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Sun Loungers, PCs and Desks

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Last week I read this news article on the BBC News site about reserving sun loungers with towels.

A German tourist has won a payout of more than €900 (£850) after he was unable to secure a sun lounger due to other guests reserving them with towels.

Of course if you were to go down to the swimming pool you would find that there were plenty of empty sun loungers (with towels on them) not been used. People would reserve sun loungers first thing in the morning, then go back to their rooms, go to sleep, have breakfast, even pop in to town. All that time the sun lounger would sit there, unused and surrounded by people complaining that there were no free sun loungers.

iMacs in the library

Reminds me why I never used PC booking software when running my libraries. Students would reserve PCs with their “towels” and then never turn up. The PC was unused and unavailable for others to use.

The example I often used was that a student would book a PC from 10am for an hour. A student would arrive at 09:45 find that there was a “free” PC, but it was booked from 10, so wouldn’t use it, even if all they wanted to do was print an assignment, or check something online. The original student who booked the PC then didn’t turn up. We would hold the PC until 10:15, when it would then be free. This would result in lots of unused PCs which were unavailable to those who wanted to use one.

I also remember seeing students enter the library “book” a PC with their coat and bag and then head off to breakfast in the canteen! We soon stopped that.

What we did was remove the booking software (cost saving) and did not require students to book computers, they could just turn up. The end result was that we didn’t have rows of empty “booked” computers we computers been used by students and free computers for those who wanted one. There was the odd exception, so, though we didn’t require students to book a PC, if a student wanted to book a PC they could. Few did this, as we had lots of availability. It doesn’t need to be one or the other, you could of course have a fleet of bookable PCs and a set of unbookable PCs.

These days though, a lot of students would have their own devices and this would reduce the demand for bookable PCs. Reminds me of the whole discussion on BYOD, that’s a topic for another blog post.

online meeting
Image by Lynette Coulston from Pixabay

The title of the blog mentions desks, and of course I mean hot desking and booking desks. The sun lounger issue rears its head again here. People would book desks for the day, and then spend all day in meeting rooms and at lunch. The desk wasn’t there to be used it was a place to store their bag and coat. You would enter the office, find that no desks were free on the booking system and virtually every desk was empty.

The other thing some people would do is book the same desk all the time (even if they didn’t need it) and then personalise the room with their clutter, making it unusable for anyone else.

These days with many people working in a hybrid manner, maybe it is less of an issue. However, with hybrid working, you could see the number of desks and office space being reduced in cost cutting measures, as there are now less people in the office. This then demands (by some) for desk bookings to come back.

I would apply the same mentality here that I used with PC bookings, have both bookable and unbookable desks.

Shall I talk about meeting rooms?

sun loungers by a pool
Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash

Going back to sun loungers there was a follow up article on BBC News which talked about how hotels are stopping the ‘dawn dash’ for sunbeds after man wins payout.

Holidaymakers have told the BBC how some hotels and resorts are cracking down on people reserving sun loungers with towels, after a man won a payout over the practice.

If every tour operator had to pay £850 to tourists who couldn’t get a sun lounger, then perhaps we might see a different approach from hotels and resorts.

What does this mean for bookable PCs and hot desks, who knows.

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Next Generation (Digital) Experiences

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Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

I have been thinking about the future student experience. You can quite easily argue that digital is already embedded into the current student experience. Much of what they do at university is now dependent on digital; from connectivity, cyber, to authentication, access to resources. Online resources are more the norm these days, and resources like ebooks are proving more popular with students. The use of learning platforms (the ubiquitous VLE) is embedded as are video platform tools such as Teams and Zoom.

So what of the future?

As, we know predicting the future, is easy, getting it right though it nigh on impossible.

What we have seen over the last ten years though is widespread adoption and usage of digital technologies. Whereas twenty years ago we would be trying to “sell” the benefits of learning technologies, today the use of technology for learning and teaching is pretty much the norm.

Those with long memories may remember the many presentations I gave over ten years ago now on the future of learning. I was on the conference circuit then talking about the future impact of digital and technology on the learning experience. Some of what I said came true, other aspects less so. Look I told you, predicting the future, is easy, getting it right though it nigh on impossible.

One feature that I never really saw people predict was the widespread use of AI (well large language generative models) by students. The long term impact of that has to be seen, but in the short term we are seeing extensive use of AI by students in many different ways. 

broken computers
Image by dokumol from Pixabay

Getting back to where I started this blog post, the future student experience. Thirty years ago when I was teaching, I didn’t have the Internet (I didn’t get access (with a 56k modem) until 1998). The college I was working in as a lecturer did have a single computer with internet access and that was really slow. My students did use technology, but it was in the main using a word processor to write assignments, and Excel for doing finance stuff. I did use presentation software, but in the main that was for printing acetates which I then used with an overhead projector (OHP).

