5 A University Providing Software as a Service: Noteable

About the Noteable Service

EDINA is a business unit in the University of Edinburgh. A cornerstone of digital expertise and data innovation since 1995, it was initially established as a national data centre. EDINA has been instrumental in providing the UK academic sector with access to an array of digital resources that help to enable teaching and learning with data of different types. Over the years, EDINA’s focus has broadened to include geospatial resources, bibliographic services, and digital preservation.

Renowned for its collaborative efforts, EDINA works alongside universities and education institutions to develop user-driven, bespoke digital solutions. Among its portfolio of services are Digimap, a comprehensive online mapping service that offers access to a wide range of datasets. These include geographical, geological and historical maps. Digimap is now a vital tool in higher education, enabling students and researchers to create custom maps and perform detailed spatial analysis, thus enhancing both teaching and research capabilities.

One of EDINA’s more recent flagship initiatives is Noteable, a platform that promotes interactive learning by enabling the use of computational notebooks across various disciplines. Through such ventures, EDINA continues to equip educators and researchers with advanced tools, facilitating the seamless integration of technology into education and research pursuits.

Noteable was originally developed in 2018 as a central technology services initiative within the University of Edinburgh. At the time, there was a need for centrally hosted tools and platforms that integrated coding platforms, languages, and extensions for education. Noteable was envisioned to infuse traditional curricula with robust data literacy capabilities and improve learners’ abilities for computational thinking. The platform provides interactive computational notebooks, largely based on the Jupyter ecosystem. Jupyter notebooks are essentially digital canvases for data analysis, coding, and problem solving that can integrate directly with course content across disciplines.

Since then, Noteable has evolved remarkably, growing from a small-scale single-university tool to a significant software service and contributor to global educational technology, with ongoing enterprise subscriptions and partnerships. Noteable currently supports over 15,000 users annually across an array of fields, which include mathematics, biology, and computer science, within Scotland and also reaching academic institutions across the UK and beyond. Noteworthy among its development is the successful integration into courses at the University of Leiden, and now, expanding its presence in the education market, with other universities showing interest in the platform.

The integration of Noteable with virtual learning environments like Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, and Brightspace exemplifies its versatility and adaptability within diverse educational ecosystems. At the University of Leeds and the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR), Noteable has been seamlessly merged with existing digital environments to enhance coding education. Its cloud-based computational notebooks facilitate interactive coding lessons in languages such as Python and R, providing educators with the flexibility to integrate coding environments into modules and courses with ease. This feature also supports various devices, ensuring accessibility and encouraging computational literacy across disciplines and technologies. Additionally, the development of innovative digital learning environments like LACDR’s ”Digital Labcoat” showcases Noteable’s impact in fostering technological advancements in education.

Fundamental to Noteable’s ethos is the principle of open-source technologies and sharing best practices. By selecting and making use of available online resources and collaborative development, the platform creates an ecosystem where educators can innovate and enrich the learning experience for students.

Noteable’s integration with Moodle at the University of Bath exemplifies a fusion of education and technology, designed to simplify and enhance the teaching and learning of coding skills. By offering a cloud-based Jupyter environment, Noteable eliminated the need for students to install software locally, thus overcoming common technological barriers such as hardware compatibility and software dependency issues. Furthermore, the Noteable service and its adherence to accessibility standards and guidelines has been able to provide a more inclusive set of tools for students to work with.

This accessibility ensures that students can access Noteable across a broad range of device capabilities and engage fully with programming exercises using only a web browser. For educators, Noteable provides powerful tools that simplify the distribution and collection of assignments, alongside capabilities for auto-grading, saving marking time and streamlining the assessment process.

Access to Noteable is offered exclusively through the virtual learning environment, making it easily accessible to students. This setup ensures that students can conveniently transition from various locations while maintaining access to their work. Furthermore, although Noteable includes a comprehensive suite of pre-installed libraries, it allows for on-the-fly installation of additional packages, providing flexibility while maintaining stability throughout the academic year. For guidance, educators and students can utilise the extensive resources available.

Sustainability Model

Organizational Structure and Governance

Noteable’s governance structure is anchored within EDINA, which is part of the University of Edinburgh’s infrastructure. This relationship leverages the university’s resources and reputation, providing a sturdy legal and operational framework for the project’s growth. The governance is collaborative, involving an active community of academic leaders, IT specialists, and stakeholders who collectively steer the project through strategic decision-making and continuous improvement.

The team involved in Noteable consists of approximately 10 members, comprising developers, educational technologists, user support staff and ancillary IT services. There are also dedicated user groups that have developed at the University of Edinburgh and in institutions with a subscription to Noteable. This multi-disciplinary community of contributors to the service ensures that Noteable meets both the technological needs of a modern educational platform and the pedagogical requirements of diverse academic programmes.

