I headed to the office on Monday. The rest of the week I was working from home, in the main as I had number of online meetings and as I have mentioned before I don’t really see the value of heading off to Bristol, spending time (and money) commuting, to then frantically book meeting rooms for various online meetings, moving around during the day. If I have a lot of online meetings then I prefer to work from home and take them there. Having said that, I did have a couple of short calls on Monday, one was a team update, the other was a workshop planning session.
This week I was part of a panel session looking at LLE. My focus was on the importance of the student experience, the data journey, and thenecessity of the sector to adhere to standards and enable interoperability. Without this then there will be an administrative burden on both the students and the institutions. I did note some thoughts about the financial viability of LLE.
Had a planning meeting about a workshop at TNC 26 in Helsinki, unfortunately I am unable to attend TNC this year.
I have been doing some quality assurance for one of our consultancy projects. It has been interesting to undertake this and makes a nice change from my usual routine.
A (much) shorter week this week as I was taking some leave towards the end of the week. I also spent time traveling up to Leeds for the AUDE conference where I was part of a panel session looking at the smart campus. We had a good session looking at the wider challenges for higher education and the opportunities for collaboration in the estates space. Due to a number of unavoidable meetings I didn’t really get to attend any of the other sessions at the conference.
Did some preparation for a webinar I am attending next week on LLE. I am focusing on the student experience and the importance of interoperability for student mobility.
Undertook some planning and brainstorming of ideas for workshops at the TNC Conference in June.
This was may first full week for what feels like ages. I worked from home all week, partly as I was expecting deliveries (one of the advantages of working from home) and also I had a lot of online meetings in the diary. I don’t really see the value of heading off to Bristol, spending time (and money) commuting, to then frantically book meeting rooms for various online meetings, moving around during the day. If I have a lot of online meetings then I prefer to work from home and take them there.
Some of my meetings were in relation to student mobility, including an interesting session on stakeholder mapping. The reality of the student mobility agenda is that there are multiple stakeholders, including students (obviously) higher education institutions, national agencies, government departments, and others.
I did attend one meeting, it made me realise that the concept of strategy is one that still seems to confuse people. If you decide what you want to do, and then use that to inform the strategy, then that is not a strategy. At a simple level if you choose what you want to do, then it doesn’t really matter if you then write a strategy based on that or not. I did buy and read Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt a few years back on the recommendation of a colleague, it certainly is an interesting read and reflects that a lot of people don’t know what strategy is and how to develop and deliver strategy.
Did preparation for the panel session I am on next week at the AUDE conference. Though the primary focus of the session is on digital, the current university sector climate will be looked at, in terms of collaboration and sharing. I worked on some notes and briefing points for the session.
I also did some work on what LLE could mean for the university sector and for Jisc. Of course the only real focus of Lifelong Learning Entitlement is on the entitlement part, in other words the funding side. Reading about that on the various stakeholder, such as the Office for Students and the Student Loans Company, their focus is on ensuring that the cash side is sorted.
Of course, the full potential of LLE is in the lifelong learning with people being able to draw down funding (loans) to pay for part time learning at a time and place of their choosing. However without some kind of infrastructure and ecosystem in place, then the administrative burden on students and institutions will be huge (and costly). Thinking about every time a student applies for a programme of study, they will need to prove who they are each time, their current qualifications and these will then need to be verified as a true account from accredited institutions. This is why I have been looking at the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework as a potential solution for the student journey in an LLE world.
I will be speaking at a couple of (online) events over the next few months, including one on LLE. I was also invited to speak about digital at an online event on estates.
Another shorter week with Easter Monday. I was working this week, but many of my colleagues had taken the week off, so it was somewhat quiet in the “office”. Actually quite quiet across the sector as many people were having a break at Easter. I suspect next week might be quite quiet as well.
Having said that, I did present at an online event this week, a Public Policy Exchange webinar on supporting university students. The focus of my presentation was about innovation in (essentially) curriculum design, and the importance of interoperability in all that.
Finished adding my comments to a review of the GÉANT TF-EDU survey which goes out soon. The survey looks at how NRENS across the GÉANT community support, provide or deliver services for education.
I have also been writing up some of the internal conversations I have been having around the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework (EHEIF) and what this means (or could mean) for the UK and Jisc.
Did some logistical planning for my trip to Leeds in a couple of weeks where I am on a panel session at the AUDE conference.
I was reminded again this week about how often “solutions” are seen as the problem that needs to be solved, so much so, that the actual problem is lost in the background.
A shorter week this week with Good Friday at the end of the week. I did go to the office on Thursday which was quiet, as expected, as many people were going on leave.
I had quite a few meetings this week.
I did see on WonkHE briefing about a potential £360m fund for restructuring higher education. David Kernohan digs into the detail.
If we have indeed found evidence of DfE plans to prop up the sector, what might such a scheme look like? So is there really £360m in DfE for loans available to help the higher education sector restructure?
Many higher education institutions have been asking for funding to support collaboration, this restructuring fund may be an option. However, this is a loan, so collaboration would need to result in enough savings to pay back the loans. There will probably also be conditions. The WonkHE article does dive into the similarities that we saw some years back in the FE sector and their restructuring.
This week I was in Oxford for the HESCA conference. I enjoyed the conference and it was good to hear a range of diverse viewpoints on the use of technology to support the student experience.
