mastodon, twitter, weeknotes

Review time – Weeknote #193 – 11th November 2022

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I had my quarter one review this week, I had a productive review meeting with my line manager. I have made good progress against my objectives for this year. I was commended for the content of the review document. This is of course quite easy to fill, as I use JIRA and Confluence to plan and implement my objectives. In addition, I have these weeknotes to refer to for other things I have done. I also made use of the blog posts I published this quarter in addition to the weeknotes. I am reminded though I have published less this quarter than I have in previous quarters, so time to get that typewriter out and get typing.

Typewriter
Image by Patrik Houštecký from Pixabay

Elon Musk started to impact on the Twitter, so much so that lots of people were talking about moving off the Twitter and onto other similar services, with Mastodon getting much of this traffic. We had some discussions about Mastodon at work. I went out and created an account on mastodon.cloud and then discovered I had already created an account before, well back in August 2018, on mastodon.social. So, I went back and deleted the new account and started to use the original account.

Though I had been on Mastodon since 2018 the recent influx has got me back on the app. Though my stream of stuff is mainly people telling people how to use Mastodon and what and what not to do. Reminds me of Twitter in 2009 when there was a similar level of new users starting to use that service.

We had a sector strategy meeting to discuss future strategy and planning.

lecture theatre
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

Had a learning spaces meeting with our Advice Team on their forthcoming project on learning spaces. Gave background to the scoping work we did last year and provided insights into their brief.

Had a Funders and Public Affairs catchup meeting.

Chaired our bi-weekly HERLT meeting – as we develop the ways in which we work, this was an useful exploration of the purpose, function and need for the meeting. It raised a lot of questions over what and when we discuss activity across the directorate. I do feel we need to reflect on the spread and breadth of what we do and how we incorporate that into our future meetings.

Had an excellent discussion on the concept of a teaching and learning service wrapper for Content & Discovery. Reflecting on an offer for members and customers that incorporates community, advice & guidance, thought leadership, other (transformative) content, different audiences across an institution and reflecting about what this could look like. Next step may be to workshop this into a plan of action.

Had a meeting with a university where we discussed the history of Jisc’s previous work in the intelligent campus space. We explored what Jisc is currently undertaking in the smart campus space.

campus
Image by 小亭 江 from Pixabay

I did some preparation for the Learning Places Scotland presentation I am delivering next week. I also worked on my Moving Target Digitalisation keynote.

Setting up a meeting to provide advice on strategy development with an internal team.

Read GuildHE’s briefing paper on how OfS could be a better .

My top tweet this week was this one.

weeknotes

There was rain – Weeknote #192 – 4th November 2022

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I did manage to get to the office in Bristol twice this week.

We had a team coaching session.

Had a planning meeting and catchup on transformative content scoping and ideas.

We had a meeting where we had a discussion on the  intelligent campus, climate change, net zero, estates, teaching and learning  We had a discussion on the financial aspects of this, the capex opex challenge and for example how the move from data centres to the cloud requires a change in funding approaches. We talked about the future challenges on how there is a need to influence the funding regime going forward.

group
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I had a preparation call for a presentation I am giving next week at Learning Places Scotland. My presentation title and abstract.

How will the growth in online learning shape the future design of learning spaces and our campuses?

The physicality of online learning is an issue that will impact on university campuses as we move to a blended and hybrid programmes containing elements of online and digital learning and physical in-person learning.  This session will explore the challenges that growth in blended learning will bring to learning spaces and the university campus. What is required for, in terms of space for online learning, but will also consider the implications of delivering online teaching as well. Examples will be given of what universities are doing today to meet these challenges. The session will reflect on a possible future maximising the use of our space as students have the flexibility to learn online, in-person and across a spectrum of blended and hybrid possibilities.

I undertook some research, planning and development of my presentation.

Next week I have my Q1 Review, so I did some preparation and filled in the paperwork.

In the beginning of December I doing a keynote at Moving Target Digitalisation in Berlin. I have been reviewing and reflecting on my  presentation content, and undertaking research, planning and development. This is my  presentation abstract.

