Tag Archives: vision

stuff

Secession

Leave a comment
engineer working on hardware
Image by This_is_Engineering from Pixabay

Could a university department secede from their university and become independent? This was the idea behind a vision piece I wrote last year. I recently published a couple of vision pieces on the blog, one on the The University Group™ and another on The Specialist University Centre. This vision about secession is similar to the specialist centre, but goes further.

Created by experts to inspire (and possibly scare) us into thinking about what a preferable future for higher education might look like.

Though the concept of economies of scale means that the concept of a large university, spreading costs and overheads across a range of provision was seen by many as a cost effective solution, the growing impact of reduced funding, fixed student fees; saw university departments being forced to cut costs. There was a spread of discontent that this was having a negative impact on the student experience and the quality of the research being undertaken. There was also a strong feeling across staff and management of many departments of these decisions being done to them and they having no say in the decision making process.

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. With no large overheads being top sliced from the income, they could invest more in learning and teaching. Some departments even decided that teaching was a distraction and focused on research alone.

Learning and teaching was often a blend of physical in-person provision combined with online delivery and resources. The use of online and digital resources meant that library provision was entirely online. Even then the use of print on demand, meant those students who wanted physical books and journals could have them delivered overnight.

For many prospective students, these new independent departmental universities were a real attraction, allowing them to fit their studies easily into their work life balance. Going to university wasn’t always an option for all prospective students, the focused and specialised provision of these providers was meeting a real demand.

Once a few high profile departments had done this, it wasn’t long before there was an avalanche of universities finding themselves breaking up. In some cases legislation was enabled that allowed those departments to retain not just their staff, but also their departmental buildings and campuses. Legislation was passed enabling these departments became small independent universities. They started to market themselves, mainly using online tools and services.

The ease at which cloud services could be obtained and the increase in the availability of independent professional services, and service companies, resulted in keeping administration costs to a minimum.

The break-up of the large universities into smaller departmental universities, also detached many university functions and services. There was no longer a need to centralise student accommodation, often halls of residences would be either sold off as they were no longer needed, or effectively privatised. University catering was closed off, and national chains took over the spaces.

Student support became a service that was bought in as and when required.

Some university campuses which consisted only of independent subject departments, the university administration became more of caretaker and administrator for these departments, akin to the science parks of their day.

stuff

The Specialist University Centre

Leave a comment
lab
Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

I had planned to publish this, as the first of my vision pieces, following the UUK Annual Conference last week, but my timetable was scuppered with the announcement of the “first” university super merger between the University of Greenwich and the University of Kent. So I did publish a vision piece on The University Group™.

So, what was going to be that first vision? Well last week was the UUK Annual Conference and I was able to attend as I had worked on strand 2 of the UUK Transformation & Efficiency Taskforce. On the second day, the then science secretary Peter Kyle was speaking and calling for increasing specialisation and collaboration in higher education.

There are “too many universities competing for the same pool of students”, according to science secretary Peter Kyle. Speaking to reporters at Universities UK conference, Kyle argued that said volume of universities was coming at the “expense of playing to their relative strengths or truly specialising to become the go-to authority in their field rather than a bit player in many.” 

I was reminded of this piece of work I wrote last February, which never got further than my hard drive (well cloud storage) on the specialist university.

Created by experts to inspire (and possibly scare) us into thinking about what a preferable future for higher education might look like.

What might it mean for the operations of a university if the focus of the student experience became more specialised? How would and how could the sector respond to change in how students accessed higher education. What would this mean for individual institutions?

Though there have been many specialist higher education institutions, they have generally being outnumbered by the more traditional general university offering a portfolio of courses across multiple subjects. 

Universities currently offer a broad range of programs and modules for graduates and postgraduates what we could see happening in future as university specialising in one or two particular areas, and then having all the students in the area attend that specific university, so you no longer would have the university of a particular city; you would have the university of business university of law, the university of biology, the university of aeronautical engineering.

