Having done a lot of travelling and with anticipation with work being done on the office in Bristol, I planned to spend a lot of the week working from home. However the work being done was rescheduled. Well at least I could access my locker in the office this week.
Much of the week though was researching, writing, and reviewing some documentation for some work we’re doing in the optimising operations and data space. It was challenging, as it is quite complex, and wide in scope. Working out what we wanted, what is needed, and what then, was quite challenging.
I am realising that as I no longer use Twitter, that I am missing out on news and views. I am not getting this from Threads or Bluesky.
A good example was this thread from Charles Knight discussing falling recruitment in higher education.
Back after a Twitter break and straight into a question of "What is going to happen in the next six months in HE in England?" – as always, views are my own. 1/n
— Charles Knight (@Charlesknight) January 19, 2024
There is often talk about the future of higher education and how universities need to respond. I do think that there is still an assumption that the traditional three year undergraduate degree programme is set in stone and will be here for a long time. I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but what I do think we will start to see is young people wanting more flexibility, and we will see employers wanting more flexibility and more specialism. It’s an interesting space, but this is less about predicting the future, more about building in the resilience and agility to be much more responsive to future changes in student demographics.
So, underpinning everything I've said – compassionate but clear-minded university leadership has never been so vital. That also means you need to think carefully about the welfare of the staff you ask to implement these decisions. 8/n
— Charles Knight (@Charlesknight) January 19, 2024
I realise that I am not as immersed into the AI in education discussion as colleagues both in Jisc and in the sector. There is a lot happening in this space. Though I have played with Bard and Firefly, I’ve not really taken a deep dive into AI.
It was great though to see my colleague Lawrie getting his research into academics’ use of AI published in Nature.