Last week I was in Oxford for the HESCA conference. I have been a regular presenter at the Higher Education Smart Campus Association (HESCA) conference, and for the third year running I delivered a keynote presentation on collaboration.
I was talking once more about working together, but taking more of a reflective look on where we are as a sector. I was presenting a state of the nation look at collaboration and why the higher education sector is not doing more collaboration. In many ways the focus of my presentation was based on my blog post on building bridges.
The presentation went down well, and as well as a range of questions, my talk was referenced by other speakers during the rest of the conference.
There were a range of presentations at the event, some from vendors, and a fair few from the sector. Actually this year a considerable number of the speakers were from universities. It got me thinking that many of the talks would be of interest to many in the sector, and due to the number of sponsors the event is free to those from colleges and universities.
There isn’t really another event like this, the AUDE conference does cover some of the topics, likewise Jisc events cover the technology side of things. The smart campus and intelligent campus space which spreads over estates and IT is often missed, but this is an ideal event for presentations and discussion about that landscape. So, something to think about for HESCA 27 next year.
This week I am in Oxford for the HESCA conference.
I have been a regular presenter at the Higher Education Smart Campus Association (HESCA) conference, and for the third year running I am delivering a keynote presentation.
At HESCA 26 I am talking once more about collaboration, but taking a reflective look on where we are. I am presenting a state of the nation look at collaboration and why the higher education sector is not doing more collaboration. In many ways the focus of my presentation will be akin to the writing of my blog post on building bridges.
This week was a slightly shorter week, as I took a day off and did another crazy extreme day out, this time to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. I have been there before back in July 2004 staying with family. I am anticipating that future extreme day trips will be curtailed, as they become more expensive due to the spike in jet fuel prices. Though I recently did see one to Palma for £40. Hmmm…
Well at one point I was planning to attend a meeting in Helsinki in Finland, but this was cancelled last week. I also didn’t attend the UCISA Leadership Summit that was taking place in Liverpool this week. Mainly, as it clashed with the potential visit to Helsinki, but also as I found two years ago in Edinburgh that the sessions in the conference had less applicability and reference to the work I am doing.
I did a presentation to my team on my work and how it was coming together. It was useful to actually build a slide deck that told the story of the different forks of my work and how they have now come together. I always thought they would at some point, but wasn’t planning for it to be this year.
I also did some preparation for next week where I am presenting at the HESCA (Higher Education Smart Campus Association) conference in Oxford, looking at collaboration and what this means for the future.
I had an excellent discussion with a colleague who works in the part of Jisc that does HEDD and Prospects and how the work I am doing on the EHEIF (European Higher Education Interoperability Framework) is aligned. The process of qualification verification is something that HEDD has been doing for years, whilst Prospects provides a discovery services for post graduate courses, core aspects of the student journey in the EHEIF. This discussion is one of many I am having as start to understand where the UK is currently standing in the EHEFI landscape, where Jisc is in that same landscape, what this could mean for LLE (Lifelong Learning Entitlement), the data requirements, and where are the gaps and what are the potential opportunities.
One of the nice things about attending any in person conference is connecting and reconnecting with people and friends.
I discuss how sometimes you lose that connection in an online space that you find in a physical in-person conference.
It had been a draft for a while, but I did get around to finishing it. I have been attempting to write more blog posts for this blog, as I was finding that though I was good at getting my weekly work notes out, I was writing less and less other kinds of posts.
One of the nice things about attending any in person conference is connecting and reconnecting with people and friends.
Sometimes I go to conferences and it is a hive of social activity where I know virtually everyone. Then there are conferences where I am pretty much an isolated individual and everyone is a stranger.
I use to attend the ALT Conference regularly every year, and it always felt like wearing a comfortable sweater.
Making those kinds of connections online though is much more challenging. I have attended many different kinds of online conferences over the last twenty odd years and it can be difficult, nigh on impossible to make the sort of connections and conversations that can be had at a physical in person conference. Not to say people don’t try, with virtual coffee sessions between the formal sessions. I would say though having been staring at the computer screen during a formal session, when its time for a break, often the last thing I want to do is stay on my computer, I want an actual coffee, time to stand up and walk around. You know, the kind of thing you do in an actual coffee break at a conference.
