All posts by James Clay

weeknotes

A quiet place – Weeknote #351 – 21st November

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This week I was up in Birmingham for a conference. The HE Transformation Expo was a new event, and I was on a panel session entitled: Is Your Estate Working for You? Deploying Smart Campus Capabilities at Scale to Meet Efficiency Objectives.

We had a good session and an excellent discussion.

The event was at the NEC was part of a larger schools and academies show. This was much more a trade exhibition than a traditional conference, well it was described as an Expo. The sessions I watched were well attended, with standing room only. There was the challenge of delivering and listening to sessions against the noise of the event itself, but headphones were provided.

I did have some interesting conversations, as well as listening to some good sessions. The need for collaboration was across many of the sessions, the challenge of how you deliver on that aspiration was also there too.

Unfortunately I had some online meetings I needed to attend, and there wasn’t really any space at the Expo for such a meeting. I had planned to take the call in the speaker lounge, alas the lounge was just a fenced off area within the hall with tables, chairs and some really bad coffee. There were no other suitable spaces within the NEC, so I had to head back to my hotel for the call. Usually I try and avoid having meetings whilst at a conference, but sometimes this isn’t always possible.

I was lucky in that the cold weather didn’t impact on my travel arrangements however really felt that winter was now upon us.

Spent time planning for next week, I am attending a GÉANT workshop in Amsterdam.

stuff

Turning that Supertanker

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Tanker
Image by Gerhard Traschütz from Pixabay

Is it just me that finds the analogy of a supertanker in higher education annoying. 

The story goes that changing things in higher education is like turning a supertanker.

Reality it is fun fact very easy to stop and turn a supertanker. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t be using them. Think about a supertanker is in port it needs to turn to get out of the port and will have to eventually stop when it arrives at its destination.

We use the analogy because where it is difficult for a supertanker to turn or stop is in an emergency. When the supertanker faces something unexpected then yes it can be challenging and difficult to turn or stop in time.

The reality is that when a supertanker moves, it is following a well defined process, outlined in a plan, along a pre-determined route. If higher education was a supertanker, it would be a highly efficient thing meeting all its objectives on time and to budget.

What does this mean for higher education?

If we say higher education is like a supertanker, what we seem to be saying is that as a sector we lack any kind of coherent plan, so when faced with a constant series of challenges we are unable to respond to them.

We should stop waiting for the disaster or the emergency and plan for the future in advance. A well planned route, an understanding of the potential hazard and adequate contingency planning to mitigate emergencies and disasters. If higher education is a supertanker then it is a well designed efficient thing which gets the job done. But only if they have a plan, a route, and good processes.

Maybe in the future, it will be a positive thing so say higher education is like a supertanker. 

weeknotes

Your radio voice – Weeknote #350 – 14th November

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Senate House Library

Much of this week was spent in London. Monday I was in our London office, and on Tuesday and Wednesday I was at the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education where I was speaking on a panel about collaboration.

I really enjoyed attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education and I am slightly sad that they are taking a fallow year in 2026. What works for me is the structure and format of the range of sessions that happen across the conference. I like the interview format of the keynote sessions which is different to the usual kinds of keynotes we see at other conferences. There was a dearth of PowerPoint slides in most sessions, which I liked. Sometimes slides dominate a session rather than enhance it.

My session was on how to collaborate, which seemed to go down well. Also decent audience for a penultimate session on the final day. The only issue for me was that I had a bad cough all week which meant that I had virtually lost my voice and did have trouble speaking in the session, a number of people referenced my radio voice.

I particularly enjoyed the final session about where will higher education be in 2050. There was an amusing lively debate on the discord channel for this conference session. It reminded me of how we would use what was the Twitter back in the early 2010s at conferences.

At the end of the week I braved the rain and delayed trains to get to the office in Bristol.

weeknotes

Cream, two sugars – Weeknote #349 – 7th November

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This week I was in Amsterdam for a GÉANT workshop on education and their strategy.

As I was anticipating that the new Entry/Exit System (EES) would be in place at Schiphol Airport I didn’t want to take a late flight to Amsterdam or try and get there first thing on the day of the workshop. Though the EES wasn’t in place at Schiphol, it still took me longer to get out of the airport after landing then the time if took to fly from Bristol.

I had a late flight back, so spent the afternoon of Thursday working in the GÉANT office.

Next week I am in London for the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education where I am speaking on a panel about collaboration. I am doing some preparation for that.

coffee

Saw on WonkHE that Nestlé had undertaken a survey on student coffee drinking habits, now I had to read that. With my intelligent campus and learning spaces work I have visited many different university campuses, one constant feature was coffee shops, sometimes chains such as Starbucks and Costa, other times it was home brewed coffee places. Of course, all were selling espresso based drinks. I look back at my university experience in the late 1980s and I trying to recall what was available back then. There wasn’t any espresso type coffee on sale, and I suspect that it was probably filter coffee, or even instant.

