This week was the first week in quite a while that I didn’t have any serious travelling, actually checking the diary the last time I had a week with no travelling was the second week in October.
Spent much of the week looking at data models. This made me reminisce about the work I did back in the day with the Western Colleges Consortium. We had seven different college student record systems sending us student data which was then uploaded to a shared VLE. Back then we didn’t have single sign on, so students would have to have another password in addition to the one they used to log into the college computers. Interoperability was something new to me back then.
Joined an interesting meeting that I helped broker between the UK admissions organisation UCAS and the Finnish NREN CSC. One of the use cases in the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework is on discovery and application.
In a conversation with a colleague last month they mentioned the potential impact of AI on estate data, something they thought I might be interested in, in relation to my long history with the intelligent campus. At the recent HE Transformation Expo in Birmingham I was talking to my fellow presenters and they also mentioned this. So, where to start, well I did a quick Google search and an article came up in my search results: Oxford Brookes University expertise in AI helps Blenheim Palace. I wrote a short blog post on Intelligent Visitor Attractions.
In a conversation with a colleague last month they mentioned the potential impact of AI on estate data, something they thought I might be interested in, in relation to my long history with the intelligent campus.
At the recent HE Transformation Expo in Birmingham I was talking to my fellow presenters and they also mentioned this.
An artificial intelligence project, developed by experts at Oxford Brookes University, is helping one of Oxfordshire’s most prestigious tourist attractions enhance its customer service and visitor experience.
As I read through the article it reminded me much of what I have written on the smart campus and intelligent campus landscape and potential.
The system uses data from digital sensors located around the Blenheim Estate that monitor everything from footfall and ticket sales to retail and catering sales.
In the original guide to the intelligent campus, I wrote about intelligent catering.
Certain times are likely to result in high demand at campus cafes and food outlets, such as lunchtime, but within those times there is flexibility to respond in different ways, or indeed encourage students to arrive at a different time. By using timetabling or event data, increased flow of people to the cafes could be predicted, and real time information on actual location and flow can reinforce and clarify the expected demand.
In the article on Blenheim Palace it says:
“Analysis of the data, using AI, enables managers at Blenheim Palace to make better predictions about footfall. They know, for example, that in two-days-time they can expect a certain number of visitors and plan their staff and catering accordingly.”
I also wrote about people flows and footfall in one of the many use cases we published.
Pedestrian flow could affect the time for journeys between classes, waiting times at cafes or sudden changes in how busy the library is. Location trackers such as used by mobile phones can provide data on flow, and also people counters, such as using video systems, can be placed around campus to collect data on the numbers of people in that location at any time. Such data can have a number of applications, including combining with other contexts to improve services.
In the article they talk about how they created an app.
They also developed an app called What’s Open When (WOW) that tells the operations team at Blenheim Palace in real-time which parts of the Palace and Estate are open, where it is busy and where it is quieter.
Does this kind of technology have an application for the university estate? It’s almost reassuring that this kind of thing is happening, it actually helps with the evidence base to support universities in thinking more creatively about the use of their estate.
When I started the intelligent campus work back in 2016 I wrote this on the now defunct Intelligent Campus blog.
We need to know and understand what you see for the future of university and college campuses. Tell us what you think about how universities and colleges can exploit the potential of the internet of things and artificial intelligence.
Over the last nine years I have seen many developments in this space and I have seen many practical applications of the developments in technology and artificial intelligence in enhancing the campus experience for students.
Last week I was up in Birmingham for a conference. The HE Transformation Expo, which was a new event, and I was on a panel session entitled: Is Your Estate Working for You? Deploying Smart Campus Capabilities at Scale to Meet Efficiency Objectives.
We had a good session and an excellent discussion. We covered various topics within the session.
This session will explore how universities are embracing smart campus technologies to drive efficiency, sustainability, and enhanced user experience across their estates. As institutions face increasing pressure to reduce costs, meet carbon targets, and deliver seamless digital experiences, the integration of intelligent systems and data-driven decision-making has never been more critical.
It is quite clear that across the UK, all universities have an element of a smart campus, some more than others. Though it has to be said the focus of much of that “smartness” is in building management and the estate function. Over the last ten years or so I have been working in the Intelligent Campus space, which in essence is about adding further data sources to your estates data to provide not just better insights into the use of the campus, but also how the estate can be managed to improve the efficiency of the university as a whole, and enhance the student experience.
One new focus that I brought to the discussion was the research I have been doing over the last couple of years on collaboration, and the work that we undertook for the Transformation & Efficiency Taskforce.
Now and down the line there may be a need for more collaboration and sharing in the estates space. This will require a new paradigm in thinking about how your estate is managed, but also the data architecture behind the estate.