The current student experience is so different to where it was twenty years ago. Back then colleges had been connected to JANET and virtually all had decided to have a VLE. Usage of that said VLE though was inconsistent across not just the sector, not just the college, but also departments and teams. Many learning technologists of that era were trying to persuade and sell the use of said tech to academics, who were a little sceptical. At the same time though IT teams were expanding the network infrastructure, professional services were digitising their processes, and email became much more ubiquitous. Though there was still some wariness about learning technologies, digital technologies were been or had been embedded into the operational side of education. It was this that probably had more impact on the role of digital in education than anything else.

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“The LLE model is not financially viable”

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This week I was part of a panel session looking at LLE. My focus was on the importance of the student experience, the data journey, and the  necessity of the sector to adhere to standards and enable interoperability. 

One delegate in the event spoke about the financially viability of LLE, indicating in their opinion that the proposed LLE model is not financially viable. That did get me thinking that what this does imply is not that LLE is not financially viable in itself, but the income derived from LLE will not cover the costs of LLE. You could also argue that the current spending model of higher education is not financially viable when delivering LLE.

So, do you raise the fees for LLE, and increase the student loans for the student, or do you change the business model of delivering higher education so that it is financially viable. It’s not too much of a surprise to see that a model designed for delivering a three year degree programme isn’t really fit for purposes in delving modular programmes.

One factor that traditional higher education institutions may want to reflect on, is that non-traditional higher education providers and new entrants may be more agile and able to change to deliver modular programmes in a cost effective manner. Just because you can’t see how to make LLE financially viable doesn’t mean that others won’t see opportunities.

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The cost of living with student loans

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Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Over the last couple of years I have been saying across various conversations about the impact of paying back student loans could have on future student recruitment. I would talk about how the next generation of students will be the first whose parents were required to take out student loans to pay their fees and for the maintenance. Their parents would have the seen the real life impact of their student debt on their lifestyle. It would reduce their real income and would have had an impact on other financial choices such as mortgage affordability.

You could quite easily see these parents advising their children to really think about university and also think about other possible options. 

We have seen some evidence of this with the huge demand for degree apprenticeships, getting paid, part time study, and no loans. The supply of such apprenticeships has certainly not increased to meet the demand.

When the government raised student fees, there was a almost audible sigh of relief from the university sector, however I do remember the press coverage of the time rarely if ever mentioned the impact of this on students. They would need get larger student loans.

Over the last few weeks there has been substantial press coverage about student loans, it certainly has become a political issue and is getting talked about on the news, in the press, and online. There have been whole programmes and features on the issues of student loans. What we are now seeing is human impact stories about loans.

The BBC News has published an article which makes for interesting reading.The article, Paying back my student loan is more painful now I have a young family, covers the story of a graduate who went to university in 2014 who took out a Plan 2 student loan. The one line from the article that stood out to me was this one.

Richmond is “really pleased” with where he’s got to in his career in recruitment. But he says he has colleagues doing just as well who didn’t go to university, so he questions whether he needed his degree.

When this comparison starts, then some people will start to think seriously about whether going to university, getting loans, is going to be the best option. Is there going to be that graduate premium in earnings that will offset the extra student loan charge.

On the WonkHE site, David Kernohan looks at the graduate premium in much more detail than I could ever do.

I think another factor out there is that university is no longer the life changing event was, even in the 2000s. I remember when I went away to university, it was a paradigm shift, the only way to communicate was by letter and using the payphone with huge queues. Today technology means even if you do go away to university, you don’t need to break everyday contact with friends and family. Likewise, in order to survive at university you will probably need to have a part-time job as well. Then, your life is not university, university is just something you do alongside everything else. That experience may mean that looking at alternative pathways for the same kind of benefit.

Something else which gets lost in the discussion is that for many students, they don’t go away to university they stay at home and go to their local university (to save money, but for other social reasons as well).  For many students alternative routes to higher education may become the preferable option.

There are lots of benefits to higher education, the question though going forward can you achieve those benefits in ways which don’t mean getting huge student loans and the negative impact that debt has for life after university.

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Competition Time

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market stall

Last month the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) published guidance on collaboration in higher education. This clarity about collaboration within the sector has to be welcomed. The law has not been changed, but the clarification can provide reassurance to the sector that looking to work together, sharing services and resources, as well as more formal collaboration is potentially possible. 

When the sector conversation started on collaboration there was some loud voices saying that we couldn’t collaborate because of the legal implications of competition law. The government and sector bodies were pushing the opportunities about working together and some parts of the sector were pushing back, talking about competition and the law. I wrote about this in a week note from February last year.

So, much so, that a discussion was had with the CMA and then the resulting guidance from them was published.

Part of me though does wonder, if the apprehension about collaboration was using the CMA and competition law as an excuse for not looking at collaboration rather than an actual reason not to collaborate. Will the new guidance mitigate that excuse now.

