Category Archives: weeknotes

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It was rather cold – Weeknote #255 – 19th January 2024

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Having done a lot of travelling and with anticipation with work being done on the office in Bristol, I planned to spend a lot of the week working from home. However the work being done was rescheduled. Well at least I could access my locker in the office this week.

Much of the week though was researching, writing, and reviewing some documentation for some work we’re doing in the optimising operations and data space. It was challenging, as it is quite complex, and wide in scope. Working out what we wanted, what is needed, and what then, was quite challenging.

I am realising that as I no longer use Twitter, that I am missing out on news and views. I am not getting this from Threads or Bluesky.

A good example was this thread from Charles Knight discussing falling recruitment in higher education.

There is often talk about the future of higher education and how universities need to respond. I do think that there is still an assumption that the traditional three year undergraduate degree programme is set in stone and will be here for a long time. I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but what I do think we will start to see is young people wanting more flexibility, and we will see employers wanting more flexibility and more specialism. It’s an interesting space, but this is less about predicting the future, more about building in the resilience and agility to be much more responsive to future changes in student demographics.

I realise that I am not as immersed into the AI in education discussion as colleagues both in Jisc and in the sector. There is a lot happening in this space. Though I have played with Bard and Firefly, I’ve not really taken a deep dive into AI.

It was great though to see my colleague Lawrie getting his research into academics’ use of AI published in Nature.

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And now, from Norwich, it’s the quiz of the week – Weeknote #254 – 12th January 2024

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Most of the week I was over in East Anglia, and as a result I spent quite a bit of time travelling. It was also a shorter week as I was on leave at the beginning of the week.

My main event was delivering an Intelligent Campus workshop at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

We had an excellent interactive discussion about what is the smart campus, how do we make it intelligent. We looked at possible opportunities in making your campus smart, but also many of the challenges and barriers that will stop this from happening.

I also brought in some external perspectives from EDINA in Edinburgh and some of our own Jisc staff.

One thing that I was reminded of, was how that campuses don’t just appear, they evolve and grow over time. A typical university campus will have a range of buildings and spaces and with each building there are challenges in making them smart.

Another perspective was the importance of having a strategic vision for your campus. This can be challenging when a typical university campus can be for three years, whereas the typical life of a university building is usually in excess of twenty years.

I enjoyed the workshop and having an explore of the UEA campus. It has a real mix of buildings, old and new. There was lots of green spaces and trees as well. It was established in 1963, but their first building was Earlham Hall which was built in 1642. This building now where the Law School lives.

As I was in Norwich, I also took the time to visit the Norwich University of the Arts. They also have a mix of old and new buildings.

I grew up in East Anglia, and I am not 100% sure if I ever visited Norwich. I thought I had, but none of it seemed familiar. I had visited other places in Norfolk before, Kings Lynn, Dersingham, Hunstanton, and Thetford. However I have no recollection of visiting Norwich.

As I was over in East Anglia I also visited the University of Suffolk campus in Ipswich. This was founded originally in 2007 as a unique collaboration between the University of East Anglia and the University of Essex. It gained independence in 2016.

There are a range of buildings, the Waterfront Building which opened in 2008, followed by the James Hehir Building three years later.

There is a substantial amount of student accommodation on the waterfront as well.The most recent addition to the growing campus is The Hold, which houses the majority of the Suffolk Record Office’s collection and provides various facilities to the university including a lecture hall.

It’s quite a hike to East Anglia, so a good part of the week was travelling much as anything, but it was worth it for the workshop and visiting different campus sites.

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Just doing stuff – Weeknote #253 – 5th January 2024

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A shorter week with the bank holiday. Always nice when coming back from nearly two weeks leave to just 15 emails in the inbox. Knowing that you can probably delete all of them in one fell swoop as well. This time last year I had 109.

I went to our Bristol office a couple of times. It was very quiet on Friday, which wasn’t too surprising.

I spent much of the week planning an intelligent campus workshop I am doing next week in Norwich. As well as developing and designing the workshop, I also needed to sort out the travel and accommodation. With the planned tube strike, I decided that not only would I drive, but would take the opportunity to undertake some additional field work in the student experience landscape.

I finished off a blog post I started writing last year. It was on why I had quit the Twitter.

On September 24th 2023 I posted my last tweet to the Twitter (or X as it is called now). Since then I have not posted to the Twitter, or replied to any posts. I have retained my account though as I have an improbable hope that one day things might go back to the way they were. I think though that it unlikely.

I also published a post while I was on leave about how I might (re)subscribe to Flickr Pro.

Flickr is one of the first social networks I joined way back in 2007, which to me feels like just a few years ago and not 16 years ago!

I also started taking a photograph a day. Something I have done for a fair few years now.

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Merry Christmas – Weeknote #251 – 22nd December 2023

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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.

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Cylinders of excellence – Weeknote #250 – 15th December 2023

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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.

Silos
Image by marcson from Pixabay

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.

stove espresso maker
Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay

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.

Microphone
Image by rafabendo from Pixabay

I attended the UCISA Event – Digital poverty and digital capability – a vicious cycle?

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Soaking – Weeknote #249 – 8th December 2023

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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.

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A bit chilly – Weeknote #248 – 1st December 2023

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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.

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Time for breakfast – Weeknote #247 – 24th November 2023

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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.

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It was a really BIG Crane – Weeknote #246 – 17th November 2023

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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.