‘Appy’ ending for Virtual Training Suite

23 June 2011

The Virtual Training Suite (VTS) of 60 online subject-based tutorials to help students expand their internet research skills will continue to be developed after July 2011, thanks to an agreement between the University of Bristol and the software house TutorPro.

TutorPro Ltd will not only retain the existing content but will also significantly enhance and develop the Virtual Training Suite with new material and new media, specifically to make the tutorials available through mobile and tablet applications.

The current set of tutorials will still be available for download as standalone units from the VTS website at and via the JORUM repository. The tutorials will be made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence, which makes the content free at the point of use to the UK teaching, learning and research communities.

TutorPro will host the new site for these tutorials and work with content providers to keep the content up to date while moving the whole project forward into the world of smartphones, tablets and mobile devices. Work is already well under way on the transition and can be viewed through desktop/laptops browsers.

Please contact TutorPro on +44 (0)1823 661669 and ask for VTS or email general@tutorpro.com with VTS in the subject line with any questions, comments or input.

Debra Hiom, Virtual Training Suite Director at the University’s Institute for Learning and Research Technology, said: ‘Internet research skills are an essential part of ensuring that UK further and higher education students are digitally literate in their academic work and are able to take those literacy skills into the workplace. We are delighted that the education community will continue to benefit from the valuable advice and guidance within the Virtual Training Suite through TutorPro’s development of the tutorials.’

Paul Turner, Managing Director of TutorPro Ltd, added: ‘We are very excited about being able to continue with the excellent Virtual Training Suite product. Being able to develop the whole platform for delivery across smart phones, tablets and mobile devices in general will ensure that the product continues to provide real value to students.’

Further information

The Virtual Training Suite is a set of over 60 online tutorials designed to help students develop good internet research skills for their academic studies. It was created by the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, the research and development group of IT services at the University of Bristol and formed part of the Intute Consortium service which was funded until July 2011 by JISC (Joint Systems Information Committee) (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/). TutorPro Ltd is a firm of more than 20 years’ standing which has developed authoring tools, learning and content management systems and courseware used by corporate, military and educational clients in this country and abroad. JISC is a joint committee of the UK further and higher education funding bodies, and is responsible for supporting the innovative use of information and communication technology to support learning, teaching, and research. It is best known for providing the SuperJANET network, a range of services, and a portfolio of high-quality resources. For more information, contact Debra Hiom, Virtual Training Suite Director, University of Bristol, 8-10 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 1HH, email d.hiom@bristol.ac.uk, tel +44 (0)117 331 4381, or Paul Turner, Managing Director, Tutor Pro, 10 High Street, Wellington TA21 8RA, email pturner@tutorpro.com, tel +44 (0)1823 661669.