I spent the weekend at a family wedding down in Sussex and I got my first taste of campanology, when I was asked to ring the bell in the church at the end of the wedding service, why I was asked I have no idea, but my family now have an amusing video of me being pulled up and down by the bell rope! The wedding was lovely and we had a great time.
Nine years ago on the 19th October 2010 I took this photograph of one of the offices in the college I was working in.
We had been having a lot of discussions about desks and offices. One particular group of staff were adamant they needed their own desks to work on and that they didn’t want their space changed.
What you should notice from the photograph above was that though everyone had their own desk, what they were actually using them was for, was storage. No one was really using their desks for working at. The result was a room which was not conducive to working, so no one worked in there. No one could find anything… well some could.
I remember having discussions about replacing the space with fewer desks, more storage and some nicer seating and comfortable areas. The reaction was (as expected) no, I need my own desk.
The staff in this office spent the majority of their working week teaching in classrooms, when they were not teaching, they wanted space to mark and prepare, research as well as somewhere to relax, drink coffee and discuss stuff with colleagues. They also needed space to store materials and resources, as well as student work. Their needs were being overshadowed by the need for their own space, a space they could call their own.
For me the key lesson here was that people didn’t think about the space in the context of what they needed to do in that space, but more about having a space to call their own. In terms of space planning you do need to balance those things out. Continue reading The bells, the bells… – Weeknote #34 – 25th October 2019→
Monday I was undertaking the final preparations for some presentation training I am delivering on Thursday. This included printing some postcards as well as designing activities.
I took advantage of Pixabay to find images for my postcards, this is a great site for images, and due to their open licensing, you can use them in a variety of ways. Though I often attribute the site for the images I use, it’s not a requirement, so if you use them later or forget, it’s not really an issue.
Tuesday I was off to London for a meeting to discuss some future collaborative work that Jisc may undertake. What are the big challenges that HE (and FE) are facing for the future. One comment which was made I thought was interesting, was how challenging it was to get people to think about long term future challenges. Most people can identify current issues and potential near-future challenges but identifying the really big challenges that will impact education in the medium or long term, is really hard. Part of the challenge is that there are so many factors that can impact and predicting the future is thus very hard.
Reminded of this challenge of predicting the future, this week with the imminent anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall thirty years ago. Watching the haunting nuclear war TV film, Threads in 1984, I had no idea that the Cold War was every going to end, it looked like it would last forever and we would always be living under the threat of nuclear war. Five years later on the 9thNovember 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. I remember watching it on the news in my student accommodation, thinking, what’s happening, how is this happening? Back then we didn’t have social media, mobile phones or the web, so the only way for news to filter through was by television and newspapers. A year later we had the reunification of Germany. A year after that the USSR was dissolved. Continue reading Presenting, presenting, presenting – Weeknote #33 – 18th October 2019→
A busy week with travels to Bristol, Reading and Birmingham this week.
Monday I was in Bristol for a meeting with the Office for Students, one of the funders of Jisc. Following that I was back in the main office for further meetings.
There was an interesting long read on the Guardian website.
A surge in anxiety and stress is sweeping UK campuses. What is troubling students, and is it the universities’ job to fix it?
We know that there is a student mental health crisis and the reasons for this aren’t necessarily clear. We know there has been increase in the demand for mental health services at universities. The article notes that there has been research into the causes of this, but lays the blame for the crisis on the way in which universities are managed and run, leading to students not being in control of what they do and saddled with debt.
With institutions re-evaluating their teaching and thinking how best to invest, it’s a great time to consider whether we really understand how students are using informal educational spaces outside of the classroom. The student perspective combined with novel use of occupancy data is bringing us closer to answering that conundrum.
Reminded me of this blog post that I wrote this back in 2017 on designing informal learning spaces that would encourage informal learning.
Well the key really is to think about what actually facilitates and encourages informal learning.
It’s a combination of factors and can include design of learning spaces and the learning activities undertaken by the learners.
Creating the right contexts and environments for informal learning, will ensure that the concept of learn anywhere and anytime is encouraged and enhanced.
Though I wouldn’t have called it ethnography (and I certainly wouldn’t call it ethnography today) my blog post was based on my experiences in designing and running libraries, as well as developing the use of digital and virtual learning. I would spend a lot of time observing how learners would use our spaces, what they were doing in those spaces and I felt importantly what they weren’t doing as well. I would talk to learners, more importantly I would listen to learners. We would also measure space utilisation and activity in our spaces and all this would inform how we would design and change the space.