Having said all that some of the best online interactions I have had at online conference was before streaming became the norm. Twenty years ago, not everyone had access to decent connectivity, or even cameras. Online conferences were very much about textual discussion as in online forums and threaded discussions. You do still see that kind of thing online on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky. Though many online conference platforms have discussion forums, my experience often shows that they are under-utilised. People check in to watch the stream, may participate in the chat, and then leave. Of course, that also happens at in-person conferences. However, the coffee breaks at those same conferences are busy and noisy, whereas the online versions are often full of tumbleweed.
I do enjoy in-person conferences, but I also get value from online events too. The fact I don’t need to travel, I can combine it with other stuff makes them convenient. What they’re not though are good opportunities for making connections and networking.
Last week I was up in Birmingham for a conference. The HE Transformation Expo, which was a new event, and I was on a panel session entitled: Is Your Estate Working for You? Deploying Smart Campus Capabilities at Scale to Meet Efficiency Objectives.
We had a good session and an excellent discussion. We covered various topics within the session.
This session will explore how universities are embracing smart campus technologies to drive efficiency, sustainability, and enhanced user experience across their estates. As institutions face increasing pressure to reduce costs, meet carbon targets, and deliver seamless digital experiences, the integration of intelligent systems and data-driven decision-making has never been more critical.
It is quite clear that across the UK, all universities have an element of a smart campus, some more than others. Though it has to be said the focus of much of that “smartness” is in building management and the estate function. Over the last ten years or so I have been working in the Intelligent Campus space, which in essence is about adding further data sources to your estates data to provide not just better insights into the use of the campus, but also how the estate can be managed to improve the efficiency of the university as a whole, and enhance the student experience.
One new focus that I brought to the discussion was the research I have been doing over the last couple of years on collaboration, and the work that we undertook for the Transformation & Efficiency Taskforce.
Now and down the line there may be a need for more collaboration and sharing in the estates space. This will require a new paradigm in thinking about how your estate is managed, but also the data architecture behind the estate.
Shorter week this week with the August bank holiday in England.
I went to the office a few times this week. I have written a fair few times about how I quite like going to the office to work. The change in routine and location is refreshing, and helps, especially as my current workload is very much focused on reading, writing, and having online calls. August is a quiet time for meetings and events.
I have been looking at which events to attend over the next few months, the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education is on that list, as is their Secret Life of Students taking place in early 2025. I am speaking at the Education Summit in October in London. I am looking at an overseas conference as well, torn between OEB in Berlin, or ASCILITE in Melbourne. They are close together, but don’t clash.
Wrote an update for the Jisc board on the work I have been doing. As part of this work I also reviewed content for a holding web page.
Had to use Excel, not my favourite activity, I was doing some research into higher education expenditure and was playing with some data. Excel is one of those applications I use infrequently, so I don’t always remember how to do stuff.
Read the OfS report on the closure of Schumacher College. In their overview the OfS said:
The higher education sector is facing significant financial challenges and institutions are facing difficult decisions. Universities and colleges are responsible for running their businesses and it’s vital that each provider has effective systems in place to identify and manage these risks to ensure students’ interests and rights are protected.
Closures of higher education providers due to financial pressures have been predicted for a long time – Schumacher may have existed outside of the traditional university sector, and was also experiencing wider and more sustained difficulties, but it is unlikely to be the only specialist provider that is struggling to make ends meet as we move towards the 2024-25 academic year.
So is this the first of many? There is a question of whether one of the (larger) more traditional providers will fail? There has been for many years rumours that there are three large universities on the brink of bankruptcy. No one actually names the three but reading across the education press there are numerous stories of financial problems, staff cuts, and closures. Would a large university be allowed to fail? I suspect more likely would be a forced merger with another institution to protect the students and allow them to finish their programmes of study. Regardless, the sector is facing huge financial pressures and this has implications for the way they are organised and operate.
