All posts by James Clay

weeknotes

There may be mergers ahead – Weeknote #272 – 17th May 2024

Leave a comment

bird screen

The news this week was dominated by the financial crisis that the university sector is facing in the UK.

Wonkhe said in their daily briefing

An increasing number of universities in England face a material risk of closure unless they significantly cut costs or merge. The Office for Students (OfS) 2024 financial sustainability report discusses a heavy reliance on international students due to declining domestic student fee income, and a “worst-case scenario” predicts that four out of five institutions will be in deficit by 2027 without changes.

With over optimistic views by universities about student numbers (domestic and international) the sector is facing a real financial challenge and with no real solutions in sight. There is no easy solution to this.

The OfS report was quite clear about the pressures facing the university sector.

Continuing decline in the real-terms value of income from UK undergraduates combined with inflationary and economic pressures on operating costs and the costs of developing buildings and facilities, as well as increasing employer contributions to some pension schemes.

They added the following key points in their report.

  • A recent apparent reduction in UK and international applications after years of strong growth, especially from international students.
  • A higher education financial model that has become reliant on fee income from international students, with a particular vulnerability where recruitment is predominantly from a single country.
  • The affordability of necessary estate maintenance and development and the significant cost of investment needed to reduce carbon emissions as part of providers’ commitments to achieve net zero.
  • Cost of living difficulties for students and staff, which challenge both student recruitment and the support needed by students during their time in higher education.

The report set out that universities may need to think differently to respond to the challenges they face.

Changes to a provider’s operating model can be a healthy response to financial challenge.  The sector as a whole has been in a relatively strong financial position for much of the past decade and has expanded its delivery to more UK and non-UK students. The financial challenges it is facing now could be a catalyst to drive positive change and innovation. Actions being taken by providers can result in more efficient operation, and could have benefits for students, including improved value for money.

This very much echoes the work I have been doing at Jisc on optimising operations and looking at collaboration and shared services.

The report also acknowledges that there may be mergers ahead.

We also expect that we might see some changes to the size and shape of the sector, for example, through mergers and acquisitions or increase specialisation.

As part of my work I wrote a vision about mergers and the formation of large university groups, but with the individual partners within that group retaining their local identity.

The first large university groups appeared following mergers forced by the regulator after financial pressures could have caused at least one higher education institution to fail. The new group recognised that though in theory they should have a new name, they also realised that the existing names were brands in their own right. As a result they formed The University Group™ but the individual university names were kept. Staff were employed by The University Group™ but students attended a named university. It was so successful that some smaller institutions asked to join the group but retain their identity. What was important to the group was that management and staff recognised that they were employed by The University Group™ and not the named university in which they worked (though some teaching staff worked across the group), from a student experience perspective the student was a student of the named university. They would be awarded their degree from that named university and would to all intents and purposes be a graduate of that named university.

This is a model we have seen in the Further Education sector, with large college groups and individual campuses having a separate brand and identity.

As well as facing financial challenges, the sector is also facing an unhappy cohort of students who are making more complaints.

Students complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) in England and Wales rose to 3,137 in 2023, the ombuds’ annual report reveals. This was a ten per cent increase from 2022, and OIA recommendations led to more than £580,000 paid out in financial compensation, in addition to almost £640,000 in settlements. Some 21 per cent of complaints were adjudged to be justified (two per cent) or partly justified (seven per cent) or were settled in favour of the student. 

Wonkhe reflects on a year of complaints received by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator.

I was in the office for a couple of days this week, but reflected I’ve not been out and about for a while. I was expecting to go out and do some visits and workshops in May, but these never materialised. I‘ve also not attended any recent events, I think I might have to do some travelling over the next few weeks.

I attended our regular catch up meeting with the OfS this week in our Bristol office, and we updated each other which what is happening and what this may mean.

Wrote a short thought piece on academic staff using ChatGPT for student feedback.