Sofa’s in the library at Gloucestershire College
When we originally designed the spaces, an important aspect to me was flexibility, being able to change the space as demands on that space changed, in how people wanted to use it and how many wanted to use it. All our shelving for example was on wheels, could be moved easily and quickly around. So following observation and listening, we would adjust the space accordingly.
The premise of that article was you couldn’t design informal learning (as that would formalise it) but what you could do is create spaces that would encourage informal learning.
It is more challenging to create learning spaces that encourage informal and social learning. As demands on space continues to grow and demand for more learner-led learning, it is important that institutions consider much more how their spaces can be used for informal learning.
Victoria Street in Bristol
Monday I was into the office in Bristol for various meetings and some training on culture. One of the things I did finalise was my performance objectives for the year ahead. One thing which I ensured was that my objectives were derived from the strategic objectives of the organisation. This way everything I do is contributing to the organisational strategic priorities. This process was something we did on the Jisc Digital Leaders Programme and I also illustrated in this sketchnote.
I also had a discussion about writing an article about Education 4.0, but with a copyright lens. At this time we’ve not really looked into the copyright implications of the changes that could happen in the world of education.
Alas when leaving the office later that day, it was pouring rain and I got rather damp walking back to my car. I realised my waterproof coat was in fact no longer waterproof.
Illness in others and terrible rain, meant that meetings were changed, so I was able to change my plans from going into the Bristol office to working from home on Tuesday and avoid the rain.
I saw a video in the Twitter on the fourth industrial revolution which I thought was rather good so I blogged about it.
Wednesday saw an interesting anniversary, as ten years ago on the 2nd October, I was at the ULCC Event, The Future of Technology in Education.
James Clay presenting at FOTE09
Little did I know the impact that this presentation would have on me, my future career and education in general. I wrote a nostalgic blog post looking back at the event, my presentation and the impact it had.
I spent a lot of time on Thursday interviewing prospective student partners for Jisc. We like to know what is important to students regarding their use of technology in education and research. What skills they think they need and how they want to learn. So every year we get a group of students from across HE and FE and work with them in a variety of different ways. Some attend our meetings, others our events, they participate in podcasts, panel sessions and workshops. I have always felt it was important to listen to the student voice to inform my work.
Friday I had various meetings, but managed to make a lot of progress on our Learning Technologist technical career pathway. We will be piloting this with individuals over the next twelve months.
My top tweet this week was this one.
It was on this day sixteen years ago that I was at Bristol Zoo and I took this photograph of a meerkat. Four years later I needed a picture for an avatar and the rest is, as they say, history. pic.twitter.com/Ax6jfyOFKE
We spent Saturday visiting Longleat Safari Park and the weather was great. However on Monday I was, as a result of a last minute change, off to London, I had intended to catch the train, but due to problems with our online travel system (affecting just me it appears) meant that in the end I drove to London.
My diary that day included a relatively early morning conference call. So I stopped at the services, and with only a minute to spare, missed getting coffee and I took the call sitting in my car over 4G. The connection was pretty good and the video I was getting was quite high quality so all was well. I was quite pleased not to have to do the call on the train, as previous experience has shown that generally it works, but too many tunnels and blackspots means that participating in a conference call (especially with video) can be problematic and a bit of a nightmare. I rarely drive to London, usually I take the train, so I parked in West London and took the tube to the office, just in time for my second conference call.
Fleet Street in London
I was in London to meet with the Consultant who had undertaken the University of Hertfordshire Value Study back in May prior to a presentation later in the week.
Tuesday I was off to our office in Bristol. I had no meetings, but my colleague Lawrie was down in Bristol so it was a good chance to catch up and see what was happening in his area.
He is organising an event at Keele, I was intending to attend the event, alas I now have to be in London on that date.
This one day event will explore the use of Microsoft Teams to support learning and teaching practices in universities, and the ways in which students want to communicate, collaborate and learn in a modern university.
In the podcast, John Cartwright, director of computing services at the University of Liverpool, talks about how his team are improving the student experience and saving staff time with technology. In the episode we explore the world of data, looking at how better use of it can transform teaching and power technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence.
However the key message I wanted people to take from the discussion is that, transformation is about people first.
Wednesday I was presenting in front of the Jisc Board on Education 4.0 and what universities and colleges need to do to start down the road to the vision which is Education 4.0. Is say presenting the majority of the session was an activity discussing the issues and themes of Education 4.0.
As with the podcast the key feedback from the Board was the importance of the human element when it comes transformation.