Was the rhetoric from the sector about Competition Law more about using it as an excuse to avoid the discussion and need to collaborate.

Now the guidance has been published, or will we now find that there is another reason why HE can’t collaborate?

Is it because they don’t want to collaborate?

Is it because they don’t know how to collaborate?

I think it’s a bit of both.

I was reminded of my experiences back in the 2000s when I was introducing technology into learning and teaching.

Often staff would tell me why they couldn’t or wouldn’t use learning technologies.

Where is the evidence etc???

When then presented with the evidence, it was then another reason, and then another reason…

Sometimes you had to listen, other times you need to dig a little deeper to understand why a person (or an organisation) doesn’t want to do something. The reason they give, may not be the actual reason why they aren’t going to do that thing.

The reality was, more my problem, I was presenting the introduction of learning technologies as a problem to be solved, the reality was technology was actually a solution, what I hadn’t done, was identified the problem. Learning technologies are a solution to problems, not the problem that needs to be solved.

market stall

We need to move away from excuses and obstacles, and move towards opportunities and solutions.

We need to remind ourselves that collaboration and sharing within higher education isn’t the problem we need to solve, it is in fact a solution (and not the only solution) to a (probably not well defined) problem. We need to be clear about the problem, define that problem, and then we can start thinking about possible solutions, one of which may be collaboration and sharing. I recently wrote about bridge building in helping understanding about problems and solutions.

Back in the day when I was designing aspects of the Digital Leadership programme I recognised that helping people to understand the differences between problems and solutions I would use a bridge building analogy.

If we are to work towards solving the solutions to the many challenges the higher education sector is facing then we need to stop just thinking about the problems with potential solutions, but focus on making those solutions work.

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Bridge Building

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wooden bridge
Image by Elizabeth from Pixabay

One question that sometimes comes up, is do we know how to collaborate?

Though there has been ample talk about collaboration and sharing, it is one of those things that is probably easy to talk about and more difficult to actually do. Part of the challenge is how universities are inconsistent in their approaches to managing themselves, which then makes it even more challenging to work together or collaborate.

We need to remind ourselves that collaboration and sharing within higher education isn’t the problem we need to solve, it is in fact a solution (and not the only solution) to a (probably not well defined) problem. We need to be clear about the problem, define that problem, and then we can start thinking about possible solutions, one of which may be collaboration and sharing.

wooden bridge
Image by hmauck from Pixabay

Back in the day when I was designing aspects of the Digital Leadership programme I recognised that helping people to understand the differences between problems and solutions I would use a bridge building analogy.

If you imagine a river, you know where you are and you have fair idea about where you want to be. The problem is how do you get from one side of the river to other. The solution is to build a bridge. The bridge in itself is not the problem you need to solve, it is the solution to the actual problem of crossing the river.

One of the challenges is that often people don’t know how to build a bridge. Then the focus energy and resources are pushed into bridge building. Sometimes it becomes all about bridge building and less about crossing the river.

In many ways I see collaboration as the bridge. We know that the sector is facing challenges, one solution is to build a bridge (collaboration) but the bridge itself isn’t the problem.

Generally what most communities do when they need a bridge, they get experts in to build that bridge. It’s pretty much the same with collaboration, why not get expert help, to help with the collaboration and then that allows greater focus on the actual problems that collaboration is trying to solve.

Generally once you’ve built a bridge, you use it to cross the river and then move on.

So are you building bridges, or are you still thinking about how to construct one?

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Impact of financial challenges – the student perspective

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stable door

The Office for Students (OfS) has published the results from a survey (from April 2025) on students’ perceptions of their providers’ response to financial challenges.

WonkHE have done their usual excellent analysis of the polling and is well worth a read.

83 per cent of those polled thought that cost-cutting measures had changed the experience they felt they’d been promised – often through larger class sizes than expected, greater use of online learning, or reduced access to academic resources and student support.

Some of my own thoughts on this.

The survey was actually done last April, so the impact of more recent responses to financial sustainability won’t have influenced the results. Even so, it demonstrates that cost-cutting is impacting on the student experience and this is reducing student satisfaction.

Interesting to read that greater use of online learning is still seen as a negative, the impact of remote online learning during covid is still having an impact. We have to remember that the majority of students been surveyed weren’t actually at university at the height of the covid lockdowns, so their experiences of school and college are having a longitudinal impact on their feelings about online learning. 

Changes noted by students included increased class sizes, and my recent post on Nottingham and their changes to student staff ratios shows that this is not going away anytime soon.

What this report and analysis is showing is that student satisfaction is being impacted by the financial situation in higher education. Though fees are set to rise, this is only going to reflect inflation, so costs in real terms is going to stay the same. We might not see so much cost reduction in the future, but we need to reflect that we not going to see much increase in real spending either.

