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weeknotes

Bon Voyage – Weeknote #317 – 28th March 2025

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This was a busy week with a lot of travelling across the UK (and then a little beyond as I took Friday as leave and travelled to France for the day).

I was in London at the start of the week, I spent Monday in our London office. It’s always nice to work in another of our offices.

On Tuesday morning I was at a breakfast briefing at the Houses of Parliament. I reminisced that I had been inside in the Houses of Parliament only twice before. Once back in the 1970s when my primary school was threatened by closure and a group of us, pupils, parents, and teachers went to discuss this in parliament. My second visit was in the early 2000s when I worked at at-Bristol (now called We The Curious) and we were meeting some parliamentarians. I actually drove to the Houses of Parliament through the building, and parked underneath.

This was a joint HEPI and Advance HE event entitled Survive or thrive: What should the new operating model be for UK higher education? The panel presented their views about the future, which were diverse and interesting. There followed a short discussion about the presented views.

The UUK Blueprint confirmed the higher education sector is committed to constantly improving its core purposes of teaching, research and civic engagement while also taking a lead on grappling with key global challenges, such as climate change, the spread of artificial intelligence and heightened geopolitical uncertainty. Is the core model of how we do higher education suitable for the unstable world in which we live? Or, if we want to retain the world-class standing of UK higher education, do we need alternative types of leadership, different structures and new approaches that learn from other sectors? And, at the same time, are we thinking enough about organisational design and workforce planning – how are we preparing structures and people for future models? How can institutional autonomy be balanced against the ever-growing list of expectations on leaders, academics and professional services staff?

Personally I came away reflecting that there was a lot of talk about the need for change, there was an appetite for change, but very little on who was going to change and what that change would look like.

Wednesday morning I was in Cambridge delivering a keynote at the HESCA 25 conference.

I was talking about collaboration and shared services.

Thursday I was in Milton Park in Oxfordshire for a team meeting.

Friday I was on leave, and I did something I hadn’t done since the 1980s a day trip to France. DFDS had done a special offer to celebrate 25 years of their Dover Dunkerque route, so a day trip was just £25. Bargain. Exhausting, but a bargain.

weeknotes

Breaking down the silos – Weeknote #302 – 13th December 2024

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I wrote a blog post, So does your institution have a silo mentality? I wrote it after reading this article on the WonkHE about higher education silos, Institutional silos are making it harder to build learning environments for student success.

Ask any higher education institution leader about the organisational challenges they’re grappling with, and they’ll start talking about silos.

Though talking about silos, the article is more about integrating digital into learning and teaching.

Though as anyone knows breaking down silos is hard. We often think of grain silos, metal cylinders that are close together, they should be easy to break, shouldn’t they? I always now think of higher education silos as missile silos, embedded into reinforced concrete and dispersed across a wide area.

Breaking down silo working, isn’t just about saying, we need to break down the silos but is so much more about thinking strategically about what your organisation is trying to achieve.

After working from home at the start of the week, I went off to London. I was attending the BLE 20th anniversary event at Senate House.

The Bloomsbury Learning Exchange (BLE) brings together expertise to share good practice and enable collaboration in digital education and technology enhanced learning projects. We are a partnership comprising six Higher Education Institutions in Bloomsbury, central London. Essentially, the BLE is the community, and the BLE Executive Team facilitates the exchange as well as offering specific services to the partner institutions.

They have grown over the years and expanded their collaboration. It is a really good example of collaboration that doesn’t mean you have to create complex pseudo-organisations to manage a shared service. The core of the BLE is the memorandum of understanding.

I ran a similar collaboration back in 2000, called the Western Colleges Consortium, where the FE colleges in Avon shared a VLE. There are lots of lessons from that experience and the BLE that higher education probably should take on board for future collaborations, especially in the learning technology space. One of the key lessons is about keeping it simple, constant adaptation and tinkering, may in the short term resolve problems, but it is harder to then collaborate whern faced with a future challenging scenario.

I have done quite a few things with the BLE over the last twenty years, including a few things while I have been at Jisc. It was nice to see and hear about their success.

