Tag Archives: senior education and student experience group

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Vision Pro announced – Weeknote #223 – 9th June 2023

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Somerset Levels

A full week back working after a week off. I nearly wrote a full week back in the office, but these days I rarely am physically in the office for the whole week.

Of course, the first day back was spent dealing with the bundle of email in my inbox. Though I use this approach to deal with my email, I also plan my work and communication, so that when I do get back from leave there is generally nothing urgent or critical to deal with. However, I did have one critical thing to do which was contribute a board report. As I have a range of smart objectives, use of JIRA, and these weeknotes, it was relatively simple to put a report together.

My submission for ALT-C this autumn was accepted. This is the first time since 2017 that I have presented at the conference. I didn’t submit a session in 2018, I didn’t attend in 2019, the conference was cancelled in 2020, it was online in 2021, I did attend in 2022. At this point the only thing I will say is that the session is not about dead VLEs.

Apple Vision Pro

I was totally impressed with Apple’s new Vision Pro, and totally disappointed that it will be US only in the first instance!

The more I hear and read about the Vision Pro, the more I am intrigued and impressed. Will it be a game changer? Don’t know, but I do see it more as a (remote) individual technology compared to say a class set of iPads.

I’ve blogged about AR quite a bit over the years, this post was 13 years ago in 2010. What I think Apple’s Vision Pro will do (in the future when it is cheaper) is make this a more engaging AR interaction. The key, will it be *better* than a flat screen?

Agreed with this comment from Alex Lindsay on the Twitter about the WWDC keynote.

The event video was so great… I can’t go back to watching stage events. The era of the “Keynote” has less than 3 years left before it’s gone everywhere.

Freeform

Discovered Freeform for the Mac and the iPad. It looks like a great planning tool, I did wonder if it would be useful for sketch notes, it could be, but it is missing many of the functions that I use in Paper by WeTransfer.

Spent time organising the final Senior Education and Student Experience Group meeting for this year, which takes place next week.  Originally planned to be in Scotland, it will not be happening online.

Library

Did some work organising and planning Intelligent Library community event for the 21st June, which is now pretty much full, which is nice.

Got some feedback from the Intelligent Campus Community Event I ran a couple of weeks back. There was 100% satisfaction with over 66% very satisfied.

Small group forum worked well, good space for interactions, right duration.

Had an excellent meeting with a University about their current work in the smart and intelligent campus space. It was really refreshing to see an institution actually delivering on the theoretical and vision concepts we imagined in this space five years ago.

I take way too many photographs like this….

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Punting on the river – Weeknote #216 – 21st April 2023

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Having spent most of last week, I spent time on Monday clearing my inbox. I realised that my email address is on lots of mailing lists, and I did some unsubscriptions or added rules to my inbox.

Had a meeting with SURF discussing the smart and intelligent campus space. They are working in this space, and we have agreed to continue to discuss and share what we are doing. SURF are the NREN for the Netherlands. They had seen the guide we published.

Attended HEAnet Group Advisory Forum meeting. Their new strategy has many similarities to Jisc’s (new) strategy. Useful insightful meeting with Irish universities (and colleges) facing many of the issues that the UK is facing.

Spent some of the week in Cambridge at the LILAC 23 Conference.

No I didn’t go punting.

I was last at LILAC delivering a keynote on digital capability when it was in Dublin in 2016. This did make me think why I hadn’t been since then. Part of it was in 2017 and 2018 I had moved away from digital capabilities into the intelligent campus landscape, and the apprenticeship space. Delving into the LILAC community wasn’t a priority in those areas. In March 2019 I got a new role, part of which was looking at the HE sector. Of course the following March we went into lockdown, LILAC 2020 was cancelled. LILAC 2021 was online. I was on leave when LILAC 2022 was happening in Manchester. So when I was looking at events and conferences to attend in 2023, LILAC was on my list. I did manage to find the time to attend.

LILAC 23 was an excellent conference, and really useful to see the library and information professional services view and perspective. AI was certainly the elephant in the room.

Sketchnote

Posted some sketch notes of various sessions.

Information Literacy and podcasting: teaching and learning through conversation

Accessibility – what does it mean for libraries and education?

Discussed the publication process for the forthcoming Guide to the Intelligent Library.

Continued the planning for the Intelligent Campus Community Event.

Continued research into AI specifically AI imaging and voices.

