All posts by James Clay

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Is it a Snow Day?

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Lots of snow this week, however, I didn’t see much mention of university closures compared to say fifteen years ago when we had some really bad snow.

Back in February 2009 we had the worst snow for twenty years. Many universities  and colleges closed, most publishing notices about the closure to their websites.

At the time myself and few others recorded a podcast about the role that learning technologies and communication tools can have in supporting colleges and schools that get closed because of the snow.

I remember discussing the issue with colleagues at the time once the snow had melted that we as a college did not make much more use of our VLE and other online platforms during the time we were closed. The result of the discussion was that closing for three days every twenty years was not something we really needed to spend resources and time planning for. There is a point, when there is an “out of the ordinary” event, contingency planning probably isn’t required in any great depth. Much easier just to deal with the problems resulting from the closure than try and plan just in case (which at the time) for a remote chance of closing.

However then in January 2010… the snow came back, this time the worse snow for forty years! Once more lots of universities, colleges, and schools closed. I discussed this at the time in my blog post on snow. My main point was:

Yes, snow makes it dangerous to travel, but with the internet and mobile technologies, does it mean that learners need to stop learning just because the decision is taken to close the physical location? So what if this snow is unprecedented? What if we are now not going to have bad snow for another twenty years?

My next point in the post was this.

Closures happen a lot, time to start thinking about how an educational institution can make best use of the fantastic tools that are available to it for learning. Though the first thing to do will be to change the culture. It’s not just about contingency planning; it’s about changing the way people work when there isn’t snow and changing the way people think when there is.

It was never about the snow; it was about the disruption.

In 2010 I spoke at the Plymouth e-learning conference, I chaired a debate about closing the physical campus in times of crisis and disruption. I wrote about this at the time in this blog post.

Even if it doesn’t snow really badly next year, other things may happen that result in the physical closure of the educational institution. It could be floods, high winds (remember 1987), flu or similar viral infections, transport strikes, fuel crisis, anything…

Of course in 2020 we had the global covid pandemic, and disruption was taken to an unprecedented level, which meant as a sector, we had to respond quickly and effectively. There was a massive emergency response and the sector moved everthing online and people stayed at home.

So this week we’ve had some snow, but I suspect the disruption is still there, but the response from the sector will be influenced by that covid experience, to the point where the disruption can be minimised.

Is today a snow day? No it’s just a day when it snowed.

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Review of 2024

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coffee

Usually at this time I would publish a blog post of the top ten posts of the previous twelve months. However WordPress have stopped doing free stats for blogs that show adverts. So I don’t have detailed stats about the top posts.

I posted 70 posts on the blog.

In 2023 I wrote 89 posts on the blog. There were 92 posts in 2022, 113 blog posts in 2021. In 2020 I had written 94 blog posts. In 2019 I had written 52 blog posts which was up from 2018 when I only wrote 17 blog posts.

weeknotes

Conditional creativity – Weeknote #303 – 20th December 2024

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blocks
Image by mohamed ramzee from Pixabay

An interesting blog post from WonKHE about the challenges that exist with restructuring higher education. It’s not as simple as we think it is. There is a lot of resistance and scepticism about merger that we have seen elsewhere as well.

Connect more: creating the conditions for a more resilient and sustainable HE sector in England

There is a startling dearth of law and policy around structural collaboration for HE; some issues such as the VAT rules on shared services, are well established, while others are more speculative. What would the regulatory approach be to a “federated” group of HE providers? What are merging providers’ legal responsibilities to students? What data and evidence might providers draw on to inform their planning?

Alignment, standardisation, rationalisation, and commonality, though requisite for merger, you don’t need to have merger to undertake the work to allow for greater alignment.

The Times Higher Education published an article about collaboration, and mentions the Jisc collaboration report by name.

A recent, comprehensive report on “collaboration for a sustainable future” by Jisc and KPMG celebrated more examples – but also made a compelling case for the sector to keep pushing itself on this.

In addition, Jisc is involved in and working with the Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce. I am working in collaboration with UUK on a joint project working on the following strand:

  • Developing detailed business cases on options for national collaboration, which will be externally published, and will give the sector clear paths towards transformation

The launch of the taskforce is on the UUK website as well. I like this quote:

“While institutions have been doing more and more to be as efficient as possible, they have largely been doing so at an individual level. Truly impactful transformation will best be delivered through partnership and collaboration at both a regional and a national level. It is time for some blue sky thinking on what that looks like.”

