Through a number of strategic investments by both the JISC and the ESRC the UK academic community has access to a unique and expansive range of digital data resources. The Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) [3] of which the UK Data Archive [7] is a service provider is a national data service that provides access and support for an extensive range of key economic and social data both quantitative and qualitative spanning many disciplines and themes. It comprises a number of specialist data services that promote and encourage data usage in teaching and research. However while individual datasets are used extensively in academic research they are significantly under-used in learning and teaching programmes within Higher Education at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and rarely used in Further Education.