At the event I had a couple of interesting conversations. One was with a manager, who spoke about the challenges in joining collaborative ventures, and needing more support from senior management. We know that collaboration often needs to come from the top, but there is also the need to delegate that downwards, to enable collaboration at different levels in the organisation as well.

In another conversation someone provided feedback on the report, which he stated he “had read thoroughly” and even quoted lines from the report. He said it was an excellent report and much needed. This was nice to hear.

Did some more work on the UUK project, did some stuff with the KPMG report next steps, and created a template for the position papers for the E in NREN activity.

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The E in NREN – Weeknote #299 – 22nd November 2024

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Fleet Street in London
Fleet Street in London

For the first time in an age I headed up to London for a meeting. I also did London in a day, which was a lot more exhausting than I remember it being. It was very cold, and though there was light snow on the way, I didn’t see the snow and disruption that others encountered.

The principal reason for heading to London was for an in-person discussion and workshop on planning some work around, what we are calling the Education in NREN. NREN stands for National Research and Education Network, in the UK that is Jisc, in the Netherlands it is SURF, whilst in Eire it is HEAnet. These are the national networks for educational providers. Though there are many similarities there are also marked differences between the various NRENs across Europe (and the rest of the world).

It was nice to work in the London office for a change. It’s never our busiest office, and that was even the case prior to the pandemic, but you do see and meet people there.

I had planned to head to the Bristol office on Wednesday, but when I tried to book a meeting room for my two online meetings, there were none available. Over the last year the Bristol office has got much busier, so meeting rooms get booked up very quickly. Part of this, is that not only do we still have a pattern of hybrid working, which means a lot more online meetings. The fact we are hybrid has also meant that are patterns of recruitment are less dependent geographically, which exacerbates the number of online meetings and calls that people are having. All this means that the number of calls in the office is higher than it was before the pandemic and there is increased demand on rooms for people to have online meetings in.

As well as the in-person meeting on the E in NREN, I had a fair number of meetings across the week, as I start to do more work in this area.

I am still continuing to work on the optimisation of operations and data following the publication fo the KPMG report I had been working on. I had a meeting about some collaboration with another agency on some next steps on some collaboration proposals.

In addition I wrote up some thoughts on next steps with KPMG report.

Across the sector there has been discussion about talk about the OfS report from last week. For example from WonkHE.

Last week’s update from the Office for Students (OfS) on the state of institutional finances for the HE sector in England brought any lingering sense of cheer from the recent announcement on the indexation of undergraduate fees to an abrupt halt. Based on the latest data available on student entry this autumn, OfS confirms that its warning in May that the sector’s recruitment forecasts had a degree of “optimism bias” has proved true.

It now appears the question of what will happen if a higher education institution fails, is less about if and more about when. The OfS requires all providers to have in place a student protection plan, to ensure a continuity of studying for students of a failing institution. The objective of these plans is to protect the students, however not the staff or the institution as a whole.

I do think that over the next year or so, we will see struggling universities merging and collaborating more closely, rather than waiting to fail. Though the independence mentality of the institution may mean that rather than merge, an institution will just keep cutting costs.

We live in interesting times.

weeknotes

When it’s three o’clock in New York, it’s still 1938 in London – Weeknote #274 – 31st May 2024

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Shorter week this week with the Bank Holiday. Decided to work in our London office this week and do some more field research into the Intelligent Campus.

Wrote a blog post on attendance after reading a Guardian article on the subject.

It would appear that the remote teaching during covid is continuing to have an impact on attendance at in-person teaching. Alongside the cost of living crisis, rising costs, the need to work, and interestingly a perception by students that attendance at in-person sessions was unlikely to benefit their learning and their grades.

I had to answer some clarification questions in relation to Invitation to tender we have out.

Undertook some preparation for Senior Education and Student Experience group meeting. I am probably going to repeat the session we did in March.

Continued with some leadership training I am doing.

Have been creating and writing out IC monthly newsletter for June.

Listened to the THE Podcast, specifically the interview with Mark Thompson, professor of digital economy at the University of Exeter.

In this interview, conducted at the Digital Universities UK event at Exeter, Thompson shares his concern that the sector is drifting away from its true north of research, teaching and impact (he uses Jeff Bezos’ idea of “day one”), citing statistics that less than 40 per cent of university staff are academics. He suggests reasons for this and talks about the need for leadership at institutional and government level and the prisoner’s dilemma of whole-sector transformation.

