So the year is nearly over. This time last year I was in Berlin for a conference which felt very festive. This year I was mainly in chilly Bristol.
I had a few internal meetings and briefings this week.
I spent most of the week scoping and researching a possible intelligent campus elevation tool based on the concept of the Jisc FE Digital Elevation Tool.
I had my Q1 review this week. These weeknotes helped me complete the paperwork and discussions during the meeting.
I wrote a blog post about how I am not using the Twitter anymore.
I stopped using the Twitter in September. Though I still yet to delete my account, partly as I think one day, it might go back to what it was. Well one can dream. If I do look at the service, I come away disappointed and saddened.
I stopped using the Twitter in September. Though I still yet to delete my account, partly as I think one day, it might go back to what it was. Well one can dream. If I do look at the service, I come away disappointed and saddened.
The last conference I really used Twitter was ALT-C 2023.
I have been using Twitter at the ALT conferences since I joined Twitter in 2007. In 2010 I had said about the Twitter
Overall from my experience, Twitter has really added value to conferences I have attended and made them more joined up and much more a social affair. It has helped to build a real community, especially at ALT-C.
This year, not so much.
There hadn’t been a huge amount of engagement on Twitter at ALT-C 2022 so I didn’t have huge expectations.
Much of the online discussion that took place at ALT-C 2023 this year was on a Discord server, but it still wasn’t at the levels that I have seen in previous years.
I have seen a continual decline in the engagement with conference backchannels. I do wonder why this is?
No (real) travelling this week, as I spent much of the week working out of our Bristol office, which on some days was really quite busy.
On Tuesday I did a masterclass, Operationalising your Strategic Vision for colleagues at Jisc.
In this session we will go through one possible process of operationalising a strategic vision. We will review what the current thinking is on vision and strategy and how this applies to organisations, teams, and individuals. We will start to explore how you can bring in the relevant stakeholders and teams to drive success. We will look at how to plan to build an effective operational responsive plan that will help to achieve your strategic vision. There will be an introduction to the strategic lens and how it can be used to ensure coherency across a business.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a famous quote from management consultant and writer Peter Drucker.
It seemed to go well, and I got a lot of positive feedback. So much so we think we might run it again early next year.
I watched the UCISA Enterprise Architecture: a culture, not a project recording from last week. Well I say I watched, what I actually did was go for a walk and listen to it. I found it really interesting and relevant to some work I am doing at Jisc.
Had a meeting with SURF about the smart campus landscape. Range of similar and interesting activities happening in Netherlands in the smart campus space.
Undertook some training in our revamped finance system.
Still not using the Twitter. I will admit to visiting the site now and again, but I am glad I left. Still not fully engaged with Threads and Bluesky.
I spent the best part of the week in Glasgow where I was attending and presenting at Learning Places Scotland 2023. Next to the Scottish Event Campus Centre is the huge, okay BIG Finnieston Crane, which I walked past every time I went from my hotel to the conference centre and back again.
It was an interesting conference, though the focus was very much on schools and from the nature of the exhibitors, furniture.
My presentation was in a session on sustainability, and for me specifically on building the intelligent campus.
Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.
I was supposed to attend a pre-conference planning call, however my flight up to Glasgow was delayed by over ninety minutes, so the call took place whilst I was in the air. We eventually did the meeting in person over coffee.
I had various conversations with key SFC stakeholders, Jisc colleagues at the Learning Places Scotland 2023 conference. This kind of informal ad hoc conversation is much harder to undertake in an online conference, not impossible, just harder, or just different. In the past at an online conference I would probably have had these informal conversations on the Twitter. As I have now stopped using Twitter (or X) and though Threads and Bluesky are spaces I frequent now, they don’t yet have reached an optimal size as a viable community for online conferences.
Thursday, I had originally planned to be in our Bristol office for a meeting with the Office for Students. However last week the decision was made to have the meeting online, so I worked from home and attended the meeting online.
On Friday we had another meeting of our Research Evidence Advisory Group at Jisc. As more and more teams and staff across Jisc undertake and utilise research, we are ensuring that moving forward we have a more consistent way of working.
I had planned to attend the UCISA Enterprise Architecture: a culture, not a project webinar, but it clashed with my flight plans, but I now have access to a recording, which I aim to visit next week.
Did some preparation for Leadership Masterclass – Operationalising your Strategic Vision which I am delivering next week.
I was mainly in London this week trying to avoid the rain.
I was attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education, this is the conference previously known as WonkFest. The name change was more about the challenge in delegates getting funding to come to the event… so you want to go to a conference, that should be fine, what’s it called. Seriously?
It was a rather good conference, some really good sessions, too much choice sometimes. Only downside was, one of the rooms for the parallel sessions, was too small, so as a result lots of people who wanted to attend the session were turned away (including me).
I enjoyed the session, “in conversation with David Aaronovitch“ I did have a question about the Remembrance of the Daleks… but a quick check of Wikipedia and I realise that Ben Aaronovitch wrote the Daleks and is David’s brother… So won’t be asking that question then!
I had to spend some time reviewing and collating materials, and writing briefing note and bullet points for a panel session at HEAnet on Navigating the Challenges and Opportunities of the Modern Campus. As the considered expert on the intelligent campus, I often get asked to provide a perspective on the future of the university campus.
It is the intelligent campus that I will be speaking about, next week at Learning Places Scotland 2023 in Glasgow. I am doing a presentation on building the intelligent campus.
Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.
I had to plan in a call to discuss the presentation.
On Monday before heading off to London, I had a great discussion with colleagues in the office about broadcast and recording capabilities within our Bristol office. The reality is that though I would love to have a proper TV studio in the office I really need to plan and deliver some initial content first, to provide some foundations to a proof of concept.
