I was away for the whole week, travelling to London and Edinburgh. On Monday I headed up to London and went to the Fetter Lane office for some meetings.
Tuesday I was off to WONKHE’s Secret Life of the Student Event. This is the third time I have attended the event. This is very much an event, more so a conference, and WONKHE certainly know how to create an engaging show. There was lots of interesting presentations, one feature of the event I liked was how they added a student voice for five minutes in between sessions.
This isn’t the most interactive conference I’ve attended, no workshop sessions, and usually very limited time for questions. However, I still thought it was an excellent conference. Others do as well, as even by the final session, most people are still there. It’s very popular as well, as they were packed out.
After the end of this conference, it was a walk over to Kings Cross (walking next to St Pancras) for a train to Edinburgh. I was quite impressed with the speed of the train, taking just four hours and twenty minutes from platform to platform.
I was up in Edinburgh for the UCISA Leadership Conference. Like the Secret Life this is my third time I have attended. The first conference was in Manchester. I said back then.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I kind of expected that this would be a highly technical conference, about how technology can deliver transformation and I can say that what I experienced was not what I was expecting.
Last year in Liverpool, I thought it was a good conference, I wrote back then.
I did enjoy the conference, not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the previous year, but it was still an excellent conference.
This year, I did enjoy the conference, however I didn’t feel it was as good and as useful as the conferences in Manchester and Liverpool. At the previous conferences I felt there was a good focus on leadership and strategy. This year in Edinburgh, I felt the focus had moved to the technology, notably AI.
Now I realise that I am not the target market for this conference, and they may have been responding to feedback from their core market. I may attend next year, but then again, I might not.
I flew home from Edinburgh.
This week I also had a preliminary planning meeting for Smart Campus workshop I am running in the next month or so.
Monday I was in London at the Jisc offices in Fetter Lane. We had our Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting with 12 PVCs (including a VC and DVCs). As you might expect ChatGPT and AI was a hot topic of conversation in the meeting.
After the meeting I was heading up to London for the UCISA Leadership Conference in Liverpool.
I did enjoy the conference, not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the previous year, but it was still an excellent conference. Various sessions got me thinking, and I am contemplating writing some of my thoughts up from the conference.
The equality, diversity, and inclusion sessions were interesting and useful. Why don’t universities try and be more flexible in their recruitment practices, for example how many offer term time only contracts (reduced hours) to attract working parents. Family friendly policies can widen the talent pool. Why are so many jobs 37.5 hrs 52 weeks? Also why is it so often that recruitment for an individual, rather than recruiting for the team. A more diverse team is often more effective.
Was a little disappointed that one of the opening sessions talked about digital natives. They don’t exist, never have.
When I was young we had a Commordore Vic-20, I had a Casio electronic calculator, does that make me a digital native? According to Prensky yes it does.
However digital is not a constant, the digital technologies we grew up with, are no longer relevant or useful. #ucisa23pic.twitter.com/xUyD1fshOp
Wondered if any university was looking at implementing a four day week?
This BBC news article reflects on the experiences of those involved in a four day week trial.
The scheme, organised by 4 Day Week Global, took place between June and December 2022, and involved organisations across the UK, including some non-profit organisations, as well as private firms in recruitment, software, and manufacturing. A report assessing its impact has found it had “extensive benefits” particularly for employees’ well-being.
I spent time reviewing the Connect More 2023 themes and topics with others across Jisc.
Started reflecting on possible ideas for ALT-C 2023 now that the call for papers is out. In 2021 I did a blog post about the digital lens, based on earlier work, so looking at possibly revisiting this.
Continued my researching AI in education. Have had early access to Bard, which looks very good.
Saw this on the Twitter – Fake Trump arrest photos trigger a new AI panic. The quality of AI images is getting better and better, and as you might expect, the images they are creating can be problematic.
Spent time writing and reviewing some ideas for next year, including looking at the rumoured Apple Reality Pro.