Revenue Model

Noteable operates with a strong focus on enhancing educational value and reinvests all revenue to advance platform development. At the heart of its revenue model is a close collaboration with Jisc, which facilitates the delivery of education-oriented Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) through Chest agreements. This partnership allows institutions to access Noteable at competitive prices specifically designed for the educational market. Jisc’s pricing model includes multiple subscription tiers, tailored to meet various institutional sizes and needs, ensuring that Noteable is financially accessible while maintaining high-quality service.

Jisc’s pricing bands play a pivotal role in determining the subscription fees for institutions accessing Noteable through Jisc’s Chest agreements. Each educational institution engaging with Jisc’s negotiated agreements, such as Noteable, is assigned to a specific band. This assignment is based on the total relevant income of the institution, ensuring a fair and equitable fee structure that aligns with an institution’s financial capacity. By tailoring fees to institutional capacities through strategic banding, Jisc ensures that the educational resources it supports, including Noteable, remain accessible and competitively priced, promoting widespread adoption and enabling institutions to enhance their educational offerings in a sustainable manner.

Beyond the standard Jisc CHEST framework within the UK and Ireland, Noteable also demonstrates flexibility by crafting contractual agreements with international institutions. This capability allows Noteable to extend its reach beyond the UK higher education sector, accommodating specific institutional requirements and fostering educational partnerships across the globe. These service level agreements ensure that Noteable can support diverse educational environments while maintaining its commitment to innovation and excellence.

Revenue allocation within Noteable is strategically managed to sustain operations, drive the development of new features, and support strategic growth initiatives. This financial strategy ensures that the platform’s core services remain robust, while ongoing innovation keeps Noteable at the forefront of educational technology.

Sharing Agreements

In its collaborative efforts, Noteable ensures transparency by establishing well-defined roles and agreements with its partners. This is achieved through comprehensive documentation and rigorous contractual processes that clearly outline the expectations and deliverables for all involved. Such clarity is crucial in building trust and facilitating seamless collaboration, thereby guaranteeing that projects are executed to the highest industry standards.

While Noteable itself is a trademarked software service and not open source, many of the resources and software components it employs are based on open-source licensing. This adoption of open-source technologies cultivates an environment conducive to sharing and continuous enhancement. This openness underpinning Noteable’s approach is not merely a strategic choice; it is a foundational philosophy that significantly enhances the platform’s utility and broadens its influence across the educational technology landscape.

The integration of open-source technologies within Noteable significantly contributes to promoting open research, development, and functionality, extending benefits to a broader user base. As a teaching and learning tool, Noteable is committed to setting the standard in leveraging open technologies, not only to build its platform but also to introduce educators and students to widely recognised tools such as Jupyter notebooks. These open-source technologies are prevalent in various industry settings, thus providing users with valuable skills and insights that are directly applicable beyond the classroom.

Community Engagement

Community engagement lies at the heart of Noteable’s success. The platform hosts numerous webinars, training sessions, and feedback forums to foster an active user community. This interaction is critical for gathering insights and driving the continuous improvement that users demand. In 2024, the Geospatial Fringe focused on the service, using it to demonstrate data visualisations and analysis regarding orbital congestion, and cleaning up available data to visualise satellites around Earth.

In terms of partnerships, Noteable employs a proactive approach, collaborating with academic and enterprise entities through joint projects and consistent dialogue. This engagement has been pivotal as Noteable establishes footholds in new regions and subjects, adapting to local educational paradigms while maintaining its foundational strengths. Community engagement is central to Noteable’s ethos and success. The frequent webinars, training sessions, and feedback forums that Noteable hosts are integral to cultivating an active and engaged user community.

Open source also plays a significant role in community engagement for Noteable. By contributing back to open-source projects, Noteable fosters a spirit of collaboration and reciprocity, encouraging a communal approach to development and innovation. This engagement ensures that the platform evolves in alignment with both community and technological advancements.

An example of Noteable’s community engagement and collaborative impact is its adoption by Scottish schools as a key tool to practice for the Higher Applications of Math exam. School pupils use one of the available environments in Noteable, RStudio, to learn about statistical concepts and run code from an integrated platform that they can access through their existing school systems.

Another example is the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research. Supported by a donation from Chris Oomen, Noteable has been integrated into the “Digital Labcoat” initiative, offering biopharmaceutical sciences students opportunities to develop crucial computational skills. This engagement strategy not only enriches the curriculum but also aligns with Noteable’s mission to enhance educational outcomes through digital solutions. By facilitating programmatic use, including programming and AI methods, Noteable continues to refine its service to meet the evolving needs of global academia.

