Planning work on BME Student Attainment

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This year, I’ll be leading some work across the institution to challenge the degree attainment of students in different subject areas – we know that there is a wide difference in the number of good degrees awarded from subject to subject, and that this has an impact on student success after graduation and ultimately on university league table position.

When I look into the data on student success in more detail, we start to see other startling patterns. The one which stands out the most is the difference in attainment between white students and BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) students. This isn’t a situation unique to Staffordshire University, as can be seen in the statistical releases from the Equality Challenge Unit.

Black-and-Minority-Ethnic-degree-students

However, I am committed to tackling this issue head on within our university – driven by a commitment to social justice and an ability to “do the numbers””.

I fully accept that this is going to mean some difficult conversations, and already I’ve had some challenges when I’ve talked about this in faculties. It will also mean some significant learn for me, and a preparedness for many of us to talk about things that make us uncomfortable (or instance – do you know the difference between race and ethnicity? Or should you use the term BME?)

Reading the plan for the Equality Challenge Unit, I’m going to shamelessly copy the four strands of their strategy, and to adapt it to our own needs:

“Illuminate – Provide quantitative and qualitative evidence on equality and diversity within UK HEIs and colleges in Scotland to illuminate equality and diversity challenges in these sectors.

Articulate – Work collaboratively with and assist external bodies on equality and diversity matters that impact on UK HEIs and colleges in Scotland.

Champion – Develop the case for equality and diversity to secure and maintain the commitment and support of institutional leaders.

Transform – Work with all institutions to identify and change any cultural and systemic practices that unfairly exclude, marginalise or disadvantage individuals or groups, and to promote inclusive approaches.

– See more at: http://www.ecu.ac.uk/about-us/our-strategy-2014-16#sthash.AKJLp8g9.dpuf”

 

For us at Staffordshire, my initial thoughts are:

Illuninate – identify through our own data sets the levels of attainment of different groups of students, based on characteristic such a ethnicity, gender, disability and age. Compare with national trends to identify which specific areas we need to work on

Articulate – work collaboratively with a group drawn from across faculties and services and the Students’ Union (I’m delighted that Rochelle, our SU President, wants to be involved) to develop a shared understanding and message for the institution, together with practical steps that can be taken

Champion – develop a range of actions and measurable targets that can be tested through processes such as Annual Monitoring and Quarterly Business Reviews, to ensure commitment at the highest level

Transform – promote inclusive practices across the institution, related to recruitment, teaching and learning,assessment, personal tutoring, data analytics etc.

I don;t expect this to  be an easy journey, but it’s the right one to take. To provide some more background and some inspiration, we’ve got a great speaker, Dr Winston Morgan of UEL, to come and talk about the attainment gap at this year’s Staff Fest Learning and Teaching Conference.

Funding for higher education in England for 2014-15

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After a long wait, and some “interesting” photos on Twitter, the annual letter from BIS to HEFCE has finally seen the light of dawn, delayed after the unexpected news of changes to student number controls in the Autumn Statement.

 

From the HEFCE website:

The settlement will mean reductions in HEFCE funding for higher education institutions in 2014-15 and again in 2015-16 beyond those accounted for by the switch to publicly funded tuition fees. The Government has asked HEFCE to deliver the reductions in ways which protect as far as possible high-cost subjects (including STEM), widening participation (which is funded via the HEFCE Student Opportunity allocation), and small and specialist institutions.

Universities UK have commented, saying:

Funding for the Autumn Statement policy announcement, and for science and research more generally, will continue to be protected, while HEFCE has been asked to develop the mechanisms to ensure that cuts in funding don’t translate directly into deterioration of the student experience.

This is not an easy trick to pull off. All parts of the public sector are being asked to deliver more with reduced funding, and the university sector is no exception. The flagship policy of removing the cap on student numbers is the right one – both for individuals and for the economy. But it will be challenging to deliver in the face of continuing restrictions on income and cuts to direct grant funding.

and….