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Breaking down the silos – Weeknote #302 – 13th December 2024

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I wrote a blog post, So does your institution have a silo mentality? I wrote it after reading this article on the WonkHE about higher education silos, Institutional silos are making it harder to build learning environments for student success.

Ask any higher education institution leader about the organisational challenges they’re grappling with, and they’ll start talking about silos.

Though talking about silos, the article is more about integrating digital into learning and teaching.

Though as anyone knows breaking down silos is hard. We often think of grain silos, metal cylinders that are close together, they should be easy to break, shouldn’t they? I always now think of higher education silos as missile silos, embedded into reinforced concrete and dispersed across a wide area.

Breaking down silo working, isn’t just about saying, we need to break down the silos but is so much more about thinking strategically about what your organisation is trying to achieve.

After working from home at the start of the week, I went off to London. I was attending the BLE 20th anniversary event at Senate House.

The Bloomsbury Learning Exchange (BLE) brings together expertise to share good practice and enable collaboration in digital education and technology enhanced learning projects. We are a partnership comprising six Higher Education Institutions in Bloomsbury, central London. Essentially, the BLE is the community, and the BLE Executive Team facilitates the exchange as well as offering specific services to the partner institutions.

They have grown over the years and expanded their collaboration. It is a really good example of collaboration that doesn’t mean you have to create complex pseudo-organisations to manage a shared service. The core of the BLE is the memorandum of understanding.

I ran a similar collaboration back in 2000, called the Western Colleges Consortium, where the FE colleges in Avon shared a VLE. There are lots of lessons from that experience and the BLE that higher education probably should take on board for future collaborations, especially in the learning technology space. One of the key lessons is about keeping it simple, constant adaptation and tinkering, may in the short term resolve problems, but it is harder to then collaborate whern faced with a future challenging scenario.

I have done quite a few things with the BLE over the last twenty years, including a few things while I have been at Jisc. It was nice to see and hear about their success.

At the event I had a couple of interesting conversations. One was with a manager, who spoke about the challenges in joining collaborative ventures, and needing more support from senior management. We know that collaboration often needs to come from the top, but there is also the need to delegate that downwards, to enable collaboration at different levels in the organisation as well.

In another conversation someone provided feedback on the report, which he stated he “had read thoroughly” and even quoted lines from the report. He said it was an excellent report and much needed. This was nice to hear.

Did some more work on the UUK project, did some stuff with the KPMG report next steps, and created a template for the position papers for the E in NREN activity.

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So does your institution have a silo mentality?

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Silos
Image by marcson from Pixabay

This was an interesting read on the WonkHE about higher education silos, Institutional silos are making it harder to build learning environments for student success.

Ask any higher education institution leader about the organisational challenges they’re grappling with, and they’ll start talking about silos.

Though talking about silos, the article is more about integrating digital into learning and teaching. The article concludes

As the digital learning and teaching landscape continues to evolve, institutional strategic agendas to make the most of technology to enhance student engagement and support won’t be driven by small teams of experts, or even by digital leadership. It will require all student-facing staff to have the confidence and skills not just to follow processes and use systems but to actively work to deploy technology creatively and interpret data to take forward improvements to learning and teaching (and that don’t depend on staff simply working harder and longer). To get to that point, institutional leaders will need to continue to find creative ways to break down those silos and build whole-organisation digital capability.

Though as anyone knows breaking down silos is hard. We often think of grain silos, metal cylinders that are close together, they should be easy to break, shouldn’t they? I always now think of higher education silos as missile silos, embedded into reinforced concrete and dispersed across a wide area.

One question that I have been thinking about after reading his article was, what typifies a silo mentality, and what enables cross-silo working? I think a key aspect is strategic thinking within the silo. If you have a unique strategy for your department, this is symptomatic of silo thinking. If you have a strategy based on, say the student journey, the staff experience, research impact, then you probably have already broken down your silos.