Making the transformation happen: The UK higher education digital transformation journey

The UK higher education sector has over the last three decades invested heavily in information technology, online solutions, digital services, resources and content. The aim has been to enhance and improve and reframe the student experience, to reimagine learning, teaching and assessment, and to transform the infrastructure, the university estate to enable and enhance this digital transformation. Across this, Jisc, the UK national research and education network, has been proving the infrastructure, security, advice and guidance to the UK higher education sector. In this keynote, James Clay Head of Higher Education and Student Experience at Jisc, will explore what we mean by digital transformation, what it means for students and why the UK higher education sector needs to deliver on their digital transformation journey. He will explore the UK experience over the last few years and how this has helped to accelerate the digital transformation journey, and will showcase exemplars from across the UK university sector. He will discuss how Jisc is supporting UK higher education and what are plans are for the future in enabling future digital transformation and what our colleagues can learn from our experiences and those of the UK higher education sector.

I was planning to attend an International & TNE Student Experience Meeting, however it was rescheduled.

I did a fair bit of planning and booking travel and accommodation. I don’t travel internationally very often, so I needed to work out how to get to Berlin from Weston.

My top tweet this week was this one.

weeknotes

Another one – Weeknote #191 – 28th October 2022

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This week we saw our third prime minister this year take office and a new cabinet and another new education secretary. So how long to the next one then?

Well I go on leave last week and come back to a full and bursting inbox (which was empty when I left) with over 140 emails to read, review, and act upon.

I had some more thoughts about what universities could do in the event of blackouts or on the impact of the energy crisis on changing student behaviour.

I spent most of the week in London.

I had some discussions on future content (what we use to call thought leadership) that would inspire digital transformation, provide insights into current practice and imagine what the future possibilities are. As a result, I spent some time scoping out some concepts and ideas on what this could look like, across our HE strategy.

Our HE strategy says for example

We will, in partnership with universities, develop approaches and digital solutions to improve and enhance the student experience and greater equity in access and participation in the UK and abroad.

If we think about insight, this is what is happening now, case studies, exemplars, commentary from sector, review, what good looks like now. So, for an insight into enhancing the student experience, university could explain how they are reviewing the student journey, so  to enable them to use digital tools and services to enhance the student experience.

As for inspiration, this is what you could do in the near term, what you need to do to achieve the potential of digital and technology, what good could look like in the next 2-5 years. So, an overview of the near future student journey illustrated with specific examples from the sector of how digital solutions are enhancing and improving that experience.

As for the future, we can imagine through horizon scanning, visions for the future, what good would look like in the next 5-10 years, what could be different, why would it be different. An example of this could be the 2035 student experience? How can digital and data enhance that experience and what does this mean for universities?

What was important to me, was to provide some scope and ideas on what we could do, not necessarily what we will do. Across the strategic themes and the concepts of insight, inspire and imagine, there are lots of opportunities for developing inspirational transformative content. Of course this had to be all backed up with toolkits, frameworks, support, advice and guidance, and a range of products and services that enable all of this.

On Tuesday I had a planning meeting, which demonstrated the importance of underpinning foundations and a clear vision to enable functional and effective planning.

One of my reasons for being in London, apart from some meeting was to undertake some research and ideation in the Intelligent Campus space. This involved some conversations, desk research, and field work across various campuses (in this case) across London.

I had some more conversations about learning spaces, for further scoping and research.

I continued with the Senior Education and Student Experience Group logistics and preparation for our meeting in December and further meetings next year.

I also continued with my preparation and planning for events in Scotland and Germany in November.

I did a quick skim of the OfS Blended Learning Review, might spend some time on this next week.

My top tweet this week was this one.

lost in translation

Lost in translation: darkness

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candle and laptop
Photo by PJ Gal-Szabo on Unsplash

Over the last couple of years I have been working on a series of blog posts about translating existing teaching practices into online models of delivery.

One of the things I have noticed as the education sector moved rapidly to remote delivery when the pandemic hit the UK in 2020 was the different models that people used. However what we did see was many people were translating their usual practice to an online version. 