Universities are adapting well to this new policy framework, but navigating the transitional period before a return to growth remains a significant challenge. The risk remains that further cuts will undermine the ability of the sector to continue delivering on important economic and social goals, and the basis for future growth will be eroded. We all have a strong stake in ensuring that situation doesn’t come about

From the actual letter from BIS we see:

“However, in the context of stretched public finances, it has been necessary to make reductions to the indicative recurrent teaching budget for 14-15. Further recurrent savings will be required in 15-16. It is for you to take decisions on how you allocate your budgets. But you should deliver savings in ways that protect as far as possible high cost subjects (including STEM), widening participation and small and specialist institutions”

The details are provided in subsequent appendices.

On social mobility, Appendix 1 states “We therefore want you to bring together funding which supports student retention and success, specifically the Student Opportunity fund and the Access to Learning Fund.”. This meas the removal of the Access to Learning Fund, which provides £37m of grants to the poorest students.

On student experience:

“The Council’s review of public information on higher education should consider whether there are better indicators, such as measures of student engagement, to provide information on what a high quality student experience looks like. We expect the Council to continue to identify improvements through pilot studies over the coming year as well as setting in train longer term improvements for the benefit of future cohorts. The work should include providing students with greater transparency on how institutions use income and how we can maximise the impact of the QAA’s guidance to institutions on publishing staff teaching qualifications, student evaluations, class size and student”.

This seems to link into other working going on to establish performance indicators that can be used across the sector, and possibly an enhanced version of KIS. Our commitment to increasing the numbers of staff with HEA fellowships, or postgaduate teaching qualifications will go some way to satisfying at least one of these requirements. Whether these indicators actually measure student experience, is of course debatable!

On science and research: “The ring fenced settlement for Science and Research resource means that we can continue to support research and related training through to 2015-16 through the Dual Support framework.”

On research excellence, HEFCE are urged to use the outcomes of the REF  “to inform research allocations from 2015 onwards. Increasing Open Access (OA) to research outputs is a key Government objective which should be supported by research assessment methodology and by the QR research funding stream in due course.”

On efficiency (and ignoring for the moment the comments on pay restraint for senior staff)

“There is an onus on institutions to demonstrate that they offer value for the fees students pay. At the same time, there remains a cross Government imperative to ensure that public money is spent efficiently……..drive further and faster improvements in efficiency, for example, considering pension costs and ways to reduce regulatory and bureaucratic burden. Ministers from this Department and HM Treasury have also asked Professor Sir Ian Diamond to carry out a further review of efficiency in Higher Education Institutions. We want the Council to work with Professor Diamond’s review, which aims to produce an interim report in Summer and present final conclusions by February 2015.”

I’m not sure how this statement about efficiency and bureaucracy links to the previous comments on student experience and provision of extra information, which will no doubt provide an added administrative burden for universities. Will we see a recommendation of things that can actually be dropped?

For a last word, let’s move to the Times Higher Education, and this quotation:

Michael Gunn, vice-chancellor of Staffordshire University and chair of the university group Million+, described the retention of the student opportunity fund as a “victory for common sense”. But he said it was “still disappointing that the overall grant is being cut”

 

 

Online Learning – a conversation

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Late on Friday I met up with an award leader from one of our schools. He was developing a new postgraduate award. He’s previously been active using social media to support his students, and is keen to use ideas learnt from MOOCs to develop onine learning resources

Since I am now responsible for Blackboard amongst other things, he felt I was a starting point for a number of his queries. (Disclosure – I may understand plenty of uni policies, but I’m not an e-learning guru).

But here are some of the things we went through, and I’m writing them up here because there may be ideas that others want to use, or challenge.

Shared Teaching

One of the perceived benefits was to move to a more open approach between multiple cohorts, with shared teaching materials and discussions. This can be dealt with in Blackboard, by creating an elective Community that is shared between each of the different module instances created for each intake. Content can be used to share learning materials.  Assessment will still need to be undertaken in the individual module.

MOOC style delivery

The intention was to have minimal lecturer involvement, and for students to self learn throughout the module. The evidence from MOOCs is that the dropout rate is high. Some synchronous seminars delivered online, using Skype, Google Hangouts or other third party tools might be a solution to this.

Open Access

We discussed the option of creating a module with content that could be used by two groups of students – those on an accredited version, and those on an unaccredited version. The plan was that the cost would be the same for both. I can’ see a benefit in this – if students are paying a fee, then they are paying for us to accredit their learning. Another  issue related to this would be around the length of time a student is enrolled on a module – our regulations expect that modules are completed within a certain time, and the information system codifies this. For the numbers of students involved, we felt there was little advantage in creating a second open version at this point.

