I had a quiet week in terms of meetings and events, but did go to the Bristol office for three days this week.
Monday was spent catching up with email and Teams messages from last week when I was mainly on leave. Also on Monday was our monthly leadership meeting.
I was failing miserably to use the campaigns function of Salesforce for one of my community groups as I don’t have the necessary profile to do specific actions in relation to the campaign function. Escalated the problem, but the person I need to chat with, is on leave this week.
I went through my research and notes for potential Intelligent Campus Member Stories for our communication team to accompany the publication of the Guide to the Intelligent Campus.
As well as updating the Guide to the Intelligent Campus, we have also updated the use cases, which were on the project blog. I spent some time mapping these to the guide, so that the use cases, which will be in PDF format can be linked to from the guide. Started thinking about the next generation of use cases, especially in the light of AI tools such as ChatGPT.
Had a meeting with the Professional Development Manager at UCISA on various ideas, submissions, and activities.
Invited by IGPP Institute of Government & Public Policy and University of East London to talk at their event on Advancing Blended Learning in Higher Education.
Undertook some research and development time on personalisation and intelligent campus.
Published some blog posts on the Intelligent Campus
Started planning the next of the Intelligent Campus community events.
If you are working in the area of the intelligent campus and have an interest in the work being undertaken in this space, we would like to invite you to attend the next in our series of community events. This community of practice gives people a chance to network, share practice and hear what various institutions are doing. You will have the opportunity to discover more about intelligent campus projects and Jisc’s work in this space.
I use to run these when I was project manager for the Intelligent Campus project, then they were taken over by a colleague, before being run by RUGIT for a while. However, since the lead person there left the sector, and the Intelligent Campus is a key part of our HE strategy, I have decided to start running the community events again.
It will take place in London at the Jisc offices on the 24th May 2023.
Planning the Intelligent Library community event for the 21st June 2023.
The DfE HE sector emergency planning liaison group meeting on Friday was cancelled. However, I did some preparation work for the meeting, and have been asked to provide current Jisc guidance for senior leaders on cyber-attacks.
My top tweet this week was this one.
This week is a quiet week for me. However from next week it all goes busy, busy, busy.
Just to let you know that I am presenting at Jisc’s Digifest 23 on the intelligent campus.
Fireside chat: Building the future 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 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. We’ll look at what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing:
Student experience
Achieving net zero
Improving efficiency
Space utilisation
James Clay and Dom Pates will also ask you to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.
I am presenting at Jisc’s Digifest 23 on the intelligent campus. I am having a fireside chat with City, University of London’s very own Dom Pates.
Fireside chat: Building the future 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 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. We’ll look at what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing:
Student experience
Achieving net zero
Improving efficiency
Space utilisation
James and Dom will also ask you to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.
On that note it was interesting to see Dom on the Twitter, using ChatGPT to write a story about the Intelligent Campus.
— Dom Pates | @dompates@mastodon.online (@dompates) February 19, 2023
Write a short story in the style of speculative fiction about a university student who spends a day on a smart or intelligent campus some time in the future. Ensure that the campus is designed to address issues around sustainability and data privacy, yet is responsive to the student in a personalised (but not creepy) way. Ensure that the student is studying a course for a future-focused job, and that the campus is actually a desirable and ethically-designed environment. Make the short story go through different stages of the day, and comes to approximately 1,500 words in total. Include an ethical quandary that the central character faces during the course of their day.
Dom then posted the first paragraph.
First up, the prompt and the initial response. In the prompt, I’ve included some of the narrative features that I’d like to see in the story, the requirement for effectively a start, middle and end, as well as a preferred word count and a plot twist. So, meet Marcel… (4/8) pic.twitter.com/OTDOkSGD9T
— Dom Pates | @dompates@mastodon.online (@dompates) February 19, 2023
Dom went on to add further narrative.
The next four screenshots plot out the rest of the story, including how it responded when I asked it to continue what it had started and make sure it wasn’t just another sci-fi story about yet another privileged white man. (5/8) pic.twitter.com/iAMmWeHtdA
— Dom Pates | @dompates@mastodon.online (@dompates) February 19, 2023
Here is the full story (in text).