As part of my work in looking at the challenges in delivering teaching remotely during the covid crisis period I wrote a series of blog posts. Though covid has not gone away the ramifications and impact of covid and the lockdowns are still with us thirty months later. Universities are wanting to utilise the experiences they had during the pandemic, to support the transformation of teaching, learning and assessment.

I decided to continue with the series of blog posts.

Since I last reflected on the series the UK has entered a cost of living crisis and an energy costs crisis (as well as other crises).

There is a real threat of blackouts happening this winter, how do you translate or transform activities dependent on energy into low-energy, asynchronous, low-bandwidth activities?

Also students will want to save money, they want to avoid excessive commuting (transport costs) as well as maybe, if they can, spend more time on campus keeping warm. Where do they go and what can they do.

So I will be listening, asking questions, reflecting and writing a new series of posts for the Lost in Translation series.

weeknotes

Weeknote #190 – 21st October 2022

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autumn leaves
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

I was on leave this week, so no weeknote this week.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Visiting the See Monster – Weeknote #189 – 14th October 2022

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See Monster

On Monday evening I went up an old North Sea gas rig on the seafront of Weston-super-Mare. The See Monster is an art installation. It certainly is an interesting place.

Tuesday I was in Birmingham for a team away day. A bit of double booking, late trains for people and other stuff, meant that it wasn’t as constructive as I hoped it would be. However, we did an excellent communication exercise which I really found illuminating.

Wednesday I was in Birmingham at the ICC for the Jisc Staff Conference. Nice to see people from across Jisc in-person. Some useful sessions and some fun ones as well.

Thursday I was down to London for a meeting with a Finnish delegation from the CSC, which is a NREN (like Jisc). Colleagues and myself presented on the work of Jisc across the UK and answered questions on various aspects of our work.

Friday I was working from home. I spent time sorting out stuff from the week in preparation for going on leave next week.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Who turned out the lights? – Weeknote #188 – 7th October 2022

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Last week I was in London (oh and a bit of Bristol). This week I worked from home at the beginning of the week and spent the end of the week working in our Bristol office. I think this was the first time in ages that I had actually spent three days in a row working out of the office. Well it was warm.

I spent some time this week organising and planning the Jisc Senior Education and Student Experience Group. This meant organising attendance at meetings, expanding the group, responding to queries, booking rooms and locations. Also rejigging and renaming the Jiscmail list for the group.

I am organising a cross-Jisc conversation to discuss and join up activity across Jisc in the intelligent and smart campus space. We have quite a few projects and ideas in this area.

campus
Image by 小亭 江 from Pixabay

The news is full of stories on the possibility of winter blackouts as the energy crisis continues to hit home. With the continuing prospect of restrictions in gas supplies across Europe, there is a strong chance with a extreme cold spell in the UK that there will be power rationing. This means that some parts of the UK will be dark. Students will face learning without light, power, heat or connectivity. How can you deliver high quality online learning without power or connectivity? So I wrote a blog post exploring this.

Also this from the Guardian: How would three-hour power cuts work if enacted in Great Britain?

People in England, Scotland and Wales are braced for the possibility of rolling power cuts this winter after a warning on Thursday from National Grid. The electricity and gas system operator has said households could face a series of three-hour power cuts…

So I wrote up a follow-up post.

stove espresso maker
Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay

Wonkhe was reporting on the cost of living crisis.

The cost of living crisis will be worse than the impact of the pandemic for some students, a Welsh university Vice Chancellor has warned. Ben Calvert, vice chancellor at the University of South Wales, made the comment as he gave evidence at the opening of a Senedd committee inquiry into mental health in higher education. Calvert told the committee: “I actually think for some of our students that will be harder, particularly where we have got populations of students who are older.”

These concerns have been expressed by many universities at meetings I have attended. What could universities do, and what should universities do?

We potentially could see shifts in attendance patterns on campus by students, as they take advantage of the warm rooms and opportunities to charge devices away from their rented student homes.

This was an interesting read on Eighteen pitfalls to beware of in AI journalism.

