This week I actually spent three days of my working week, working in the Bristol office. It was a very busy office, and as a result there was a real buzz. Some of my colleagues in my team were also in the office, so there was much discussion and in-person collaboration.

The beginning of the week I was in a meeting looking at improving internal communication and collaboration within our directorate. It was an interesting meeting.

Spent a lot of time on organising and planning next week. I am off to the Netherlands for a GÉANT TF-EDU (Education Taskforce) meeting in Delft and then will be attending the 1EdTech Learning Impact conference before ending the week meeting up with Dutch colleagues from SURF. I helped put together a presentation which Jisc will be presenting next week at the conference looking at sharing and collaboration.

I did look at travel options for the trip; my first choice was to actually drive and use the Harwich Hook of Holland ferry. Though this would take a lot more time, most of which would be driving to Harwich in Essex, which with charging would be a six or even seven hour drive followed by an eight hour ferry crossing. Another option was to catch the train. There are direct trains from London to Amsterdam, but the timings are challenging as it is a nearly a five hour train journey, but I would need to get to London first, and then at the other end get to Delft. In the end it was easier, quicker (and cheaper) to fly from Bristol. It’s a seventy-five minute flight, though I have to get from Schiphol to Delft, however that is less than an hour away on the train.

The OfS has proposed a revised TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) and is consulting how it assesses and regulates higher education. One key point is putting a lower burden on high-quality institutions; and increased scrutiny on weaker ones. There is still some reliance on NSS scores, which we know sometimes skews how universities interact with students.

There’s something for everyone in the latest rethink of the Teaching Excellence Framework, but as David Kernohan suggests at WonkHE, bringing disparate approaches together can highlight fundamental weaknesses.