The cost of providing some subjects became prohibitive and many universities recognising that economies of scale would be more cost-effective took the decision to specialise in a few core areas. They decided to specialise and provide high-quality, specialised education locations in their chosen, subject field and research. However though they narrowed down their breadth of delivery, they were able to use technology to widen their offer to the whole of the UK and in some cases internationally as well. 

As the reputation of these institutions grew, those universities who had decided to retain a broad curriculum, found that both domestic and international student recruitment was falling, and it was becoming more difficult to recruit and retain staff.

The specialist institutions soon outnumbered the traditional university by student numbers. These institutions were large enough to provide their own student services, professional services and even multiple campus hubs across the UK.

In addition to these large specialist institutions, there was also a large number of small institutions focusing on very specialist curriculum and research areas. However they did not have the capacity or capability to deliver the student and professional services they required. As a result they bought in these services from service companies, or in some cases they collaborated with other specialist institutions to deliver shared services in a range of areas. This enabled the specialist institutions to focus on teaching and research. They used third parties for professional services such as IT, HR, payroll, student records and others. 

There was also collaboration in other areas, especially in student facing services such as the library, student support, healthcare, and academic support.

Some specialist institutions also partnered with relevant industry partners, with the industry partner providing the business support for the university.

stuff

The University Group™

2 Comments
laptop with coffee
Image by Firmbee from Pixabay

With the recent announcement of the “first” university super merger between the University of Greenwich and the University of Kent, I was reminded of this piece of work I wrote last February, which never got further than my hard drive (well cloud storage). I did write about writing them in a weeknote back then.

Anyhow, here is the vision I wrote about a future University Group, something that KPMG wrote about in their Radical Collaboration document for the UUK Transformation & Efficiency Taskforce and can be seen in the Greenwich and Kent merger.

Created by experts to inspire (and possibly scare) us into thinking about what a preferable future for higher education might look like.

All universities have their own personality, appeal, and brand. However not all universities need their own HR departments, or IT teams.

The first large university groups appeared following mergers forced by the regulator after financial pressures could have caused at least one higher education institution to fail.

The new group recognised that though in theory they should have a new name, they also realised that the existing names were brands in their own right. As a result they formed The University Group™ but the individual university names were kept. Staff were employed by The University Group™ but students attended a named university. It was so successful that some smaller institutions asked to join the group but retain their identity. What was important to the group was that management and staff recognised that they were employed by The University Group™ and not the named university in which they worked (though some teaching staff worked across the group), from a student experience perspective the student was a student of the named university. They would be awarded their degree from that named university and would to all intents and purposes be a graduate of that named university.

Support for the administrative and support functions was provided by group services. There was a single HR department for example, a single catering supplier for the group, IT services was provided by the group. Some group staff were based at each university campus to provide on-site support, but many professional services staff worked in a hybrid manner based in. regional hubs. This again reduced costs, through economics of scale, reduced office space. For those universities based in high cost city centres, reducing the amount of space for professional services, either increased teaching space capacity or reducing the university estate to further save costs.

The success of that first group in reducing costs and increasing student numbers encouraged others to not only reflect on joining the group, but for the regular to force through mergers across the country. We then started to see the first metropolitan universities appear, as well as the first regional groups.

Some universities decided to jump before they were pushed and so when a group of geographically dispersed universities merged to form a new super university group but retaining their individual identities the tide turned for the unique independent single university.

It wasn’t too long before the number of higher education organisations could be counted on the fingers of two hands, though the number of named universities actually increased, as the university groups de-regionalised some of their brands into local brands.

The university groups had better bargaining power and more influence in some markets. This also helped reduce costs across various services. With just a few higher education organisations the market for some specialised learning technologies was too small and many edtech businesses either dissolved or moved into other markets.

weeknotes

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

Leave a comment

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.

weeknotes

Visionary – Weeknote #260 – 23rd February 2024

1 Comment

I have been working on a series of visions about how universities could be working differently in the future. The aim of the visions is not to predict a future, but to provide an insight into a possible view of what that future could look like and think about how these impact on your current position and thinking. We did something similar for Learning and Teaching Reimagined, and though I wasn’t personally credited with the authorship of some of the visions, I did create and write the visions. I tested them out with a few people and got the reaction I wanted as well as stimulating an interesting discussion.

