Quite a busy week as a couple of people threw a lot of stuff into my in-tray. Writing this reminded of how when I first started working as a lecturer in Further Education, I had a pigeonhole for communicating. People would put stuff in there. A lot of the time the stuff was memos with a series of names on. Once read, you would cross out your name, replaced in the reuseable envelope and put the next person’s name on it. Of course usually there was one person who would never read the memos and their pigeonhole would be stuffed with stuff they hadn’t read.

Sometimes I think email is very much like that…

The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) will transform the post-18 student finance system to create a single funding system. I read this new overview of LLE from the UK Government. The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) will transform the post-18 student finance system to create a single funding system. It will replace higher education student finance loans and Advanced Learner Loans.

The LLE will deliver transformational change to the current student finance system by:

• broadening access to high-quality, flexible education and training
• supporting greater learner mobility between institutions

This has implications for student mobility across the UK as students will be able to move and transfer between institutions. Also students will be able to take a single module or part of a course. In addition the government are expecting new and smaller providers to deliver a range of level 4 and 5 programmes.

Of course the funding is only part of the picture if this is going to happen.

Had various meetings about Jisc’s presence at the Digital University UK (DUUK) Conference happening at the University of Lancaster. I might be going, but it does clash with another meeting I need to attend at the University of Warwick. Looked over Google Maps if travelling between them was even feasible.

Had an internal catch up meeting on digital leadership and sharing what I have been doing. I don’t do much with digital leadership these days, but with my work on collaboration there is potentially some work to do on leadership for collaboration.

Continued to work on the collaboration project we are doing with UUK. This work is looking at possible opportunities and narrowing them down to some realistic and potential opportunities.

I reviewed the work we have been doing for the Education in NREN work. We have been writing stories to explain the student journey. I also reviewed a potential submission for TNC in Brighton.

I am now attending Digifest on the 11th and 12th March. Come and say hi if you’re there. I have had to miss Digifest last year as I was attending another event which was on at the same time.

I also spent time this week responding to various requests to speak at events.