This week, what with Easter and taking some leave, meant I was only “in the office” for one day this week. I say I was in the office; the reality was that I was working from home. One reason for that was I was presenting a session at the Smart Campus Insights Brief 2025 Conference.
Abstract: From Smart to Intelligent Campuses: A Roadmap
Designing a truly integrated approach to data-led decision making across an institution
The real prize in supporting connected devices that make intelligent decisions based on real time environmental data
Building the infrastructure and capabilities to join up data sources across a campus
How do we set meaningful goals to support intelligent decision making on campus?
I enjoyed presenting and there was some positive feedback. Across the event as a whole other presenters referenced my talk.
Wrote up my notes from AHUA conference I attended last week and did some administration sorting travel and logistics for next few weeks.
Took some leave this week, so shorter week than usual.
I was spending time preparing and planning for next NRENs4Education – technical solutions meeting with a focus on application and accreditation.
In the next few weeks I have a couple of online presentations, so I was busy with writing and developing presentation for HE Shared Services and Structural Collaboration event and similarly a presentation for Smart Campus Insights Brief 2025.
I drove to Swansea to deliver a workshop at the AHUA Conference on Shared Services. The workshop was productive and insightful.
On Monday I was prepping stuff for the rest of the week. In the main developing and writing activity for UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce meeting. This involved diamonds and scissors.
I spent the day in London on Tuesday, the afternoon was taken up with the UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce meeting, however as I had a two hour online meeting with the HEAnet Group Advisory Forum I spent the morning in the office.
I had some necessary Dovetail admin and Miro admin to do this week. I hadn’t used Miro for weeks and then all of a sudden, I was asked to input to an influx of Miro boards. I do use Miro, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I don’t much like the alternatives either.
We had a discussion about capturing the senior voice and then what do we do with that once we have that. A bit of we can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Spent some time planning a session for AHUA Conference next week, which is taking place at Swansea University.
Recognised the need to plan out E in NREN work I am undertaking in some more detail. It has been agreed that this will continue into 2026.
I am attending and presenting at a couple of online conferences later this month, so spent time planning, developing and writing those presentations. Yes you would be right in thinking there will be lots of photographs.
Noted that the situation in higher education is still not good, and in some sense is getting worse.
As higher education institutions shed thousands of jobs, Times Higher are tracking developments and bringing together latest analysis with resources for affected staff and students.
As a mounting financial crisis grips UK universities, thousands of jobs are being axed across the sector. This page tracks latest updates, exploring the reasons behind the redundancies, how they will affect staff and students, and the long-term impact on higher education and research.
In similar news the sustainability of higher education was discussed at Parliament. Where the Augar report was reviewed as Education Committee learn about university finances
Notably, Augar argued that no university should fail – the impact on local areas and the international reputation of the sector would be too big – and called for “behind the scenes” support for struggling providers. Universities UK’s Malcolm Press argued once again for a transformation fund to support universities in adapting to the current circumstances.
Our work with UUK was mentioned in passing.
Malcolm Press (vice chancellor at Manchester Metropolitan University, at the committee representing Universities UK) emphasised just how hard universities were working to drive efficiencies – highlighting examples of collaboration, and the ongoing Universities UK project in response to the government’s reform agenda.
Made me smile for the end of the week. This from WonkHE on Sussex on taking the position that universities can’t prohibit any speech unless it’s already explicitly banned by civil or criminal law.
“The University would have to tolerate an academic conducting every lecture through the medium of song or mime (noting that freedom of speech protects the manner of speech as well as the content).”
A less busy week, in terms of travelling, but I still went to the Bristol office and then on Wednesday I was up at the University of Warwick.
I finished writing six of the eleven proposals we had been working on for the UUK strand 2 work.
Attended the UUK members meeting at the University of Warwick and supported an activity where they ranked the eleven different proposals. There was some interesting discussions, however the
Spent some time planning a session for UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce
Attended the NREN Technical Solutions Group where we discussed the technical challenges with European-wide student mobility.
I attended the Jisc Careers Fair where I had an UCU stand.
This was a busy week with a lot of travelling across the UK (and then a little beyond as I took Friday as leave and travelled to France for the day).
I was in London at the start of the week, I spent Monday in our London office. It’s always nice to work in another of our offices.
On Tuesday morning I was at a breakfast briefing at the Houses of Parliament. I reminisced that I had been inside in the Houses of Parliament only twice before. Once back in the 1970s when my primary school was threatened by closure and a group of us, pupils, parents, and teachers went to discuss this in parliament. My second visit was in the early 2000s when I worked at at-Bristol (now called We The Curious) and we were meeting some parliamentarians. I actually drove to the Houses of Parliament through the building, and parked underneath.
This was a joint HEPI and Advance HE event entitled Survive or thrive: What should the new operating model be for UK higher education? The panel presented their views about the future, which were diverse and interesting. There followed a short discussion about the presented views.
The UUK Blueprint confirmed the higher education sector is committed to constantly improving its core purposes of teaching, research and civic engagement while also taking a lead on grappling with key global challenges, such as climate change, the spread of artificial intelligence and heightened geopolitical uncertainty. Is the core model of how we do higher education suitable for the unstable world in which we live? Or, if we want to retain the world-class standing of UK higher education, do we need alternative types of leadership, different structures and new approaches that learn from other sectors? And, at the same time, are we thinking enough about organisational design and workforce planning – how are we preparing structures and people for future models? How can institutional autonomy be balanced against the ever-growing list of expectations on leaders, academics and professional services staff?