Marcel was both excited and apprehensive as he stepped onto the smart campus of his university. He was studying for a future-focused job in sustainable architecture, and he had heard many rumours about this intelligent campus that was designed to address the most pressing issues of the day. Marcel looked around and was impressed by what he saw: a vast, green space surrounded by glass buildings that glinted in the sun. He could see solar panels and wind turbines, all designed to reduce the campus’s carbon footprint. He walked towards his first lecture hall, and as he did, he heard a voice speaking to him.
What’s happening
“Good morning, Marcel. I hope you slept well. Your first lecture is in the building to your right, and it starts in fifteen minutes. Would you like me to guide you there?”
Marcel looked around, but he couldn’t see anyone talking to him. He realised that the voice was coming from the earpiece he was wearing.
“Yes, please guide me there,” Marcel replied.
“Of course, Marcel. Please follow the green line on the ground, and it will lead you to the lecture hall. You will be there in ten minutes.”
Marcel followed the green line, and he couldn’t help but marvel at the smart technology that was everywhere on this campus. The line led him through gardens and courtyards, and he saw many other students walking along similar lines, all following directions from their earpieces.
As Marcel arrived at the lecture hall, he noticed that there were no doors. Instead, the entrance was an open archway, and as he stepped through, he was welcomed by a soft voice.
“Welcome, Marcel. Please take a seat wherever you like.”
Marcel looked around and saw that there were no chairs. Instead, there were soft, cushioned pods that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Marcel chose one and sat down, and he was surprised by how comfortable it was. As he did, a screen appeared in front of him, showing him the schedule for the day.
His lecturer walked in, and he was impressed by how engaged the class was. The screens in front of each student allowed the lecturer to show interactive diagrams and videos, and Marcel could ask questions by speaking into his earpiece. The lecture was engaging and interactive, and before he knew it, it was over.
As Marcel stepped out of the lecture hall, he heard the same voice in his earpiece.
“Marcel, it’s time for your workshop on sustainable design. It’s in the building to your left. Please follow the blue line on the ground.”
Marcel followed the blue line, and he couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. He had read about smart campuses that used data to track the movements of their students, and he wondered if he was being watched. As he approached the building, he saw a sign that read, “Data Privacy is Our Priority.” He relaxed a little and stepped inside.
The workshop was fascinating, and Marcel was able to experiment with virtual reality tools that allowed him to design sustainable buildings in a three-dimensional space. As he worked, the system recognised his movements and preferences, and it adapted to his design choices. Marcel felt empowered and inspired by the technology, and he couldn’t wait to use it in his future career.
As the day wore on, Marcel attended a variety of classes and workshops, each designed to challenge and inspire him. The smart campus was constantly adapting to his preferences and needs, and he felt like he was learning more in a day than he had in a week at his old university.
As he left the last class of the day, he felt a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.
However, as he walked back towards his dormitory, he noticed that the green line he had been following all day was now leading him towards a part of the campus he had never been to before. Marcel hesitated for a moment, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he followed the line.
As he walked, he noticed that the campus was quiet, and there were no other students around. He heard the soft voice in his earpiece again.
“Marcel, we have one more thing to show you. Please continue following the green line.
Marcel’s heart started to beat faster, and he wondered what the voice was leading him towards. As he rounded a corner, he saw a small group of people standing in front of a glass building. They were all wearing lab coats, and they were looking at him expectantly.
“Welcome, Marcel,” said a man with grey hair and a friendly smile. “We have been watching you all day, and we have a proposition for you. We are working on a top-secret project that we think you would be perfect for. It involves designing a sustainable city that will be built on the site of an old factory. We think your skills and experience would make you an ideal candidate to lead this project. What do you say?”
Marcel was taken aback. He had never expected anything like this to happen, and he wondered how they had been watching him all day. He felt a moment of hesitation, wondering if this was an ethical quandary he was facing.
But then he looked around him and realised that this campus was not just designed for sustainability and data privacy, but it was also designed to empower students to create a better future. He looked back at the man in the lab coat and nodded.
