weeknotes

Positioning Interoperability – Weeknote #361 – 30th January 2026

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This week I made it to the Bristol office to work and meet with colleagues. I had a chance meeting with a member of the OpenAthens team which was useful and we sat down and had a discussion about trust and identity. I do like going to the office, and have decided I will try and get in more than I have been going. I think the wet weather probably puts me off. The other aspect is that if I have a lot of online meetings, then actually going into the office is makes that more challenging, as I would need to book a meeting room, and on some days, when the office is busy, there are fewer meeting rooms available.

I wrote an article on Erasmus+ for the internal comms team, which did draw on the article I wrote for this blog back in December.

I did write three blog posts this week. The first was on students’ perceptions of their providers’ response to financial challenges.

What this report and analysis is showing is that student satisfaction is being impacted by the financial situation in higher education.

The second was on the news from the University of Nottingham about their course closures and staff student ratios.

The university is planning to consolidate the number of faculties from five to three and reduce the number of courses that are delivered at the university by suspending recruitment on 42 courses. 

The two stories are somewhat linked. The financial crisis impacting on the higher education sector is not just about numbers and figures, it is about people. As well as the impact on staff and redundancy, we are also seeing the negative impact on the student experience and student satisfaction. Alas, this can be a somewhat downward spiral if we see student numbers drop. Having said that the news from UCAS this week was 338,940 UK 18-year-olds have applied for university – a record high and 4.8 per cent more than the 323,360 that applied in 2025. That increase though is driven by demographics, the number of 18 year olds in 2026 is largest for 35 years. Probably better to look at the application rate as a percentage of that demographic, and then the figure has remained relatively static at 40.7%, it was 40.6% in 2025. There was a peak of 42.8% in 2022. What we can say then is the rise in applications is down to population growth.

Going forward if applications stay around the 40% mark then we will in the future see the number of applications fall. Of course not all of those 40% actually go to university and then there are others who will choose later to go having not made an UCAS application.  The recent government white paper no longer talks of the 50% going to university but does talk about 67% undertaking some form of higher level education. What does that look like going forward?

The third blog post was on generalisations and assumptions.

As I said earlier, as a society technology and digital has become more embedded into our lives, the concept of post-digital echoes the sentiment that as technology becomes part of our everyday lives, the less we see it as technology. At the end of the day we are probably all digital now, living in a post-digital world.

I have been looking at the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework, in the main for the work I have been doing in the E in NREN landscape, but also how it could support LLE in the future. It is also been used within the UCISA work on the student data model.

I have been researching and planning some position papers on the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework, looking at the current UK landscape and what Jisc is doing or could do in that landscape.

I have also been having discussions about collaboration and sharing. One question that sometimes comes up, is do we know how to collaborate?

Though there has been ample talk about collaboration and sharing, it is one of those things that is probably easy to talk about and more difficult to actually do. Part of the challenge is how universities are inconsistent in their approaches to managing themselves, which then makes it even more challenging to work together or collaborate.

We need to remind ourselves that collaboration and sharing within higher education isn’t the problem we need to solve, it is in fact a solution (and not the only solution) to a (probably not well defined) problem. We need to be clear about the problem, define that problem, and then we can start thinking about possible solutions, one of which may be collaboration and sharing.

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Impact of financial challenges – the student perspective

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The Office for Students (OfS) has published the results from a survey (from April 2025) on students’ perceptions of their providers’ response to financial challenges.

WonkHE have done their usual excellent analysis of the polling and is well worth a read.

83 per cent of those polled thought that cost-cutting measures had changed the experience they felt they’d been promised – often through larger class sizes than expected, greater use of online learning, or reduced access to academic resources and student support.

Some of my own thoughts on this.

The survey was actually done last April, so the impact of more recent responses to financial sustainability won’t have influenced the results. Even so, it demonstrates that cost-cutting is impacting on the student experience and this is reducing student satisfaction.

Interesting to read that greater use of online learning is still seen as a negative, the impact of remote online learning during covid is still having an impact. We have to remember that the majority of students been surveyed weren’t actually at university at the height of the covid lockdowns, so their experiences of school and college are having a longitudinal impact on their feelings about online learning. 

Changes noted by students included increased class sizes, and my recent post on Nottingham and their changes to student staff ratios shows that this is not going away anytime soon.

What this report and analysis is showing is that student satisfaction is being impacted by the financial situation in higher education. Though fees are set to rise, this is only going to reflect inflation, so costs in real terms is going to stay the same. We might not see so much cost reduction in the future, but we need to reflect that we not going to see much increase in real spending either.

