Category Archives: weeknotes

weeknotes

Traitorous cooperation – Weeknote #345 – 10th October

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The week before I was quite unwell with covid. I was getting better, so I did another test and this one came back negative. I wasn’t 100%, but I did think I was well enough to travel to Birmingham for a couple of days. We had a team away day on Tuesday and an all staff conference on the Wednesday.

Jisc is very much a hybrid geographically distributed organisation across the UK, so more often than not, conversations and discussion is over Teams. So, it makes a nice change to actually meet in person and chat and discuss stuff.

On Monday the day before I headed off to Birmingham, we had a meeting about collaboration. I was reminded of the article I wrote on blocking collaboration back in 2022.

Collaboration is defined in the dictionary as: traitorous cooperation with an enemy. That may not mean what we think when we say collaboration. Of course there is another definition which is: the action of working with someone to produce something.

I concluded that collaboration does require teams to plan and think about their ways of working. Compromises have to be made to ensure effective collaboration. You have to trust, and trust is a two way street.

It is looking like I will be travelling to the Netherlands quite a bit over the next few months delivering workshops and attending various meetings. One of things I will need to do before all that is renew my passport. In theory I have just under three months left on my passport, reality is that I need to have at least three months left on my passport if I am going to travel. I will be losing my nice burgundy passport and getting a new blue one.

The BBC reports on an UCU analysis which shows universities have collectively announced more than 12,000 job cuts in the last year. The article discusses not just the closure of courses, but also cuts to services for students. Could the ongoing financial crisis for the sector actually become worse, as some young people decide that an deprecated student experience isn’t the experience that they want from university, and choose a different path.

weeknotes

Back to Covid – Weeknote #344 – 3rd October

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man with facemask
Image by pisauikan from Pixabay

Felt rough on Monday, signed myself off sick, read this BBC report, and said to myself, James you’ve got Covid.

If you feel unwell with a bad throat and a temperature you may well have caught one of the new strains of Covid circulating this autumn. XFG, called Stratus by some, and NB.1.8.1, known as Nimbus, are now the most common variants being passed around in the UK, according to officials, external.

Got some tests.

Yes, I have Covid.

weeknotes

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past – Weeknote #342 – 19th September

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This week I actually spent three days of my working week, working in the Bristol office. It was a very busy office, and as a result there was a real buzz. Some of my colleagues in my team were also in the office, so there was much discussion and in-person collaboration.

The beginning of the week I was in a meeting looking at improving internal communication and collaboration within our directorate. It was an interesting meeting.

Spent a lot of time on organising and planning next week. I am off to the Netherlands for a GÉANT TF-EDU (Education Taskforce) meeting in Delft and then will be attending the 1EdTech Learning Impact conference before ending the week meeting up with Dutch colleagues from SURF. I helped put together a presentation which Jisc will be presenting next week at the conference looking at sharing and collaboration.

I did look at travel options for the trip; my first choice was to actually drive and use the Harwich Hook of Holland ferry. Though this would take a lot more time, most of which would be driving to Harwich in Essex, which with charging would be a six or even seven hour drive followed by an eight hour ferry crossing. Another option was to catch the train. There are direct trains from London to Amsterdam, but the timings are challenging as it is a nearly a five hour train journey, but I would need to get to London first, and then at the other end get to Delft. In the end it was easier, quicker (and cheaper) to fly from Bristol. It’s a seventy-five minute flight, though I have to get from Schiphol to Delft, however that is less than an hour away on the train.

lecture theatre
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

The OfS has proposed a revised TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) and is consulting how it assesses and regulates higher education. One key point is putting a lower burden on high-quality institutions; and increased scrutiny on weaker ones. There is still some reliance on NSS scores, which we know sometimes skews how universities interact with students.