I was talking once more about collaboration, but taking more of a reflective look on where we are. I was presenting a state of the nation look at collaboration and why the higher education sector is not doing more collaboration. In many ways the focus of my presentation was based on my blog post on building bridges.
On my way back from Oxford I did pop in and have a meeting at our offices in Milton Park before then heading back to our Bristol office.
I have been having conversations and discussions with colleagues inside Jisc on digital credentials and digital wallets. Within the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework one of the use cases is about how a student can communicate their educational credentials to both other educational institutions and employers. There has been quite a bit of work done in this space, what I was interested in was what has been happening in Jisc.
I wrote a blog post about the impact of student loans on peoples’ lives.
Over the last couple of years I have been saying across various conversations about the impact of paying back student loans could have on future student recruitment. I would talk about how the next generation of students will be the first whose parents were required to take out student loans to pay their fees and for the maintenance. Their parents would have the seen the real life impact of their student debt on their lifestyle. It would reduce their real income and would have had an impact on other financial choices such as mortgage affordability.
I read WonkHE’s report on AI and students. It reflected much of my (admittedly limited) knowledge on how students are using AI.
This week was a slightly shorter week, as I took a day off and did another crazy extreme day out, this time to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. I have been there before back in July 2004 staying with family. I am anticipating that future extreme day trips will be curtailed, as they become more expensive due to the spike in jet fuel prices. Though I recently did see one to Palma for £40. Hmmm…
Well at one point I was planning to attend a meeting in Helsinki in Finland, but this was cancelled last week. I also didn’t attend the UCISA Leadership Summit that was taking place in Liverpool this week. Mainly, as it clashed with the potential visit to Helsinki, but also as I found two years ago in Edinburgh that the sessions in the conference had less applicability and reference to the work I am doing.
I did a presentation to my team on my work and how it was coming together. It was useful to actually build a slide deck that told the story of the different forks of my work and how they have now come together. I always thought they would at some point, but wasn’t planning for it to be this year.
I also did some preparation for next week where I am presenting at the HESCA (Higher Education Smart Campus Association) conference in Oxford, looking at collaboration and what this means for the future.
I had an excellent discussion with a colleague who works in the part of Jisc that does HEDD and Prospects and how the work I am doing on the EHEIF (European Higher Education Interoperability Framework) is aligned. The process of qualification verification is something that HEDD has been doing for years, whilst Prospects provides a discovery services for post graduate courses, core aspects of the student journey in the EHEIF. This discussion is one of many I am having as start to understand where the UK is currently standing in the EHEFI landscape, where Jisc is in that same landscape, what this could mean for LLE (Lifelong Learning Entitlement), the data requirements, and where are the gaps and what are the potential opportunities.
One of the nice things about attending any in person conference is connecting and reconnecting with people and friends.
I discuss how sometimes you lose that connection in an online space that you find in a physical in-person conference.
It had been a draft for a while, but I did get around to finishing it. I have been attempting to write more blog posts for this blog, as I was finding that though I was good at getting my weekly work notes out, I was writing less and less other kinds of posts.
It was another shorter week again, as I took another day’s leave. This time no crazy extreme day out.
On Tuesday I headed off to London for an early morning event the following day. Wednesday I was up early and headed to the Houses of Parliament for a HEPI and Advance HE breakfast briefing
This was an interesting briefing on the current challenges facing the sector in collaborating and specialising. I was reminded of the post I recently wrote on bridge building. Collaboration and specialisation should be seen as solutions to the wider issues facing the sector. The discussion very much saw collaboration as the problem to be solved and that the solution (to the solution) was spending more money.
This week was also the week of Digifest, Jisc’s annual conference. I was not there this year, as I wasn’t needed for presenting or chairing. It is an useful event for making connections and conversations, but we had a number of Jisc people attending, so I wasn’t going to be missed. In addition most of the conversations I am interested in are more likely to be covered at different kinds of events.
This week was a slightly shorter week, as I took a day off and had lunch in Madrid, as one does.
I also went to our Bristol office and had lunch. This week was all about planning and gap analysis. When it comes to planning this was plain old planing, it wasn’t forward planning, nor was it backward planning. I think I might plan a blog post on planning.
Read an interesting article (paywall) about the falling demand for purpose-built city centre student accommodation.
There was a perception that building this kind of accommodation (or converting existing buildings) would breath life back into city centres.
Another consideration of this fall in demand, is that maybe this is a symptom of how many students view higher education, many will now either look for alternative paths, or will live at home and study locally.
The impact of this will be on those destination universities, such as Nottingham, Bristol, Leeds, etc…
Are we starting to see the beginning of the end of “going away” to university?
I had quite a variety of online calls this week, on a range of subjects. so was involved in lots of different kinds of discussions and conversations.
Next week is Jisc’s Digifest, which takes place in Birmingham. I am not attending this year, in the main as I am not presenting on stuff. There is something to be said about networking and meeting people from the sector, but there will be plenty of people from Jisc there to do that..
In theory this is the last week of winter, we shall see.
No big trips this week, though I did pop to the Bristol office twice. I did some logistics for various things I am doing next month and the month after.
Spent time working on and researching the work I need to do in relation to student mobility.
I have been asked to quality assure some of the consultancy work that Jisc is undertaking, looks like it will be interesting.
I finished a blog post I have been writing, about competition.
Part of me though does wonder, if the apprehension about collaboration was using the CMA and competition law as an excuse for not looking at collaboration rather than an actual reason not to collaborate. Will the new guidance mitigate that excuse now.
news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…
