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weeknotes

Through the medium of dance – Weeknote #319 – 11th April 2025

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Image by Bernard-Verougstraete from Pixabay

On Monday I was prepping stuff for the rest of the week. In the main developing and writing activity for UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce meeting. This involved diamonds and scissors.

I spent the day in London on Tuesday, the afternoon was taken up with the UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce meeting, however as I had a two hour online meeting with the HEAnet Group Advisory Forum I spent the morning in the office.

I had some necessary Dovetail admin and Miro admin to do this week. I hadn’t used Miro for weeks and then all of a sudden, I was asked to input to an influx of Miro boards. I do use Miro, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I don’t much like the alternatives either.

We had a discussion about capturing the senior voice and then what do we do with that once we have that. A bit of we can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Spent some time planning a session for AHUA Conference next week, which is taking place at Swansea University.

Recognised the need to plan out E in NREN work I am undertaking in some more detail. It has been agreed that this will continue into 2026.

I am attending and presenting at a couple of online conferences later this month, so spent time planning, developing and writing those presentations. Yes you would be right in thinking there will be lots of photographs.

Image by Tom from Pixabay

Noted that the situation in higher education is still not good, and in some sense is getting worse.

As higher education institutions shed thousands of jobs, Times Higher are tracking developments and bringing together latest analysis with resources for affected staff and students.

As a mounting financial crisis grips UK universities, thousands of jobs are being axed across the sector. This page tracks latest updates, exploring the reasons behind the redundancies, how they will affect staff and students, and the long-term impact on higher education and research.

In similar news the sustainability of higher education was discussed at Parliament. Where the Augar report was reviewed as Education Committee learn about university finances

Notably, Augar argued that no university should fail – the impact on local areas and the international reputation of the sector would be too big – and called for “behind the scenes” support for struggling providers. Universities UK’s Malcolm Press argued once again for a transformation fund to support universities in adapting to the current circumstances.

Our work with UUK was mentioned in passing.

Malcolm Press (vice chancellor at Manchester Metropolitan University, at the committee representing Universities UK) emphasised just how hard universities were working to drive efficiencies – highlighting examples of collaboration, and the ongoing Universities UK project in response to the government’s reform agenda.

Made me smile for the end of the week. This from WonkHE on Sussex on taking the position that universities can’t prohibit any speech unless it’s already explicitly banned by civil or criminal law.

 “The University would have to tolerate an academic conducting every lecture through the medium of song or mime (noting that freedom of speech protects the manner of speech as well as the content).”

weeknotes

Love a bit of snow me – Weeknote #311 – 14th February 2025

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This week I was in Finland for a workshop regarding NRENs for Education. NRENs are the National Research and Education Networks that most countries have for connecting their universities and research institutes. In the UK Jisc is the NREN.

This workshop was bringing together a group of like-minded NRENs to work together on essentially student mobility across Europe. The group has written a series of use cases on a prospective student journey. This takes the student through the recruitment process, transferring easily between institutions, and ensuring that they are accredited and recognised for what they have been studying.

Now of course we know that the UK is no longer part of the EU, however there are potentially good core reasons why the UK should be involved in this. First the situation in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland ensuring students can move freely between institutions. Secondly, there has been discussions about free movement for young people, streamlining and aligning education would enable young people in the UK to study at universities in the EU, and for EU students to come to the UK.

This can happen now, but it’s a complex and often manual process. It also favours the institution rather than the student.

I have been to Finland before, I was there for a conference in July 2006, nearly twenty years ago. Back then I was presenting at the EU e-Learning Conference in Espoo. It was a quick trip in 2006, flying out on Monday and then back home on the Wednesday. I flew from Bristol Airport and then there was a bit of a mad rush at Schiphol where I had to change to a flight to Helsinki. Schiphol is one huge airport… Having arrived at Helsinki, I needed to get to Espoo and travelled by shared taxi to the hotel. I spent part of the evening walking around the area, before ending up in the hotel restaurant. It was lovely and sunny, and as being so far north, the sun never really set. I had spent the Tuesday at the conference. I had some time the following day before my flight to have a really quick look around Helsinki. I caught a bus to the centre and back. I had always planned to return, so nineteen years later I was back.

This time I flew direct to Helsinki from Heathrow. I arrived late afternoon, this time I took a train from the airport to the centre. I then walked to my hotel, so after checking in I did explore the area around the hotel.

The following morning, I was up early so I went for a walk around the city centre. I then headed off to Espoo for my workshop, using the Metro to get there. The workshop was over two days. I had an evening flight the following day. I woke up to 4cm of snow, so after working at the hotel, after checking out I took a walk down to the harbour to catch a ferry to Suomenlinna. Suomenlinna is an island fort that has a long history and some amazing architecture and a few museums.

Helsinki is an amazing city, and there is some incredible architecture and buildings. I was impressed with the public transport, there were trains, buses, trams, a metro, and even a ferry. I used the HSL app extensively for tickets. It was nice to return to Helsinki and having a little more time to see something of the place, whereas back in 2006 it was very rushed.