I think the challenge we face in preparing for a roadmap, is the expectation that the roadmap delivered will be complete. If we knew what was needed and what was going to happen, then I suspect we would either a) already have a roadmap or b) not need one! So the first phase for the roadmap is researching and developing the roadmap. I did think should we even be using the term “roadmap”?
Thursday I spent some time reading the Advance HE report, On the Horizon.
This report focuses on the perceptions of change and challenge for the learning and teaching agenda in higher education (HE) providers around the world over the next five to ten years. A selection of people with executive or senior leadership roles in both the UK and overseas were interviewed about the challenges their institutions faced.
There was one section on evidence of effective practice, which reminded me of a blog post I wrote a couple of years ago.
In the report it states there is a lukewarm enthusiasm for change in teaching practices.
This is something we covered on the Jisc Digital Leaders Programme about change.
Part of the challenge, according to the report, is a lack of interest.
Some colleagues express worry about a general lack of interest in pedagogy from academics more comfortable with the established practices of their particular discipline.
But others show a definitive lack of faith in the evidence, because it is often based on small-sample studies.
Others wonder whether the quality of such research really matches up to the high standards expected elsewhere, not least because the research findings often derive from small-sample studies.
However all is not lost…
Many think there are real opportunities now for a step-change in pedagogy and improved student learning: ‘it’s time to start thinking much more seriously about the collective will for real pedagogical innovation and how it can be sustained.’
Friday I had a couple of online meetings and spent a fair amount of time developing the assessment criteria for one of our Technical Career Pathway paths.
After a busy week travelling up and down last week, this week was, you’ve guessed it, more travelling and back to London for a meeting preparing for another larger meeting which is taking place next week. I am running a one hour session on Education 4.0 and what universities and colleges need to think about and start doing to aspire to the potential benefits that the fourth industrial revolution will have on learners, students and institutions.
I really like this video clip from the BBC Archive on a 1963 view of what 1988 would look like.
#OnThisDay 1963: Time on Our Hands looked back on the events that had shaped idyllic 1988, like the Russian moon landing, the rise of the mega cities of Milford Haven and Holyhead, the great tea shortage and the coming of the machines. pic.twitter.com/fRWyxVWLWC
It really demonstrates how difficult it is to predict the future. Some stuff you get right, most things you get wrong, and timeframes are really hard to judge. Part of my role is planning for a future that we can’t accurately predict. I have in the past spoken about these challenges. About the only thing we get right is that things change.
Tuesday I was flying up to Edinburgh, I was intending to go to our Bristol office, but the meeting I was going to attend was cancelled, so in the end I spent the morning working from home.
EasyJet at Bristol Airport
I was intrigued to see the changes to Bristol Airport as I think the last time I flew from Bristol was well over a year ago. Some of the restaurants have changed hands and there are some new ones as well. I did quite like how there was a big seating area for the Starbucks so I could get some work done whilst I was waiting for my flight. I was slightly annoyed that I was charged an extra 5p for having a paper cup. I don’t actually disagree with the concept of charging extra, it was that I didn’t have a choice. I would have actually preferred a proper china cup. I didn’t realise so I hadn’t brought with me my reusable cup either. Should note there are also water fountains to fill reusable water bottles.
From the airport I caught the tram to the centre of Edinburgh where my hotel was.
Edinburgh Tram at Haymarket
It’s a pity that the tram network in Edinburgh never got further than it did. It had huge potential. It certainly makes life much easier now travelling from the Airport to the city centre.
I really like the architecture and buildings in Edinburgh, the buildings have a certain darkness and charm about them.
It was an early morning meeting in Edinburgh, so I was glad I had spent the night before in a hotel. We were meeting with the Scottish Funding Council who part fund Jisc’s work, and it was time to provide an update and progress against our plans.
It was then back to Edinburgh airport for the flight home. I spent way too long at the airport, waiting for my plane. I think next time I do this, I should plan better and do something, or meet people.
Coming into land at Bristol Airport flying over Sand Bay, close to Weston-super-Mare
On the subject of change, on September 18th 2007, twelve years ago I was working in Gloucester and I took some photographs around the docks area including this one of the boarded up offices.
Boarded up offices in the Gloucester Docks
It may have been a pub or hotel at one point. I was curious what it looked like today, especially as the whole area was part of a major development since 2007. So using Google Street View I found it had changed quite dramatically.
Google Street View of Gloucester Docks
It’s now a Bills restaurant, but I was amazed by the restoration and development of the building, the only constant is change
Thursday I decided to work from home and caught up with correspondence and reading the numerous memos that were in my in-tray… otherwise known as trawling through my email inbox.