What will this mean, well with fees still set to rise and actual costs of going to university, falling graduate incomes, does this mean that the benefit of attending university becomes less attractive to prospective students in the future?

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This is the way

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Writing in a notebook
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Before I finished for the festive break there was a report in the Times Higher Education on the current situation at Nottingham University.

Staff at the University of Nottingham fear that planned course closures and changes to staff-student ratios could damage the university’s international standing and create “impossible” workloads.

The university is planning to consolidate the number of faculties from five to three and reduce the number of courses that are delivered at the university by suspending recruitment on 42 courses. Of course the challenge in suspending recruitment is that restarting recruitment might be challenging, and probably impossible to do quickly.

The University of Nottingham is not alone in facing a financial crisis and equally is not alone in cutting courses and reducing staff numbers.

What is also consistent for most universities in this predicament is that they are facing it alone. Though there has been ample talk about collaboration and sharing, it is one of those things that is probably easy to talk about and more difficult to actually do. Part of the challenge is how universities are inconsistent in their approaches to managing themselves, which then makes it even more challenging to work together or collaborate.

Making those changes to be more aligned, is probably not even on the agenda, as the next crisis loads on the existing crisis. Sitting outside the turmoil, you might think it is easy to offer solutions, the reality is that there is so much unknowns in that crisis, that any solution may become the next problem.

We need to remind ourselves that collaboration and sharing within higher education isn’t the problem we need to solve, it is in fact a solution (and not the only solution) to a (probably not well defined) problem. We need to be clear about the problem, define that problem, and then we can start thinking about possible solutions, one of which may be collaboration and sharing.

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60% of UK academic staff in UK universities are digital natives

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Image by Patrik Houštecký from Pixabay

As I mentioned in one of my week notes I read a well researched report and an article on Generation Alpha and how I am not really a fan of generational generalisations. I said how I am not sure how useful they are. 

I was though reminded of the whole digital natives debate, which still seems to bear its ugly head every so often. Prensky’s premise was the idea that if you were old you were only a  digital immigrant and the young people were digital natives. As young people were born into a digital world then they were digital natives. Whereas everyone else was born into a non-digital world and therefore digital was new to them and not something that they had always known.

According to the Prensky definition, 60% of UK academic staff in UK universities are pure digital natives. You could even argue that the figure is closer to 80%…

So, using the term to describe students isn’t helpful as the definition by definition in theory applies to virtually everyone who is part of the university. 

Giving a generation a name is one thing, but what people then conjectured was that as they had this name, digital native, they would be able to handle a range of digital tools, services and environments. They would be in a better position to handle online environments then the so called immigrants.

This conjecture is rather flawed and makes a lot of assumptions about behaviours, skills and experience, based on what is really just a label.

Making labels to describe generations is one thing, making assumptions about how individuals will be able to do things (or not do things) just because they are part of that generation is just wrong.

Over the years technology changes as does society. They both influence each other, both positively and negatively. Behaviours change as technology both enables and enhances. The other aspect of technology is that it is constantly evolving and changing, as new technologies arrive, others become redundant or less useful.

As a society technology and digital has become more embedded into our lives, the concept of post-digital echoes the sentiment that as technology becomes part of our everyday lives, the less we see it as technology.

Thinking about this I am reminded of two aspects of my work over the the years.

When I started working at Gloucestershire College in 2006 I did a few new staff induction sessions about the use of IT in the college. I remember asking new staff, who had an email account, many didn’t. It wasn’t part of their life, they didn’t need one, obviously some did. I then handed over the inductions to another member of staff. Later in 2013 I was asked to cover one of the staff induction sessions, and it was very apparent that a lot had moved on. Now, it was pointless asking the question about email, so I asked what was the last thing they bought online. Everyone in the room was shopping online, some were even buying shoes online, which still to this day I find incredulous.

Another thing I did was help develop and deliver the Jisc Digital Leaders Programme. In the early days we did some mapping of our digital self using the concept of Visitors and Residents. 

At the time I liked how the mapping exercise makes you consider how you are using various tools and what needs to happen to change that map, how do you become more resident when using a tool such as Bluesky. Or how do you start using a tool which is currently not on your map, such as a professional blog? 

The mapping changes as new tools are introduced, old ones retire and your role and behaviours change.

When a couple of years ago I did a similar mapping exercise again, I started to realised how embedded digital and services were into everyday life. The value of mapping your digital self had become less valuable and so much more was embedded into how we communicate and collaborate. 

