This was may first full week for what feels like ages. I worked from home all week, partly as I was expecting deliveries (one of the advantages of working from home) and also I had a lot of online meetings in the diary. I don’t really see the value of heading off to Bristol, spending time (and money) commuting, to then frantically book meeting rooms for various online meetings, moving around during the day. If I have a lot of online meetings then I prefer to work from home and take them there.

Some of my meetings were in relation to student mobility, including an interesting session on stakeholder mapping. The reality of the student mobility agenda is that there are multiple stakeholders, including students (obviously) higher education institutions, national agencies, government departments, and others.

I did attend one meeting, it made me realise that the concept of strategy is one that still seems to confuse people. If you decide what you want to do, and then use that to inform the strategy, then that is not a strategy. At a simple level if you choose what you want to do, then it doesn’t really matter if you then write a strategy based on that or not. I did buy and read Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt a few years back on the recommendation of a colleague, it certainly is an interesting read and reflects that a lot of people don’t know what strategy is and how to develop and deliver strategy.

Did preparation for the panel session I am on next week at the AUDE conference. Though the primary focus of the session is on digital, the current university sector climate will be looked at, in terms of collaboration and sharing. I worked on some notes and briefing points for the session.

I also did some work on what LLE could mean for the university sector and for Jisc. Of course the only real focus of Lifelong Learning Entitlement is on the entitlement part, in other words the funding side. Reading about that on the various stakeholder, such as the Office for Students and the Student Loans Company, their focus is on ensuring that the cash side is sorted. 

Of course, the full potential of LLE is in the lifelong learning with people being able to draw down funding (loans) to pay for part time learning at a time and place of their choosing. However without some kind of infrastructure and ecosystem in place, then the administrative burden on students and institutions will be huge (and costly). Thinking about every time a student applies for a programme of study, they will need to prove who they are each time, their current qualifications and these will then need to be verified as a true account from accredited institutions. This is why I have been looking at the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework as a potential solution for the student journey in an LLE world.

I will be speaking at a couple of (online) events over the next few months, including one on LLE. I was also invited to speak about digital at an online event on estates.