Content

In terms of content, we discussed the learning materials that could be used – the approach discussed meant that the course would use significant amounts of existing learning materials, and the role of the lecturer was to curate that material.

Roll on/Roll Off enrolment

This was the plan for the first module. There is a slight problem with this, and it’s more to do with other student systems. For every pattern of delivery we’ll need to create that definition in the student information system. So rather than have true roll on/roll off, we felt that creating 3 intakes per year might be a better approach.

Assessment

After talking about the final assessment, we thought about how we could use peer assessment to improve formative feedback and engagement. Blackboard offers a great tool for this. If you create a self and peer assessment, under assessment tools, then questions can be created, together with a marking rubric. The assessment can then be set to be undertaken within a certain timescale. Following submission, all participants are then required to assess (anonymously) other students’ work. The advantage of this technique are: students engage in the marking process; peer pressure will encourage greater take up of a formative assessment opportunity and staff can record the formative marks received if desired.

These are just notes from a conversation,  but it shows some of the areas we should be providing more guidance in our Blackboard help files.

 

Some thoughts on Masters degrees

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A part of my role in academic planning, I read a lot of proposals for new postgraduate awards, and I also look how many and what kind of student enrol in masters level taught awards when I’m doing any analysis of our award portfolio and student population. With the current approach to student visas likely to have an impact on international recruitment from some countries, and the cost of HE in the UK, it’s timely to consider how to develop an appropriate postgraduate offering.

This got me thinking, particularly in the light of a couple of articles in the press in the last week about M-level study.

The Times Higher reports on a recent forum where Mick Fuller, chair of the UK Council for Graduate Education and head of Plymouth University’s graduate school,said “institutions were now less able to cross subsidise master’s provision because of the squeeze on undergraduate numbers.” With the new fees regime set to leave graduates with loan debt of tens of thousands of pounds, many in the sector question whether students will burden themselves with more debt by moving into postgraduate study.

Bob Burgess of Leicester University added “the supply in taught master’s programmes had already become “dangerously low.We need to think about new ways to attract postgraduate students into higher education.”

The article cites the rise in Masters courses taught in English in other European countries, and that these could become more attractive to both U< and overseas students.

In another THE article, it states “Research councils may eventually have to “rethink” the requirement for PhD candidates to have a master’s degree if the number of studentships available for such lower-level courses continues to be cut.”

With these factors in mind, here’s a few thoughts and questions about taught masters awards

  • Why would a university run an award for which they might charge about £5000 for a UK student for 180 credits, when you could earn £9000 for teaching an undergraduate student for 120 credits?
  • How can we develop  targets that recognise that some activities – and postgraduate teaching is one of them – need to be considered in terms that are not just financial?
  • Why would a student choose a taught postgraduate masters over an integrated masters? The former would cost leas, and cover more learning, the latter, although more expensive could be completed in less time and be covered by a student loan?
  • In developing and reshaping a postgraduate portfolio, should awards be designed to directly follow on from awards in an existing undergraduate portfolio, or should they be more open and negotiated with a greater amount of research expected?
  • What should we measure in a postgraduate portfolio performance tool? Are the factors that we would use for undergraduate relevant, or do other things come into play?

I don;t have answers to these questions yet – just a set of opinions!- but these are some of the things I’ll be considering as I start work on assessing the postgraduate portfolio, and on mapping progression routes from our existing undergraduate awards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The future of MOOCs

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The beginning of a new year, and it’s time I wrote about MOOCs again. Or at least commented on output from a couple of seasoned and respected commentators, George Siemens and David Kernohan,

George Siemens created the first MOOC in 2008, and in an article this week entitled  “The attack on our higher education system — and why we should welcome it” on the TED blog website he talks about where MOOCs are now.

“As 2013 drew to a conclusion, the 18-month intoxicating hype machine produced the inevitable headache. The open vistas of a bright future where MOOC providers moved from success to success were replaced with a fatigued resignation that MOOCs were appearing to take their place in a lineage of many, many failed predictions of educational transformation. Move aside radio instruction and VCR teaching. Make room for MOOCs.