We know that students are using tools such as ChatGPT to support their assessment work. It looks like some staff are also using the tool to provide feedback.

conference
Image by Florian Pircher from Pixabay

I have started a leadership development programme at Jisc. I am very much in the position in my career, where it is much less about what do I need to do to advance my career, but more about having achieved my career aspiration, what can I do for Jisc. I have extensive management and leadership experience, running teams of various sizes, complexity and geographically distributed. I have planned, designed, and delivered shared services for consortia and complex organisations. I have managed multi-million pound budgets and projects.

So, I am not attending the programme to learn how to be a leader, but there is something about refreshing and updating your knowledge in this space. Also, it will be good to work with colleagues across the organisation as well.

assessment

Please provide feedback

2 Comments
Writing in a notebook
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

We know that students are using tools such as ChatGPT to support their assessment work. It looks like some staff are also using the tool to provide feedback.

Saw this tweet on the Twitter.

In one of the student discords I am a member of – someone explaining they had to write to their tutor to explain that it was clear that their feedback was from ChatGPT because they’d cut and pasted the prompt as well

Not much of a surprise that staff are using generative AI tools like ChatGPT for writing feedback for students to save time. There is a deeper question on whether this is not just ethical, but also if using the tool is providing useful feedback to the student.

We don’t know what the prompt was, but I suspect that if the prompt was left in as it was copied and pasted onto the student work, then it probably hadn’t even been read before being pasted.

I can see the potential for using tools such as ChatGPT to maybe tidy up feedback, but not to replace the entire process of creating feedback.

connectmore2024, weeknotes

Accessible Maths – Weeknote #271 – 10th May 2024

Leave a comment

Shorter week this week with the bank holiday.

Have been working on sub-themes for the proposed Intelligent Campus framework. This means taking the themes and breaking them down further.

This week was Connect More, I attended various Connect More sessions. Chaired a Connect More session on accessible maths, delivered by an old friend of mine, Lilian Joy. She described the challenges in teaching maths to the visually impaired. One insight was the use of tactile methods to teach maths, made easier due to the availability of cost effective 3D printing.

3D Printer
Image by Lutz Peter from Pixabay

Continuing my work on the report on how universities could support their organisational change through the optimisation of their operations.

We are now in quarter four, so I did my Q3 paperwork for my Q3 review. These weeknotes were useful in helping with that.

I attended a review meeting for the Digital Elevation Model. Though not directly reviewing the model, I am using the meetings to inform and influence my work on the Intelligent Campus framework.

Read the UCU report on Academic Freedom in the Digital University.

twitter, weeknotes

Immaturity Framing – Weeknote #270 – 3rd May 2024

Leave a comment

Spent some time working on some draft themes for a possibly (maturity) framework for the intelligent campus.

I am a little but loathe to call it a maturity framework, as we really don’t confidently know what a mature intelligent campus looks like. However at this stage I don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about a name, when there is much more to do with the framework.

I am planning to use the FE Digital Elevation Tool as a starting point. The first stage is to identify the main themes. This is what I arrived at, reflecting on the work I have done in this space for the last eight years.

  • Vision
  • Campus
  • Data
  • Digital
  • Technology
  • People
  • Activity
  • Policy
  • Process
  • Security
  • Ethics
  • Energy
  • Community

A theme has many sub-themes, so we could take people and break it down into staff and students.

Each sub-theme has many competencies. Competency has three statements and there are four responses to each statement.

  • Completed
  • In progress
  • Not started
  • Not a priority

This will take some time to work on, but I am planning to run some community events around this.

I rebooted my monthly Intelligent Campus newsletter on the Jiscmail. You can subscribe to the mailing list here.

I wrote a blog post about a Wonkhe article I read.

Across the country there are a real variety of university campuses. No two campuses are alike, but all have similar challenges that the Estates team have to work with. There was an interesting article from Wonkhe a few weeks back on what keeps your estates manager awake at night? from the incoming AUDE chair.

I also published some thoughts about personalisation.

I have been looking at what we mean by personalisation in higher education. What I have discovered is that there isn’t really any clear idea or definition of what we mean by personalisation and across the sector there are varied views and opinions about what is personalisation, what can be personalised, and importantly why we would do this.