This paper discusses the proposition that the issue with higher education is not so much a lack of proper funding, but that the current operating model isn’t fit for purpose.
Higher education’s onrushing insolvency is not, as many would wish, merely a fixable fault in our funding model, caused by government backsliding on the tuition fee. Instead, we have a system-design problem, in which funding problems are simply a characteristic, not a cause. What other sector would allow itself to stall in an era of surging demand, as our addressable market expands from young people to all adults? The fault lies in our business models and our operating assumptions, as a sector and as providers. We must rethink the types of people we serve, and how we can meet their needs for education and skills in ways that meet the test of private and public goods. Our fascination with the ‘world-class university’ model has had negative systemic effects, draining resources from the wider sector. And we must question our default setting, our cherished high-quality, high-touch and high-cost model. These attributes are not inviolable aspects of our offer. Each places huge demands on students and providers. Can our system really be fit for purpose, if it is unworkable for large minorities of students and providers, and unaffordable for the state?
I am reminded of the recent post I wrote about hindsight in which I looked at the challenges and change that Intel and Kodak faced, and some would say failed to adapt to.
There are lots of examples of how organisations and companies did not respond to changes and trends. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, as you can ask, why didn’t they change, they could see the challenge, they could have changed, they could have adapted. The problem often is that though internally the organisation may know it needs to change, the current situation means they are unable to change.
Higher Education knows that they are facing challenges, and that they need to change. They know this. However a deeper question is not the one that Higher Education needs to be told they need to change, they know that, but they are actually unable to change and so the question is how do we change a sector, that knows it needs to change, but actually can’t make that change.
Back in March 2024 I attended Wonkhe’s Secret Life of Students at the Shaw Theatre in London. There was a range of interesting sessions, and for some I made some sketch notes.
There was part of one session which focussed on quality and included insights into AI and plagiarism.
It wasn’t a lengthy presentation, so it’s quite a minimalistic sketchnote as a result. I do like the fact that the Matrix inspired background worked well for a sketchnote; over the plain background I usually use.
Back in March 2024 I attended Wonkhe’s Secret Life of Students at the Shaw Theatre in London. There was a range of interesting sessions, and for some I made some sketch notes.
I did attempt to do a sketchnote on one of the sessions, but it didn’t come together.
Looking over the programme I am not even sure which session this was for!
My sketch notes are really for me, rather than other people. The process of sketching allows me to digest for myself what is been talked about and demonstrated. The sketch note provides me with a mechanism that provides a process for my interpretation of what is being said and what I understand from the talk. The process of sketching engages me in the talk in ways in which note taking does for others or conversing on social media.
Now in this session, I really couldn’t bring together what was being said in a sketch. There were odd words and phrases, which I noted in my sketch.
Does this mean it was a poor presentation? Well of course not, presentations at conferences are not delivered so I could draw a fancy sketchnote! However the talk didn’t work for me.
Back in March 2024 I attended Wonkhe’s Secret Life of Students at the Shaw Theatre in London. There was a range of interesting sessions, and for some I made some sketch notes.
I attended the session What do we know about what’s shaping how students spend their time?
The latest and most powerful insights on the student condition from Wonkhe and Cibyl’s Belong student survey platform and from across the HE sector.
There was a lot of things in there, about sleep, travel time, working, and time travelling to work.
Of course time isn’t everything, space is important too. Time and space go together. Some interesting commentary about students (who don’t live on campus) needing space on campus to rest or even sleep.
Back in March 2024 I attended Wonkhe’s Secret Life of Students at the Shaw Theatre in London. There was a range of interesting sessions, and for some I made some sketch notes.
The session which kicked off the conference was What do we know about the conditions that help students thrive?
The latest and most powerful insights on the student condition from Wonkhe and Cibyl’s Belong student survey platform and from across the HE sector.
For many students, university can be a stressful experience, as they worry about money, the cost of living, working, as well as studying and assessment.
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