So what happened?

For one thing, the MOOC hypesters were wrong. They discovered, on the backs, or within the wallets, of their VC partners, that knowledge building is a complex integrated system with multiple facets. The linear nature of MOOC solutions to the perceived problems of higher education (better instructional software and greater numbers of learners) failed to account for knowledge building as an integrated social, economic and cultural activity of society. Suggestions of MOOCs replacing universities began to seem quaint and childlike.”

I don”t like to say “told you so”, because plenty of better informed thinkers than I were saying this last year too.

Indeed, Siemens goes on to say:

“The hype of 2012 must be counter-balanced with equally passionate hype decrying the failure of MOOCs!

Watching this conversation unfold, I am struck by the range of errors and misunderstanding within both camps.”

So that’s me told.

Siemens says that MOOCs are here to stay, and proposes a number of changes to expect:

“learners really need has diversified over the past several decades as the knowledge economy has expanded. Universities have not kept pace with learner needs and MOOCs have caused a much needed stir — a period of reflection and self-assessment. To date, higher education has largely failed to learn the lessons of participatory culture, distributed and fragmented value systems and networked learning. MOOCs have forced a serious assessment of the idea of a university and how education should be related to and supportive of the society in which it exists.”

The developments will be in:

  • corporate MOOcs, for recruitment, marketing and CRM
  • technological changes to allow MOOC providers to offer the facilities that other learning management system vendors provide
  • MOOCs will become more global – we already have FutureLearn in the UK
  • MOOCs will include ideas around personalising the learning experience

A key challenge will still be about accreditation of learning – universities are currently good at this, but as content becomes increasingly open, and teaching becomes open, the issue of awarding credit becomes significant, especially when we consider internal and external regulatory frameworks.

David Kernohan of JISC, writing on Followers of the Apocalypse also looks at the future of MOOCs.

He also shows that the early expectations are proving unattainable:

“All those millions of dollars that venture capitalists have invested come with the expectation of financial return – or, at the very least, sustainability. But despite moderately-huge (on a social media scale) user numbers, financial returns are proving harder to come by.

Most of the major xMOOC platforms now appear to be moving (at greater or lesser speed) towards a corporate training model rather than directly replacing traditional Higher Education.”

Kernohan is positive about the benefits of open education (noting that “open” needs to be carefully defined, as it means a range of things right now)

“An open class occurs where a traditional course delivered to paying students for credit is shared with the wider world – in that anyone can have access to the content and assessment that traditional students have, and discussion between students inside and outside the classroom is promoted and encouraged.

An open course offers the paying learner the best of both worlds – the structure, support and accreditation of traditional HE, plus the global network and enormous range of resources offered online. And for open learners, it is a chance to experience the reality of class-based teaching and to build strong relationships with students and staff in an institution.”

He also provides links to some great resources on the hype around MOOCs  and on sustainable online learning in institutions – it’s worth reading his blog and these related articles.

So for us at Staffordshire University – what could this mean?

I personally would not be recommending anyone to be rushing out to create a MOOC per se. Unless of course you have a significant amount of money in your budget and are prepared to spend it with no guarantee of return.

However, there are areas to learn from, and some of them are tiny things which could make a big difference to our learners:

  • creating short online video lectures (Coursera model) to provide revision opportunities
  • using online peer assessment for formative testing – a core part of most MOOC offers, but available in Blackboard and could provide great feedback to students
  • analyzsing the data on what our learners do while using Blackboard, to find out what works and what doesn’t
  • exploring the connectivist pedagogy used in #edcmooc and in early work by Siemens, as this could be a good model for much of our postgraduate  provision and also to support enquiry based learning (a Staffordshire Graduate attribute) at undergraduate levels
  • begin able to provide enhanced support to learners at our overseas partners, especially as we move to increasing staff and student mobility as part of the Staffordshire Global award
  • developing a better understanding of how we could use open resources and open learning to better support out existing students on and off campus

NMC Horizon Report 2014 -Preview

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The NMC Horizon reports are always worth reading. I blogged about last year’s, and the preview of this year’s is now available

“The NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE Program. The full report is scheduled for release on February 3, 2014.

 The eleventh edition will describe annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a more than decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Six emerging technologies will be identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and significant challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.”