Legal Considerations

Legal compliance is paramount to the operations and sustainability of the Noteable platform, under the stewardship of the wider University of Edinburgh strategies. This responsibility underscores the commitment to upholding rigorous standards in data protection, privacy, and accessibility across all services rendered. As part of the University of Edinburgh’s remit, Noteable adheres to comprehensive regulatory frameworks and institutional guidelines that ensure ethical and secure handling of user data.

The University of Edinburgh provides a robust legal framework that supports EDINA and Noteable’s operations, encompassing thorough compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and adherence to industry best practices in information security. Testing and audits conducted by the university’s dedicated compliance teams ensure that Noteable meets the required standards, thereby safeguarding user trust and fostering a secure learning environment.

Ensuring comprehensive legal compliance with data protection, privacy, and accessibility laws is an ongoing commitment for Noteable. The service website includes current policies and statements on data retention and usage of the service, which are readily available for all users to see when they launch the platform.

Reflections and Learning

Challenges

Scaling Noteable from a university pilot to an internationally recognised platform has not been without challenges. Evolving funding landscapes, technological scalability, and diverse educational requirements posed significant hurdles. However, these challenges also reinforced Noteable’s strategic resilience and adaptability.

• Navigating Open-Source Infrastructure: As Noteable is built on open-source technologies like Jupyter and RStudio, it must regularly ensure compatibility with new versions and updates. This demands a vigilant development team ready to rapidly integrate new features or patches and maintain seamless service delivery amidst potential security vulnerabilities or sudden changes in dependencies.
• Capacity to Contribute Back: Engagement with the open-source community entails a commitment to reciprocity, such as providing code improvements or collaborating on new features. This enriches Noteable’s functionalities but also adds an additional layer of responsibility, necessitating a careful balance between in-house priorities and community contributions.
• Governance Structure Complexities: Operating within university governance structures introduces challenges, given the intricate decision-making processes across IT, academic, and administrative departments. Aligning Noteable’s offerings with institutional strategies, budget constraints, and digital transformation goals can require nuanced negotiations and tailored communication strategies that effectively demonstrate the platform’s unique benefits, such as enhancing data literacy and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration.

Successes

At the core of Noteable’s success is its transformation into a critical educational tool used by diverse academic institutions across multiple continents. Its ability to integrate smoothly into various academic ecosystems, coupled with its subscription-based revenue model, ensures not only sustainability but also growth. The expansion beyond the United Kingdom exemplifies Noteable’s capacity to broaden its impact, adapting to new markets while preserving core values.

Noteable has accomplished significant successes across various facets of its operation, reflecting its status as a leading educational technology platform. One of the most notable achievements is the expansion into enterprise-level engagements, where educational institutions around the world have integrated Noteable into their core teaching and learning processes. These enterprise partnerships exemplify trust in Noteable’s capability to deliver a robust, scalable solution that addresses the dynamic needs of diverse educational environments.

An initiative we are particularly proud of is the free provision of Noteable to Scottish schools, supporting local education systems by democratising access to advanced computational tools that can be used in exam preparation for the Higher Applications of Math qualification. This initiative aligns with the University of Edinburgh’s mission to promote educational equity and has been instrumental in fostering early engagement with computational thinking among school students. By offering Noteable free of charge, schools are empowered to enhance their curriculum with cutting-edge technology without financial barriers, cultivating the next generation of digital learners.

The user base across Noteable has consistently shared positive feedback and testimonials highlighting the platform’s ease of use, comprehensive functionalities, and impactful learning outcomes. This satisfaction is rooted in Noteable’s commitment to user-centric design and continuous improvement processes that incorporate user feedback into its development roadmap.

Whether in mathematics, biology, computer science, or humanities, Noteable has proven capable of meeting the unique demands of each discipline. This cross-departmental utility not only illustrates the platform’s inherent flexibility but also its ability to promote interdisciplinary collaboration. Students and educators from different fields benefit from a unified set of tools that supports diverse educational objectives for computation, enhancing both teaching and learning experiences.

Recommendations

• Prioritise User-Centric Design: Develop with a focus on user feedback and needs, ensuring the platform remains relevant and effective across diverse educational settings.
• Build Sustainable Communities: Establish strong, collaborative communities early to foster academic partnerships, enhance credibility, and support robust financial models.
• Adopt Flexible Governance: Create adaptive governance frameworks that enable efficient navigation of changes while maintaining coherence and high standards.
• Leverage Open-Source Technologies: Utilise open-source tools to enrich platform functionalities, fostering a dynamic and innovative ecosystem through community engagement.
• Ensure Legal and Ethical Compliance: Uphold rigorous compliance to fortify user trust and credibility, essential for the longevity of any educational initiative.

Noteable’s evolution from a university project to a pivotal global educational resource underscores the power of strategic planning and innovation. By adopting these guiding principles, educational technology projects can not only meet but exceed the demands of modern education environments, creating sustainable and impactful learning experiences that transcend traditional boundaries.