Happy New Year
No weeknote this week as I am on leave.
Category Archives: weeknotes
Merry Christmas – Weeknote #251 – 22nd December 2023
I was travelling at the beginning of the week, spending time in London, Oxford and Cambridge.
It was a quieter week, what with the end of term for many in higher education, and many people in Jisc taking leave.
We had our Jisc Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting on Monday and worked on how the group will work moving forward, ensuring alignment with the similar research focussed group.
I had confirmation of my speaking slot at EDUtech Europe 2024, which takes place in October in Amsterdam.
Panel – The place where pedagogy meets technology: designing innovative learning spaces
- Aligning physical and virtual spaces and technology with pedagogical approaches and teaching methods
- Creating flexible spaces that accommodate diverse learning styles
- The role of mobile devices and BYOD policies in shaping learning spaces
Undertook some more field work and research about campus and space.
Had an excellent meeting at UAL’s King Cross campus, including a short tour of their facilities.
Cylinders of excellence – Weeknote #250 – 15th December 2023
I had various meetings this week and spent time in our Bristol office, as well as working from home.
I wondered if silo working is another word for non-strategic working? People often complain about silo working and the resulting challenges that can arise. I think part of the reason why there are problems with duplication, conflict, and lack of communication, across silo working, is teams are working to their own objectives and aren’t necessarily working towards common objectives.
The NSA in the US talks of silo working as cylinders of excellence. You can have outstanding or excellent teams, but not necessarily have an excellent organisation. See this blog post I wrote about that. I think I might expand on this on a future blog post.
I attended the Adobe and Wonkhe Education Espresso event on supporting pedagogical development and innovation.
I had a meeting on licensing development and links to intelligent campus and student experience.
I had a meeting with organisers of on possible speaking opportunity and possible session ideas for EDUtech Europe 2024.
I had an Intelligent Campus meeting with the Honeywell PoC team at Jisc.
I also had a meeting for planning a workshop on building a smart or an intelligent campus.
Had an informal discussion with colleagues in Jisc on learning spaces. I have been looking at how Jisc can support universities in the learning spaces space. What help and support do universities need, and what help and support do we want from Jisc. We also discussed the compromise that is a flexible learning space. Often, we see universities building flexibility into their learning spaces, as that is often seen as easier than building flexibility into curriculum design and timetabling.
Continued my work on a concept for supporting institutions in the smart campus space. This included reviewing the Higher Education Reference Model with an intelligent campus lens.
I recorded some content for an internal podcast. I used my Snowball microphone using Quicktime. I did a test recording, which sounded fine, and then did the actual recording. After sending it off I got some feedback that the audio recording was noisy. I checked my recording and there was a lot of interference. I had written a script for the recording, so it was quite easy to re-record the piece. This time though I used Garageband to record the podcast clip, and then checked that it sounded okay before sending it off.
I attended the UCISA Event – Digital poverty and digital capability – a vicious cycle?
Soaking – Weeknote #249 – 8th December 2023
The week started off with rain, and the some more rain. I worked mainly in Bristol this week, but also took some leave. On Monday I headed off to our Bristol office, in the rain. There were flooded roads and then some.
Had a meeting about a potential platform for the intelligent campus elevation tool I have been scoping. We also discussed the potential of the platform for a learning spaces toolkit as well. I have some meetings next week about this idea as well. One of the key areas is ensuring it is matched to the Higher Education Reference Model (HERM), so have been looking at the HERM with an intelligent campus lens.
Though I have been working on the audio and video for the Leadership Masterclass – Operationalising your Strategic Vision recording, however I have had a cough which has made this challenging.
I had a few UCU meetings this week, I am on our UCU committee.
A bit chilly – Weeknote #248 – 1st December 2023
So the year is nearly over. This time last year I was in Berlin for a conference which felt very festive. This year I was mainly in chilly Bristol.
I had a few internal meetings and briefings this week.
I spent most of the week scoping and researching a possible intelligent campus elevation tool based on the concept of the Jisc FE Digital Elevation Tool.
I had my Q1 review this week. These weeknotes helped me complete the paperwork and discussions during the meeting.
I wrote a blog post about how I am not using the Twitter anymore.
I stopped using the Twitter in September. Though I still yet to delete my account, partly as I think one day, it might go back to what it was. Well one can dream. If I do look at the service, I come away disappointed and saddened.
Time for breakfast – Weeknote #247 – 24th November 2023
No (real) travelling this week, as I spent much of the week working out of our Bristol office, which on some days was really quite busy.
On Tuesday I did a masterclass, Operationalising your Strategic Vision for colleagues at Jisc.
