Digital Skills BootCamps – funded by national and regional development agencies, as well as the DfE. Allowed the team at the OU Cisco ASC to offer alternate non-credit bearing courses focussed on entry to work or upskilling. In disciplines including Coding, CyberSecurity and DevOps. Our reach, supporting a large community of educators, enabled the OU to tap into a large-scale community of experts, to support these funded BootCamps. This work was accomplished in partnership with the OU Business Development Unit.

Discovering Computer Networks – funded by the UFITrust and supported by Cisco, this initiative focussed on the development of a 100% online, practice based zero to hero network engineering course. Originally leveraging early work, with KMI – focussing on adapting the Cisco Packet Tracer network simulator for web browser delivery.

The course created, was broadly aimed at Further Education levels 2 to 3, depending on the prior experience of the learner. During development, this project leveraged experts and organisations from the growing OU Cisco ASC community of practice. This course was adopted by the UK Government during the pandemic as part of the digital skills toolkit. Some outcomes from this project have been adopted by Cisco, contributing towards the development of their future NetAcad platform and course delivery.

CyberCamps for Girls and Young Women – part of our current open societal challenges initiative, Cisco are funding the OU to reach and develop 2000+ girls and young women, offering them entry level, industry ready cybersecurity skills. This project is active, having commenced late 2023, currently we already have 950+ active participants supported by leading female academic cybersecurity experts from all nations, within the UK.