It was an interesting interview, and there is a related article.

UK universities should rip up a lot of their “back-end nonsense”, tackle managerial bloat and stop shelling out for different versions of the same technology to allow them to return to their core missions and heavily invest in academic jobs, according to an influential professor who has helped to pioneer a new approach to digital infrastructure in the public sector.

This echoes much of my work in this space. I am not sure the sector could achieve the 20% saving, but I do think there is room for savings.

ucisa22, ucisa23, ucisa24, weeknotes

It’s a secret – Weeknote #263 – 15th March 2024

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I was away for the whole week, travelling to London and Edinburgh. On Monday I headed up to London and went to the Fetter Lane office for some meetings.

Tuesday I was off to WONKHE’s Secret Life of the Student Event. This is the third time I have attended the event. This is very much an event, more so a conference, and WONKHE certainly know how to create an engaging show. There was lots of interesting presentations, one feature of the event I liked was how they added a student voice for five minutes in between sessions.

This isn’t the most interactive conference I’ve attended, no workshop sessions, and usually very limited time for questions. However, I still thought it was an excellent conference. Others do as well, as even by the final session, most people are still there. It’s very popular as well, as they were packed out.

After the end of this conference, it was a walk over to Kings Cross (walking next to St Pancras) for a train to Edinburgh. I was quite impressed with the speed of the train, taking just four hours and twenty minutes from platform to platform.

I was up in Edinburgh for the UCISA Leadership Conference. Like the Secret Life this is my third time I have attended. The first conference was in Manchester. I said back then.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I kind of expected that this would be a highly technical conference, about how technology can deliver transformation and I can say that what I experienced was not what I was expecting.

Last year in Liverpool, I thought it was a good conference, I wrote back then.

I did enjoy the conference, not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the previous year, but it was still an excellent conference.

This year, I did enjoy the conference, however I didn’t feel it was as good and as useful as the conferences in Manchester and Liverpool. At the previous conferences I felt there was a good focus on leadership and strategy. This year in Edinburgh, I felt the focus had moved to the technology, notably AI.

Now I realise that I am not the target market for this conference, and they may have been responding to feedback from their core market. I may attend next year, but then again, I might not.

I flew home from Edinburgh.

This week I also had a preliminary planning meeting for Smart Campus workshop I am running in the next month or so.

weeknotes

The lines were closed – Weeknote #256 – 26th January 2024

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Monday I was working from home. I did some preparation for the week ahead, researching strategically the current state of higher education and the future challenges they may be facing.

I had an away day in London (and some other meetings). I decided to take the train, which I knew would be challenging as the lines were closed between Weston and Bristol all week due to engineering work. The plan was to take the train to Taunton and then take the train there to London.

Upon arriving at my local station I checked the National Rail app to see that my train was “delayed” and no indication when it would be arriving. It then magically appeared, so I got on the train and it headed down to Taunton. Had a bit of a wait at Taunton, so went to Starbucks for a coffee. I ordered a flat white.

Train arrived and I boarded. Then there was an announcement about ticket validity. Well, that was annoying. My super off peak ticket was not valid on the 09:43 from Taunton. Now needed to wait for the next train.  At least I managed to get off on time. I waited on the platform for the next train. This was a slower five carriage train, which stopped at many more stations. The previous train would have stopped at Reading and then Paddington only. This one was stopping at a lot more stations. In the end my journey was over five hours long.

Managed to arrive at our offices in Fetter Lane in time for my afternoon meeting. Had a really good discussion on the area of work I am looking at on optimising operations and data.

The following day we had an away day with various items on the agenda.

I spent Thursday, in the main, travelling home, again taking about five hours from London to Weston.

I have been invited to attend or speak at various events about the university (smart) campus.

weeknotes

Merry Christmas – Weeknote #251 – 22nd December 2023

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I was travelling at the beginning of the week, spending time in London, Oxford and Cambridge.

It was a quieter week, what with the end of term for many in higher education, and many people in Jisc taking leave.

We had our Jisc Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting on Monday and worked on how the group will work moving forward, ensuring alignment with the similar research focussed group.