In advance of publication of the full report, I’ve looked at the preview, and tried to summarise each of the emerging technologies, key trends and challenges for us. I’m not saying my answers are definitive, and different individuals and groups will have different views, but in my role of having oversight of technology enhanced learning, the exercise provides useful reflection.

 Key Trends Accelerating Ed Tech Adoption in Higher Education

1. Fast Moving Trends: Those likely to create substantive change (or burn out) in one to two years

Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative Learning Already being used to support on campus and distance learning. Possibility of exploiting further to develop hybrid learning and thus reduce amount of attendance needed on campus for full time students, leading to re-evaluation of estate needed, both in terms of amount, but also type.
 Social Media Use in Learning Being used significantly in specific areas but little overall coordination or advice being provided on how to optimise utilisation so far.

 

2. Mid-Range Trends: Those likely to take three to five years to create substantive change

The Creator Society

“Higher education is now in a position to shift its curricular focus to ensure learning environments align with the engagement of creator-students and foster the critical thinking skills needed to fuel a creator society. Courses and degree plans across all disciplines at institutions are in the process of changing to reflect the importance of media creation, design, and entrepreneurship”

 We’re doing pretty well at this – the idea of co-creation of learning is a key strand of the academic strategy, together with the commitment to enquiry based learning. The Staffordshire Graduate attributes also reinforce this, as well as providing the needed focus on entrepreneurship
 Data-Driven Learning and Assessment“

As learners participate in online activities, they leave a clear trail of analytics data that can be mined for insights. Learning analytics is a collection of tools to process and analyze that data stream, and use it to modify learning goals and strategies in real time.”

 This is still new to us, although individual staff might be using some of the simplest data available on BlackBoard usage to identify student engagement. One of the new roles n ADU includes a brief to look into learning analytics, so we’ll be providing more information on this.

 

3. Slow Trends: Those likely to take more than five years to create substantive change

Agile Approaches to Change

“There is a growing consensus among many higher education thought leaders that institutional leadership could benefit from agile startup models. Educators are working to develop new approaches based on these models that stimulate top-down change and can be implemented across a broad range of institutional settings.”

 This is the area where my new eam wil have to review how we develop and introduce new ideas in technology enhanced learning. The pace of technological change, and the need to respond ever more quickly to demands from learners and teachers mean a move away from rigid planning paradigms.
Making Online Learning Natural

“Asynchronous voice and video tools are humanizing online learning. Historically, one of the major concerns people have expressed about online courses is the lack of interaction. People desire digital learning opportunities that mimic face-to-face experiences. Learning management systems and other services are beginning to incorporate recording features that allow both faculty and students to communicate more authentically online.”

 

 This is an area where I hope we can make a real difference quickly. A further BlackBoard product will enable us to have video and voice conferencing, recording of online session and audio feedback incorporated into assessment tools. This would, with one single implementation, change our use of a learning management system from one which is a repository of learning object and asynchronous discussion, to one that engages learners and teachers in real time.

 

 Significant Challenges Impeding Ed Tech Adoption in Higher Education

1. Urgent Challenges: Those which we both understand and know how to solve

 Low Digital Fluency of Faculty

“Faculty training still does not acknowledge the fact that digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession. Despite the widespread agreement on the importance of digital media literacy, training in the supporting skills and techniques is rare in teacher education and non-existent in the preparation of faculty.”

 This should be easy to solve, so long as we recognise it as a challenge. If we want teaching staff to be able to use the technology that is available to them, then we have to not only ensure that training is available, and people are able to easily access it, but also see the benefits of using the tools available.
Relative Lack of Rewards for Teaching The first university to crack this one will be onto a winner in terms of rewarding teaching staff. No matter how much an institution might commit to teaching, the reward and recognition mechanisms don’t always follow. Clarifying the focus and lines of accountability will go some way to achieving this.

 

2. Difficult Challenges: Those we understand but for which solutions are elusive

 Competition from New Models of Education MOOCs are always cited here, but in themselves, I don’t think they are the competition. However, the change to number allocations will reset the UK market. Other areas of competition for us to consider are private providers – particularly for low cost, employability led subjects. In the future, a more blended approach to the traditional 3 year degree will be a challenge
 Scaling Teaching Innovations

“Our organizations are not adept at moving teaching innovations into mainstream practice.”

