I was working on an invitation to tender this week. This took up most of my time with researching, reading, writing, reviewing, sharing, and then going back again…
Estates Directors, by and large, are significant net spenders of university income. While we may also run aspects of our institution’s income-generating commercial services – conferencing and retail for instance – and we know our university built environment can be key in attracting research income, staff and students too, on the whole we sit on the expenditure side of the balance sheet, with buildings second only to people in terms of operating costs.
It noted the challenge that costs are rising and budgets are being cut, and the challenges that this brings to the Estates team.
The issue of both students and staff using the campus differently now, post covid, and their hybrid use of space for studying and working. We know that space designed for the way we would use those spaces pre-covid, aren’t necessarily now the kinds of spaces that we need post-covid. Easy to say, actually quite challenging to design spaces that meet these new needs. What are those new kinds of spaces and how would we know?
The other challenge isn’t just space, but also time. You can already see that more people are coming into the office for two or three days a week, and those days are usually in the middle of the week. The challenge that anyone has in managing space is how do you provide the capacity needed for two or three days, knowing that for the rest of the week it will be underutilised. How do you incentivise people to spread their in-person working (and studying) patterns across the week, to ensure space is being used efficiently.
Next week I am presenting at our directorate away day in Bristol on my work. I produced a presentation, which for me has a fair few words on it. I also developed the visions exercise I ran recently with our senior group; I turned the visions into handouts and created an activity that can be used with them.
Back to a full week, after a couple of shorter weeks. It’s still school holidays in the West, so the roads were quieter as were the trains. Well there was a few issues with the trains, but not big issues.
As it was the holidays I was in the office every day this week. Some days the office was busy and noisy, and on other days it was quieter. Friday it was very quiet.
Most of the week was researching reading, thinking, and writing.
On Tuesday I attended the HEAnet Group Advisory Forum, which is a group which supports HEAnet in Ireland. I attend as an international expert.
Arts education is essential – yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack. With massive redundancies announced at this London institution, is it the canary in the coalmine?
The article notes how what is happening at Goldsmiths is reflecting what is happening elsewhere in the sector.
Yet in many ways, what’s happening at Goldsmiths is a vivid thumbnail sketch of the crises, both accidental and deliberately manufactured, hitting the entire sector, bar a very few stunningly well-funded universities from the high-profile Russell Group.
Despite the sector being very collaborative and mutually friendly, underneath there is a fierce competitive streak. Changes in how university education was funded exposed this. As the article notes when fees were set at £9000 per year.
…Andrew McGettigan, author of the Great University Gamble and expert in university funding and finance, says: “Suddenly classroom subjects were getting a lot more than the cost of delivering teaching, so you could fund research time in your department out of the money you were getting from your students.” You could also cross-subsidise more expensive subjects. This led to what he calls “a great sucking sound” as larger, more prestigious institutions pulled in humanities students because they were very lucrative.
The sector is facing huge challenges, and they will need to change. What that change is and what it looks like, we don’t’ really know.
Spent some time discussing our away day which is happening later this month, I am doing a session on the challenges that the higher education sector is facing.
Shorter week this week with Easter Monday. Headed to the office on Tuesday after the long weekend and did some writing and planning. In the end (with what it being school holidays) I was in the office every day this week. With many people in Jisc on leave this week, and the same can be said for much of higher education it was a rather quiet week, which gave me time to focus on getting some research, analysis and writing done.
I did write a blog post about lecture capture and how you could do things more creatively.
The idea of capturing a lecture isn’t new. Even before the advent of dedicated lecture capture systems being installed across the campus some lecturers (and some students) would record the lecture onto cassette tape.
I have been thinking of using Jisc’s Digital Elevation Tool for FE in the Intelligent Campus space. So this week I started planning what needs to happen to make that happen. This involved looking at the scaffolding that the tool has and what would need to be in a campus version of the tool.
Is UK higher education really the world’s third most expensive way of getting a degree – and if it is, what might the alternatives look like?
One of the key questions that arises from different operating models, are higher education institutions prepared to change, and are they only going to change because they are forced to.
There’s a history of attempts to drive efficiency by sharing services – and precious little evidence of success.