What will this mean, well with fees still set to rise and actual costs of going to university, falling graduate incomes, does this mean that the benefit of attending university becomes less attractive to prospective students in the future?

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This is the way

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Writing in a notebook
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Before I finished for the festive break there was a report in the Times Higher Education on the current situation at Nottingham University.

Staff at the University of Nottingham fear that planned course closures and changes to staff-student ratios could damage the university’s international standing and create “impossible” workloads.

The university is planning to consolidate the number of faculties from five to three and reduce the number of courses that are delivered at the university by suspending recruitment on 42 courses. Of course the challenge in suspending recruitment is that restarting recruitment might be challenging, and probably impossible to do quickly.

The University of Nottingham is not alone in facing a financial crisis and equally is not alone in cutting courses and reducing staff numbers.

What is also consistent for most universities in this predicament is that they are facing it alone. Though there has been ample talk about collaboration and sharing, it is one of those things that is probably easy to talk about and more difficult to actually do. Part of the challenge is how universities are inconsistent in their approaches to managing themselves, which then makes it even more challenging to work together or collaborate.

Making those changes to be more aligned, is probably not even on the agenda, as the next crisis loads on the existing crisis. Sitting outside the turmoil, you might think it is easy to offer solutions, the reality is that there is so much unknowns in that crisis, that any solution may become the next problem.

We need to remind ourselves that collaboration and sharing within higher education isn’t the problem we need to solve, it is in fact a solution (and not the only solution) to a (probably not well defined) problem. We need to be clear about the problem, define that problem, and then we can start thinking about possible solutions, one of which may be collaboration and sharing.

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60% of UK academic staff in UK universities are digital natives

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As I mentioned in one of my week notes I read a well researched report and an article on Generation Alpha and how I am not really a fan of generational generalisations. I said how I am not sure how useful they are. 

I was though reminded of the whole digital natives debate, which still seems to bear its ugly head every so often. Prensky’s premise was the idea that if you were old you were only a  digital immigrant and the young people were digital natives. As young people were born into a digital world then they were digital natives. Whereas everyone else was born into a non-digital world and therefore digital was new to them and not something that they had always known.

According to the Prensky definition, 60% of UK academic staff in UK universities are pure digital natives. You could even argue that the figure is closer to 80%…

So, using the term to describe students isn’t helpful as the definition by definition in theory applies to virtually everyone who is part of the university. 

Giving a generation a name is one thing, but what people then conjectured was that as they had this name, digital native, they would be able to handle a range of digital tools, services and environments. They would be in a better position to handle online environments then the so called immigrants.

This conjecture is rather flawed and makes a lot of assumptions about behaviours, skills and experience, based on what is really just a label.

Making labels to describe generations is one thing, making assumptions about how individuals will be able to do things (or not do things) just because they are part of that generation is just wrong.

Over the years technology changes as does society. They both influence each other, both positively and negatively. Behaviours change as technology both enables and enhances. The other aspect of technology is that it is constantly evolving and changing, as new technologies arrive, others become redundant or less useful.

As a society technology and digital has become more embedded into our lives, the concept of post-digital echoes the sentiment that as technology becomes part of our everyday lives, the less we see it as technology.

Thinking about this I am reminded of two aspects of my work over the the years.

When I started working at Gloucestershire College in 2006 I did a few new staff induction sessions about the use of IT in the college. I remember asking new staff, who had an email account, many didn’t. It wasn’t part of their life, they didn’t need one, obviously some did. I then handed over the inductions to another member of staff. Later in 2013 I was asked to cover one of the staff induction sessions, and it was very apparent that a lot had moved on. Now, it was pointless asking the question about email, so I asked what was the last thing they bought online. Everyone in the room was shopping online, some were even buying shoes online, which still to this day I find incredulous.

Another thing I did was help develop and deliver the Jisc Digital Leaders Programme. In the early days we did some mapping of our digital self using the concept of Visitors and Residents. 

At the time I liked how the mapping exercise makes you consider how you are using various tools and what needs to happen to change that map, how do you become more resident when using a tool such as Bluesky. Or how do you start using a tool which is currently not on your map, such as a professional blog? 

The mapping changes as new tools are introduced, old ones retire and your role and behaviours change.

When a couple of years ago I did a similar mapping exercise again, I started to realised how embedded digital and services were into everyday life. The value of mapping your digital self had become less valuable and so much more was embedded into how we communicate and collaborate. 

As I said earlier, as a society technology and digital has become more embedded into our lives, the concept of post-digital echoes the sentiment that as technology becomes part of our everyday lives, the less we see it as technology. At the end of the day we are probably all digital now, living in a post-digital world.

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e-Learning Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts 2025

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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.

In 2025 I published 63 blog posts. In 2024 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.

Blog traffic in 2025 was double what it was in 2024.