“I’m in,” he said, and the man smiled.
“Excellent. We’ll start tomorrow.”
The next day, Marcel woke up early, eager to start his new project. He made his way to the glass building, where he was greeted by the man from the previous day.
“Good morning, Marcel,” the man said. “I’m glad to see you’re excited. We have a few more people joining us today, including the project manager.”
Marcel followed the man inside, and was surprised to see a group of people sitting around a table. They were all different ages, genders, and ethnicities, and they all looked like they were full of ideas.
“Marcel, this is the project manager, Rachel,” the man said, gesturing towards a tall woman with dark hair and sharp eyes. “And these are the other members of the team.
We have engineers, architects, and designers from all over the world. We believe that diversity is key to creating a sustainable future.”
Marcel nodded, feeling a sense of pride at being part of such a forward-thinking team.
As they got to work, he noticed that Rachel had a way of leading the team that was both authoritative and inclusive. She listened to everyone’s ideas and made sure that everyone had a chance to speak. Marcel admired her leadership style and felt inspired to be a part of such a team.
As the day went on, Marcel found that the work was challenging but rewarding. He was able to use all of the skills he had learned in his degree, and he felt like he was making a difference. The team worked together seamlessly, bouncing ideas off each other and collaborating in a way that felt natural.
As the day drew to a close, Marcel realised that he had found his calling. He had always known that he wanted to do something that would make a difference, but he had never known how to do it. Now, he felt like he was on the right path, and he was excited to see where it would lead.
As he walked out of the building, he felt a sense of pride in himself and in the campus that had brought him there. He realised that the smart and intelligent campus was not just a place to learn, but it was also a place to grow and to find oneself.
Marcel felt like he had found a community of like-minded people who shared his values, and he felt grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it. He walked out into the sunlight, feeling inspired and excited for the future.
Clearly some of this story feels a little cliched and from a literary point of view, there are undoubtedly many points from which it could be criticised. However, even though the bot wouldn’t be winning a Nobel Prize for Literature, I do think that it makes an interesting stab at a ‘first draft’ of an idea. If I wanted to write a short story about an #IntelligentCampus, I have some material to work with and try to improve.
What are your thoughts on this particular story? Have you had any great successes (or horrible failures) from trying a collaboration with a #GenerativeAI for fictional purposes? Is there a role for chatbots as co-authors with human writers? #ChatGPT#LLMs#ALTc#AI (8/8)
— Dom Pates | @dompates@mastodon.online (@dompates) February 19, 2023
What are your thoughts on this story created by ChatGPT?
Back in 2018 I wrote a story about the Intelligent Campus. Sections of the story were part of the Guide to the Intelligent Campus. I posted the whole story to the project blog, but am re-posting here as a starting point for new and different stories.
It was raining and Leda was off to her University for the day. Her phone had already sent her notification to leave for campus early as there was a lot of traffic on the roads and the buses were being delayed. She got to the bus stop earlier than usual and within a few minutes the bus arrived. On the bus, on her phone using the University App, she looked over her schedule for the day. There were lectures, a seminar and she also had a window to get to the library to find those additional books for the essay she needed to hand in next month. She was hoping to catch up with some friends over coffee. There were some notifications in the app, the seminar room had been changed, there was a high chance that the library would be busy today. Leda looked out of the window of the bus at the rain. Today was going to be a good day.
The bus arrived at the campus and Leda got off, she checked her app and started to walk to her first lecture. As she passed one of the campus coffee shops she was sent a notification that three of her friends from the course were in there, so she checked the time, she had the time, popped in and found her friends. Her app let her know that she had enough loyalty points for a free coffee, well why not, Leda thought to herself. She could check if there were any additional resources for the lectures today.
As Leda drank her coffee, she reflected on why she had chosen thus university. One of the things that had attracted her was the positive reviews and feedback that had come from existing and previous students on the whole student experience. This positive view of the university had resulted in her putting in an application. She was reminded though of one of the induction sessions where the University had taken the time to discuss the whole concept of the gathering of data, the processing of that data, the what interventions were possible and the importance of consent at all three stages. She did worry about this and wondered if all appropriate mechanisms and security was in place to protect her personal data. As she finished off her coffee, she did think was all this data gathering really necessary?