One of those visions was about organisations merging. Coincidently in the news this week was the news that City, University of London and St George’s, University of London have agreed a merger – the new institution will be called City St George’s, University of London and commence operations from 1 August, “though full integration will take longer.” Current City president Anthony Finkelstein will lead the combined institution.

There has been much talk about the four day week, in the Guardian this week was an article on how some firms have made their four day week trials permanent.

Most of the UK companies that took part in the world’s biggest ever four-day working week trial have made the policy permanent, research shows.

Reports from more than half the pilot organisations said that the trial, in which staff worked 100% of their output in 80% of their time, had a positive impact.

For 82% this included positive effects on staff wellbeing, 50% found it reduced staff turnover, while 32% said it improved job recruitment. Nearly half (46%) said working and productivity improved.

TASO published a new report: Using learning analytics to prompt student support interventions.

How can learning analytics – data systems that help understand student engagement and learning – be used to identify students who may be at risk of withdrawing from their studies, or failing their courses, and what interventions work to re-engage students in their studies?

The key findings from the report were:

  • Neither HEP found a measurable difference in post-intervention engagement rating between at-risk students who received an email followed by a support phone call and at-risk students who received only the email.
  • Neither HEP found any significant impact of the additional support call on the likelihood of a student generating additional at-risk alerts.
  • Qualitative feedback indicated that students welcomed the intervention. For some, the phone call was appreciated as a means of breaking down barriers between themselves and the institution and stimulating their re-engagement with learning. For others, the email alone was cited as a sufficient motivator to re-engage with learning.

There was an article on Wonkhe on the report.

A new study from TASO seeks to judge “what works” in the use of learning analytics for student support, exploring whether students identified by engagement data as being “at risk” were better supported by email and phone contact or email alone. Large cohorts of students at two providers, Sheffield Hallam University and Nottingham Trent University, were divided into two random groups. In both cases, it was found that an additional support call created no measurable difference in at-risk students’ subsequent engagement and no appreciable change in the likelihood of the student generating subsequent alerts.

It will be crucial to robustly test the impact of any wellbeing interventions that analytics systems may trigger.

As many people already well known, the environmental costs of generative AI is soaring, and that also being kept mostly secret. In Nature is an article about the impact AI will have on energy systems.

Last month, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman finally admitted what researchers have been saying for years — that the artificial intelligence (AI) industry is heading for an energy crisis. It’s an unusual admission. At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Altman warned that the next wave of generative AI systems will consume vastly more power than expected, and that energy systems will struggle to cope.

Spent some time planning out Senior Education and Student Experience Group meeting for March.

Wrote a briefing update on the work I have been doing on the optimisation of operations and data work.

Had an interesting and informative conversation with a college about their smart campus aspirations.

Spent time planning next steps of my Intelligent Campus work.

Planning a meeting with an university for a follow up workshop on their smart campus planning, after successful workshop in January and their request for a 1-2 day cross university workshop.

Worked on creating and planning blog ideas in the personalisation space. Also worked on creating and planning senior management primer ideas in the personalisation space, and some use case ideas.

Spent time planning out ideas for Spaces events over the next 12 months.

Noted that this worknote represents five years of undertaking worknotes for the blog.

fote09, gloucestershire college

Predicting an uncertain future

1 Comment
crystal ball
Image by Martyn Cook from Pixabay

Predicting is hard, and we can get it wrong. Actually, most of the time we do get it wrong.

It is hard, almost impossible to predict the future as there are too many variables and dependencies. Who would have predicted the covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown? Who would have foreseen the growth of smartphones?

