Much of the week was about working on the UUK project on collaboration.
I have been working on supporting the work on 12 ideas; combine that with review meetings, writing content, tidying up slides for a presentation, and then some.
Also been working on the E in NREN work looking at student mobility across Europe.
Attended the Wonkhe and Mills and Reeve Connect More webinar realising opportunities for strategic collaboration in higher education which was very interesting and relevant to my current work.
Attended a briefing for Digifest which is happening next week.
I have been thinking about the challenges of higher education institutions having a silo mentality and the potential impact of this on collaboration and sharing.
Ask any higher education institution leader about the organisational challenges they’re grappling with, and they’ll start talking about silos.
As one respondent said in our research in the Collaboration for a sustainable future report said “my institution doesn’t even collaborate with itself.” Part of that has to be having a silo mentality.
What this means is that across an organisation, different departments work to their own specific strategy and needs. Sometimes silos are referred to as “cylinders of excellence”. You can have outstanding and excellent departments, but though often we think of the phrase first coined by the philosopher Aristotle, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. With cylinders of excellence, the whole can be a lot less than the sum of the parts.
From personal experience, having high performing teams, means that they are achieving their objectives, but unless those objectives are aligned or contribute to the organisational whole then, the overall impact on the organisation might be negligible or even negative.
Collaboration internally means alignment, it means common goals, thinking of the whole rather than the one. Internal strategies and objectives need to be connected to other internal strategies and objectives to ensure alignment and maximum impact.
Part of this is breaking down silos. Though as anyone knows breaking down silos is hard. We often think of grain silos, metal cylinders that are close together, they should be easy to break, shouldn’t they? I always now think of higher education silos as missile silos, embedded into reinforced concrete and dispersed across a wide area.
I wonder 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.
Breaking down silo working, isn’t just about saying, we need to break down the silos but is so much more about thinking strategically about what your organisation is trying to achieve. Recognising that even if your department is successful in achieving your strategic goals, doesn’t mean that the university is being successful.
In the current economic climate the sector is facing real challenges. Strategically you may want to have an outstanding student experience, world class research, and a global impact, but the reality is you might need to keep the lights on first. If you take the “usual” strategic objectives that most universities have, as stated, an outstanding student experience, world class research, and a global impact, as a given. Then the strategic objectives of the organisation can be focused on survival, resilience, and change. Part of that change has to be breaking down the internal silo mentality. Of course, easier said than done.
This week I attended the joint HEPI and Jisc webinar: Competition or collaboration? Opportunities for the future of the higher education sector. This was building on the Collaboration for a sustainable future report we recently published.
The appetite for collaboration and sharing appears to be growing, but as with any change, people want change, but don’t necessarily want to change. The more radical the change, the more resistant people become it would appear. However to maximise the benefits of collaboration, then very likely we will need some radical change.
One thing I have been thinking about is the barrier of identity. When you collaborate, do you lose your institutional identity. This actually brings back to the table the importance of personalisation.
I have continued to research, plan, and start writing an initial draft for higher education state of activity internal report. The challenge is how much to include and how much detail to put in there.
On a mailing list I frequent, the question was asked what was hindering or helping the sharing of digital learning resources.
IPR issues aside…
One issue that I wonder about, is are practitioners (and/or colleges) actually creating a wealth of digital learning resources, or are they generally repurposing (third party) resources which exist already.
Second issue, sharing learning resources is only part of the story, the context in which those resources are used and how they are used is equally if not more important and certainly then makes the resources (or even just the ideas) much more transferable, not just between colleges but also internally between courses.
Third issue, storing and finding resources. A folder or hierarchal structure makes filing simpler, but searching more complex.
Fourth issue, compatibility. Here we could be talking about Office 2007 or 2003, Publisher on a Mac, or other resources which require specific software.
Fifth issue, branding, not just from a college perspective but also from a qualificational perspective. One of the things I didn’t like about the NLN materials, was they were branded by subject and level. But as anyone who teaches the subject knows, Level 2 Business materials can be used with Level 3 Tourism students, but sometimes the branding, or qualificational specific nature of materials can put off or confuse learners.
Sharing is good, it saves time, enables practitioners (and learners) to access a wider range of resources.
Despite the issues, these are not reasons to not share, more issues to be aware of.
news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…