Leda’s phone buzzed, she needed to be at her lecture in ten minutes, however the room was different to the one she was usually in. Leda didn’t concern herself with this, as she knew that the phone would direct her to the room quickly and efficiently. What was so great about this, Leda thought to herself, was that the sessions she attended were always in the right kind space. Sometimes her lecturer wanted to do group work and the usual lecture theatre wasn’t appropriate, so having that in a more suitable room allowed her and her friends to focus on the learning.
As Leda walked around the campus she noticed that there was a lot of devices attached to ceilings and walls. She recognised the CCTV style cameras, though some looked more like speed cameras with some kind of sensor. She had also seen devices with lights in the classrooms and the lecture theatres. Leda made her way to her next session, she used the Wayfinding app on her phone as she knew due to building work on the campus, her usual route was closed. The app would give her the fastest route to get there. As she walked into her seminar room she touched her RFID enabled smartphone to the touchpad by the door. This registered her attendance, but the app recognising her location, started to download the resources for the seminar to her phone and registered her device for the polling and audience response system. Leda found the process much more transparent than being given a clicker. She liked being able to use a single device, her phone for all her smart campus interactions, rather than using a range of devices, cards and equipment to do so.
When Leda had started her degree programme she had been concerned about how data on her was being gathered, processed and acted upon. It was apparent from the start that her journey through the university, both academically and physically would be tracked. She was happy though that the University had published a guide for students on the ethical use of data. She was aware of what data she had to provide and other data about her for which she had a choice on whether it was collected or not. Leda with her friends had been looking at the open algorithms the University used and had been playing with some of them to see if there were any interesting insights into the way her and her friends interacted with the university systems and the campus.
Though Leda had concerns about her personal privacy with all the data gathering happening on campus, her and her friends had noticed a reduction in crime and vandalism. When incidents happened on campus, reaction time from the campus security officers was really fast they could get to the right place much quicker. Leda did think it was all a bit Big Brother, but did feel safer.
Leda was sitting in the library reading through the book she had borrowed, her phone buzzed with a notification, her bus home was due shortly and if she left now, she would be able to catch it. Leda really liked this as though there was a bus timetable, the realities of traffic and weather meant that the buses weren’t always on time. The bus company used GPS to identify the exact location of their buses and this data could then be used by the university app to help learners catch their buses on time. One of the reasons Leda liked this was that it was raining and it saved having to stand in the rain for too long. As Leda sat down in the bus, her phone buzzed again, as she had walked from the library to the bus stop, the phone had downloaded an interesting podcast related to the lecture she had been to ready for her to listen on the journey home.
As Leda settled down for the evening, she reflected on her day. What kind of day would have it been without her phone, without it connected to the different services on campus, the way it worked in a smart or even intelligent way. It was making her whole experience better, she could focus on her studies and spend a lot less time trying to find rooms. The university called it the intelligent campus, in Leda’s view it was more than that, it was a campus that improved the whole student experience. Well for her it did.
I am planning to update the story to reflect changes in both society and technology.
From snowless ski resorts to freak weather events and deadly wildfires, we are all seeing the impact of climate change in headlines. This session will consider the changes we can make to the way we do IT in universities and colleges to reduce our impact on the environment. How do we balance the needs for high-priority technology matters such as cyber security, with the need to become a sustainable society? Can we persuade our staff and suppliers to prolong the lifespan of devices, repairing rather than replacing where possible? In what ways can we come together as a sector to tackle the practical challenges surrounding digital sustainability?
It was an interesting presentation and certainly lots of think about. It reminds me of how much activity these days not only impacts the environment, but also is no longer the domain of a single team in an organisation.
In 2008 JISC Infonet published a scenario planning workshop. If you’re interested in running a workshop of this kind, then this guide would probably be a good place to start. Guess that I am thinking about running this kind of workshop.