As I said earlier, as a society technology and digital has become more embedded into our lives, the concept of post-digital echoes the sentiment that as technology becomes part of our everyday lives, the less we see it as technology. At the end of the day we are probably all digital now, living in a post-digital world.

weeknotes

Competing collaborators – Weeknote #360 – 23rd January

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This week I was working from home. There was lots of rain and wind. The space I had gave me time to write up the workshop I attended last week. The write up also included the work I have been doing and the meetings I have had in this space over the last two months. I also had a number of meetings on the work.

This week I also presented at a GÉANT webinar on education. My part was discussing about possible alignment with existing funded work by NRENs across Europe. There is real diversity across the NERNs in Europe about the services they provide for higher education and research. Some, like Jisc, provide a range of education based services, others go further and even provide VLEs. There are though many NRENS whose primary area is research. Obviously it’s not that education doesn’t happen in that country, but that responsibility is down to other organisations.

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay
Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

On Friday the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) published guidance on collaboration in higher education. This clarity about collaboration within the sector has to be welcomed. The law has not been changed, but the clarification can provide reassurance to the sector that looking to work together, sharing services and resources, as well as more formal collaboration is potentially possible. Part of me though does wonder, if the apprehension about collaboration was using the CMA and competition law as an excuse for not looking at collaboration rather than an actual reason not to collaborate. This new guidance mitigates that excuse now.

weeknotes

Standardised – Weeknote #359 – 16th January

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Was in London this week for a workshop looking at a standardised student data model. It linked into my work on E in NREN and LLE. This ideal of a student data model isn’t new, nor is it just about the data. There are cultural and planning issues that need to be addressed.

I have been talking to SURF in the Netherlands about lots of different things, including the data model work. However, this week I also had a constructive meeting about their OOAPI specification and hub.

Had a really interesting discussion with Lawrie about the government white paper on higher education. I was reminded of what I wrote back in October.

Could we see a paradigm shift in young people going to university? There is no longer talk about 50% of young people going to university, this has been swapped with the two-thirds under-25 participation in higher-level learning.

Another thing I wrote was:

There was much discussion about collaboration and sharing by providers, as well as a focus on specialisation.

What was more challenging was not necessarily coming up with ideas or solutions to the challenges set out in the white paper, but what was the role of Jisc in all this.

Of course the underlying challenge that the sector is facing is one of financial sustainability.

weeknotes

No Snow – Weeknote #358 – 9th January

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path

I was back at work after the festive break. In theory the first work day back was the 2nd of January, but I had taken leave on that day.

I had about twenty emails in my inbox (which was empty when I finished work in December). Took almost no time to clear as virtually all of them were notifications of some kind.

Across a lot of the country there was heavy snow and as you might expect closures of schools and colleges. I could mention all those blogs and podcasts I have written about snow, but not today. For me, though most of the week was icy cold, the sun was shining. Just one day of wind and rain.

I did manage to get to the Bristol office this week, which was quite busy so had a bit of  buzz in there.

I am continuing to look at data models in relation to student mobility. There are a couple of meetings next week that I was preparing for.

campus
Image by 小亭 江 from Pixabay

I have been invited to speak at two events in the spring, about collaboration in higher education in a smart campus and estates context. Estates are not only a huge asset for higher education institutions, but also take up a large proportion of operating expenditure. Is there a way in which collaboration can offset some of those costs and improve the efficiency of how the estate is used.

Read a well researched report, and an article on Generation Alpha. I am not really a fan of generational generalisations. I am not sure how useful they are. I am reminded of the whole digital natives debate, which still seems to bear its ugly head every so often. When you consider that, according to the Prensky definition, 60% of UK academic staff in UK universities are digital natives. You could even argue that the figure is closer to 80%…

Grouping people together and assuming that they will behave in a similar way, isn’t really that helpful.

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e-Learning Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts 2025

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Usually at this time I would publish a blog post of the top ten posts of the previous twelve months. However WordPress have stopped doing free stats for blogs that show adverts. So I don’t have detailed stats about the top posts.

In 2025 I published 63 blog posts. In 2024 I posted 70 posts on the blog. In 2023 I wrote 89 posts on the blog. There were 92 posts in 2022, 113 blog posts in 2021. In 2020 I had written 94 blog posts. In 2019 I had written 52 blog posts which was up from 2018 when I only wrote 17 blog posts.

Blog traffic in 2025 was double what it was in 2024.

news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…