Tag Archives: learning places scotland 2023

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Attending Learning Places Scotland 2023

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Last  week I was up in Scotland in a rather damp (and cold) Glasgow for Learning Places Scotland 2023.

I had attended Learning Places Scotland 2022 and had delivered back then a talk entitled How will the growth in online learning shape the future design of learning spaces and our campuses?

This year I had submitted a talk, on building the intelligent campus.

Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.

This is a variation of a talk I have given many times before on what we understand by the term intelligent campus. How you can evolve your estate from the non-smart or dumb campus, the smart campus, through to what turns your smart campus to an intelligent campus.

It also covered some of the challenges and issues that can arise when building an intelligent campus. This included data challenges, proprietary systems which are closed to data inputs and outputs, silo working, data challenges, ethics, privacy, legal, data literacy, and other issues.

We had some interesting questions after my presentation alongside my co-presenters.

I attended a range of other sessions as well. This event covers all of Scottish education from primary to university. There is a real focus on schools, but still there is something that other sectors can learn from the school sector, even if it is just benchmarking where your learning spaces are.

conference, weeknotes

It was a really BIG Crane – Weeknote #246 – 17th November 2023

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I spent the best part of the week in Glasgow where I was attending and presenting at Learning Places Scotland 2023. Next to the Scottish Event Campus Centre is the huge, okay BIG Finnieston Crane, which I walked past every time I went from my hotel to the conference centre and back again.

It was an interesting conference, though the focus was very much on schools and from the nature of the exhibitors, furniture.

My presentation was in a session on sustainability, and for me specifically on building the intelligent campus.

Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.

I was supposed to attend a pre-conference planning call, however my flight up to Glasgow was delayed by over ninety minutes, so the call took place whilst I was in the air. We eventually did the meeting in person over coffee.

I had various conversations with key SFC stakeholders, Jisc colleagues at the Learning Places Scotland 2023 conference. This kind of informal ad hoc conversation is much harder to undertake in an online conference, not impossible, just harder, or just different. In the past at an online conference I would probably have had these informal conversations on the Twitter. As I have now stopped using Twitter (or X) and though Threads and Bluesky are spaces I frequent now, they don’t yet have reached an optimal size as a viable community for online conferences.

Thursday, I had originally planned to be in our Bristol office for a meeting with the Office for Students. However last week the decision was made to have the meeting online, so I worked from home and attended the meeting online.

On Friday we had another meeting of our Research Evidence Advisory Group at Jisc. As more and more teams and staff across Jisc undertake and utilise research, we are ensuring that moving forward we have a more consistent way of working.

I had planned to attend the UCISA Enterprise Architecture: a culture, not a project webinar, but it clashed with my flight plans, but I now have access to a recording, which I aim to visit next week.

Did some preparation for Leadership Masterclass – Operationalising your Strategic Vision which I am delivering next week.

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Storm Ciarán – Weeknote #244 – 3rd November 2023

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I was in the office this week, continuing to work on various pieces of work. The only day I didn’t go into the office was Thursday and that was mainly down to Storm Ciarán. I had originally planned to visit a university campus in Southern England, but after the storm warnings for Storm Ciarán, I decided to change my plans, however with possible disruption to roads and rail, I also made the decision not to go to the office to work.

I was invited to and attended a focus group to support an investigative study of higher education delivery models in Wales. I was reminded of the work I had done on translation and transformation.

Continued the planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data. Researching and analysing the background, exemplars, benefits, issues, challenges, and barriers to shared services across higher education. Continued the planning report structure on the background, exemplars, benefits, issues, challenges, and barriers to shared services across higher education.

Had a discussion with Paul McKean on FE digital elevation tool and how it is being used by FE colleges. This inspired me to rethink about approaches to various pieces of work I am doing.

Did the first scoping of an Intelligent Campus Elevation Tool to support members in their development of the smart and intelligent campus concept. Based on the work done on Jisc’s FE digital elevation tool, this could be something that universities and colleges might find useful as they navigate the smart and intelligent campus landscape. Also started to reflect on the use of the concept of the digital elevation tool for the optimisation of operations and data.

Wednesday I was in the office for an in-person workshop. I was attending Module 1: Community manager training understanding behaviours workshop in Bristol. The workshop was led by Dave White. I have done this workshop before and have even delivered a version of it as part of the Digital Leaders Programme. So it was very familiar territory for me.

It was interesting to map my internet activity, as my online behaviours have changed quite a bit over the last few years. Back in 2015 for example, Twitter was huge for me, today, well I left X in September. Might write about this a bit more.

Had a meeting with our Public Affairs team about providing the supporting information for a panel session at HEAnet on Navigating the Challenges and Opportunities of the Modern Campus. Much of the work I have done on the Intelligent Campus is appropriate in this area, as are the original use cases that we wrote back in 2017 and 2019.

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Image by 小亭 江 from Pixabay

We had our Directorate Monthly call covering change management and information governance.

The official photographs from EDUtech Europe 2023 were posted to Flickr. As per usual I did not manage to avoid the photographer.

Started thinking about my Q1 review documentation.

Continued with my planning and preparation for presentation for Learning Places Scotland 2023 happening in two weeks time.

Next week I am in London for the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education.

twitter, weeknotes

Busy, not packed – Weeknote #243 – 27th October 2023

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I went to the office quite a bit this week, travelling to Bristol. Our offices are busy, not packed, but busy.

Most of the week was continuing the planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data. I was also researching and analysing the background, exemplars, benefits, issues, challenges, and barriers to shared services across higher education. I then started planning a potential report structure.

We had our monthly HEIRLT Leadership Meeting, and I also had my monthly one to one.

I did some planning and preparation for presentation for Learning Places Scotland 2023. I am doing a presentation on building the intelligent campus.

Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.

I was asked to conduct an initial ‘triage’ review of Jisc online advice and guidance that I am responsible for. There isn’t a huge amount on the Jisc website, so didn’t take long.

Did some preparation for Investigative study of higher education delivery in Wales session I am attending next week.

Starting to realise how over the last few years (but not really over the last few months) how much stuff I would get and learn from what was the Twitter. I made the decision to disengage from the Twitter and though not gone so far to delete my account, I haven’t posted there since September, I haven’t really got the same engagement and traction with Bluesky and Threads. I also realised that by tweeting out links and news, I would have a mechanism for remembering these stories and websites. Currently I don’t think the answer is Threads or Bluesky, but it might be in the future. I think I will need to rethink my workflows for news and content. I have done this before when Google Reader stopped working.