Spent some time reviewing and proofing the second draft of the Guide to the Intelligent Campus which will be (hopefully) launched at Digifest.
Attended an internal meeting with our Public Affairs team.
A busy and unbusy week, in the sense, fewer events and meetings in my diary, but lots of things to get done.
According to a BBC report, digital cameras back in fashion after online revival.
Digital cameras from the early 2000s are becoming must-have gadgets for many young people because of a burgeoning trend online. And in the past 12 months, videos with the hashtag #digitalcamera have amassed more than 220 million views on TikTok.
…and to think I still consider this *new* technology!
One of my favourite photographs. Taken with a Sony Cybershot Digital Camera in 2004.
On Tuesday I headed off to the Bristol office by train. My usual train use to be a GWR Castle class HST train, but today it had been replaced by one of the newer GWR Intercity Express Trains (IET). I believe that the HSTs on GWR are being slowly withdrawn from the services they currently do as they are expensive to run, and also produce more emissions than the IETs.
Attended an Intelligent Campus guide launch and engagement planning meeting. We reviewed the complementary materials to go alongside the launch of the second edition of the Guide to the Intelligent Campus. We clarified that this was not a big launch. Also discussed potential sessions for Networkshop on the foundations required for the Intelligent Campus. I am doing a fireside chat at Digifest in March, and we will launch the guide there. I spent some time reviewing and proofing the Guide to the Intelligent Campus.
Had an interesting conversation in our office on issues around the concept of the Intelligent Campus including security of IoT devices and smart devices. There are lots of smart devices out there, and across many institutions, people are plugging them into the network, without necessarily thinking about the security implications. I am reminded of the chaos caused when a series of soda vending machines and lamp posts hijacked the network of an American university. In my own home I have a smart washing machine, have I attached it to my network, no I have not.
So Bard got one of its facts wrong on its public debut. It looked plausible so nobody at Google checked it. It was immediately obvious to an expert in the field.
Google’s AI search bot Bard made a $120bn error on day one. This does demonstrate that we are at early days with AI supported search. Also, this week Microsoft added AI search to Bing. This will make it easier and simpler for students to utilise AI when making (internet) searches for content related to their studies. I do think we need to start thinking about both academics and students understanding these tools, and the potential of these tools and what it means for teaching and learning. The essence of assessment is something else that will need to be rethought.
Advocates of “block teaching” are teaming up in an attempt to hasten its adoption by universities worldwide.
This isn’t new, as the article says, it has been around for fifty years.
Read this tweet responding to the article
However in other cases students do need time to build up their understanding & the conventional approach enables this. Unfortunately unis’ timetabling & other admin systems don’t handle a blend of conversational & block teaching v easily 2/2
I have to agree that this isn’t a one or the other situation, it’s about doing both, a spectrum of teaching. Back in the day when I was teaching at City of Bristol College (in the 1990s) we designed a GNVQ programme that was a combination of block and linear, for those very reasons. Some areas benefited from a deep dive and others were about building knowledge and skills over time. We had to design the whole programme to then fit the timetable. The main challenge was that we couldn’t devote one person to deliver each subject block, so we shared the teaching. The students had block learning, we had linear timetabled teaching.
Booking events and conferences for April. I am attending the UCISA Spotlight 2023 and LILAC 2023. Various issues with the LILAC booking, so had to redo the whole purchase order process for this conference. Spotlight 2023 is in Leeds, so will be nice to be back there. The last time I was in Leeds, was in January 2020 just before the first Covid-19 lockdown.
Also booked into an online event, UCISA Starting the year on the right foot happening next week.
Sent out information on next Senior Education and Student Experience to members of the group, and inviting new members to the group. The group in the main consists of PVCs in the Education and Student Experience space, but also has some DVCs and VCs (or equivalent) on the group as well.
On Thursday I attended a technology for teaching discussion meeting with the Department for Education. It reminded me that a research informed evidence base is critical for many conversations in this space.
IFTTT let me know that changes to the Twitter API means that some of my IFTTT applets will probably stop working.
