Tag Archives: eduroam

altc2023, weeknotes

Star – Weeknote #242 – 20th October 2023

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Took some leave this week and headed off to Chessington World of Adventure for the day.

It was nice to see Lawrie win our Star of the Month award for his work at ALT-C. I took the time to write a detailed nomination about what he did and the impact it had. It was a well deserved win.

Spent most of the week planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data. Researching the background, exemplars, benefits, issues, challenges, and barriers to shared services across higher education. I have been finding relevant reports and documents, uploading them to Dovetail and then going through them undertaking analysis of the content, tagging different sections. Still early for deep insights, but often these reports flag the potential benefits of shared services, there is a lot of discussion about the importance of process analysis and optimisation, before moving to a shared service model.

This reminds me of some work I did back in 2014 about process analysis and optimisation before adding software or a digital service to the workflow. For example no point in adding a CRM for student recruitment, unless you go through the current process of student recruitment, and then reflecting on what you are trying to achieve. Without undertaking the process analysis, you can often find that all you are doing is spending a lot of time, effort, and money on creating a digital version of the existing process, which often results in just translation, and not taking advantage of the affordances of what digital and online can bring, and usually losing the nuance of the analogue or in-person process.

It has been a little but more challenging to see some of the blockers and barriers that stop the implementation of shared services, but this is where I can bring in some of my own experiences to the table.

Read this interesting article this week: Sunderland City Council is planning to extend the local eduroam Wi-Fi network into the city centre.

It is working with the University of Sunderland and its smart city partner Boldyn Networks to enable accredited users of EduROAM, developed as a Wi-Fi service for the higher education sector, to obtain connections beyond the university’s campus through the public Wi-Fi network.

From a social mobility perspective, inclusion, widening participation, reducing carbon, wellbeing, and a range of other factors it’s important that eduroam extends beyond the campus. It enables students to access Wi-Fi at a time and place of their choosing, rather than being forced to travel to campus.

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Ich bin ein Berliner – Weeknote #196 – 2nd December 2022

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Spent most of the week in Berlin for the Moving Target Conference.

I was at our London office on Monday. We had a team coaching session looking at our internal and external stakeholders.

On Tuesday I flew out to Berlin from Heathrow. When I was invited to the conference I did consider catching the train to Berlin, but after doing some research I found out it was going to take in excess of 20 hours and required not just changes (which I expected) but actually would entail taking a bus for part of the journey. So despite some reservations decided to fly. I would have preferred to fly from Bristol, but there were no direct flights to Berlin, so in the end flew from Heathrow.

Travelling to Terminal 5 from my hotel, I took an autonomous pod. These pods are for those parking at a car park, but were also available to hotel residents.

The conference was excellent and I enjoyed attending. It’s useful to see education from a different perspective.

The conference had a focus on trans-national education.  There were some interesting panel sessions and presentations. I did a few sketch notes on various presentations and panel sessions.

Here is my sketch note of trust and reputation in the digital economy with Prof. Timm Teubner.

I delivered my keynote on the Friday.

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.

There was an online audience as well as people in the room.

The conference was at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences).

The building still had the scars from the fighting in 1945.

It was a great venue for a conference, with good spaces. I also appreciated the fact that the building had eduroam, so connecting to the wifi was quick and easy.

I get a mention in the closing comments about my sketchnoting and tweets on the conference.

Saw this Twitter thread. Really useful list of locations in London for working and reading, where you don’t need to buy endless cups of coffee.

Read this paper COVID, Campus, Cameras, Communication, and Connection by Jasmine Price, Donna Lanclos and Lawrie Phipps.

This article discusses insights from two separate and linked projects. A staff-facing project at a UK university in the English Midlands, took place in late Spring 2020. We heard at that time a concern from staff for students who were not in touch and were not “visible” due to their absence from digital places as well as the more obvious physical ones. Staff also discussed their sense that, from the students who were in contact, there were a lot more emails and one-on-one discussions about logistics and worries. In Spring 2021, at a university in the north of England, we conducted a student-facing project intended to discover their lived experience of the 2020-21 academic year, as well as surface insights into what the phrase “back to campus” might mean for these students. Students struggled with what their lecturers were asking in terms of visibility (especially cameras). Students were also concerned about building and maintaining connections. The desire for effective and transparent communication in a time of crisis was also expressed. We juxtapose the rhetoric about “back to campus” and assumptions embedded in policies around cameras and digital participation with the expressed desires of students for human relationships and care in a time of uncertainty and upheaval. We end with implications for institutions going forward, with the certainty that this will not be the last time, as a sector, when we have to rely primarily on digital places and platforms for the work of the University.

Well worth downloading and reading.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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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.