There was a discussion on the possible future of the office, as in redesigning the space to reflect the current (hybrid) working practices. So more collaborative spaces, more occasional spaces, more spaces for online conversations and meetings, and so on…
Continued doing more work on the planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data.
I had a great meeting with Josie Fraser discussing digital skills and digitisation.
Had a pre-meeting for Jisc OfS meeting next week. As a result I have some preparation to do.
I did miss using the Twitter at the conference this week, though I did post to Bluesky and Threads, it wasn’t quite the same, and very little engagement. I did look at the Twitter and there were some posts, so I do think even if I had engaged, there wouldn’t have been a serious amount of traction and discussion.
I am attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education 2023 at Senate House in London.
Originally called WonkFest I have attended the conference before, and it’s a great event to learn about higher education policy and the impact on the university sector.
I attended the session titled: What might the future of education technology hold?
Beyond the hype, and the sales pitch, beyond digital transformation and digital natives – this session will explore how technology is likely to shape higher education provison in the years ahead, what changes universities can realistically expect to learning and teaching, and how they might work with technology providers to get ahead of the curve.
Despite the abstract this was alas something of a sales pitch. As well as the advertised PVC, Claire Pike, Mark Simpson, the PVC from Teesside was also on the stage. However in a thirty minute session, over twenty minutes was devoted to telling us how “wonderful” one specific product was. I think this was a missed opportunity. Yes, I know you sponsored the conference, do provide an insight into the product, but that would have been much more authentic and valuable if it had come one of the PVCs.
I also felt thirty minutes was quite short for the session, so there wasn’t time for question or further discussion.
Jisc did get a mention for their report on student perceptions of generative AI.
This report looks at how students are currently using generative AI and explores its potential impact on their learning experience.
I am attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education 2023 at Senate House in London.
Originally called WonkFest I have attended the conference before, and it’s a great event to learn about higher education policy and the impact on the university sector.
I attended the session titled: How do you solve a problem like HE regulation?
Can any higher education regulator realistically be expected to balance the interests of students, providers, government, and the nation – and not get itself into hot water? With regulatory divergence and reform across the UK and criticisms from a House of Lords committee over the efficacy of English regulator the Office for Students, our panel will assess the options for HE regulation and think through what might be done to make it work.
I did a sketchnote which shows the breadth and depth that was covered in the session.
I am attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education 2023 at Senate House in London.
Originally called WonkFest I have attended the conference before, and it’s a great event to learn about higher education policy and the impact on the university sector.
The opening panel session was entitled What do the UK’s places want from their universities?
“Levelling up” may no longer be the current buzzword in government, but long standing issues of inequitable economic growth, public health, cultural assets, and education outcomes across the UK haven’t gone away – nor has universities’ and colleges’ commitment to their places. As Britain gears up for a general election, how might “place” shape the next generation of policy thinking – and how can universities best meet the needs of their communities?
I did a sketchnote which shows the breadth and depth that was covered in the session.
I was in our Bristol office for an in-person workshop. I was attending a community manager training understanding behaviours workshop in Bristol. The workshop was led by Dave White. The focus was on digital practice and involved looking at visitors and residents and mapping your online activities.
I have done this workshop before quite a few times, and have even delivered a version of it as part of the Digital Leaders Programme and at the ALT Conference. So it was very familiar territory for me.
Despite having participated before in these kinds of workshops, I still threw myself into the process.
It was interesting to map my internet activity, as my online behaviours have changed quite a bit over the last few years (and even over the last few months).
One of the interesting observations as I reflect on the map, is what is missing. I use Google to search everyday, and I think that has become so normalised in my behaviour that I didn’t even consider putting it in. Having said that I am using search in Google Maps a lot more these days and that is something I didn’t use to to (and it is on the map).
I also reflected that Wikipedia is not there either, and this is a site I use on a regular basis for both finding out stuff and checking information, but I also use it to read about stuff that I find interesting, sometimes going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole of articles.
WordPress, a tool I use all the time for blogging was also missing in action.
On previous maps I did, Twitter was huge bubble or square on the map, today X is over on the left side of the map. Whereas before I would consider my behaviour to be resident in Twitter, these days it is a place I visit rarely and stopped engaging with the site last month. My replacements of Bluesky and Threads are there, but from a personal social perspective Facebook has become more dominant.
After using Flickr album at ALT-C in September, I have been thinking about re-engaging with the service and paying the subscription. ALT-C was also where Discord became my conference tool of choice, I think though that my use of that will decline over the next few months.
Another service, which I use to use a lot, Google Docs, is now a much smaller part of my digital footprint. I certainly don’t use it like I did a few years ago. Maybe that is the nature of the work I am doing, but I think also the use of Office 365 at work has changed how I collaborate on shared documents.
The work stuff is there, Outlook, Teams, (what was Yammer) and Dovetail. Though I personally use JIRA and Confluence, the rest of the people I work with don’t. I think what is interesting for me is how Outlook is a place I visit, but don’t necessarily use as a key communication or engagement tool, that’s where Teams comes into play.
Overall I did enjoy doing the mapping exercise and then reflecting on my practice.
I managed to snag an invite code for Bluesky, which I am now using alongside Threads as a micro-blogging platform instead of X (what as the Twitter).
I haven’t quite engaged with my community on Bluesky, still more lurking (listening) than participating and engaging.
As with Threads, I will give Bluesky for time and engagement as experience tells me it takes time for a social media platform time to bed in and become part of people’s lives. I worry though as it is in beta, will it scale, but more importantly as it isn’t that easy and simple to sign up to (you need an invite code) will that mean people won’t join and seek a home elsewhere. Without a community, then there is a chance that people will stop visiting and not engage.
news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…