“Current organizational promotion structures rarely reward innovation and improvements in teaching and learning. A pervasive aversion to change limits the diffusion of new ideas, and too often discourages experimentation.

“

 This links back to the digital fluency of faculty staff, and rewards for teaching. Like everyone we have struggled to provide reward and recognition – Teaching Excellence Fellowships go so far, but should we see more Professorships based on teaching and learning innovation, having an impact on the organisation?

 

3. Wicked Challenges: Those that are complex to even define, much less address

 Expanding Access

“The off-cited relationship between earning potential and educational attainment plus the clear impact of an educated society on the growth of the middle class is pushing many countries to encourage more and more students to enter universities and colleges.”

 In this institution we understand the transformative benefits of HE to those who study with us. The  first challenge for us is to make sure that these students still feel able to enter HE, and the second is to learn to support those who maybe have not been prepared to degree level study through traditional A-level routes. We might need to develop a better idea fox where our students are coming from and how they learn
Keeping Education Relevant

“As online learning and free educational content become more pervasive, institutional stakeholders must address the question of what universities can provide that other approaches cannot, and rethink the value of higher education from a student’s perspective.”

 If the content is more freely available than ever before, and video lectures can be downloaded, why come to university? We need opt clearly identify what our proposition is, and then make sure we focus on that.

 

 

Important Developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education

1. Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

Flipped Classroom

“a model of learning that rearranges how time is spent both in and out of class to shift the ownership of learning from the educators to the students. After class, students manage the content they use, the pace and style of learning, and the ways in which they demonstrate their knowledge, and the teacher becomes the guide, adapting instructional approaches to suit their learning needs and supporting their personal learning journeys.”

 This is used in plenty of area already to a greater or lesser extent. One thing that might prevent adoption though is that the current model, which includes timetabling, resourcing and estates, is designed around the mass lecture. No matter how many times we are told people don’t learn much in lectures, when you have 200 enrolled in a class, it’s the easy and efficient way to maximise contact hours.
Learning Analytics

“data science with the aim of improving student retention and providing a high quality, personalized experience for learners.”

 We have some tools in Blackboard to use for analytics, and we’re improving the data and benchmarks we provide for retention. To really leverage this technology thought would require more investment, and a much clearer vision of what we want to measure, how we will set algorithms to analyse the data and how we design interventions. And above all, would the cost of the data science be repaid by improved student outcomes. Certainly schools and colleges are much more u to speed that the HE sector on using past results in predicting outcomes.

 

2. Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

3D Printing

“3D printing refers to technologies that construct physical objects from three-dimensional (3D) digital content such as 3D modeling software, computer-aided design (CAD) tools, computer-aided tomography (CAT), and X-ray crystallography.”

 Clearly this can be used (and indeed already is) in teaching of design, education and manufacturing. The challenge would be seeing how this technology could help in other disciplines.
 Games and Gamification

“the gamification of education is gaining support among educators who recognize that effectively designed games can stimulate large gains in productivity and creativity among learners”

 This isn’t just about playing games – one area where we are already using an element of gamification is in the Staffordshire Graduate Employability project  with the use of badges. How much further this could be extended in HE is questionable, unless the badges had external currency. If they could be earned after study of a recognised MOOC, they may provide additional detail to an HEAR.

 

3. Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

Quantified Self

“the phenomenon of consumers being able to closely track data that is relevant to their daily activities through the use of technology.”

 We need to keep a watching brief on mobile and wearable technologies. As these become pervasive, from BlackBoard Mobile, through Google Glass and devices such as Pebble, can we identify how we can use these to improve student learning?
 Virtual Assistants.

”Virtual assistants are a credible extension of work being done with natural user interfaces (NUIs), and the first examples are already in the marketplace.”

 

 Siri and Microsoft Kinect are just the starting points. How will we use these in an educational setting? So far KInect recognises me, and Siri provides answers to simple questions. In 5 years I expect my car to be talking to me.

 

Clearly these are my views only – on this one, I’d really welcome comments, either below, or emailed to me, so that we can update this and use it as a living document.