When I started my work in this space, I came to similar conclusions that were in this article. However I do think just because that was the way things were, doesn’t mean that there isn’t opportunities in the future.
Did some analysis of various reports, articles, and links in relation to Optimising Operations and Data. I did a similar analysis of various reports, articles, and links in relation to Intelligent Campus.
I started the planning various reports in relation to Optimising Operations and Data.
I had a meeting about a proposed Intelligent Campus maturity framework.
I did some more field research on the Intelligent Campus.
A busy start to the week, I was attending HESCA 24 at the University of Loughborough. HESCA is the Higher Education Smart Card Association, primarily a membership organisation for vendors in the smart card and access card space.
There were some interesting talks and presentations. Some were from universities and others were from vendors. As the presentations were about fifteen minutes long, I didn’t make any sketch notes.
I was talking at the final session of the conference talking about the holistic approach to building a smart campus. Got some nice feedback from the session.
This week we also had our Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting. As a well as our usual what’s on your agenda discussion, we also looked at what the big challenge is for higher education and discussed two of the future visions I have been writing. Some interesting thoughts and commentary came out from that.
I had an initial discussion meeting with another university about a possible stakeholder workshop. I was also contacted by a colleague in Jisc about a different university for a conversation, who is also interested in this space. There is a lot of interest and demand in this area from universities across the UK.
I continued my work on optimising operations and data, undertaking further analysis of various reports, articles, and links. I did a similar thing with my work on the intelligent campus.
We had a team meeting, though meeting isn’t really the operative word here, much more a structured conversation and chat.
I was in the office on Friday which was quite busy, for a Friday, usually it is quite quiet.
I attended the Digital Elevation Model review meeting with colleagues from the FE side of Jisc.
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.
I was working in the Bristol office for a few days this week and a couple of days working from home.
Spent some time preparing for next week, when I will be in London, Edinburgh and then early the following week I will be in Loughborough. Will be spending a fair amount of time travelling and staying in hotels as a result.
I wrote a blog post about transformation following attending the UUK event the week before. In Transformation and all that I look at transformation and how digital and technology can now enable that transformation.
As we discuss and talk about digital transformation, it becomes apparent very quickly that digital transformation is not about digital causing transformation. It’s not as though if you invest in digital and online technologies that therefore you will be (magically) transformed.
It was very much a reflection on a post I had written two years ago.
Here we are two years later and re-reading the blog post, much of what I wrote still stands up. In some cases the technology has moved forward already.
I developed and imagined another vision for my work on optimising operations and data. This vision was on secession, a vision in which departments secede from the university hierarchy and form their own institution.
University departments already had some element of autonomy, so it wasn’t too long before some departments decided to secede from the university and form their own “university” to take back control. These departments wanted to have more power over the recruitment of students and staff. They were able to outsource administrative and professional services to subsidiary service companies that delivered services to a large number of these autonomous departments. With the wealth of empty office space across major cities, it was relatively easy to procure space, combined with online provision, and hybrid home working, the costs of running a department of a university, divorced from the university itself, could be minimised. The use of shared services across these small independent universities enabled them to focus on research, learning and teaching.
I also developed one on the outsourced university.
It was seen as easy to outsource much of the domestic functions of the university, but it became apparent to many senior managers that they could outsource much of their professional services as well. It wasn’t too long before some enterprising universities realised that they could outsource their teaching as well. This would enable them to bring in dedicated subject experts for teaching on undergraduate programmes as and when needed.
I’ve enjoyed writing these and will be interesting to see what happens when I share them with some senior colleagues in a few weeks.
I saw that UPP Foundation launched Student Futures II, New threats to student futures. In 2021, with the world still in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UPP Foundation convened the Student Futures Commission to understand how the pandemic was affecting students and what universities could do to help them get back on track. Two years on, the UPP Foundation launched Student Futures II, with new research from Cibyl and Public First assessing the sector’s progress.
The cost of learning crisis is creating new threats to students’ futures
Worryingly, students who took part in focus groups for the Commission report a further gap between what they imagined university would be like and what they have actually experienced, with international students in particular feeling short-changed. There is a general sense of apathy, a loss of agency, and high levels of reported loneliness – and with many universities at or close to the end of their financial tether, the solution of delivering “more support for students” is well past being reasonable or sustainable.