I have many times on this blog talked about the future. Back on the 2nd October 2009 I was at the ULCC Event, The Future of Technology in Education and I presented on the future of learning.

Ten years later I revisited those predictions. So, did I predict the future?

No.

But the point of the presentation wasn’t necessarily about being delivering an accurate prediction of the future but talking about the possibilities of the future.

In my 2009 talk, I spoke about connectivity. Back then it was either slightly haphazard, or expensive, or both. We had 3G, but it wasn’t widespread, it would be another three years before we saw 4G. As for 5G, that wouldn’t arrive until 2016.

laptop with coffee
Image by Firmbee from Pixabay

Wi-Fi was there, but it didn’t always work, and network congestion would often cause the Wi-Fi to fail. This happened with frequent regularity at events and conferences I attended back then, as delegates killed the Wi-Fi with too many connections. The Wi-Fi which was being made available was based on the assumption that there would only be a few delegates with wireless devices. Of course, I was attending events with loads of people in the field of educational technology, who would arrive at events with generally at least two devices. Everyone would connect to the conference Wi-Fi, and it would fall over. So much so, that for many years I would never use conference Wi-Fi and would use my own 3G connection.

At the time I was working at Gloucestershire College and though we had had staff Wi-Fi in our new building which opened in 2007, it was another year before we expanded the Wi-Fi to allow students to connect. What we did plan, was to ensure that the Wi-Fi would be able to handle not just the demand at that point in time but would be able to handle the future Wi-Fi needs of students going forward (and could be extended and expanded if required).

In 2009 I said about the future, that I felt connectivity wouldn’t just be important, it would be critical for the future of learning. Though we would have no idea about what devices the students would be using, we could prepare for the possible future by ensuring the infrastructure was in place ready for that uncertain future.

Here in 2022, thirteen years later, students have devices that depend on ubiquitous connectivity for a seamless experience. Do we have the infrastructure to support this, or are we playing catch-up? What we may not have predicted is the importance of localised connectivity and off-campus connectivity and the dependency on this by students who might not be able to, or want to travel to campus.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Today we can also talk about possibilities and what it could mean for the student experience in the future.

The purpose of this is not to predict what the university of the future will be but provide an envelope of possibilities that would allow us to plan for that potential future and build in appropriate resilience and responsiveness.

We did some of that with Jisc’s Learning and Teaching Reimagined where we set some future visions from across sector.

We’re building a collection of possible future scenarios, created by experts to inspire (and possibly scare) us into thinking about what a preferable future for higher education might look like.

These visions are not going to happen but are there to help us think about how we might plan for an uncertain future. What will happen? What could happen? What won’t happen? What should happen? What must happen?

Is it time again to predict the future?

stuff

Day19: EdTech Dogs

Leave a comment

This post is part of the #JuneEdTechChallenge series.

wandelen langs de vloedlijn
CC BY-NC 2.0 Gerard Stolk

Dogs can be wonderful pets so I have been told.

So ask me do I have a dog?

The answer is no.

Now ask me why I don’t have a dog?

I don’t have the time!

If you gave me the time, would I have a dog?

Still no.

I don’t have a dog #altc

Though I didn’t post these posts each day in June (and to be honest I didn’t post it each day on the Twitter either) except the final day, I have decided to retrospectively post blog posts about each of the challenges and back date them accordingly. There is sometimes more I want to say on the challenge then you can fit into 140 characters (well 280 these days).

alt, conference, learning technologies

I don’t have a dog #altc

5 Comments
CC BY 2.0 JD Hancock https://flic.kr/p/732b7n
CC BY 2.0 JD Hancock https://flic.kr/p/732b7n

Dogs can be wonderful pets, or so I have been told.

So ask me do I have a dog?

The answer is no.

Now ask me why I don’t have a dog?

I don’t have the time!

wandelen langs de vloedlijn
CC BY-NC 2.0 Gerard Stolk

Over the last twenty years or so when learning technologists and others interested in embedding the use of digital technology to enhance and enrich teaching, learning and assessment, the one “problem” that arises again and again is that people don’t have the time.