This week, what with Easter and taking some leave, meant I was only “in the office” for one day this week. I say I was in the office; the reality was that I was working from home. One reason for that was I was presenting a session at the Smart Campus Insights Brief 2025 Conference.
Abstract: From Smart to Intelligent Campuses: A Roadmap
Designing a truly integrated approach to data-led decision making across an institution
The real prize in supporting connected devices that make intelligent decisions based on real time environmental data
Building the infrastructure and capabilities to join up data sources across a campus
How do we set meaningful goals to support intelligent decision making on campus?
I enjoyed presenting and there was some positive feedback. Across the event as a whole other presenters referenced my talk.
Wrote up my notes from AHUA conference I attended last week and did some administration sorting travel and logistics for next few weeks.
This included reflecting and feeding back on the UUK Chapter 7 – expert roundtable last week in London.
I reviewed the Intelligent Campus Maturity Model in regard to RIBA Smart Building Overlay. There was a lot of alignment and synergy.
I attended an internal Guiding Principles review focus group at Jisc. One thing I noted about our guiding principles (or values) was how well known and embedded they were somewhat dependent on who was driving them. Something to reflect on, if you have values, of course everyone owns them, the key is who is responsible for driving them? How many people are working in embedding them into the organisation? Are the aligned in their methodology in embedding?
I attended an online event, Four Futures: Shaping Higher Education in England.
I did some research into the Intelligent Campus aspects in providing support for Digital Elevation Tool business plan. This included writing statements and content for Digital Elevation Tool business plan.
I spent most of the week working from home, it is exam time for some in the house, so I was around to provide lifts to early revision sessions, or to ensure functionality in case of delayed buses. I did plan to go into the office one day, but even though it was June, the weather forecast was for heavy rain and strong winds. My reasoning for going to the office was that I had a series of later afternoon meetings, so I would then have somewhere quieter to participate in them. In the end, two of those three (and the most participative) were cancelled, or not needed.
I actually like going to work in the office, the change in space, place, and routine, makes a difference to how I feel, or even my wellbeing.
I have been working on a concept Intelligent Campus Maturity Tool. Based on the Further Education elevation tool Jisc produced, the idea is that you can use the tool to assess your progress in building your smart campus. I have already identified the key themes and sub-themes; I am now working on competency statements for those different sub-themes. I am planning to run a workshop in the autumn to test out the tool with the community.
At the beginning of the week I was marking and moderating some bids for a tender we had out on the opportunities for collective, collaborative, and inter-institutional activity.
A couple of meetings were cancelled which gave me some time back.
I am currently taking a leadership course at Jisc, and this week I completed some more work on this.
Had a volunteering day on Friday. Jisc provides staff with three volunteering days a year. I use mine to support the administration of running a Cub Pack. This involves planning the programme, badge administration, risk assessments, and communicating with other organisations.
I spent most of the week working from home, it is exam time for some in the house, so I was around to provide lifts to early revision sessions, or to ensure functionality in case of delayed buses. I had intended to work in the office at least one day this week, but I was also expecting a call from the garage about my car, and it would have been easier to pick it up travelling from home, than from the office.
I am currently taking a leadership course at Jisc, and this week I completed some more units from the Institute of Leadership. I have extensive management and leadership experience, running teams of various sizes, complexity and geographically distributed. I have planned, designed, and delivered shared services for consortia and complex organisations. I have also managed multi-million pound budgets and projects. In addition I have delivered management and leadership training, both at Jisc, to universities, and was a Management and Business Studies lecturer back in the 1990s.
Having said all that there is still room to both learn new things and to update existing knowledge. I also want to affirm my understanding of leadership as well. The course has been useful for these things.
Had a couple of internal meetings this week, they were scheduled for longer than they actually took. Though it’s nice to have time back, it would be even better if we had that time back before the meeting took place. Planning meetings takes time for the person planning the meeting but can save a lot more time for those participating in that meeting. Do they even need to be in that meeting?
I have written about meetings over my Technology Stuff blog. Back in 2021 I reflected on an article by Atlassian on making meetings better, useful and interesting.
Running effective meetings isn’t simply a matter of doing the obvious things like sharing the agenda and starting on time. While those things are important, they’re just table stakes. The real key to running a great meeting is organizing and running them with a human touch – not like some corporate management automaton.
The perspective we can solve engagement issues by having meetings, and so we need to improve the online meetings, misses the key problem, which is the lack of engagement. This is a leadership and management challenge not just about improving online meetings. People have a personal responsibility to engage with corporate communication, give them choice, make it easier, but to think you solve it by having a meeting, is a similar thinking that people read all their e-mail.
The author, Professor Sir Chris Husbands, is the former vice-chancellor at Sheffield Hallam University. He develops four plausible scenarios for the future of English higher education and looks at what they could mean for students, universities and government.
Scenario 1 considers what happens on the current funding trajectory.
