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·         DIFUSE: (Driving Innovation from Universities into Scientific Enterprises) aims to develop a model for close trans-national cooperation between university knowledge transfer support functions set up to facilitate industrial and commercial exploitation of university research results. Its specific goal is to explore new ways for the joint exploitation of university knowledge in targeted domains using, best practice and individual experiences from members already engaged in an established pan-European university network, and to use this to develop models and pilot actions to show how a group of universities might share resources to make exploitation of research results and transfer to the private sector more effective at a European level. Ms McDonald is project manager and Principle Investigator for the Strathclyde led work packages. Funding: EU FP6

·         Investigation of emerging Complex Learning Communities (CLC) with the aim of developing a comprehensive and relevant research and development agenda, which will address the issues of maximising potential and successful seeding of learning communities which use synergy to achieve multiple, often diverse objectives. As part of this project, different roles in team and group working were analysed to examine how they self-organise to increase the capabilities of groups. Grant: Scottish Enterprise Glasgow

·         SIMPLE: (Simulated Professional Learning) led by the University’s Law School, is examining the wide scale implementation of virtual locations which support transaction based learning for professional education. Ms McDonald was involved in the early stages. Funding: JISC

·         IBIS: Item Bank Infrastructure Study investigated the issues surrounding development of facilities to enable the sharing of eAssessment material – Funded: JISC.

·         Study into Advertising on the Web was led and managed by Ms McDonald – Funded: JISC

Previous Role: Managed Learning Environment Project Manager: Ms McDonald was responsible for taking the MLE project from initial conceptualisation to pilot stage. Managing this high profile project required close contact with senior stakeholders as well as the setting up and co-ordination of a number of working groups to ensure that the MLE will provide the functionality required by the various stakeholders. The functional and technical specifications were completed and the project was handed on for the commissioning phase. Prior to this, she was the University’s Network & Security Manager.

McDonald, D.M., Maharg, P. & Owen, M., 2006, Embedding Innovation. ECLO Public Sector Seminar.

McDonald, D.M. 2006, Community Space in Complex Learning Communities: Lessons Learnt. In Proceedings of eSociety 2006 Conference, Dublin, Ireland.

McDonald, D.M. & Kay, N., 2006, Towards an evaluation framework for complex social systems. ICCS 2006, Boston.

McDonald, D.M., 2005, Emergent Characteristics of Complex Learning Communities. Complexity, Science and Society Conference, Liverpool, UK.

McDonald, D.M. and McGill, L., 2005. The Emergence of eLiteracy: enhancing our understanding. eLiteracy 2005, Glasgow, UK.

McDonald, D.M., 2004, ‘Security, access and authentication’. In N.Sclater (Ed) IBIS: Item Bank Infrastructure Study. JISC report.

Sclater, N. and McDonald, D.,2004 ‘Item bank system requirements specification.’ In N.Sclater (Ed) IBIS: Item Bank Infrastructure Study. JISC report.

McDonald, D.M., 2003, ‘JISC TechWatch Report on Web Services Technologies’. JISC Report

McDonald, D.M. & Breslin, C., 2001, A Study into Advertising on JANET. JISC Report.