I had a fair few meetings in my calendar for Friday, when planning my trip, and originally going by train, I had intended to head to the London office on Fetter Lane and have my meetings there. With potential issues with the trains the preceding Sunday, I had decided to drive to Heathrow. That didn’t preclude going to the London office, but I thought, as I had the car, I would travel to our relatively new offices in Milton Park near Didcot. These replaced our old offices in Harwell. However with my body clock still on Helsinki time, having woken up early I had the time to make the trip back to Bristol and still do my meetings, so I did that.

candle and laptop
Photo by PJ Gal-Szabo on Unsplash

Over the week I continued my work on the state of activity of higher education and on data standards.

My final action of the week was reviewing the proposals for the collaborative UUK project work which is my next big thing.

weeknotes

Raising the standards – Weeknote #308 – 24th January 2025

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I was off to London again this week. I was attending an 1EdTech Event in London, Innovate your way out of the funding crisis. This was my first engagement with the standards community for some time. Before I joined Jisc and when I was working in Further Education I did a lot of work looking at standards in relation to moving student data around so it could be imported into the VLE. Then there were standards for learning objects and ensuring that they would work on the VLE, both importing and exporting the right data. I also being very impressed with LTI and what it would enable in allowing students to use a WordPress installation for blogging. Blogging, what was that, and is it still around?

We are starting work on a collaborative project with UUK on collaboration. Part of that is reviewing the original terms of reference and bringing in a consultant to undertake some of the work as well.

laptop
Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

I have been spending time researching, planning and writing initial draft for a higher education state of activity report.

In February Jisc has one of its regular meetings with the OfS and I have been preparing some notes for that meeting.

Spent time on the planning and logistics for a workshop I am attending in Helsinki in February. The workshop is about NRENs for Education. NRENs are the National Research and Education Networks that most countries have for connecting their universities and research institutes. In the UK Jisc is the NREN. This workshop is bringing together a group of like-minded NRENs to work together on essentially student mobility.

I am anticipating that Helsinki will be cold. I have been before, for an EU e-Learning Conference which took place in July 2006 in Finland. I reminisced about that conference back in a weeknote in July 2019.

I also signed up for TNC in Brighton in June. It’s the first TNC I go to, and it’s in the UK. Reminds me when I got funding to go to the international conference mLearn, and the year I went, it was in Dudley.

weeknotes

The E in NREN – Weeknote #299 – 22nd November 2024

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Fleet Street in London
Fleet Street in London

For the first time in an age I headed up to London for a meeting. I also did London in a day, which was a lot more exhausting than I remember it being. It was very cold, and though there was light snow on the way, I didn’t see the snow and disruption that others encountered.

The principal reason for heading to London was for an in-person discussion and workshop on planning some work around, what we are calling the Education in NREN. NREN stands for National Research and Education Network, in the UK that is Jisc, in the Netherlands it is SURF, whilst in Eire it is HEAnet. These are the national networks for educational providers. Though there are many similarities there are also marked differences between the various NRENs across Europe (and the rest of the world).

It was nice to work in the London office for a change. It’s never our busiest office, and that was even the case prior to the pandemic, but you do see and meet people there.

I had planned to head to the Bristol office on Wednesday, but when I tried to book a meeting room for my two online meetings, there were none available. Over the last year the Bristol office has got much busier, so meeting rooms get booked up very quickly. Part of this, is that not only do we still have a pattern of hybrid working, which means a lot more online meetings. The fact we are hybrid has also meant that are patterns of recruitment are less dependent geographically, which exacerbates the number of online meetings and calls that people are having. All this means that the number of calls in the office is higher than it was before the pandemic and there is increased demand on rooms for people to have online meetings in.

As well as the in-person meeting on the E in NREN, I had a fair number of meetings across the week, as I start to do more work in this area.

I am still continuing to work on the optimisation of operations and data following the publication fo the KPMG report I had been working on. I had a meeting about some collaboration with another agency on some next steps on some collaboration proposals.

In addition I wrote up some thoughts on next steps with KPMG report.

Across the sector there has been discussion about talk about the OfS report from last week. For example from WonkHE.

Last week’s update from the Office for Students (OfS) on the state of institutional finances for the HE sector in England brought any lingering sense of cheer from the recent announcement on the indexation of undergraduate fees to an abrupt halt. Based on the latest data available on student entry this autumn, OfS confirms that its warning in May that the sector’s recruitment forecasts had a degree of “optimism bias” has proved true.

It now appears the question of what will happen if a higher education institution fails, is less about if and more about when. The OfS requires all providers to have in place a student protection plan, to ensure a continuity of studying for students of a failing institution. The objective of these plans is to protect the students, however not the staff or the institution as a whole.

I do think that over the next year or so, we will see struggling universities merging and collaborating more closely, rather than waiting to fail. Though the independence mentality of the institution may mean that rather than merge, an institution will just keep cutting costs.

We live in interesting times.