Scenario 2 looks at what a higher education sector fully funded for high participation, research and innovation might look like.
Scenario 3 explores the implications of a tertiary system.
Scenario 4 considers what a more differentiated system might look like.
I have written some scenarios up as future visions as prompts for discussion. The HEPI visions are much more near-future (and probably more realistic) than my visions. However my future visions are not supposed to be accurate predictions of the future, more as discussion pieces to prompt thinking about how higher education can change.
It’s long been assumed that whatever the outcome of the coming general election, fees would remain stuck in the freezer for the time being. We’ve pored over Public First polling that has neatly demonstrated how unpopular raising fees would be and concluded that no political party could feasibly contemplate this. But the ground is now shifting beneath our feet and I think a modest but significant fee rise looks more likely than ever.
I think that may happen, as a last resort if there are real possibilities of universities failing, as well as declining international student recruitment, then the (next) government may need to raise fees to ensure that universities survive financially.
I have been working on an Intelligent Campus Maturity Tool, this has required me to map out competency statements that institutions would require to assess their current state of readiness in relation to smart and intelligent campus.
Wrote a section for our board report on the work I have been doing.
I planned, prepared and then cancelled my Senior Education and Student Experience group meeting. I have now been asked to attend UUK Round Table on the same date.
Have been working on sub-themes for the proposed Intelligent Campus framework. This means taking the themes and breaking them down further.
This week was Connect More, I attended various Connect More sessions. Chaired a Connect More session on accessible maths, delivered by an old friend of mine, Lilian Joy. She described the challenges in teaching maths to the visually impaired. One insight was the use of tactile methods to teach maths, made easier due to the availability of cost effective 3D printing.
Continuing my work on the report on how universities could support their organisational change through the optimisation of their operations.
We are now in quarter four, so I did my Q3 paperwork for my Q3 review. These weeknotes were useful in helping with that.
I attended a review meeting for the Digital Elevation Model. Though not directly reviewing the model, I am using the meetings to inform and influence my work on the Intelligent Campus framework.
Read the UCU report on Academic Freedom in the Digital University.
Spent some time working on some draft themes for a possibly (maturity) framework for the intelligent campus.
I am a little but loathe to call it a maturity framework, as we really don’t confidently know what a mature intelligent campus looks like. However at this stage I don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about a name, when there is much more to do with the framework.
I am planning to use the FE Digital Elevation Tool as a starting point. The first stage is to identify the main themes. This is what I arrived at, reflecting on the work I have done in this space for the last eight years.
Vision
Campus
Data
Digital
Technology
People
Activity
Policy
Process
Security
Ethics
Energy
Community
A theme has many sub-themes, so we could take people and break it down into staff and students.
Each sub-theme has many competencies. Competency has three statements and there are four responses to each statement.
Completed
In progress
Not started
Not a priority
This will take some time to work on, but I am planning to run some community events around this.
I rebooted my monthly Intelligent Campus newsletter on the Jiscmail. You can subscribe to the mailing list here.
I wrote a blog post about a Wonkhe article I read.
Across the country there are a real variety of university campuses. No two campuses are alike, but all have similar challenges that the Estates team have to work with. There was an interesting article from Wonkhe a few weeks back on what keeps your estates manager awake at night? from the incoming AUDE chair.
I also published some thoughts about personalisation.
I have been looking at what we mean by personalisation in higher education. What I have discovered is that there isn’t really any clear idea or definition of what we mean by personalisation and across the sector there are varied views and opinions about what is personalisation, what can be personalised, and importantly why we would do this.
We had our monthly team meeting.
I am recognising that now as I no longer use Twitter, that I am missing some articles and news that would have been shared on Twitter. I would also use the postings (especially of links) I made to Twitter to inform the writing of these weeknotes. I need to reflect on what this means going forward and if there is some other kind of mechanism I can use. I really don’t want to go back to the Twitter.
Shorter week next week with the bank holiday. I am chairing a session at Jisc’s Connect More event next week, so attended a rehearsal on how to use the platform we are using.
Shorter week this week with Easter Monday. Headed to the office on Tuesday after the long weekend and did some writing and planning. In the end (with what it being school holidays) I was in the office every day this week. With many people in Jisc on leave this week, and the same can be said for much of higher education it was a rather quiet week, which gave me time to focus on getting some research, analysis and writing done.
I did write a blog post about lecture capture and how you could do things more creatively.
The idea of capturing a lecture isn’t new. Even before the advent of dedicated lecture capture systems being installed across the campus some lecturers (and some students) would record the lecture onto cassette tape.
I have been thinking of using Jisc’s Digital Elevation Tool for FE in the Intelligent Campus space. So this week I started planning what needs to happen to make that happen. This involved looking at the scaffolding that the tool has and what would need to be in a campus version of the tool.
Made some suggestions for Connect More 2024.
news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…