Friday I was back in the Bristol office for various meetings and discussions.
The city centre saw a huge demonstration in support of stopping climate change and the passion an enthusiasm was plain to see.
Climate Change march in Bristol
I spent some time working on the Education 4.0 roadmap notes in preparation for a meeting next week.
So it was off to London on Monday for a couple of meetings. The weather on Sunday had been lovely, Monday it was raining.
I don’t think I would like to commute to London on a regular basis, as in every day, but don’t mind the fact that I am there three to five times a month in my role. I nearly said new role, I have been doing this job now for just over six months (Weeknote #28 is a bit of a giveaway), when does a new role, become just my role? Other parts of the country differ in their accessibility with public transport, so sometimes I drive.
These two quotes are what I really took from the article.
We are unconsciously drawn to people who think like ourselves, but rarely notice the danger because we are unaware of our own blind spots.
This applies to groups as well as organisations. We employ people that are like ourselves rather than think about the whole. You can measure diversity within an organisation, but that only tells you what you already know that your organisation isn’t diverse. Sometimes your organisation needs to be more diverse than the population, but how do you know that?
You may feel you have fair employment recruitment practices, but who decides what is “fair”, sometimes you will want to recruit people that wouldn’t be recruited if you were to be fair.
I am also reminded of unconscious bias, and the fact that this is easier to say then sometimes to actually do something about. This was echoed in the second quote from the article.
There is a science to putting together the right minds, with perspectives that challenge, augment, diverge and cross-pollinate rather than parrot, corroborate and restrict. This is how wholes become more than the sum of their parts.
There isn’t an easy solution to this, you could think outside the box and put together teams that are not like ourselves, but that is not as easy as it sounds. The rewards though, as the article says mean wholes become more than the sum of their parts.
Rochdale Canal in Manchester
Wednesday I caught the train to Manchester, to attend an internal product meeting where I was presenting on the drivers within the draft Jisc HE strategy.
It was quite along train journey there and back in a day, and though I did manage to get a fair bit of work done, the lack of connectivity did annoy me as it has before.
Rochdale Canal in Manchester
I wrote a blog post on making digital a choice, in response to a BBC news article about a branch of Sainsbury’s in Holborn in London where the only choice to pay was via an app.
Friday I was in Leeds to deliver a keynote on Education 4.0 for the Leeds Business School, I had travelled up the day before.
Leeds Business School Active Learning Studio
I showed a presentation, which is all photos. In the presentation I talked about who is Jisc, what do we mean by the Education 4.0 and some of the challenges we face in moving down the road to Education 4.0.
I also showed the Jisc Education 4.0 video we showed at UUK last year and at Digifest.
So it was back to a full week after a few short weeks and leave. September is traditionally the start of term in England for schools and FE, though HE usually start a little later. I would like to have gone to ALT-C in Edinburgh, alas I didn’t go this year as I needed to be close to home as my youngest started secondary school, and as most people know, transition is a challenging time for all. In the end there were very few issues, but I am glad I stayed behind.
I attended some of the ALT-C sessions remotely and participated via the Twitter as well.
Ten years ago at ALT-C in Manchester, we had The VLE is Dead session at ALT-C. So I wrote a blog post reminiscing about the debate.
Spent some time booking travel for the weeks ahead and checking in some cases if I needed to travel. Liking our self-service portal for travel, as it does making life easier.
On Tuesday morning I listened to the ALT-C keynote from Sue Beckingham. She covered a range of stuff. I was reminded of a talk I gave on e-mail and how it is used (and abused). I hadn’t shared it before, so I uploaded it to slideshare.
I spent a lot of time working on a roadmap, which was an interesting, but challenging task, as there are so many unknown unknowns.
Working on a workshop for the Jisc board and it’s challenging to create an engaging interaction session that will add value, and has to be about forty five minutes!
Thursday I was reminded of the excellent Web 2.0 Slam – ‘Performing’ Innovative Practice workshop that I attended at ALT-C in 2007, so I wrote a blog post about it.
Looking over my blog posts over that date I wasn’t surprised to find some posts had missing images. I recently updated my blog hosting, so initially I thought it might be that, but checking the underlying code I realised what the problem was. The images that were original held on a remote server embedded into the post were no longer available.