There’s something for everyone in the latest rethink of the Teaching Excellence Framework, but as David Kernohan suggests at WonkHE, bringing disparate approaches together can highlight fundamental weaknesses.

weeknotes

Is it a bird… Is it a plane… No, it’s a super-university! – Weeknote #341 – 12th September

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The big news this week was the announcement of the merger between the University of Greenwich and the University of Kent. It is being called the creation of the “first” super university. I wrote about this on the day of the announcement. Degrees from the new super university will still be awarded in the name of Kent or Greenwich. I think that this is a wise move and needs to be supported, mergers don’t and shouldn’t always means the loss of institutional identities.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Also this week I published a couple of vision pieces on The University Group™ and The Specialist University Centre. With the recent announcement of the “first” university super merger between Greenwich and Kent, I was reminded of a piece of work I wrote last February, which never got further than my hard drive (well cloud storage). Also last week was the UUK Annual Conference, the then science secretary Peter Kyle was speaking on the second day, and calling for increasing specialisation and collaboration in higher education, which reminded me of another vision piece. So, I put them both on the blog.

One of the reports I have been working on this year was on subject collaboration within higher education. We did reference a previous British Academy report, so it was with interest that I read their recent report, which obviously focuses on the arts and social sciences. I wrote up some thoughts on the report and the implications for the UK higher education sector.

laptop
Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

On the 1st September we published a version of one of the reports I have been working on, this week I have been  working with others finalising the second report which will be sent to UUK members.

The NRENS 4 Education group I am part of had a meeting with the European Commission. The last time we met, it was in-person in Brussels, this time it was a Teams meeting, so no Belgian chocolates for me this time.

We had a discussion and reflected on UUK’s annual conference, which took place last week. Positive attitudes to collaboration, however still understanding the challenges in making it happen. The Kent and Greenwich merger may demonstrate one way forward.

Writing up a business case for visit to Netherlands and attendance at Learning Impact Europe 2025 Conference.

I have been invited to be a speaker at HE Transformation 2025, taking place 19 – 20 November at the NEC, Birmingham.

I did make it to our office in Bristol and London this week.

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Opportunities for efficiency – Weeknote #340 – 5th September

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Back to work after a week off. August is quite quiet for Jisc, partly as it is quiet for higher education. September though, is when it all kicks off. Though saying that, last week another blog post on the Jisc websites, Setting the foundations for successful collaboration was published.

Convincingly making the case for collaboration across the higher education sector for better student experiences is crucial, but how do you get key people on board for institutional and personal buy-in?

As with most content that I have published on the Jisc website, it was a group effort in writing it. It has developed and changed since I originally proposed the idea. It complements the post It’s better together – how to make the case for collaboration which was published the week before.

This week saw the publication by UUK and Jisc of the report, Opportunities for efficiency through shared services.

The Universities UK (UUK) commissioned report, led by Jisc, presents a compelling case for a sector-wide action plan. New recommendations, published today, outline opportunities for smarter collaboration across the UK higher education (HE) sector, drawing on the long history of successful shared services that play a vital role in securing improved user experience and significant university cost savings through greater efficiency.

The report, developed under the UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce, calls on universities to make best use of existing, underutilised shared services to fully support entrepreneurial, locally driven initiatives and encourage nationwide growth. It highlights that while shared services like UCAS and Jisc’s Janet Network are used right across UK HE, most others remain underutilised due to lack of awareness, funding, and strategic coordination.

I did a significant amount of work on this report; it was one of three that we worked on as part of strand 2.

I was invited to attend the Universities UK’s Annual Conference 2025 which was taking place this week at the University of Exeter. Exeter is just over an hour away down the M5, so quite an easy place to get to. Jisc’s CEO was delivering two sessions supporting the publication of the report.

It was a good conference with some very good sessions and insights.  I am though 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. I had listened to a podcast, which discussed how Kodak did not adapt well to the digital revolution in photography. It was interesting as it wasn’t as though Kodak ignored digital, they actually produced a handheld digital camera back in 1975.

The current economic climate and the state of financial sustainability is here, and universities know this. This was expressed many times during the conference. However universities may know and realise that they need to change, but they can’t afford to make those changes now. As a result they may never change.

Usually at the time of year I would be off to the ALT Conference, well I didn’t go last year. This year the conference is taking place later in October up in Glasgow. As my role is less about learning technology and more about strategic operational issues, the value of the conference to my work is less than in other years. There are some interesting looking sessions on the programme, so it’s on my list of possible conferences, but we will have to see.