Starting Monday, February 13th, 2023, Twitter will no longer support free access to their API. As a result, we expect that any Applet that connects with Twitter will stop working.
I am mainly using IFTTT at the moment to post native images from Instagram to Twitter. However in the past I have used IFTTT to collate tweets to specific hashtags.
We’ve not seen the complete collapse of Twitter as many were predicting a few weeks back, but we have seen problems this week and many other issues as well. I am still using Twitter, but also drop in on Mastodon as well.
Most Kipling cakes come in sixes. Why do the Battenberg cakes only have five in the box? Is someone at the Kipling factory eating that extra Battenberg cake?
Spent a lot of time this week reading, digesting, reviewing, and reflecting. Also attended a few meetings and spent time having conversations on Teams.
On Tuesday I went to our Bristol office. The train was delayed, so I started attending a meeting on my phone, which I find weird, but it worked.
Attended an internal meeting about Microsoft – Mixed Reality (MR) and Metaverse. There is some excitement around the Metaverse. As I said last week industry perspectives on the metaverse and immersive platforms are varied. Meta, Google are all laying off technical staff in this space, Apple have delayed their AR/VR product again. Lots of confusion between immersive games and the Metaverse. Apart from some niche areas (such as education) what is the unique selling point of the metaverse? As Paul Bailey in a recent blog post said, the “effective” metaverse is probably decades away…
Had an interesting discussion about the Office for Students and its future. There is criticism that they have been receiving from members and member organisations (such as GuildHE and the Russell Group). Labour (who are likely to win the 2024 election) have been quiet on HE and the OfS. Also found and read this Can Labour de-Commodify Higher Education? It has a Minor Problem.
The education system in Britain is in the mud. That is scarcely news. But would Labour have the courage and values needed to revive it? The trouble they would have if they win the next General Election is due partly to their Party’s legacy and partly to a personal problem.
I had a busy week with most of the week travelling and being in Manchester.
Monday though was a series of meetings across the whole day, incorporating updates, discussing the customer experience, finalising our team coaching, and a meeting with our public affairs team.
Tuesday I headed first to the Bristol office, where I picked some stuff up I needed for Manchester (okay I picked up my coffee machine for the hotel) and had my Q2 review. After that I travelled up to Manchester.
I spent two days in Manchester planning, discussing, and conversing.
Reviewing industry perspectives on the metaverse and immersive platforms. Meta, Google are all laying off technical staff in this space, Apple have delayed their AR/VR product again. Lots of confusion between immersive games and the Metaverse. Apart from some niche areas (such as education) what is the unique selling point of the metaverse? As Paul Bailey in a recent blog post said: “Let’s be clear: the metaverse (however you define it) is decades away.”
I had a meeting on the second edition of the guide to the intelligent campus, the decision has been made to make it a web guide.
Read this blog post from Donna and Lawrie on digital leadership.
We no longer encounter as many people in workshop contexts who have the option of not engaging with digital. We no longer encounter people who believe that “digital” is a separate job that only a few people in an organization should have.
This reminds me of the staff IT induction sessions I use to run at Gloucestershire College, in that in 2006, there were many new staff who didn’t have and didn’t use e-mail, or the internet. By 2013, things had changed, all staff were using the internet and doing things that even I wasn’t doing online. Digital is not constant or standing still, it is constantly evolving and changing.
There is also a call to action on ensuring that digital leadership going forward is seen through the lenses of:
Social justice and equity,
Ethics, privacy, security, and intellectual property
Environmental impact and sustainability of using Edtech (and tech generally) in education
Reviewing industry perspectives on AI and the impact of ChatGPT. Huge investments being made by Google and Amazon. Could we see an AI OS. Machine learning already in place in many applications (such as photo apps). Microsoft looking at including AI into tools such as Word (in a similar vein to a spellchecker and grammar checker).
My top tweet this week was this one.
Thinking Differently about Digital Leadership – Digital is People by @DonnaLanclos and @Lawrie https://t.co/pfOHv2LPkb
A shorter week for me, as I was on leave at the end of the week.
