Tag Archives: upp foundation

Setting a vision – Weeknote #262 – 8th March 2024

I was working in the Bristol office for a few days this week and a couple of days working from home.

Spent some time preparing for next week, when I will be in London, Edinburgh and then early the following week I will be in Loughborough. Will be spending a fair amount of time travelling and staying in hotels as a result.

I wrote a blog post about transformation following attending the UUK event the week before. In Transformation and all that I look at transformation and how digital and technology can now enable that transformation.

As we discuss and talk about digital transformation, it becomes apparent very quickly that digital transformation is not about digital causing transformation. It’s not as though if you invest in digital and online technologies that therefore you will be (magically) transformed.

It was very much a reflection on a post I had written two years ago.

Here we are two years later and re-reading the blog post, much of what I wrote still stands up. In some cases the technology has moved forward already.

I developed and imagined another vision for my work on optimising operations and data. This vision was on secession, a vision in which departments secede from the university hierarchy and form their own institution.

University departments already had some element of autonomy, so it wasn’t too long before some departments decided to secede from the university and form their own “university” to take back control. These departments wanted to have more power over the recruitment of students and staff. They were able to outsource administrative and professional services to subsidiary service companies that delivered services to a large number of these autonomous departments. With the wealth of empty office space across major cities, it was relatively easy to procure space, combined with online provision, and hybrid home working, the costs of running a department of a university, divorced from the university itself, could be minimised. The use of shared services across these small independent universities enabled them to focus on research, learning and teaching.

I also developed one on the outsourced university.

It was seen as easy to outsource much of the domestic functions of the university, but it became apparent to many senior managers that they could outsource much of their professional services as well. It wasn’t too long before some enterprising universities realised that they could outsource their teaching as well. This would enable them to bring in dedicated subject experts for teaching on undergraduate programmes as and when needed.

I’ve enjoyed writing these and will be interesting to see what happens when I share them with some senior colleagues in a few weeks.

Group working
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

I saw that UPP Foundation launched Student Futures II, New threats to student futures. In 2021, with the world still in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UPP Foundation convened the Student Futures Commission to understand how the pandemic was affecting students and what universities could do to help them get back on track. Two years on, the UPP Foundation launched Student Futures II, with new research from Cibyl and Public First assessing the sector’s progress.

The cost of learning crisis is creating new threats to students’ futures

Worryingly, students who took part in focus groups for the Commission report a further gap between what they imagined university would be like and what they have actually experienced, with international students in particular feeling short-changed. There is a general sense of apathy, a loss of agency, and high levels of reported loneliness – and with many universities at or close to the end of their financial tether, the solution of delivering “more support for students” is well past being reasonable or sustainable.

pie and apples
Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

Do you use pie charts? Well stop then.

I was sent these two links about not using pie charts.

This link was from August 2007, which was some time ago, Save the Pies for Dessert.

Not long ago I received an email from a colleague who keeps watch on business intelligence vendors and rates their products. She was puzzled that a particular product that I happen to like did not support pie charts, a feature that she assumed was basic and indispensable. Be- cause of previous discussions between us, when I pointed out ineffective graphing practices that are popular in many BI products, she wondered if there might also be a problem with pie charts. Could this vendor’s omission of pie charts be intentional and justified? I explained that this was indeed the case, and praised the vendor’s design team for their good sense.

This was the other link, Here’s why you should (almost) never use a pie chart for your data.

The tiny slices, lack of clear labelling and the kaleidoscope of colours make interpretation difficult for anyone.

So if you need to show data, don’t use a pie chart, use a bar chart instead.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Also this week I did work on the following.

I was supporting a colleague on the management of our Dovetail licences. We use Dovetail to analyse data. I used it myself this week to analyse the UK Higher Education Financial Sustainability Report in relation to the project I am working on in optimising data and operations. I also used Dovetail to review some of the data and insights we have on the intelligent campus.

I gave a briefing (with a PowerPoint) about my work on optimising operations and data.

Updated our CRM with conversations I had last week.

I am not that old – Weeknote #163 – 15th April 2022

I was mainly on leave this week working just a couple of days.

Was in London on Monday for an in-person meeting. I don’t mind meeting online when required, but after two years of online meetings, there is something about meeting in-person. The change in routine and scenery is very welcome. The focus of the discussion was an offshoot of the UPP Foundation report on the Student Futures Manifesto, notably recommendation one.

We were discussing the challenges that universities face in modernising their IT infrastructure and architecture.

Attended a meeting reviewing Digifest that happened last month.

…and that was day one

…and that was day two

If you attended the event, what did you think about the festival? What worked well for you and what would have made it better? Did you any sessions stick out for you? If you didn’t go, why was that, and what would have needed to be different for you to change your mind?

My top tweet this week was this one.

Unknown Unknowns and Unknown Knowns – Weeknote #117 – 28th May 2021

Monday I was focusing on one of the projects we are working on with an university looking at various scope areas and how technology and digital can make a difference. I was reminded of the NSA quote of cylinders of excellence when it comes to silo working. The concept of excellent departments, but not an excellent university came to mind, but also about the inefficiencies of silos working in isolation and not thinking about the impact of their development and change on the rest of the university.

At the end of the day we were discussing assessment. What is happening with assessment in higher education now and what changes made as a result of Covid-19 are now in place, but also the wider issues of assessment as well.

old television
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Cancelled my subscription to Britbox, in the main despite there being stuff I would like to watch, I wasn’t finding the time to watch it.

Tuesday saw me back to our office in Portwall Lane for an in-person meeting with my line manager, our first meeting in-person since August last year. It was actually nice to be both in the office and in an in-person meeting.

Something that keeps coming to my attention is the future of teaching, especially the concept of dual mode or hybrid teaching. What are peoples’ experiences of “dual-mode”, “muti-mode”, hybrid teaching? What has the student feedback being like? Something I have been reflecting on this week.

Students prioritise a return to face to face teaching from September 2021, so says the findings from a report published by the UPP Foundation.

Students want universities to prioritise a return to in person teaching and are missing face-to-face interaction around their wider student experience.

This is something which isn’t too surprising and is also something that has come out of our recent research into the student experience. Though digging deeper for us, it was more the in-person interaction students were missing and less the teaching.

Wednesday afternoon myself and Isabel Lucas of HEDG and the University of Cumbria hosted a share shop, facilitated by Advance HE, on how universities can support students transitioning in HE. We looked at both new students and returning students.

In the session, How can we best support learners coming in to HE from a Covid context? We discussed the transition arrangements others have put into place for the next academic year.

In September, third year students returning to HE will not have had a normal year in higher education and it is likely that their third year will not be like it was before.

We discussed a range of issues, focusing on the known knowns and the known unknowns. More difficult to discuss the unknown knowns and the unknown unknowns!

We are aiming to share the findings from the shareshop in June.

Thursday was a light day in terms of meetings, but got even lighter, as one meeting was cancelled five minutes before it was due to start, with the other meeting, two people who had accepted were in fact on leave, so in the end the meeting lasted only five minutes.

The future of the office keeps getting discussed, with those who own offices explaining why going back to the office is so important and those who don’t explaining why it isn’t. For me a lot is about the kind of work you do, I don’t do the same thing everyday, so there isn’t a single kind of space I need all the time. Before Covid, sometimes I would be working alone, sometimes I would be in meetings, sometimes we would be collaborating and sometimes I didn’t know, so it was useful to have other people around to bounce ideas off and chat over coffee.

My top tweet this week was this one.