I had a couple of meetings about NRENS 4 Education (or E in NREN as I have bene referring to it on the blog).

weeknotes

It’s better together – Weeknote #338 – 22nd August

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I was on leave at the beginning of the week, which was nice.

A blog post on the Jisc websites, It’s better together – how to make the case for collaboration was published.

Convincingly making the case for collaboration across the higher education sector for better student experiences is crucial, but how do you get key people on board for institutional and personal buy-in?

As with most content that I have published on the Jisc website, it was a group effort in writing it. It has developed and changed since I originally proposed the idea.

This was one piece of communications that will support the publication of a report into one of the strategic online cases that Jisc developed as part of the Transformation & Efficiency Taskforce strand 2 work.

I have another blog post being posted next week as well.

We have been making final tweaks to the NREN 4 Education proposal in preparation for a meeting in September. Always challenging to undertake this work over the summer with people taking holidays or even closing down.

weeknotes

OKRing – Weeknote #337 – 15th August

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For part of this week (well the end of the week) I was on leave.

We had a team meeting about our team OKRs.

OKR, which stands for Objectives and Key Results, is a goal-setting framework used to define and track objectives and their measurable outcomes. It helps organizations align on goals, improve focus, and drive progress. OKRs consist of a qualitative, inspirational Objective and several quantitative Key Results that define how to achieve the objective.

It’s very easy for a team (or an individual for that matter) to have an ill-defined or woolly objective about the year ahead.

In the past and in previous roles I very much asked to deliver SMART objectives.

A SMART objective is a goal that adheres to a framework of five criteria: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant (or Realistic), and Time-bound. This structured approach clarifies what needs to be done, how to track progress, and when to expect results, fostering greater focus, accountability, and success in achieving objectives for individuals, teams, and organizations.

I can see with the OKR approach, which doesn’t ignore the concept of SMART is that there is an overlying overall (inspirational) objective.

It can be quite challenging to write OKRs and if you haven’t done it before, it is even more challenging. Of course with an ever changing landscape, the ability of an organisation to be agile and responsive is important, but having an OKR scaffolding will allow an organisation to ascertain if there should be a change in direction, what is a priority and what isn’t? What do we need to stop doing, what should we do now, and do we need more resources.

Any organisation needs to balance the requirements of being reactive to changes, but also proactive in planning for the year ahead. OKRs do allow for that forward planning, but should incorporate flexibility and agility as well.

Writing in a notebook
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Continued to review the most recent draft of our NREN 4 Education proposal.

UUK and Jisc are planning to publish one of the strategic outline cases as a public report. It will also be supported by two blog posts which will have my name on. Spent some of the week discussing, editing and writing aspects for that process.

weeknotes

The year ahead – Weeknote #336 – 8th August

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Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

First week of the year, the new Jisc year starts 1st August. There have been some organisational changes in my directorate, however, doesn’t impact me personally very much.

I have been planning for the next twelve months. My main priorities are focused on three key areas.

  • First, I’m continuing to build on the work of NRENs (National Research and Education Networks) across Europe, particularly by focusing on the topic of student mobility within the education field.
  • Second, I’m analysing the implications of the new Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) for higher education, with a specific focus on how it will impact Jisc’s work in the areas of digital technology and data.
  • Finally, I’m continuing to work on initiatives that promote collaboration and knowledge sharing. This includes building on the findings of last year’s report, Collaboration for a Sustainable Future, and the work of Universities UK’s Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce. The goal for the coming year is to help the sector act on these recommendations and build a more collaborative future.

This is all subject to change as the priorities for the year ahead might flex and change.

I have also been looking at the possible conferences I might attend to support this work. Some I expect I may try and get a speaking slot; others will be more about my professional and personal development.

I have been reviewing a proposal which took a lot longer than I thought it would.

We have been working with UUK on releasing some of the outputs from the Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce that I both supported and helped to write.

Finally I have been writing up my forms for my Q4 review.