FAST Leadership: Making it Work

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Gordon Tredgold of Henkel  (and author of “Leadership: it’s a marathon not a sprint“) spoke today at Staffordshire University about FAST Leadership. (his blog can be found here). I’m always going to enjoy hearing someone explain how they solved problems using data to support their decision making, and Gordon provided some great examples of  data analysis and simplification of planning.

These are my notes, comments, questions and pictures of the event.]

Introduction

Gordon claims to have been successful by keeping things simple. However, we must not confuse “simple” with “easy”.

Today’s challenge for all organisations is simple – do everything better, faster and cheaper!

tredgold -todayschallenge

 

We need to look at effectiveness and efficiency, making sure that we are doing the right job, not the wrong one, and making sure that we do that job well.

tredgold - whyfail

It’s crucial to remember that: “Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity”.

The implication here is to make sure that we are focusing on the right things – for instance there is no point in growth of  a business if no money is being made. This translates quite nicely to the business of a university.

 

The FAST approach to leadership consists of:

  •  FOCUS
  • ACCOUNTABILITY
  • SIMPLICITY
  • TRANSPARENCY

tredgold - FAST

Focus

We need to understand clearly what it is that we aiming to do. What are our objectives? What does success look like?

Leaders need to do the right things while manager have to do things right.

Organisations tend to try to focus on too many things at once. Not all of them can be priorities, and so organisations do not prioritise properly. Ideally there should be 2 or 3 right things to focus on.

Having identified these key objectives, we must the communicate this clear focus to teams so they can have a clear vision of what success looks like.

Bonuses and reward mechanisms have to be linked to these priorities, so people will know where to focus their efforts. Having too many KPIs is the same thing as having no KPIs.

 Accountability

We need to know who is accountable for doing the work,  who is responsible for doing it and how will you hold them accountable.

A key question for leaders to ask is “Have we told people what we will hold them accountable for?”

We need to hold people accountable for the outcomes, not how they do it.

We need to be clear about accountability for 2 reasons: when successful, we can give rewards; if failing we can give appropriate support. We cannot give support if we don’t know who is accountable, so a clear reporting mechanism is needed.

Leaders need to hold themselves accountable.

If people are made accountable and equipped with right tools they will be successful

 Simplicity

Experts tend to make things complex. However, real expertise is about making its simple. If you can understand it then you should be able to explain it simply. We need to challenge people to explain the solution that they are trying to implement.

People often seek and find complexity where there is none.

We need new ways of doing things that are simpler, but remember, simple is not the same as easy

 Transparency

People don’t mind hard work but don’t like to waste effort.

This means that we can motivate our teams if they can see how it leads to success.

We also have to be open and honest about our performance.

If we are  transparent, we  can be accountable and provide  rewards. If focused on the right things, people will become more motivated, especially if we can ensure that the attractiveness of success is greater than the resistance to change.

Organisations need to use the data available to make the right decisions.

dogbert

 

Question and Answer Session

A couple of key points from the Q&A session

  • THE TARGETS REMAIN THE TARGETS!
  • Everyone can do a great job, but hey need the right tools and the right authority.
  •  If you don’t want to do a good job then we need another conversation.

I asked a question about simplicity and accountability, but this was a question for us as leaders, not really for Gordon. If we have 13 strategies, some of which are 30 pages long, how can we hope to succeed. Gordon said he was already bored on hearing that there were 13 strategies.

tredgold - efficency

Reflections

An engaging and authentic talk, from a leader who has really delivered success and change, interestingly using data to support decision making, and in making the priorities really simple for the organisation.

This is a challenge for universities, where we like to think of ourselves as large complex organisations, even if we aren’t that big or complex, but we have developed of culture of complexity. This is not necessarily better.

This could be a time for reflection on our strategic plan, in the light of the changed environment in which we operate, and the identification of what our two or three priorities should be with clearly defined accountabilities.

