Tag Archives: leeds business school

Play Away – Weeknote #269 – 26th April 2024

The beginning of the week was our directorate away day in Bristol, well it was a lunchtime to lunchtime away day. Always nice to get together the directorate in-person and discuss key issues and challenges. I delivered a presentation, which for me has a fair few words on it about my work on optimising operations and data.

Read this article, ‘Give academics studios’ to record lectures that engage students

Blended learning will not truly take off until lecturers have access to recording studios and video editing services that will allow them to create high-quality online lectures, an e-learning expert has warned.

A colleague of mine noted that lecture capture became embedded in many institutions during the pandemic, and asked the question, has the level of use sustained?

video recording
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

I was reminded that I wrote these posts at the height of the pandemic in May 2020.

Lost in translation: the television programme

Lost in translation: the radio programme

I also remember a year or so back that Durham University have put in self-service TV studios for staff. I did think that the technology was only part of the solution, what about the creative, production, and presentation skills, that would be needed. Recording high quality video content, is significantly different to capturing a lecture.

Also Leeds Business School had done something similar pre-pandemic

They were using some clever glass technology that made their content more engaging.

As it happened, I wrote this earlier this month, The idea of capturing a lecture…

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 read the HEPI policy note, ‘Dropouts or stopouts or comebackers or potential completers?’: Non-continuation of students in the UK.

…the UK has had the lowest drop-out rate among developed countries, with Ireland in second place; the UK’s strong performance arises in part from the historic levels of academic selection at the point of entry to higher education as well as the relatively short length of undergraduate degrees, which provides less scope for life events to intervene and disrupt study;

I did wonder though, if this was the main reason. Across Europe, many young people who go to university go to their local university, they’re not moving away from a family home for the university experience. Once studying maybe family issues disrupt study, or employment opportunities come around.

However the report concludes:

‘The UK’s problem is not high drop-out rates across the entire higher education sector. It is the relatively low attendance rate in the compulsory stage of education since the pandemic lessened, insufficient support for sub-degree provision, high drop-out rates among a minority of institutions, courses and students (including degree apprenticeships) and people being unable to make the most of their student experience because they have not got enough money and have to undertake a high number of hours of paid work – even during term time when their studies should be their main priority.’

They recognise how jobs and paid work are not intruding on that student experience, will the drop-out rates start to increase?

Could we build a treehouse?

Image by Th G from Pixabay
Image by Th G from Pixabay

I have written before about informal learning, and how that once you start designing informal learning it becomes formalised. What you can do is create spaces, as well as provide technology, that can encourage informal learning.

A simple example of this is providing ubiquitous Wi-Fi across the campus, especially in social and communal areas.

What would you design in your informal learning spaces if money no object?

This was the brief we had in a workshop at the Leeds Business School at the recent ALT Learning Spaces SIG in January.

So the brief was to think about how an existing space could be refurbished into an informal learning space. There were three scenarios, a very limited budgetary option, a classic budgetary scenario and ours, which was “budget, what budget!”

We were split into groups, two groups had a (realistic) limited budget to work with, another group a bigger budget and our group… well our group had an unlimited budget. We could go to town.

There is still something useful about this kind of scenario, even though it isn’t realistic, as with any blue skies thinking, you can start with unrealistic and unattainable outcome, but bringing that back down to reality, means that some things will remain.

The space we were working with was a real space, and is in the West Park Teaching Hub at Loughborough University. This is a round space, currently divided into two semi-circle teaching spaces. The space wasn’t working as planned, in the main due to noise leaking between the spaces.

The space was circular and I immediately thought lets go right out there and think about doing something very different, so I threw into the initial discussion the idea of either building a fairground carousel, my thinking was of the double decker ones you see in Germany and France.

My other idea, which the group liked more, was let’s build a treehouse in the space.

The seminar room we were in had interactive whiteboards for each group, so I got to work to “sketch” a treehouse concept for the space.

The key concept was to bring in nature into the space, both in terms of the tree, but also real foliage and natural light.

The other aspect was to design the space to create various different ways in which the space could be used for informal learning, both for individuals and for groups.

One thing I have done in spaces I was managed (some years ago) was designing the space to allow for quick (or light) informal learning and spaces for longer deeper informal learning. I took my cue from coffee shops, where though they basically sell coffee, there are different coffee drinking scenarios. There are those people who want to pop in, sit down, have a quick coffee and then go. Similarly there are two people, who want a break from shopping, so want to chat and have a coffee. Then there are the people who want a longer coffee drinking experience (maybe they are going to have cake or a sandwich). They will spend much longer in the coffee shop, they may even have a second coffee. Sometimes a group will come in to discuss and chat over coffee. Then there are those looking for a place to use their laptop.