We had our monthly team meeting.

I am recognising that now as I no longer use Twitter, that I am missing some articles and news that would have been shared on Twitter. I would also use the postings (especially of links) I made to Twitter to inform the writing of these weeknotes. I need to reflect on what this means going forward and if there is some other kind of mechanism I can use. I really don’t want to go back to the Twitter.

Shorter week next week with the bank holiday. I am chairing a session at Jisc’s Connect More event next week, so attended a rehearsal on how to use the platform we are using.

stuff

Keeping you awake?

1 Comment

Across the country there are a real variety of university campuses. No two campuses are alike, but all have similar challenges that the Estates team have to work with. There was an interesting article from Wonkhe a few weeks back on what keeps your estates manager awake at night? from the incoming AUDE chair.

Estates Directors, by and large, are significant net spenders of university income. While we may also run aspects of our institution’s income-generating commercial services – conferencing and retail for instance – and we know our university built environment can be key in attracting research income, staff and students too, on the whole we sit on the expenditure side of the balance sheet, with buildings second only to people in terms of operating costs.

It noted the challenge that costs are rising, and budgets are being cut, and the challenges that this budgetary nightmare brings to the Estates team. There are things they can cut, things they can spend less on, and then there are the statutory requirements that have to be met and paid for. In addition the way in which campuses are been used are changing.

The issue of both students and staff using the campus differently now, post covid, and their hybrid use of space for studying and working. We know that space designed for the way we would use those spaces pre-covid, aren’t necessarily now the kinds of spaces that we need post-covid. Easy to say, actually quite challenging to think about and design spaces that meet these new needs. What are those new kinds of spaces and how would we know?

Most universities I have discussed this with reinforce the importance of the university space, a place for people to come together for education and research. There is an expectation that staff and students will be physically travelling to and using the university buildings and spaces.

Even so with hybrid working and studying the norm these days, spaces have to be flexible to allow for in-person working and studying, as well as allowing for online interactions to take place on campus as well. Just because a meeting or a lecture is online this doesn’t automatically mean that the person participating is going to be off campus. Are there spaces on the campus that can be used for these online activities.

Another challenge isn’t just space, but also time. You can already see that more people are coming into the office for two or three days a week, and those days are usually in the middle of the week. The challenge that anyone has in managing space is how do you provide the capacity needed for two or three days, knowing that for the rest of the week it will be underutilised. How do you incentivise people to spread their in-person working (and studying) patterns across the week, to ensure space is being used efficiently.

With people working at home for part of the week, what I am seeing in our own spaces, and hearing about on university campuses, and also seeing in the office work environment; is that without some kind of intervention, people are creating their own working patterns based on the patterns that benefits them individually and aren’t necessarily the most efficient mechanism for space utilisation across a working space. There is a default to mid-week in-person working, resulting in less utilisation on the extremities of the week. Should spaces be closed one day a week to allow for this?

Might it be more efficient to spread utilisation across the week, and then reduce the size of the space required? How then do you encourage and incentivise people to work on the less popular days of the week?

Whatever decisions are made by estates teams in relation to the campus, it is understandable why it might be keeping them awake at night.

video, weeknotes

Play Away – Weeknote #269 – 26th April 2024

Leave a comment

The beginning of the week was our directorate away day in Bristol, well it was a lunchtime to lunchtime away day. Always nice to get together the directorate in-person and discuss key issues and challenges. I delivered a presentation, which for me has a fair few words on it about my work on optimising operations and data.

Read this article, ‘Give academics studios’ to record lectures that engage students

Blended learning will not truly take off until lecturers have access to recording studios and video editing services that will allow them to create high-quality online lectures, an e-learning expert has warned.

A colleague of mine noted that lecture capture became embedded in many institutions during the pandemic, and asked the question, has the level of use sustained?

video recording
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

I was reminded that I wrote these posts at the height of the pandemic in May 2020.