Not long ago I received an email from a colleague who keeps watch on business intelligence vendors and rates their products. She was puzzled that a particular product that I happen to like did not support pie charts, a feature that she assumed was basic and indispensable. Be- cause of previous discussions between us, when I pointed out ineffective graphing practices that are popular in many BI products, she wondered if there might also be a problem with pie charts. Could this vendor’s omission of pie charts be intentional and justified? I explained that this was indeed the case, and praised the vendor’s design team for their good sense.
I was supporting a colleague on the management of our Dovetail licences. We use Dovetail to analyse data. I used it myself this week to analyse the UK Higher Education Financial Sustainability Report in relation to the project I am working on in optimising data and operations. I also used Dovetail to review some of the data and insights we have on the intelligent campus.
I gave a briefing (with a PowerPoint) about my work on optimising operations and data.
Updated our CRM with conversations I had last week.
I was in London towards the end of the week. I was attending UUK’s Survive or thrive? Grasping the financial sustainability challenge event.
Universities are critical to society – whether that’s developing the skills our economy needs, boosting regions, driving social mobility or discovering the next scientific or innovation breakthrough. We are at a critical turning point, however. In 2021-22, one in four UK universities reported an operating deficit. UUK’s policy and advocacy work is focussed on securing more sustainable funding for higher education across the UK but we also need to act for ourselves. We need to apply all the innovation, creativity and business acumen across the sector and beyond and grasp the nettle to find solutions to the big questions.
This conference will cover urgent topics such as:
How can we innovate and find new ways of operating – through different organisational models, creative use of digital, online and AI tools? What might hold us back?
Should we challenge the status quo and how? High quality, high touch, high-cost teaching to student ratio? The overall student offering? Geographic footprints in the UK and beyond?
When you need to transform a university, what are your options and how do you do it?
How do policy and regulation inhibit innovation and what can we do about it?
This was probably one of the best events I have attended in recent months, though, I think the main reason for that was how much of it was aligned to the work I am currently doing at Jisc.
The programme was excellent, with both keynotes, panel sessions and effective workshops. I also had a fair few ad hoc informal discussions with colleagues. There was a large number of senior managers, including vice-chancellors at the event.
Attended Jisc’s Evidence and Research Advisory Group. I actually attended this meeting whilst going for a walk. It was quite late in the day, so though I was working from home, the house by that time was quite busy. I knew I had minimal input to contribute, so rather than annoy the house, I went for a walk, which was quieter than the house, well the road I walked along was quite noisy.
Had my regular one to one.
As well as writing various visions for my work on optimising operations and data, I am also looking for exemplars of current practice. As with a lot of my work, I planned out the structure and content of the exemplars, as well as identifying possible case studies for the exemplars.
As part of Learning & Teaching Reimagined, we constructed some simple scenarios, across the spectrum of digitally enhanced teaching and learning. I want to do something similar with optimising operations and data. These would show the impact on students, academic staff, and professional services as you travel down a road of optimising operations and data.
I have been working on a series of visions about how universities could be working differently in the future. The aim of the visions is not to predict a future, but to provide an insight into a possible view of what that future could look like and think about how these impact on your current position and thinking. We did something similar for Learning and Teaching Reimagined, and though I wasn’t personally credited with the authorship of some of the visions, I did create and write the visions. I tested them out with a few people and got the reaction I wanted as well as stimulating an interesting discussion.
One of those visions was about organisations merging. Coincidently in the news this week was the news that City, University of London and St George’s, University of London have agreed a merger – the new institution will be called City St George’s, University of London and commence operations from 1 August, “though full integration will take longer.” Current City president Anthony Finkelstein will lead the combined institution.
There has been much talk about the four day week, in the Guardian this week was an article on how some firms have made their four day week trials permanent.
Most of the UK companies that took part in the world’s biggest ever four-day working week trial have made the policy permanent, research shows.
Reports from more than half the pilot organisations said that the trial, in which staff worked 100% of their output in 80% of their time, had a positive impact.