On Friday I was in London for the third of the Senior Education and Student Experience Group meetings, this was a meeting to accommodate those who had been unable to make the previous Monday meetings. We had an expected lower turnout, but still had some excellent, useful, and interesting conversations.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Personalising – Weeknote #214 – 7th April 2023

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Shorter week this week due to the Easter holiday.

Attended the Wonkhe and Adobe Education Espresso online event – Curriculum for the whole person. There was an excellent presentation from Hull University.

I spent most of the week in London working in our London office.

Wrote up notes for internal and external use on the Senior Education and Student Experience Group meeting. I also updated CRM for those that attended the Senior Education and Student Experience Group meeting. Spent time planning logistics and informing for (next) Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting on 21st April.

lecture theatre
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

Had a meeting on a possible Learning Spaces session for Connect More. In the end I recognised what I wanted from the session and how I would like to run it, wasn’t aligned. So, I dropped myself from the session. From a strategic perspective, I want a learning spaces session at Connect More, this doesn’t mean I need to deliver such a session.

Planning a meeting with SURF sharing notes on the concepts of the Smart Campus and the Intelligent Campus.

Went down to Portsmouth, to look at a city campus. I am planning some reports on the smart city, civic university, belonging. I wanted some inspiration for a place I had not visited before.

Spent time planning and inviting colleagues to some internal personalisation workshops. This will be followed by some external workshops.  We are doing this as part of a strategic target that we will undertake and publish research into the concept of personalised learning and what it could mean for higher education.

I was supporting our events team with invitations for people to present at Connect More.

Thursday, we had our monthly sector strategy leads meeting.

Had to spend some time planning travel and accommodation for April and May. I am off to LILAC 23, UCISA’s Spotlight 23, as well as some internal training in London.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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A Hard Day’s Night – Weeknote #212 – 24th March 2023

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Royal Albert Dock

Monday I was in London at the Jisc offices in Fetter Lane. We had our Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting with 12 PVCs (including a VC and DVCs). As you might expect ChatGPT and AI was a hot topic of conversation in the meeting.

After the meeting I was heading up to London for the UCISA Leadership Conference in Liverpool.

I did some sketch notes while I was up there.

I did enjoy the conference, not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the previous year, but it was still an excellent conference. Various sessions got me thinking, and I am contemplating writing some of my thoughts up from the conference.

The equality, diversity, and inclusion sessions were interesting and useful. Why don’t universities try and be more flexible in their recruitment practices, for example how many offer term time only contracts (reduced hours) to attract working parents. Family friendly policies can widen the talent pool. Why are so many jobs 37.5 hrs 52 weeks? Also why is it so often that recruitment for an individual, rather than recruiting for the team. A more diverse team is often more effective.

Was a little disappointed that one of the opening sessions talked about digital natives. They don’t exist, never have.

Wondered if any university was looking at implementing a four day week?

This BBC news article reflects on the experiences of those involved in a four day week trial.

The scheme, organised by 4 Day Week Global, took place between June and December 2022, and involved organisations across the UK, including some non-profit organisations, as well as private firms in recruitment, software, and manufacturing. A report assessing its impact has found it had “extensive benefits” particularly for employees’ well-being.

I spent time reviewing the Connect More 2023 themes and topics with others across Jisc.

Started reflecting on possible ideas for ALT-C 2023 now that the call for papers is out. In 2021 I did a blog post about the digital lens, based on earlier work, so looking at possibly revisiting this.

Continued my researching AI in education. Have had early access to Bard, which looks very good.

Saw this on the Twitter – Fake Trump arrest photos trigger a new AI panic. The quality of AI images is getting better and better, and as you might expect, the images they are creating can be problematic.

Spent time writing and reviewing some ideas for next year, including looking at the rumoured Apple Reality Pro.

Final comment, often we know where we are, and where we want to be. The harder job is working out how to get there. What do we need to do to make it happen. How do we get there?

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Secret life – Weeknote #211 – 17th March 2023

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I was on leave for part of this week.

I attended The Secret Life of Students last year and enjoyed the conference, so made a point this year of booking a place.

This year the focus of the conference was on belonging.

I made some sketch notes from many of the sessions.

I did some more planning for Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting on the 20th March.

I spent time reviewing and having discussions on the Connect More themes.

campus
Image by 小亭 江 from Pixabay

I did some planning , working on ideas for the  Intelligent Campus community event which is taking place on the 24th May 2023. Bookings are now open.

This community of practice gives people a chance to network, share practice and hear what various institutions are doing. You will have the opportunity to discover more about intelligent campus projects and our work in this space. The focus of this community event will be where do we go next? You can read the new guide to the intelligent campus and reflect on your own journey in this space, and where you feel we can provide help and support. This will be an opportunity to discover more about the history of our past and current work in the intelligent campus space as well as hear from others about their work on this exciting topic.