Lost in translation: the television programme

Lost in translation: the radio programme

I also remember a year or so back that Durham University have put in self-service TV studios for staff. I did think that the technology was only part of the solution, what about the creative, production, and presentation skills, that would be needed. Recording high quality video content, is significantly different to capturing a lecture.

Also Leeds Business School had done something similar pre-pandemic

They were using some clever glass technology that made their content more engaging.

As it happened, I wrote this earlier this month, The idea of capturing a lecture…

The idea of capturing a lecture isn’t new. Even before the advent of dedicated lecture capture systems being installed across the campus some lecturers (and some students) would record the lecture onto cassette tape.

I read the HEPI policy note, ‘Dropouts or stopouts or comebackers or potential completers?’: Non-continuation of students in the UK.

…the UK has had the lowest drop-out rate among developed countries, with Ireland in second place; the UK’s strong performance arises in part from the historic levels of academic selection at the point of entry to higher education as well as the relatively short length of undergraduate degrees, which provides less scope for life events to intervene and disrupt study;

I did wonder though, if this was the main reason. Across Europe, many young people who go to university go to their local university, they’re not moving away from a family home for the university experience. Once studying maybe family issues disrupt study, or employment opportunities come around.

However the report concludes:

‘The UK’s problem is not high drop-out rates across the entire higher education sector. It is the relatively low attendance rate in the compulsory stage of education since the pandemic lessened, insufficient support for sub-degree provision, high drop-out rates among a minority of institutions, courses and students (including degree apprenticeships) and people being unable to make the most of their student experience because they have not got enough money and have to undertake a high number of hours of paid work – even during term time when their studies should be their main priority.’

They recognise how jobs and paid work are not intruding on that student experience, will the drop-out rates start to increase?

stuff

Personalisation, just some thoughts

Leave a comment
man on windowsill looking over a city
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

I have been looking at what we mean by personalisation in higher education. What I have discovered is that there isn’t really any clear idea or definition of what we mean by personalisation and across the sector there are varied views and opinions about what is personalisation, what can be personalised, and importantly why we would do this.

In this blog post I am not trying to come up with a definition of personalisation, nor am I proposing what it definitively means for higher education. No, this post is much more some of my recent thinking on the issue and what personalisation could mean for higher education.

In many ways the sector already has personalisation, the student journey for each student, though common in many areas, is pretty much unique to each individual student.

There are reasons why universities might want to be more explicit in how they personalise the student journey. These may include equity, inclusion, adaptation, enhancement, efficiency, and other reasons. Obviously though you might want to allow all of the student journey to be personalised, the reality is that a fully personalised student journey isn’t practical or affordable.

Reviewing the student journey, there will be touchpoints, where the student interacts and engages with the university. Across those touchpoints the university will need to decide which touchpoints:

  • Don’t need to be personalised.
  • Must be personalised
  • Should be personalised
  • Could be personalised

This will then allow those touchpoints to be prioritised.

In addition the level of personalisation would need to be considered, what changes would have to be made and the subsequent impact of those changes. What are the variables across the touchpoints and what does personalisation look and feel like for students for all the touchpoints.

I am interested in how data, digital, and technology can help and support this process. Certainly from a data and analytics perspective, the ability to record those touchpoints and the changes that arise from personalisation.

From my perspective, the next stage will be is, what is the role of an organisation like Jisc in the process of personalisation.

weeknotes

The challenge of time and space – Weeknote #268 – 19th April 2024

Leave a comment

I was working on an invitation to tender this week. This took up most of my time with researching, reading, writing, reviewing, sharing, and then going back again…

Interesting article from Wonkhe this week on what keeps your estates manager awake at night?

Estates Directors, by and large, are significant net spenders of university income. While we may also run aspects of our institution’s income-generating commercial services – conferencing and retail for instance – and we know our university built environment can be key in attracting research income, staff and students too, on the whole we sit on the expenditure side of the balance sheet, with buildings second only to people in terms of operating costs.

It noted the challenge that costs are rising and budgets are being cut, and the challenges that this brings to the Estates team.