Final comment, often we know where we are, and where we want to be. The harder job is working out how to get there. What do we need to do to make it happen. How do we get there?
My top tweet this week was this one.
My sketchnote from the excellent Trust, teamwork and technology: building a culture of educational innovation at scale presentation here at #ucisa23pic.twitter.com/oKkCn1xiUZ
This week I was attending the UCISA Leadership Conference in Liverpool.
On day one I drew two sketchnotes from the sessions I attended. On day two I did four sketchnotes. On the final day of the conference I did two more sketchnotes.
Tackling Today’s Student Engagement Challenges
Today’s students expect more from your institution. Apart from their academic careers, students expect to be communicated with in a modern way, they expect to be engaged right from the start, and they expect to be part of your campus community. The question is: how do you live up to those high expectations? Innovative digital solutions have proven effective in improving student communication, increasing student engagement and personalising the overall student experience. This session will share valuable learnings and insights on how an institution has effectively personalised the student journey.
Trust, teamwork and technology: building a culture of educational innovation at scale
This is a session where we, a Pro-Vice-Chancellor Academic and a Chief Information and Digital Officer, will share our journey of building a trusting relationship to serve our academic and learner communities. We will reflect on what qualities we foster among our teams, give them space to innovate and collaborate, and drive motivation to deliver at pace. We will share our story of building a bridge between academic and professional services communities, where the frequent users are our students. Finally, we will showcase some tech transformation and implementation that may not be ground-breaking but delivered at pace and at scale. It’ll be an interactive session and we will have some fun!
I am attending the UCISA Leadership Conference in Liverpool.
On day one I drew two sketchnotes from the sessions I attended. On day two I did four sketchnotes.
A sustainable approach to building a diverse and disability inclusive team
Building a diverse and inclusive team requires both honest reflection and positive action. Hear from AbilityNet on how to create the conditions where the widest talent pool can thrive.
Curriculum management as the foundation of digital transformation and success: What can UK higher education leaders learn from their Australian counterparts?
We passionately believe that true digital transformation starts with an institution’s core asset – its curriculum. In this presentation, we share learnings from universities that have successfully digitally transformed their curriculum management systems, exploring along the way:
Why curriculum management should be the focal point for any digital transformation journey
How digital tools enable staff to manage critical digital data assets accurately, effectively and efficiently
How a curriculum management system with composable architecture supports and builds resilience into the university ecosystem
How to ensure a successful implementation
Tackling the Gender Pay Gap in Tech
The twin challenge of pay gap and lack of role models can mean it feels like an uphill struggle to attract and retain women in tech. In this session Tracey Jessup talks about her role as Chief Digital and Information Officer at Parliament and the work the Parliamentary Digital Service did to ensure they were recruiting across the whole of the market, leading to a 0% gender pay gap.
Durham University’s AI Journey
I did attempt to do a sketchnote on the shared services session, but it didn’t come together.
I am attending the UCISA Leadership Conference in Liverpool.
On day one I drew two sketchnotes from the sessions I attended.
Driving transformational Higher Education through automation and Total Experience technology
In this session Dave Wright from Servicenow talked about driving transformation in an university, thinking holistically about the processes and role of digital.
As the technology landscape grows more complex, the need for platforms that cater for large scale change are essential for educational management. Recent events have shown a need for hybrid and digital learning, plus automation of back-office processes and systems to provide a revolutionary student and employee experience. Delivering a cohesive Enterprise Service Management(ESM) that’s easy to adopt, monitor, and use is now crucial to Educational institutions.
Reasons to be cheerful
In this session, Karen Stanton, Vice-Chancellor, Solent University takes about the challenges, but all the opportunities that mean there are reasons to be cheerful.
Karen Stanton, Vice-Chancellor at Solent University, for this keynote session focusing on the positives IT Leaders can look forward to in the near and distant future. With attitudes in the sector often straying somewhere south of positive, it’s time to consider how the role of IT Leaders will change as the importance of technology grows in shaping strategy will .
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?