I had confirmation of my speaking slot at EDUtech Europe 2024, which takes place in October in Amsterdam.

Panel – The place where pedagogy meets technology: designing innovative learning spaces

  • Aligning physical and virtual spaces and technology with pedagogical approaches and teaching methods
  • Creating flexible spaces that accommodate diverse learning styles
  • The role of mobile devices and BYOD policies in shaping learning spaces

Undertook some more field work and research about campus and space.

Had an excellent meeting at UAL’s King Cross campus, including a short tour of their facilities.

conference, twitter, weeknotes

What Was Wonkfest – Weeknote #245 – 10th November 2023

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I was mainly in London this week trying to avoid the rain.

I was attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education, this is the conference previously known as WonkFest. The name change was more about the challenge in delegates getting funding to come to the event… so you want to go to a conference, that should be fine, what’s it called. Seriously?

It was a rather good conference, some really good sessions, too much choice sometimes. Only downside was, one of the rooms for the parallel sessions, was too small, so as a result lots of people who wanted to attend the session were turned away (including me).

I enjoyed the session, “in conversation with David Aaronovitch“ I did have a question about the Remembrance of the Daleks… but a quick check of Wikipedia and I realise that Ben Aaronovitch wrote the Daleks and is David’s brother… So won’t be asking that question then!

I did a few sketch notes.

What do the UK’s places want from their universities?

How do you solve a problem like HE regulation?

What might the future of education technology hold?

Not as many as I might do at other conferences, as the format of some of the sessions, didn’t lend themselves to sketching.

There was a couple of good blog posts on the WonkHE website about the event.

I had to spend some time reviewing and collating materials, and writing briefing note and bullet points for a panel session at HEAnet on Navigating the Challenges and Opportunities of the Modern Campus. As the considered expert on the intelligent campus, I often get asked to provide a perspective on the future of the university campus.

It is the intelligent campus that I will be speaking about, next week at Learning Places Scotland 2023 in Glasgow. 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 had to plan in a call to discuss the presentation.

video recording
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

On Monday before heading off to London, I had a great discussion with colleagues in the office about broadcast and recording capabilities within our Bristol office. The reality is that though I would love to have a proper TV studio in the office I really need to plan and deliver some initial content first, to provide some foundations to a proof of concept.

There was a discussion on the possible future of the office, as in redesigning the space to reflect the current (hybrid) working practices. So more collaborative spaces, more occasional spaces, more spaces for online conversations and meetings, and so on…

Continued doing more work on the planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data.

I had a great meeting with Josie Fraser discussing digital skills and digitisation.

We had some great old person digital transformation reminiscing.

Had a pre-meeting for Jisc OfS meeting next week. As a result I have some preparation to do.

I did miss using the Twitter at the conference this week, though I did post to Bluesky and Threads, it wasn’t quite the same, and very little engagement. I did look at the Twitter and there were some posts, so I do think even if I had engaged, there wouldn’t have been a serious amount of traction and discussion.

conference, jisc, learning technologies

What might the future of education technology hold?

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Senate House

I am attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education 2023 at Senate House in London.

Originally called WonkFest I have attended the conference before, and it’s a great event to learn about higher education policy and the impact on the university sector.

I attended the session titled: What might the future of education technology hold?

a view of the stage

Beyond the hype, and the sales pitch, beyond digital transformation and digital natives – this session will explore how technology is likely to shape higher education provison in the years ahead, what changes universities can realistically expect to learning and teaching, and how they might work with technology providers to get ahead of the curve.

Despite the abstract this was alas something of a sales pitch. As well as the advertised PVC, Claire Pike, Mark Simpson, the PVC from Teesside was also on the stage. However in a thirty minute session, over twenty minutes was devoted to telling us how “wonderful” one specific product was. I think this was a missed opportunity. Yes, I know you sponsored the conference, do provide an insight into the product, but that would have been much more authentic and valuable if it had come one of the PVCs.

I also felt thirty minutes was quite short for the session, so there wasn’t time for question or further discussion.

Jisc did get a mention for their report on student perceptions of generative AI.

This report looks at how students are currently using generative AI and explores its potential impact on their learning experience.

Even so I did do a sketchnote.