The issue of both students and staff using the campus differently now, post covid, and their hybrid use of space for studying and working. We know that space designed for the way we would use those spaces pre-covid, aren’t necessarily now the kinds of spaces that we need post-covid. Easy to say, actually quite challenging to design spaces that meet these new needs. What are those new kinds of spaces and how would we know?

The other challenge isn’t just space, but also time. You can already see that more people are coming into the office for two or three days a week, and those days are usually in the middle of the week. The challenge that anyone has in managing space is how do you provide the capacity needed for two or three days, knowing that for the rest of the week it will be underutilised. How do you incentivise people to spread their in-person working (and studying) patterns across the week, to ensure space is being used efficiently.

Next week I am presenting at our directorate away day in Bristol on my work. I produced a presentation, which for me has a fair few words on it. I also developed the visions exercise I ran recently with our senior group; I turned the visions into handouts and created an activity that can be used with them.

weeknotes

Back in the office – Weeknote #267 – 12th April 2024

Leave a comment

Back to a full week, after a couple of shorter weeks. It’s still school holidays in the West, so the roads were quieter as were the trains. Well there was a few issues with the trains, but not big issues.

As it was the holidays I was in the office every day this week. Some days the office was busy and noisy, and on other days it was quieter. Friday it was very quiet.

Most of the week was researching reading, thinking, and writing.

On Tuesday I attended the HEAnet Group Advisory Forum, which is a group which supports HEAnet in Ireland. I attend as an international expert.

There are numerous stories across the press now about the financial (and other) challenges that various universities are facing. The Guardian reports on The Goldsmiths crisis: how cuts and culture wars sent universities into a death spiral.

Arts education is essential – yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack. With massive redundancies announced at this London institution, is it the canary in the coalmine?

The article notes how what is happening at Goldsmiths is reflecting what is happening elsewhere in the sector.

Yet in many ways, what’s happening at Goldsmiths is a vivid thumbnail sketch of the crises, both accidental and deliberately manufactured, hitting the entire sector, bar a very few stunningly well-funded universities from the high-profile Russell Group.

Despite the sector being very collaborative and mutually friendly, underneath there is a fierce competitive streak. Changes in how university education was funded exposed this. As the article notes when fees were set at £9000 per year.

…Andrew McGettigan, author of the Great University Gamble and expert in university funding and finance, says: “Suddenly classroom subjects were getting a lot more than the cost of delivering teaching, so you could fund research time in your department out of the money you were getting from your students.” You could also cross-subsidise more expensive subjects. This led to what he calls “a great sucking sound” as larger, more prestigious institutions pulled in humanities students because they were very lucrative. 

The sector is facing huge challenges, and they will need to change. What that change is and what it looks like, we don’t’ really know.

Spent some time discussing our away day which is happening later this month, I am doing a session on the challenges that the higher education sector is facing.

ucisa24

Delivering value with AI

Leave a comment

Back in March 2024 I attended the UCISA 24 Leadership Conference in Edinburgh. There was a range of interesting sessions, and for some I made some sketch notes.

There was a Microsoft sponsored session, Delivering value with AI: Insights and lessons learnt in shaping your AI enabled digital journey.

As AI becomes ever more woven into society, many organisations and individuals are just starting to understand the full extent of what’s possible. During this session, members of the Microsoft team will share thoughts and insights on the use of AI across the sector, whilst also drawing upon the lessons learnt from other industries. Security, governance, skills, and responsible / ethical AI are amongst the key pillars of building trustworthy and reliable AI outcomes. The session will discuss how data and models can be protected from unauthorised access, tampering or theft. How governance ensures processes and policies for developing and deploying AI are transparent, accountable, and fair. The importance of skills, both in consideration of your curriculum and your own workforce. And lastly, the approach of Responsible / Ethical AI to ensure alignment with human values and social norms. By following these principles, we can create AI solutions that benefit society and empower individuals.

The session covered a huge amount of content, but as you might imagine from a vendor perspective, it was quite positive about the impact AI will have on working and productivity. There were quite a few demonstrations of how copilot could be used to support this.