We noticed that many articles tend to mislead in similar ways, so we analyzed over 50 articles about AI from major publications, from which we compiled 18 recurring pitfalls. We hope that being familiar with these will help you detect hype whenever you see it. We also hope this compilation of pitfalls will help journalists avoid them.

The first example was this analysis of an article on an AI EdTech product, The Machines Are Learning, and So Are the Students.

It features comments such as this one:

This sentence implies that AI is autonomously grading and optimizing coursework. However, it is only being used to assist teachers in a small part of grading: identifying the answer that a student wrote and checking if it matches the answer provided by the teacher.

I think that the article and analysis is not just useful for journalists, but anyone looking at AI in education (and beyond).

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I have been thinking about the keynote I am delivering for Moving Target 2022 in Berlin in November. Planning a short video for the conference organisers social media for next week as well.

My top tweet this week was this one.

coffee, learning, news, twitter

Then the lights went out…

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power
Photo by Alexander Popov on Unsplash

The news is full of stories on the possibility of winter blackouts as the energy crisis continues to hit home.

So I wrote a blog post exploring this.

When I posted the link to my blog post on the Twitter, I did get this response.

I don’t disagree with people spending three hours staring at a flickering candle, but it would be nice if students had a choice about how to spend that three hours. It did though get me thinking, could I last three hours without coffee? Should I get a camping stove and use my stovetop espresso maker?

stove espresso maker
Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay

I also ordered a new power bank.

So, would the power just cut out? Well, I later read this from the Guardian: How would three-hour power cuts work if enacted in Great Britain? on how power cuts would work across England, Scotland and Wales.

People in England, Scotland and Wales are braced for the possibility of rolling power cuts this winter after a warning on Thursday from National Grid. The electricity and gas system operator has said households could face a series of three-hour power cuts

So how it would work is as follows:

… consumers in different parts of the country would be notified a day in advance of a three-hour block of time during which they would lose power. Households in different areas would then be cut off at different times or days, with the frequency rising depending on the severity of the supply shortage.

As a result if this is how it happens, then students probably would get notice that when they would lose power, that would given them time to charge up devices and download activities, resources and other content.

Of course the risk of this happening, according to the National Grid, is low, and dependent on a range of circumstances. Or another way of looking at, it will happen, and probably happen more often than is being reported. Or is that my just being a little too cynical?

learning, news

When everything goes dark

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Candle
Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay

So how do students do online and digital learning without electricity or even connectivity?

The news is full of stories on the possibility of winter blackouts as the energy crisis continues to hit home. With the continuing prospect of restrictions in gas supplies across Europe, there is a strong chance with a extreme cold spell in the UK that there will be power rationing. This means that some parts of the UK will be dark. Students will face learning without light, power, heat or connectivity.

What can universities do to prepare for this potential likelihood?

How can you deliver high quality online learning without power or connectivity?

When the power goes out, this means no lights, no power, potentially no heating and no broadband. Of course a blackout also means as well no mobile signal, so no 4G. So though you may have a mobile device with enough battery power to use it, it you won’t be able to use the internet.

This means that if learning is to take place during a power cut, then it needs to be offline (downloaded), so it can be accessed without the internet.

It is important that any such learning activities are able to take place on (probably) a mobile device, with no connectivity. Mobile devices will have limited battery life, so though the idea of downloadable video content (recorded lectures) may be attractive, watching these can dramatically reduce the battery life of a device, so curtailing the amount of time it can be used for learning.

So how can universities prepare for low power asynchronous learning activities?

The obvious solution is to revert back to paper and candlelight as many students did in the 1970s. 

However fully charged devices with their own power source (batteries) provide the potential for digital learning despite there been no electricity.

It is likely that areas of the UK at risk of blackout will have some advance warning (as they did in the 1970s) of the risk of blackout, so allowing students a chance to download activities before the power cuts out.

If you’re not using video, you don’t have to be constrained by text, downloaded audio recordings and podcasts are possible options. Audio also means that the screen can be turned off (or turn the brightness down) again increasing battery life.