I did some reflecting and reviewing potential priorities for next year, as well as some budgetary planning to support it. Much of what I am planning to do, builds on the work I have done this year and am doing this year.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Back to Birmingham – Weeknote #210 – 10th March 2023

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Monday I was spending time planning and working on the  Intelligent Campus community event for the 24th May 2023 and the Intelligent Library community event for the 21st June 2023. I also did some more planning for Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meetings on the 20th March and 21st April, including producing slides for the meeting I am planning some internal and external personalisation events.

The government got slammed on the Twitter for talking about innovation, through the use of a QR code and some weirdly animated AR text.


I published this in 2011 which was a little while ago, though for some I guess it only feels like yesterday… Ten ways to use QR Codes.

Sorry, this is not a blog post on ten ways to use QR Codes, but it is a blog post about what you actually can do with QR Codes. Once you know what you can do with QR Codes then you can build learning activities round those functions.

Still one of my favourite bizarre uses of a QR code.

Remember holding your phone whilst driving is illegal.

In the middle of the week, I was in Birmingham this week for Jisc’s Digifest conference.

I did a few sketch notes of some of the presentations.

I undertook a fireside chat with Dom Pates on the Intelligent Campus, early indications were forty plus people attended the session. It was also recorded. In case you were wondering where the slides are, well we didn’t use slides, we literally had a chat, with a video of a fireplace on my iPad.

It also coincided with the launch of the revised guide to the intelligent campus.

Many colleges and universities are working on ways to improve their students’ experience, business efficiencies and environmental performance by better utilising data. This data can be directly related to learning and part of the overall campus experience.

I was intrigued and enjoyed this article, Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed on The Register.

“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

In the article, Alexander Hanff, a computer scientist and leading privacy technologist who helped develop Europe’s GDPR and ePrivacy rules, talks about how ChatGPT killed him off and even tried to fabricate URLs to a fake obituary. A scary thought on how relying on AI could result in you trying to prove to people that you’re alive, though the AI says you’re dead!

Though there is an upside to ChatGPT, Essay mills ‘under threat from rise of ChatGPT’.

The emergence of chatbots and other writing tools powered by artificial intelligence may pose a far greater threat to the future of essay mills than legislation has proved to be, experts said. There are early signs that firms which specialise in selling assignments are already having to shift their business models in the face of more students using the likes of ChatGPT to generate answers of a similar or better quality to what they may have been tempted to buy previously.

At the end of the week I was doing some logistics for future travel and events.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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London’s Calling – Weeknote #209 – 3rd March 2023

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I spent some time in London this week. I hadn’t been to our London offices for a while and with plenty of events in my diary for the next few weeks, I wouldn’t otherwise be getting there in a while.

I am planning a range of meetings, workshops, and events over the next few months. I am also attending a few events and conferences as well. Throw in some training days and away days, it wasn’t long before something went wrong. There is one week now where I need to be at three different things, in three different places, with three different organisations. Yup, I need to think again.

Had a meeting with Dom Pates about our fireside chat next week at Digifest.

The revised guide to the intelligent campus was published on the Jisc website.

Wrote What is the intelligent campus blog post for web team.

campus
Image by 小亭 江 from Pixabay

Getting ahead of myself I spent time producing slides for Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting happening later in March. I also designed and developed a brown paper workshop for the same meeting.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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End of term – Weeknote #198 – 16th December 2022

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This was my last working week of the year.

So though I had snow and cold weather in Berlin two weeks ago, it was even colder than that this week in the UK. In the South West we didn’t hit really cold temperatures, though I did experience -6°C one morning this week.

The week started with a Senior Education and Student Experience Group meeting. Originally planned to take place in London, due to a range of unforeseen circumstances we moved the meeting online. It was really useful and interesting to hear about the challenges various universities across the UK are facing.

Some key headlines from the group were (and there are no real surprises here)

  • Personalisation
  • Learning Spaces
  • Assessment and feedback
  • Wellbeing analytics
  • Learning analytics
  • Curriculum analytics
  • Influencing government and regulators on blended learning
  • Importance of support for campus (intelligent campus)
  • Reviewing the curriculum
  • Culture change
  • Digital learning environment review

One thing they did want to see more of, which crossed all those areas was research based evidence to support any advice, guidance, products across those areas.