In this session we will go through one possible process of operationalising a strategic vision. We will review what the current thinking is on vision and strategy and how this applies to organisations, teams, and individuals. We will start to explore how you can bring in the relevant stakeholders and teams to drive success. We will look at how to plan to build an effective operational responsive plan that will help to achieve your strategic vision. There will be an introduction to the strategic lens and how it can be used to ensure coherency across a business.
A lot of the talk was based on the following blog post Why does no one care about my digital strategy? As well as this briefing paper that Lawrie Phipps and myself wrote back in 2018, Delivering digital change: strategy, practice and process. I also used a lot of thinking from this book, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. I also worked in this blog post on breakfast.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a famous quote from management consultant and writer Peter Drucker.
It seemed to go well, and I got a lot of positive feedback. So much so we think we might run it again early next year.
I watched the UCISA Enterprise Architecture: a culture, not a project recording from last week. Well I say I watched, what I actually did was go for a walk and listen to it. I found it really interesting and relevant to some work I am doing at Jisc.
Had a meeting with SURF about the smart campus landscape. Range of similar and interesting activities happening in Netherlands in the smart campus space.
Undertook some training in our revamped finance system.
Still not using the Twitter. I will admit to visiting the site now and again, but I am glad I left. Still not fully engaged with Threads and Bluesky.
It was a really BIG Crane – Weeknote #246 – 17th November 2023
I spent the best part of the week in Glasgow where I was attending and presenting at Learning Places Scotland 2023. Next to the Scottish Event Campus Centre is the huge, okay BIG Finnieston Crane, which I walked past every time I went from my hotel to the conference centre and back again.
It was an interesting conference, though the focus was very much on schools and from the nature of the exhibitors, furniture.
My presentation was in a session on sustainability, and for me specifically on building the intelligent campus.
Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.
I was supposed to attend a pre-conference planning call, however my flight up to Glasgow was delayed by over ninety minutes, so the call took place whilst I was in the air. We eventually did the meeting in person over coffee.
I had various conversations with key SFC stakeholders, Jisc colleagues at the Learning Places Scotland 2023 conference. This kind of informal ad hoc conversation is much harder to undertake in an online conference, not impossible, just harder, or just different. In the past at an online conference I would probably have had these informal conversations on the Twitter. As I have now stopped using Twitter (or X) and though Threads and Bluesky are spaces I frequent now, they don’t yet have reached an optimal size as a viable community for online conferences.
Thursday, I had originally planned to be in our Bristol office for a meeting with the Office for Students. However last week the decision was made to have the meeting online, so I worked from home and attended the meeting online.
On Friday we had another meeting of our Research Evidence Advisory Group at Jisc. As more and more teams and staff across Jisc undertake and utilise research, we are ensuring that moving forward we have a more consistent way of working.
I had planned to attend the UCISA Enterprise Architecture: a culture, not a project webinar, but it clashed with my flight plans, but I now have access to a recording, which I aim to visit next week.
Did some preparation for Leadership Masterclass – Operationalising your Strategic Vision which I am delivering next week.
What Was Wonkfest – Weeknote #245 – 10th November 2023
I was mainly in London this week trying to avoid the rain.
I was attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education, this is the conference previously known as WonkFest. The name change was more about the challenge in delegates getting funding to come to the event… so you want to go to a conference, that should be fine, what’s it called. Seriously?
It was a rather good conference, some really good sessions, too much choice sometimes. Only downside was, one of the rooms for the parallel sessions, was too small, so as a result lots of people who wanted to attend the session were turned away (including me).
I enjoyed the session, “in conversation with David Aaronovitch“ I did have a question about the Remembrance of the Daleks… but a quick check of Wikipedia and I realise that Ben Aaronovitch wrote the Daleks and is David’s brother… So won’t be asking that question then!
I did a few sketch notes.
What do the UK’s places want from their universities?
How do you solve a problem like HE regulation?
What might the future of education technology hold?
Not as many as I might do at other conferences, as the format of some of the sessions, didn’t lend themselves to sketching.
There was a couple of good blog posts on the WonkHE website about the event.
I had to spend some time reviewing and collating materials, and writing briefing note and bullet points for a panel session at HEAnet on Navigating the Challenges and Opportunities of the Modern Campus. As the considered expert on the intelligent campus, I often get asked to provide a perspective on the future of the university campus.
It is the intelligent campus that I will be speaking about, next week at Learning Places Scotland 2023 in Glasgow. I am doing a presentation on building the intelligent campus.
Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.
I had to plan in a call to discuss the presentation.