Last year I wrote this;

I wondered if silo working is another word for non-strategic working? People often complain about silo working and the resulting challenges that can arise. I think part of the reason why there are problems with duplication, conflict, and lack of communication, across silo working, is teams are working to their own objectives and aren’t necessarily working towards common objectives.

The WonkHE article talks about digital learning and teaching, if the owner of the digital learning strategy is the head of the digital learning team, then how will that strategy, not only communicate across the university, but how will it compete with all the other departmental strategies out there.

Breaking down silo working, isn’t just about saying, we need to break down the silos but is so much more about thinking strategically about what your organisation is trying to achieve. Recognising that even if your department is successful in achieving your strategic goals, doesn’t mean that the university is being successful.

weeknotes

Similar working – Weeknote #301 – 6th December 2024

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I can not quite believe that it is December already (or is that again). Guess it must just be an age thing.

Pretty much a similar week to last week. Took some leave, did some more work on the UUK project, did some stuff with the KPMG report next steps, and thought more about the position papers for the E in NREN activity.

Had a pre-emptive call with a university on Jisc’s “coalition of willing”, they were keen to participate and provided some useful insights into what this coalition could look like and what they would do.

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Three hundred – Weeknote #300 – 29th November 2024

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So this is weeknote number three hundred. When I started these weeknotes back in March 2019, I did wonder if I would keep it going. Well over five years later and three hundred posts later, I guess I have.

Still sorting things out with my new house, so I took some leave to deal with a couple of issues.

I will be working on a project with UUK on collaboration building on the report we did with KPMG. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

I undertook some scoping and planning on the E in NREN work I am doing over the next few months.

I have been reflecting on coalition of the willing, the report has catalysed a really positive response from many in the higher education sector. We need to think about how we can build on this to ensure that future collaboration takes place.

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The E in NREN – Weeknote #299 – 22nd November 2024

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Fleet Street in London
Fleet Street in London

For the first time in an age I headed up to London for a meeting. I also did London in a day, which was a lot more exhausting than I remember it being. It was very cold, and though there was light snow on the way, I didn’t see the snow and disruption that others encountered.

The principal reason for heading to London was for an in-person discussion and workshop on planning some work around, what we are calling the Education in NREN. NREN stands for National Research and Education Network, in the UK that is Jisc, in the Netherlands it is SURF, whilst in Eire it is HEAnet. These are the national networks for educational providers. Though there are many similarities there are also marked differences between the various NRENs across Europe (and the rest of the world).

It was nice to work in the London office for a change. It’s never our busiest office, and that was even the case prior to the pandemic, but you do see and meet people there.

I had planned to head to the Bristol office on Wednesday, but when I tried to book a meeting room for my two online meetings, there were none available. Over the last year the Bristol office has got much busier, so meeting rooms get booked up very quickly. Part of this, is that not only do we still have a pattern of hybrid working, which means a lot more online meetings. The fact we are hybrid has also meant that are patterns of recruitment are less dependent geographically, which exacerbates the number of online meetings and calls that people are having. All this means that the number of calls in the office is higher than it was before the pandemic and there is increased demand on rooms for people to have online meetings in.

As well as the in-person meeting on the E in NREN, I had a fair number of meetings across the week, as I start to do more work in this area.

I am still continuing to work on the optimisation of operations and data following the publication fo the KPMG report I had been working on. I had a meeting about some collaboration with another agency on some next steps on some collaboration proposals.

In addition I wrote up some thoughts on next steps with KPMG report.

Across the sector there has been discussion about talk about the OfS report from last week. For example from WonkHE.

Last week’s update from the Office for Students (OfS) on the state of institutional finances for the HE sector in England brought any lingering sense of cheer from the recent announcement on the indexation of undergraduate fees to an abrupt halt. Based on the latest data available on student entry this autumn, OfS confirms that its warning in May that the sector’s recruitment forecasts had a degree of “optimism bias” has proved true.

It now appears the question of what will happen if a higher education institution fails, is less about if and more about when. The OfS requires all providers to have in place a student protection plan, to ensure a continuity of studying for students of a failing institution. The objective of these plans is to protect the students, however not the staff or the institution as a whole.

I do think that over the next year or so, we will see struggling universities merging and collaborating more closely, rather than waiting to fail. Though the independence mentality of the institution may mean that rather than merge, an institution will just keep cutting costs.

We live in interesting times.