For example the high end iPhone 14 Pro on a full charge can deliver 29 hours of video playback. On a full charge it could also deliver 95 hours of audio playback. Of course those figures aren’t real-life experiences, and assumes the phone was fully charged when the power was cut.

Audio also doesn’t require light, so less need for lots of candles or torches.

Delivering audio as a subscribed podcast, means that the device will probably have downloaded the content already in the background, so will be available for listening when the power cuts out.

There will probably still need to be a reliance on contingency planning to ensure that students are aware of what they can do, and are able to do when everything goes dark.

They may not want to actually learn whilst it is dark.

There is the further challenge of what to do when the campus goes dark.

Learning during a blackout is always going to be a challenge, and for many students it will be something that they don’t do until the power comes back on. However universities can do some things that make at least some learning possible, so diminishing the impact of the blackout.

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Oncoming vehicle approaching – Weeknote #187 – 30th September 2022

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Was in London on Monday. I had gone up the night before, so I could avoid travelling on a Monday morning.

Monday was a team coaching day, where we did our insights (colours) thing. I think the most useful aspect is discussion and working together, as for the insights I am always reminded of horoscopes.

Monday evening, I couldn’t see Jupiter as it was cloudy, saw it last week and later in the week, but not on the day it was the closest to the earth in 107 years.

On Tuesday I presented at the GuildHE Policy and Planners Network meeting in London on analytics and student support. This was well received presentation and there was lots of questions and discussion afterwards.

Wednesday I was back in Bristol. I had a constructive meeting on the marketing, event, production requirements for the HE objectives assigned to me, and how these will fit into the planning and campaign processes for 2022-23. We also discussed transformative content (thought leadership) and the planning I have done on producing transformative content that will support the delivery of the HE sector strategy and ensuring it is aligned to the Jisc core strategy.

Read this HEPI blog post at the weekend. The blog says

There is a tendency for the literature to connect innovation and technology in discussions about models of change. Clearly, technology can have a significant impact on activities and practice and can lead to innovation but, if badly designed or implemented, can create unnecessary costs and additional bureaucracy. The key to good innovation is that it leads to better productivity; better work practice; and better delivery of activities. In planning any change, it is important to understand how the innovation that you wish to introduce will deliver those three things: better productivity, better practice and better delivery. 

You could almost rewrite this and replace the word innovation with transformation. It goes onto say:

Innovation is also often seen as a big bang ‘thing’. This is not necessarily the case, small improvements or minor changes can have significant effects…

I was reminded of my butterfly post on digital transformation.

Do you think transformation is something that has a result (we’ve been transformed) or do you see it as an evolving continuing process (we are transforming and continue to transform)?

The Mirror reports that University of Glasgow students are unhappy about having lectures in a church with no internet access.

Though it was July 2015 when Apple Pay was introduced in the UK, I have never actually used it until August this year! I bought some parking on my phone and used Apple Pay to pay for it. It was only on Thursday that I actually used Apple Pay at a till! I paid for some shopping using the system at one of those “unexpected item in the bagging area” machines.

I know I should know this, but it was quite a seamless experience. I did have to double tap, which I didn’t think I would need to do. Well done that now, do I need to do it again? Probably not.

Friday I headed to work in our Bristol office. Had some administration to do as well as catching up with conversations and email.

Why is this post entitled oncoming vehicle approaching? Well when I was driving to London, I did see a fair few warning signs, that there was an oncoming vehicle approaching. I wasn’t sure how much I should slow down by, as there were cars behind and next to me. I wasn’t sure even which lane I should stick to, as I had no idea about the oncoming vehicle, would it be in the outside lane, or on the hard shoulder? There were a lot of unknowns and in the end I tried to ensure that I had plenty of options for moving out of the way, just in case. I never did see the vehicle, but it was quite unnerving. Writing this, it reminded me of how some people feel when it comes to the implementation and embedding of digital technology. People may be unsure of what to do and it might be all bit unnerving as they are doing what they normally do and now they are facing uncertainty.

My top tweet this week was this one.

news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…