I asked ChatGTP, an artifical intelligence tool,  what is personalisation of learning was and this was the response. I think tools like this have their place and their uses, but as with any tool understanding what its potential is, is important in knowing how you can use it, and how others might use it.

Disappointed and rather saddened to see the way Twitter is going. Despite that, and though I didn’t plan to, I quite enjoyed the #LTHEChat this week. It was run by an old friend of mine Lilian Soon, and was on accessibility.

One topic which did generate discussion was that of document styles.

I really struggle with getting people to use styles and templates effectively. Most don’t see the point and actually prefer to bold and underline headings throughout their documents and presentations. This is fine for them, but as soon as you need to collaborate on a document, you find that you need to work hard to retain styles and consistent formatting through a document. It’s a similar thing with templates. In theory if you use styles and you change the formatting of the style, then all the instances of the style will be updated. Where people use formatting tools on the actual text, this then doesn’t happen.

Why are styles important, well they are critical for screen readers in navigating documents, but also if a student (or a member of staff) wants to change a document, then styles makes it really easy.

So why don’t people use styles and templates, I don’t know. Maybe it is too hard. I don’t think this is just a training issue.

Also it is not just styles, some people don’t do section breaks instead do lots of hard returns.

Typewriter
Image by Patrik Houštecký from Pixabay

In many of my presentations in the past I have talked about laptop bans, and then ask can I bring a typewriter?

It always gets a few laughs.

So you should not be surprised I laughed at this.

My top tweet this week was this one.

movingtarget2022, weeknotes

Who turned out the lights? – Weeknote #188 – 7th October 2022

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Last week I was in London (oh and a bit of Bristol). This week I worked from home at the beginning of the week and spent the end of the week working in our Bristol office. I think this was the first time in ages that I had actually spent three days in a row working out of the office. Well it was warm.

I spent some time this week organising and planning the Jisc Senior Education and Student Experience Group. This meant organising attendance at meetings, expanding the group, responding to queries, booking rooms and locations. Also rejigging and renaming the Jiscmail list for the group.

I am organising a cross-Jisc conversation to discuss and join up activity across Jisc in the intelligent and smart campus space. We have quite a few projects and ideas in this area.

campus
Image by 小亭 江 from Pixabay

The news is full of stories on the possibility of winter blackouts as the energy crisis continues to hit home. With the continuing prospect of restrictions in gas supplies across Europe, there is a strong chance with a extreme cold spell in the UK that there will be power rationing. This means that some parts of the UK will be dark. Students will face learning without light, power, heat or connectivity. How can you deliver high quality online learning without power or connectivity? So I wrote a blog post exploring this.

Also this from the Guardian: How would three-hour power cuts work if enacted in Great Britain?

People in England, Scotland and Wales are braced for the possibility of rolling power cuts this winter after a warning on Thursday from National Grid. The electricity and gas system operator has said households could face a series of three-hour power cuts…

So I wrote up a follow-up post.

stove espresso maker
Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay

Wonkhe was reporting on the cost of living crisis.

The cost of living crisis will be worse than the impact of the pandemic for some students, a Welsh university Vice Chancellor has warned. Ben Calvert, vice chancellor at the University of South Wales, made the comment as he gave evidence at the opening of a Senedd committee inquiry into mental health in higher education. Calvert told the committee: “I actually think for some of our students that will be harder, particularly where we have got populations of students who are older.”

These concerns have been expressed by many universities at meetings I have attended. What could universities do, and what should universities do?

We potentially could see shifts in attendance patterns on campus by students, as they take advantage of the warm rooms and opportunities to charge devices away from their rented student homes.

This was an interesting read on Eighteen pitfalls to beware of in AI journalism.

We noticed that many articles tend to mislead in similar ways, so we analyzed over 50 articles about AI from major publications, from which we compiled 18 recurring pitfalls. We hope that being familiar with these will help you detect hype whenever you see it. We also hope this compilation of pitfalls will help journalists avoid them.

The first example was this analysis of an article on an AI EdTech product, The Machines Are Learning, and So Are the Students.

It features comments such as this one:

This sentence implies that AI is autonomously grading and optimizing coursework. However, it is only being used to assist teachers in a small part of grading: identifying the answer that a student wrote and checking if it matches the answer provided by the teacher.

I think that the article and analysis is not just useful for journalists, but anyone looking at AI in education (and beyond).

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I have been thinking about the keynote I am delivering for Moving Target 2022 in Berlin in November. Planning a short video for the conference organisers social media for next week as well.

My top tweet this week was this one.