Just to note I did write an interesting blog piece on coffee analytics a couple of years ago and could we combine data on coffee drinking (along with snacks and tea) with other student data sets to better understand the student experience. I actually think we could still do that. I wrote some more on that here.

coffee

Time for a coffee

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coffee
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

Saw on WonkHE that Nestlé had undertaken a survey on student coffee drinking habits, now I had to read that. The survey, Behind the Beans: Coffee on Campus,  isn’t too much of a surprise, well it was commissioned by Nestlé, you know they do that Nescafe stuff.

94% of students regularly buy coffee on campus, with mornings being the most popular time…

As we know coffee is getting more expensive, so…

72% of students have changed their coffee-buying habits due to cost increases…

That shouldn’t be too surprising.

With my intelligent campus and learning spaces work I have visited many different university campuses, one constant feature was coffee shops, sometimes chains such as Starbucks and Costa, other times it was home brewed coffee places. Of course, all were selling espresso based drinks. I look back at my university experience in the late 1980s and I trying to recall what was available back then. There wasn’t any espresso type coffee on sale, and I suspect that it was probably filter coffee, or even instant.

Of course in a climate of financial instability, it makes sense to ensure that your campus catering outlets are meeting both the needs of students, but also not losing money. Understanding the purchasing habits of your students can ensure that you are selling what they want, when they want it, and at a price they are willing to pay. The high street chains are always reviewing the profitability of their branches, and I am sure everyone reading this will have seen at least one coffee shop close in their city or town. University catering outlets though are not just about profit, they are also part of that student experience. I did write an interesting blog piece on coffee analytics a couple of years ago and could we combine data on coffee drinking (along with snacks and tea) with other student data sets to better understand the student experience. I actually think we could still do that.

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Collaboration is a compromise

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coffee
Image by David Schwarzenberg from Pixabay

Over the last few years I have been looking at collaboration and sharing. Though my experience in this area goes back decades.

In 2001 I was employed as Director of the Western Colleges Consortium, this was a collaboration of seven FE colleges in what was originally the county of Avon. This consortium shared a common VLE, and my role was to run the shared service and where possible expand what we could do.

The original concept behind the consortium was in the main to shared lessons about using a VLE, but also to save money.

As the colleges’ experience with the VLE concept expanded there was a demand to expand what each college wanted to do with the VLE, and unsurprisingly branding was one of the key requirements. They weren’t wiling to compromise in their use of a shared environment and as a result they went down their own path. There wasn’t anything wrong with this decision (well apart from the fact that my role became somewhat redundant), we knew when the consortium was setup that whatever we did would have to be a compromise, we would need to sacrifice some key features and requirements, in order to take advantage of the affordances of a shared environment (in the main affordability).

In later roles when looking at procuring services through outsourcing it was clear that whatever was on offer was never going to be perfect, what we would get would be a compromise. Of course, if we decided to go down the road of doing it ourselves, then we wouldn’t need to compromise, but we would need to factor in the (real) costs of doing it by ourselves.

We now live in an environment where financial sustainability is very likely the item on the top of the agenda within higher education, and looking to where savings could be made. The use of shared services is often touted as a potential way to save costs, as outlined recently in reports I have been involved in from Jisc, KPMG, and UUK. Thought when discussing shared services with representatives from the sector, it becomes apparent that some are not willing to compromise on the service within the institution. The reality is that sometimes what you want isn’t affordable and you have to compromise somewhere along the way. Collaboration is a compromise, but a comprise that is affordable in the current financial climate.

weeknotes

Don’t wait for the translation! Answer me now! – Weeknote #348 – 31st October

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Pumpkins

On Monday I was in London, along with my colleague, I was delivering a presentation about Jisc to a delegation of Koreans from KERIS. They were on a study tour of the UK and had asked to see Jisc and hear about who we support higher education. It was an interesting experience presenting and then waiting for the translation, before continuing the delivery. Likewise answering question was equally challenging. I wrote up about the visit for an internal blog.

I was involved in various meetings about a workshop I am helping to deliver next week in Amsterdam.

I spent a lot of time analysing the recent higher education white paper and what it means for higher education, Jisc, and what we can do to support the sector. There was a lot of discussion in the paper about collaboration and sharing.

Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay
Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay

I noted that Advance HE are getting into the collaboration space as announced on the WonkHE site.

On the site this morning, Alistair Jarvis sets out for the first time his plans for Advance HE to focus its offer to members on transformation and change. Recognising that the sector’s challenges will necessitate significant transformation agendas, innovation and a different set of leadership skills, Jarvis commits to modernising the sector’s development agency and putting transformation and change “at the heart of what Advance HE does.” A new strategic advisory group will support in-house expertise to embed transformation support across all Advance HE’s programmes, products, and services.

Read more on Wonkhe.

There are some interesting comments in the article and the primary focus of Advance HE now to be on transformation and change (rather than improvement).

Firstly, we have made supporting transformation and change a core part of our membership offer.

They indicate that they will do this by:

Supporting enhancement, change and transformation will now be at the heart of what Advance HE does – embedded across our member benefits, our programmes and our consultancy. To help institutions through these challenging times we will apply our expertise, experience and resources to best support enhancement and service improvement, where it is needed.