In a lot of coffee shops, you will see they design the space to meet these differing needs. Near the entrance are usually tables and chairs and occasional soft seating. As you venture deeper into the coffee shop, you will find sofas and more comfortable seating, but also larger tables and chairs (for groups).

So back to the learning space design, we wanted to do something similar. We wanted a range of furniture that would allow for multiple and varied informal learning scenarios. Places where a learner could sit down and check something on their laptop. Tables that would allow a couple of learners to grab a coffee and chat about their most recent lecture. Furniture for longer and deeper informal learning scenarios, working on an essay or a group project.

We felt that lighting was important and would both encourage and discourage informal learning. Everyone felt coffee (and snacks) was important, but were aware of the noise issues that this could cause. Acoustical planning would be undertaken to create quiet spaces and ensure noisy spaces could be contained and the sound absorbed by the furniture and plants.

Technology would be embedded and integrated into the treehouse. There would be ubiquitous Wi-FI, well would you expect anything less. There would be places to charge devices. Screens would be available for small group work, as well as traditional whiteboards and other areas to write on.

Image by Duddesack from Pixabay

We also thought a big screen surrounding the tree could be used to change the mood of the space, as well as for information.

It was a fun task and we enjoyed working together. It certainly wasn’t a realistic option, but some of the concepts and ideas could certainly be utilised in a real budgetary envelope when designing a space for informal learning.

What’s a lightboard? – Weeknote #28 – 13th September 2019

The Old Bailey

So it was off to London on Monday for a couple of meetings. The weather on Sunday had been lovely, Monday it was raining.

I don’t think I would like to commute to London on a regular basis, as in every day, but don’t mind the fact that I am there three to five times a month in my role. I nearly said new role, I have been doing this job now for just over six months (Weeknote #28 is a bit of a giveaway), when does a new role, become just my role? Other parts of the country differ in their accessibility with public transport, so sometimes I drive.

The failings of the CIA over 9/11 have been well documented, though on Tuesday morning I did read the following BBC viewpoint article – Viewpoint: The CIA, 9/11 and collective blindness

These two quotes are what I really took from the article.

We are unconsciously drawn to people who think like ourselves, but rarely notice the danger because we are unaware of our own blind spots.

This applies to groups as well as organisations. We employ people that are like ourselves rather than think about the whole. You can measure diversity within an organisation, but that only tells you what you already know that your organisation isn’t diverse. Sometimes your organisation needs to be more diverse than the population, but how do you know that?

You may feel you have fair employment recruitment practices, but who decides what is “fair”, sometimes you will want to recruit people that wouldn’t be recruited if you were to be fair.

I am also reminded of unconscious bias, and the fact that this is easier to say then sometimes to actually do something about. This was echoed in the second quote from the article.

There is a science to putting together the right minds, with perspectives that challenge, augment, diverge and cross-pollinate rather than parrot, corroborate and restrict. This is how wholes become more than the sum of their parts.

There isn’t an easy solution to this, you could think outside the box and put together teams that are not like ourselves, but that is not as easy as it sounds. The rewards though, as the article says mean wholes become more than the sum of their parts.

Rochdale Canal in Manchester
Rochdale Canal in Manchester

Wednesday I caught the train to Manchester, to attend an internal product meeting where I was presenting on the drivers within the draft Jisc HE strategy.

It was quite along train journey there and back in a day, and though I did manage to get a fair bit of work done, the lack of connectivity did annoy me as it has before.

Rochdale Canal in Manchester
Rochdale Canal in Manchester

I wrote a blog post on making digital a choice,  in response to a BBC news article about a branch of Sainsbury’s in Holborn in London where the only choice to pay was via an app.

Digital should be a choice…

University of Leeds - Leeds Business School
Leeds Business School

Friday I was in Leeds to deliver a keynote on Education 4.0 for the Leeds Business School, I had travelled up the day before.

Leeds Business School Active Learning Studio
Leeds Business School Active Learning Studio

I showed a presentation, which is all photos. In the presentation I talked about who is Jisc, what do we mean by the Education 4.0 and some of the challenges we face in moving down the road to Education 4.0.

I also showed the Jisc Education 4.0 video we showed at UUK last year and at Digifest.

https://youtu.be/aVWHp8FsV1w

Frances Noble from the University of Leeds did a fantastic sketch note of my talk.

Education 4.0 Sketchnote

I attended a couple of sessions following my keynote including a demonstration of ClassVR.

ClassVR demonstration

I was also shown a piece of technology I had never heard of or seen in action.

The Lightboard (a.k.a. learning glass) is a glass chalkboard pumped full of light. It’s for recording video lecture topics.

My top tweet this week was this one.