At the beginning of the week, I spent some time reviewing forthcoming events and conferences. I have found in the past that I usually find out about interesting events either on the day (via the Twitter) or after it is over. So, this year I have been planning to attend some conferences and events. Some will be ones I have attended in the past, others will be new to me.
I did though manage to get to the office in Bristol on one day.
Last week we did a session of our directorate risks, and after they were written up, I spent time reviewing them and feeding back. Another aspect was reviewing the mitigation of those risks.
In the summer Jisc will once more put on the online event, Connect More. I am part of the group at Jisc reviewing the themes for Connect More and I provided some ideas and feedback to the Jisc Events team.
Had a meeting with a new member of staff, exploring what I do and how my role fits into the wider Jisc.
Next week is my Q2 Review, so I did the paper paperwork and reviewing of work over the last quarter. As you might expect these weeknotes have helped considerably in reviewing my work over the last three months.
I have been researched and reflecting on AI voices and narration, implications for creating effective audio teaching resources automatically. Apple is already using AI voice narration for some of their audio books. Note this is not text to speech, but artificial voices that sound natural.
Some examples of voices can be found on the ElevenLabs website. The narration voices sound much better than text to speech.
Monday I was working from home, spent some time planning for the week ahead. I spent much of the week up in London attending meetings in our Fetter Lane office.
I published a blog post about university spaces and wellbeing.
Could we use space utilisation data to support wellbeing? As students frequent and move about the campus, the spaces in which they study, learn and relax can have an impact on their wellbeing.
Had a meeting about some potential sessions at Jisc’s Digifest that I may present on.
Wednesday I was part of a meeting talking about risk. I have participated in risk meetings and importantly risk mitigation many times over the years. I remember undertaking a risk assessment on the external hosting of our VLE. I was asked by an auditor, what would we do if the server room in London (which hosted our VLE) flooded. Well we would switch to the alternate servers in Wiltshire. I was then asked what would we do if that server was taken out as well. As a group we decided that if both London and Wiltshire were taken out, then we would probably have more important problems to worry about than if the VLE was running or not. Though, if that did happen, we could restore the VLE from a backup on our own servers and get it running again that way.
On Thursday we had our Quarterly Leadership Team Away Day, much of what was taken up with a conversation and discussion with our CEO about the strategy, planning and moving forward.
Friday I attended the DfE HE Sector emergency planning liaison group where we discussed the potential impact of blackouts and cyber threats. I have written before, in October, about the potential impact of loss of power on student learning.
So how do students do online and digital learning without electricity or even connectivity? The news is full of stories on the possibility of winter blackouts as the energy crisis continues to hit home. With the continuing prospect of restrictions in gas supplies across Europe, there is a strong chance with a extreme cold spell in the UK that there will be power rationing. This means that some parts of the UK will be dark. Students will face learning without light, power, heat or connectivity. What can universities do to prepare for this potential likelihood? How can you deliver high quality online learning without power or connectivity?
In the post I explored some of the preparations that universities might want to consider if there was going to power outages.
At the time of writing the risk is low, so we are unlikely to see blackouts.
Jisc published a comment about ChatGPT and assessment.
ChatGPT and its ability to produce high quality essays with minimal human input has created a flurry in the UK education sector and many are questioning whether this signals the end of the essay as a primary mode of assessing learners.
One of the (now not so) little people got a new 10th generation iPad for Christmas. He asked if he could borrow my first generation Apple Pencil to do some drawing on his iPad. Having purchased an USB-C to Lighting adapter from the Apple Store in Bristol to connect a first generation Apple Pencil to a 10th generation iPad, I think there might be a problem with the pencil. It seemed to be failing to hold a charge, despite being connected and fast charging from the 10th generation iPad. Reading the web it looks like that as I haven’t used the pencil in a while, the battery has died. Though I had given up hope, my son hadn’t. While I was away for work, he tried once more to charge the pencil, and low and behold, it charged up, it paired and is working well with the 10th generation iPad.
It’s alive I tell you, alive!
My top tweet this week was this one.
Nearly a third of university courses still have hybrid teaching – BBC News https://t.co/48h9n5JKNI