As we know transformation is usually enhanced and enabled by digital, data and technology. The next comment shows a potential opportunity for Jisc as well.

Collaborating with partner organisations that are supporting transformation and change will be central to our approach. Blending our expertise in leadership development, educational excellence, equality and inclusion, governance effectiveness with the experience of partners that have different but complementary skills and capabilities.

They also see that they have a role for mergers as well as less formal collaboration as well.

…we have launched the Merger Insights and Roadmap, a new resource for navigating institutional collaboration, partnerships and mergers.

Interesting times.

altc2025

Sketchnoting at ALT-C

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This week I was in Glasgow for the Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C). This year it is shorter.

While I was there I did a couple of sketch notes of two of the keynotes.

My sketch notes are really for me, rather than other people. The process of sketching allows me to digest for myself what is been talked about and demonstrated. The sketch note provides me with a mechanism that provides a process for my interpretation of what is being said and what I understand from the talk. The process of sketching engages me in the talk in ways in which note taking does for others or conversing on social media.

The first of these was from Charles Knight.

Being a leader, not an algorithm: Human skills for an AI-Shaped Future

Artificial Intelligence as a contested technology, is increasingly positioned as the solution to every challenge, from assessment to personalisation, efficiency, and leadership.  In this keynote, Dr Charles Knight, Director of Leadership, Governance and Management at Advance HE, will explore the intersection of leadership and technology, asking: what uniquely human skills and behaviours ATL members need to thrive? Drawing on insights from leadership practice, digital innovation, and organisational development, this session will challenge assumptions and surface blind spots, and argue for a very human set of skills.

The second was the keynote by Gabi Witthaus.

Engaging Learning: Rethinking Inclusion with Insights from the Margins

This talk is about how learning designers can foster more inclusive student participation in online learning by considering four key dimensions of engagement—cognitive, behavioural, social, and emotional. Student engagement is important because it is correlated with retention, especially for students living in precarious circumstances. There is evidence that engagement in any one dimension can fuel engagement in the others—and the corollary is also true: disengagement in one dimension can cascade into others, fuelling broader disengagement. I will argue that while academia tends to value the cognitive and behavioural, for some students—especially those in contexts of conflict, crisis and displacement—social and emotional engagement may be critical to the successful completion of their studies.

altc2025, weeknotes

Reforming Higher Education – Weeknote #347 – 24th October

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The big story this week was the publication of the e government’s post-16 education and skills white paper.

What is in the post-16 education and skills white paper for higher education? Well WonkHE as per usual does a really good job of analysing what was in it for higher education.

In terms of strategic ambition, there are five objectives for the sector: economic growth, a high quality experience, national capability via specific research and skills development, regional impact, and an increase in international standing. In the international domain, these translate into global standing, nationally to government goals on growth, security and skills, regionally to meeting skills needs through collaboration, and at provider level, to specialisation and efficiency.

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

Though the news about increased fees will be welcomed by institutions, I wonder what the reaction will be from prospective students. Yes, student fee debt, is not really debt as often explained by Martin Lewis, but as he says the amount you borrow is mostly irrelevant day to day – it works more like a tax. The reality is that extra 9% tax on earnings above £25,000 will make a difference, in terms of things like mortgage affordability, but also when comparing graduate income levels to non-graduate income levels. Throw in the temptations of a degree apprenticeship where there are no fees and debts (and you get paid). 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.

Next week we have a Korean delegation from KERIS visiting us in our London offices. With over twenty five delegates there was some logistical stuff to sort out, as well as my travel.

I continued working on the E in NREN project, planning for two workshops in November, as well as thinking about a session at TNC 26 in Helsinki in June next year.

At the end of the week I was in Glasgow for the Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C). This year it is both shorter than usual, later than usual. Unlike previous conferences, it is taking place in a hotel rather than an university. In the past ALT-C was a three day conference, this year it was concentrated into two days.

I really enjoyed and got a lot out of the conference. I have been part of this community for over twenty years, attending my first ALT-C back in 2003.

altc2025

Hanging out in Glasgow for ALT-C

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Glasgow

This week I am in Glasgow for the Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C). This year it is both shorter than usual, later than usual, and in a twist isn’t in Manchester or Warwick, but in Glasgow. Also unlike previous conferences, it is taking place in a hotel rather than an university. I suspect the reason for the hotel is that it is taking place in October so there would be no conference availability at an university campus.

My first ALT-C was back in 2002, which was at Sheffield. I have written about this event before, back then I didn’t think it was the conference for me. So, much so, that when ALT-C 2003 took place in Exeter (which is literally just down the road from me) I didn’t go. I did go to Manchester in 2004 and really enjoyed the conference.

Since then I have been nearly every year, though I did miss last year’s conference.

I am not presenting this year, I was way too late for the submission deadline. So, as a delegate I am interested in looking at the current landscape for learning technology in higher education, as well as having conversations about student mobility, collaboration and shared services.