Back then I used a service called ShoZu to add images as blog posts, it didn’t upload the images to WordPress, merely adding HTML code and embedding the images hosted on the ShoZu server. With ShoZu now defunct, there were no images. I had copies of the images on Flickr (and on Amazon photos) so I updated the old blog posts and added copies of the images.
It reminds me that embedding externally hosted content can be problematic, what happens when that service dies or is shut down. Just because something is free, doesn’t mean it will last forever.
I have written a longer blog post about this on my technology blog.
A rather short week for me, as taking some leave. This week started for me on Wednesday as we had a bank holiday here in England and I took some additional leave.
Fetter Lane, London
I was off to London again, this time for an internal meeting about the Intelligent Campus, in which I provided some insights into the work I did on the project over the last few years. It reminded me about how much I enjoyed working on that project and the sheer quantity of ideas, use cases, blog posts I created and wrote over that time.
It also reminded me of how the presentation I created for the project evolved and developed over the life of the project.
When I ran the first community event at Sheffield Hallam in March 2018 the presentation was very wordy.
When I spoke about the Intelligent Campus in March 2019 at Digifest, the presentation was nearly all images.
I delivered variations of the presentation many times in that twelve month period, including a keynote in France, as well as versions at events and at meetings with universities. The more confident I got with the content and the details, meant I reduced the words and replaced them with images.
I have also been working on the assessment criteria for the Learning Technologist Technical Career Pathway using the SIFA framework.
I think it needs more work and some extra non-SIFA units to make it more aligned to the Learning Technologist role within Jisc.
I was only working two days this week, and Friday I was back in the office for more meetings and tying up loose ends from my growing inbox.
We have moved to a self-service model for booking travel and accommodation, which means for me less back and forth when booking hotels in cities I don’t know or have not stayed in before. Having booked a hotel for a trip to Leeds, my next booking will be for a meeting in Edinburgh.
I remember a long time ago, getting a job, not just because I matched the criteria and did a good interview, but because the panel felt that I was someone they could drink coffee with first thing in the morning. In other words I fitted their expectations of a colleague they could both work with, but also fit into their culture.
I doubt back then “unconscious bias” was even thought about, let alone even considered as an issue. Did the other candidates make them feel uncomfortable? Did they even understand why that was?
Interesting it was in that job, that I started to realise as white middle class male that I had privileges that came to me just because of my gender and ethnicity. I started to recognise that when working with people that they had different backgrounds, cultures and challenges, that were nothing like mine, so I had to ensure I didn’t let this impact on the decisions I was making.
On Monday I was still on leave, so it wasn’t until Tuesday that I was back at work and then it was off to London for some meetings. I had expected a fair few e-mails in my inbox, but in the end there were just over eighty. I managed to clear them all by 2pm (including all the extra ones that arrived after I started). I follow an Inbox Zero approach which works well for me.
There were a few other online places to check as well, Teams, Yammer and Slack. I also checked my Jira boards as well.
After being away on leave I find it usually takes me a day or so to re-adjust to work mode, catch up with what I am doing, what I have missed and what I need to do, including those urgent things. I haven’t yet found a quick way to do this. So when attending a 9:30am online meeting in Teams that morning, I wasn’t really in the zone… It certainly didn’t help that I was trying to attend the meeting whilst travelling at 125mph on a train. The connectivity wasn’t great, and as a result I missed some stuff, sometimes people sounded like a Dalek and the latency issues meant that I was unable to participate fully.
Wednesday morning saw me in the Bristol office attending various meetings in my role as Head of HE and Student Experience. Various items were discussed both external facing topics as well as internal processes.
After a morning in the Bristol office it was up North to Liverpool where I am recording a podcast on the following day.
Thursday I was in Liverpool recording a podcast with John Cartwright at the University of Liverpool, no spoilers, but we discussed a range of topics and issues on digital, data as well as the student experience. We had a really good conversation and I hope this is captured in the podcast recording. I will link to the podcast once it is published.
Reflecting on that conversation on the way home, I was conscious about how some universities approach change. Often the focus is on a small number of big effort improvements, large changes, as opposed to a large number of small effort quick changes. Often organisation prefer big change, as it is often linked to strategy. It can be easier to ask for larger sums of money for high profile projects than lots of smaller sums for projects which will result in a small improvement.
I was reminded of marginal gains analysis. The marginal gains theory is concerned with small incremental improvements in any process, which, when added together, make a significant improvement.
Can the same be gained though one big improvement? Something for further reflection.
Friday I was back to the Bristol office for various calls and meetings. One of the things I have been working on was a roadmap to Education 4.0, which is proving somewhat challenging.