For 82% this included positive effects on staff wellbeing, 50% found it reduced staff turnover, while 32% said it improved job recruitment. Nearly half (46%) said working and productivity improved.
How can learning analytics – data systems that help understand student engagement and learning – be used to identify students who may be at risk of withdrawing from their studies, or failing their courses, and what interventions work to re-engage students in their studies?
The key findings from the report were:
Neither HEP found a measurable difference in post-intervention engagement rating between at-risk students who received an email followed by a support phone call and at-risk students who received only the email.
Neither HEP found any significant impact of the additional support call on the likelihood of a student generating additional at-risk alerts.
Qualitative feedback indicated that students welcomed the intervention. For some, the phone call was appreciated as a means of breaking down barriers between themselves and the institution and stimulating their re-engagement with learning. For others, the email alone was cited as a sufficient motivator to re-engage with learning.
A new study from TASO seeks to judge “what works” in the use of learning analytics for student support, exploring whether students identified by engagement data as being “at risk” were better supported by email and phone contact or email alone. Large cohorts of students at two providers, Sheffield Hallam University and Nottingham Trent University, were divided into two random groups. In both cases, it was found that an additional support call created no measurable difference in at-risk students’ subsequent engagement and no appreciable change in the likelihood of the student generating subsequent alerts.
It will be crucial to robustly test the impact of any wellbeing interventions that analytics systems may trigger.
As many people already well known, the environmental costs of generative AI is soaring, and that also being kept mostly secret. In Nature is an article about the impact AI will have on energy systems.
Last month, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman finally admitted what researchers have been saying for years — that the artificial intelligence (AI) industry is heading for an energy crisis. It’s an unusual admission. At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Altman warned that the next wave of generative AI systems will consume vastly more power than expected, and that energy systems will struggle to cope.
Spent some time planning out Senior Education and Student Experience Group meeting for March.
Wrote a briefing update on the work I have been doing on the optimisation of operations and data work.
Had an interesting and informative conversation with a college about their smart campus aspirations.
Spent time planning next steps of my Intelligent Campus work.
Planning a meeting with an university for a follow up workshop on their smart campus planning, after successful workshop in January and their request for a 1-2 day cross university workshop.
Worked on creating and planning blog ideas in the personalisation space. Also worked on creating and planning senior management primer ideas in the personalisation space, and some use case ideas.
Spent time planning out ideas for Spaces events over the next 12 months.
Noted that this worknote represents five years of undertaking worknotes for the blog.
It was half term week in North Somerset, so I was off to the office for most of the week.
I posted a blog post What makes an intelligent campus? which was about the differences between a smart campus and a campus which is intelligent.
A dumb campus is merely a series of spaces and buildings. For example the heating comes on at 8am, off at 5pm, and is only switched on between November and March, regardless of the external temperature.
A smart campus uses data from the spaces and buildings to make decisions. For example, a thermostat controls the heating, as the room warms up, the heating turns off.
An intelligent campus uses data from across the organisation to make decisions and make predictions. For example, a team is out on an away day, so the intelligent campus, switches off the heating and lighting on that floor for that day.
I also updated a blog post I had written about the links between the university smart campus and the smart city (or smart community).
So how does the intelligent campus slot into the smart city? The reality is in many cities the campus and the city are not distinct spaces, and for many people they will move between city and campus across the day. If a university with an intelligent campus does not integrate or work with the smart city, then they won’t have the full picture and in some cases could be at odds with each other. Bringing in the full picture, all the data, a better understanding can be drawn from the experiences of the students and the city population at large.
Following on from the Intelligent Campus workshop I ran in January, the university has been back in touch to discuss planning a two day workshop with a wider range of stakeholders.
I had my Q2 review. As always, these notes come in useful for writing up that review.
I spent time reviewing the personalisation space I have on Dovetail and identifying gaps and further research required. The plan here is not to create the definitive guide to personalisation in higher education, but reflect on a shared understanding, the needs of the sector in this landscape, and where and how Jisc can help and support universities in moving to a more personalised student experience. I worked through a potential workplan and what the next steps are.
I have spent time working on learning spaces, and I undertook a second analysis of learning spaces scoping study we did last year, adding tags and insights to Dovetail space I have on learning spaces.
news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…