On Monday before heading off to London, I had a great discussion with colleagues in the office about broadcast and recording capabilities within our Bristol office. The reality is that though I would love to have a proper TV studio in the office I really need to plan and deliver some initial content first, to provide some foundations to a proof of concept.
There was a discussion on the possible future of the office, as in redesigning the space to reflect the current (hybrid) working practices. So more collaborative spaces, more occasional spaces, more spaces for online conversations and meetings, and so on…
Continued doing more work on the planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data.
I had a great meeting with Josie Fraser discussing digital skills and digitisation.
We had some great old person digital transformation reminiscing.
Had a pre-meeting for Jisc OfS meeting next week. As a result I have some preparation to do.
I did miss using the Twitter at the conference this week, though I did post to Bluesky and Threads, it wasn’t quite the same, and very little engagement. I did look at the Twitter and there were some posts, so I do think even if I had engaged, there wouldn’t have been a serious amount of traction and discussion.
Storm Ciarán – Weeknote #244 – 3rd November 2023
I was in the office this week, continuing to work on various pieces of work. The only day I didn’t go into the office was Thursday and that was mainly down to Storm Ciarán. I had originally planned to visit a university campus in Southern England, but after the storm warnings for Storm Ciarán, I decided to change my plans, however with possible disruption to roads and rail, I also made the decision not to go to the office to work.
I was invited to and attended a focus group to support an investigative study of higher education delivery models in Wales. I was reminded of the work I had done on translation and transformation.
Continued the planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data. Researching and analysing the background, exemplars, benefits, issues, challenges, and barriers to shared services across higher education. Continued the planning report structure on the background, exemplars, benefits, issues, challenges, and barriers to shared services across higher education.
Had a discussion with Paul McKean on FE digital elevation tool and how it is being used by FE colleges. This inspired me to rethink about approaches to various pieces of work I am doing.
Did the first scoping of an Intelligent Campus Elevation Tool to support members in their development of the smart and intelligent campus concept. Based on the work done on Jisc’s FE digital elevation tool, this could be something that universities and colleges might find useful as they navigate the smart and intelligent campus landscape. Also started to reflect on the use of the concept of the digital elevation tool for the optimisation of operations and data.
Wednesday I was in the office for an in-person workshop. I was attending Module 1: Community manager training understanding behaviours workshop in Bristol. The workshop was led by Dave White. I have done this workshop before and have even delivered a version of it as part of the Digital Leaders Programme. So it was very familiar territory for me.
It was interesting to map my internet activity, as my online behaviours have changed quite a bit over the last few years. Back in 2015 for example, Twitter was huge for me, today, well I left X in September. Might write about this a bit more.
Had a meeting with our Public Affairs team about providing the supporting information for a panel session at HEAnet on Navigating the Challenges and Opportunities of the Modern Campus. Much of the work I have done on the Intelligent Campus is appropriate in this area, as are the original use cases that we wrote back in 2017 and 2019.
We had our Directorate Monthly call covering change management and information governance.
The official photographs from EDUtech Europe 2023 were posted to Flickr. As per usual I did not manage to avoid the photographer.
Started thinking about my Q1 review documentation.
Continued with my planning and preparation for presentation for Learning Places Scotland 2023 happening in two weeks time.
Next week I am in London for the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education.
Busy, not packed – Weeknote #243 – 27th October 2023
I went to the office quite a bit this week, travelling to Bristol. Our offices are busy, not packed, but busy.
Most of the week was continuing the planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data. I was also researching and analysing the background, exemplars, benefits, issues, challenges, and barriers to shared services across higher education. I then started planning a potential report structure.
We had our monthly HEIRLT Leadership Meeting, and I also had my monthly one to one.
I did some planning and preparation for presentation for Learning Places Scotland 2023. I am doing a presentation on building the intelligent campus.
Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.
I was asked to conduct an initial ‘triage’ review of Jisc online advice and guidance that I am responsible for. There isn’t a huge amount on the Jisc website, so didn’t take long.
Did some preparation for Investigative study of higher education delivery in Wales session I am attending next week.
Starting to realise how over the last few years (but not really over the last few months) how much stuff I would get and learn from what was the Twitter. I made the decision to disengage from the Twitter and though not gone so far to delete my account, I haven’t posted there since September, I haven’t really got the same engagement and traction with Bluesky and Threads. I also realised that by tweeting out links and news, I would have a mechanism for remembering these stories and websites. Currently I don’t think the answer is Threads or Bluesky, but it might be in the future. I think I will need to rethink my workflows for news and content. I have done this before when Google Reader stopped working.