I have been supporting staff for many years in the use of learning technologies, all the time when I run training sessions though I hear the following comments:

“I don’t have the time.”
“When am I suppose to find time to do all this?”
“I am going to need more time.”

Time appears to be a critical issue.

Even more recently running a workshop I asked people to identify the main barriers to embedding learning technologies and the answer everyone came back was, time!

I have written and spoken about this issue time and time again.

A long time ago, back in 2004 I presented at the Becta Post-16 e-Learning Practitioners Conference on the Myths of Time.

In 2007 I managed to find the time to spend some time talking about time on the blog and wrote a post about time.

Now ask me again why I don’t have a dog?

I don’t have the time!

On The Streets of Vilnius
CC BY 2.0 FaceMePLS https://flic.kr/p/a7RLz7

I am aware that there are quite a few people out there who have a dog, and they seem to find the time to have a dog.

It certainly takes time to have a dog, time to walk it, time to stroke it, time to bath it, time to walk it again. When I am out and about see people walking their dogs and I believe that you have to walk a dog everyday. Where do people find the time for that?

Correct me if I am wrong, but dog owners have the the same amount of time as everyone else. They don’t live in some kind of timey-wimey temporal reality that gives them more time than anyone else.

So if they don’t have more time than anyone else, how do they find the time to have a dog? I don’t have the time to have a dog, why do they have the time?

And don’t get me started on the resources and costs of having a dog….

We know people who have dogs don’t have more time, but they like to spend time to have a dog. Therefore they must prioritise having a dog over other things they could spend time on. For them having a dog is a priority.

Now ask me again why I don’t have a dog?

It’s not a priority for me, I have other priorities that take up my time.

Gent beweegt!
CC BY 2.0 FaceMePLS https://flic.kr/p/9G1Ttf

So when you talk to teaching staff about learning technologies, and they say they don’t have the time, or they need time; what they are actually saying and meaning is…

It’s not a priority for me, I have other priorities that take up my time.

This also explains why some other staff find the time to engage with learning technologies, they find the time, as they see it as a priority.

So how do you make the teaching staff prioritise or raise the importance of something that they see as a low priority or unimportant so that they feel they can’t spend time on it.

One thing that does get forgotten, is that everyday we use technology to make our lives easier and to save time. Often learning technologies can be used to make our lives easier and importantly save time.

Often we are so busy being busy that we don’t take the time to think about those tools and processes which could save us time.

So another question ask me why having a dog is not a priority for me?

Well that depends on who sets the priorities in my home, looks at his wife and children…. Even if I was the person setting the priorities, what I would be doing would be looking at everything else I was doing, prioritise them and spend time on those things. I may do that in a planned manner, the reality is that this is probably a more sub-conscious activity.

However if the household decided that we should get a dog and my objections about the lack of time were ignored, then we would get a dog and I would need to find the time, prioritising the dog over other things I considered to be a priority. Now I am sure a few dog owners out there would tell me how wonderful having a dog is, and maybe this would be something I would discover by having a dog. This can be an issue, I may hate having a dog!

You can take analogies only so far…

If people are concerned about the issue of time when it comes to using and embedding learning technologies then they are probably more likely concerned about how this will fit into their other priorities. So ask the question, who is responsible for setting the priorities of the teaching staff in your institution? Is it the teaching staff? Is it the executive team? Is it the teaching managers? Unlikely I would have thought to be the learning technologists

So if you are facing the real issue when talking to teaching staff of them responding that they don’t have the time, maybe you are talking to the wrong people! Or the wrong people are talking to the teaching staff.

Priorities in theory are set by the line manager, who is operationalising the strategic direction and vision of the institution. If digital is not a strategic priority can we be surprised that staff within that institution don’t consider it a personal priority.

How do you make digital a strategic priority? Well that;s another blog post, which I don’t have the time for at the moment, I have to walk the dog.