Personally I came away reflecting that there was a lot of talk about the need for change, there was an appetite for change, but very little on who was going to change and what that change would look like.
Wednesday morning I was in Cambridge delivering a keynote at the HESCA 25 conference.
I was talking about collaboration and shared services.
Thursday I was in Milton Park in Oxfordshire for a team meeting.
Friday I was on leave, and I did something I hadn’t done since the 1980s a day trip to France. DFDS had done a special offer to celebrate 25 years of their Dover Dunkerque route, so a day trip was just £25. Bargain. Exhausting, but a bargain.
I was on leave at the beginning of the week, so a shorter working week.
Most of my time was spent on the UUK collaboration project, undertaking research, writing, presenting, discussions, meetings, debates, decision making.
I attended an online meeting with UUK’s Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce.
I spent time preparing for our Team Away Day next week at Milton Park.
This week I was in Birmingham for Jisc’s Digifest. This is Jisc’s annual big event at the ICC. I wasn’t presenting but was attending sessions and networking.
Much of the rest of the week was about working on the UUK project on collaboration.
Attended the NREN Technical Solutions Group start up meeting which is looking at education and student mobility in Europe.
Much of the week was about working on the UUK project on collaboration.
I have been working on supporting the work on 12 ideas; combine that with review meetings, writing content, tidying up slides for a presentation, and then some.
Also been working on the E in NREN work looking at student mobility across Europe.
Attended the Wonkhe and Mills and Reeve Connect More webinar realising opportunities for strategic collaboration in higher education which was very interesting and relevant to my current work.
Attended a briefing for Digifest which is happening next week.
I have been thinking about the challenges of higher education institutions having a silo mentality and the potential impact of this on collaboration and sharing.
Ask any higher education institution leader about the organisational challenges they’re grappling with, and they’ll start talking about silos.
As one respondent said in our research in the Collaboration for a sustainable future report said “my institution doesn’t even collaborate with itself.” Part of that has to be having a silo mentality.
What this means is that across an organisation, different departments work to their own specific strategy and needs. Sometimes silos are referred to as “cylinders of excellence”. You can have outstanding and excellent departments, but though often we think of the phrase first coined by the philosopher Aristotle, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. With cylinders of excellence, the whole can be a lot less than the sum of the parts.
From personal experience, having high performing teams, means that they are achieving their objectives, but unless those objectives are aligned or contribute to the organisational whole then, the overall impact on the organisation might be negligible or even negative.
Collaboration internally means alignment, it means common goals, thinking of the whole rather than the one. Internal strategies and objectives need to be connected to other internal strategies and objectives to ensure alignment and maximum impact.
Part of this is breaking down silos. 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.
I wonder 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.
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.
In the current economic climate the sector is facing real challenges. Strategically you may want to have an outstanding student experience, world class research, and a global impact, but the reality is you might need to keep the lights on first. If you take the “usual” strategic objectives that most universities have, as stated, an outstanding student experience, world class research, and a global impact, as a given. Then the strategic objectives of the organisation can be focused on survival, resilience, and change. Part of that change has to be breaking down the internal silo mentality. Of course, easier said than done.
Quite a busy week as a couple of people threw a lot of stuff into my in-tray. Writing this reminded of how when I first started working as a lecturer in Further Education, I had a pigeonhole for communicating. People would put stuff in there. A lot of the time the stuff was memos with a series of names on. Once read, you would cross out your name, replaced in the reuseable envelope and put the next person’s name on it. Of course usually there was one person who would never read the memos and their pigeonhole would be stuffed with stuff they hadn’t read.
The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) will transform the post-18 student finance system to create a single funding system. I read this new overview of LLE from the UK Government. The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) will transform the post-18 student finance system to create a single funding system. It will replace higher education student finance loans and Advanced Learner Loans.
The LLE will deliver transformational change to the current student finance system by:
broadening access to high-quality, flexible education and training
supporting greater learner mobility between institutions
This has implications for student mobility across the UK as students will be able to move and transfer between institutions. Also students will be able to take a single module or part of a course. In addition the government are expecting new and smaller providers to deliver a range of level 4 and 5 programmes.
Of course the funding is only part of the picture if this is going to happen.
Had various meetings about Jisc’s presence at the Digital University UK (DUUK) Conference happening at the University of Lancaster. I might be going, but it does clash with another meeting I need to attend at the University of Warwick. Looked over Google Maps if travelling between them was even feasible.
Had an internal catch up meeting on digital leadership and sharing what I have been doing. I don’t do much with digital leadership these days, but with my work on collaboration there is potentially some work to do on leadership for collaboration.
Continued to work on the collaboration project we are doing with UUK. This work is looking at possible opportunities and narrowing them down to some realistic and potential opportunities.
I reviewed the work we have been doing for the Education in NREN work. We have been writing stories to explain the student journey. I also reviewed a potential submission for TNC in Brighton.
I am now attending Digifest on the 11th and 12th March. Come and say hi if you’re there. I have had to miss Digifest last year as I was attending another event which was on at the same time.
I also spent time this week responding to various requests to speak at events.
news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…