 

 

 

 

Update on New Year’s Resolutions

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I wrte my New Year Resolutions in September, to link to the academic year. After one semester, it seems timely to provide an update on what has happened since then:

Resolution Progress after 1 semester
Make student attainment a focus for Academic Development Unit activity Student attainment and success is now included explicitly in the Academic Strategy
Make sure every group of staff knows how they can contribute to improving league table performance I’ve given presentations in Faculty of Arts and Creative Technology and Faculty of Business Education and Law. I’ve also presented to staff in Schools of PSE and Sciences.
Give talks in all faculties and schools throughout the year Talks and have been provided to faculties and schools as above. It’s quite clear where this work has not yet been as fully disseminated.
Run an event on campus to address the issue of BME student performance Forthcoming Learning and Teaching Conference will include a keynote speech on BME attainment, and a workshop session. In addition, there will be further work within the institution before this event
Develop undergraduate and postgraduate award portfolio performance tools Undergraduate tool was completed in September, and a final version shared across schools and faculties in November. To date, we have not agreed what should be included in a pg version.
Learn how to use Blackboard, particularly analytics As BlackBoard is now within my purview, I’m learning how to use some of the newer tools, and setting up a new BlackBoard Steering Group and will be working with my team to create a user group. We will also be revising all the help documentation that we provide and the training and support that is available. We will be reviewing new opportunities such as BB Mobile and Collaborate.
Review personal tutoring and other L&T enhancement processes Personal Tutoring is being reviewed by Steve and Marj.
Give keynote speech on MOOCs I presented a keynote on my experience and views of MOOCs and a Quality Enhancement event at University of Hertfordshire
Stop writing blog articles about MOOCs – they were so 2012. Well, I wrote only one article since I wrote my list of resolutions, but I expect there will be more now that I am looking at the delivery of FutureLearn MOOCs
Do not publish blog articles that might offend…….chiz Yeah right.

End of the year blog

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I’ve been writing this blog for a whole year now, and so in the traditions of every newspaper or other media outlet,  I should provide a review of the year.

Having said that, there are plenty of these already available, that I’d point readers to:

Firstly the Guardian weighs in with “The U-turn universities wanted – over overseas students – never came“.

For those interested in technology supported or enhanced learning, I have to recommend  Audrey Watters over on Hack Education. She’s provided  a series of articles on the top ed-tech trends of 2013.

And finally Martin Weller of the Open University provides us with The Year of No S**t Sherlock.

Reviewing my own blog for the year – here are the highlights:

January

I started my rant against MOOCs, highlighting some of the hyperbole that was starting to fly around. I also started to highlight issues around BME attainment and more broadly around degree classification rates in the sector.

February

The blog this month was very quiet – I was away from the university, and produced a couple of short pieces. MOOCs were still there though, with suggestions that only 10 universities would exist in the future!

March

This month I took the plunge,and actually enrolled in some MOOCs – I figured I’d be able to comment better from experience. Coursera now own a lot of data about me, and in return I’ve received a couple of PDF certificates (and some interesting ideas). the VC of Salford took one of the same courses as me and also blogged about it.

In the same month we saw the apocalyptic vision “An Avalanche is Coming“, produced by the IPPR and written by Pearsons (who got  a bit of bad press later in the year as so much of the BIS budget was used up in supporting HNC and HND students at private providers). This report described the end of the world as we knew it. I was dismissive, and was much of the blogosphere.

April

In April I carried on studying a MOOC, and wrote about the New Media Consortium report on trends in technology in HE. We also had reports of another avalanche, this time a more serious and credible one, when Steve Smith talked about finance as being the big problem for HE. We also started to see the results of the first league tables of the year, with the THE Student Experience Survey and the Complete University Guide. The latter one prompted me to start producing detailed information on the university’s performance to a wide range of stakeholders.

May

May was a month ion which I completed a MOOC on Surviving Disruptive Technologies, with an essay on how a low ranking UK university can respond to the disruptive influences in technology, markets and finance. I provided plenty of detail of meetings I attended, on MOOCs with Universities UK, and more importantly on BME performance, where I gained some great ideas from the University of Hertfordshire. This year’s Learning and Teaching Conference at Staffordshire (July 1st, 2014 – save the date) will pick up these ideas and use one of the same speakers.

June

June and we were back to league tables, with the results now in from the Guardian (a slight improvement) and the People and Planet Green League Table( a good result). I started to write about how we could improve our league table position, and this translated into workshops and talks that I delivered around some (but interestingly not all) of the faculties of the university. Also in June we saw the annual survey of opinions of HE leaders, who thought that the sector was going to change in size and shape, with mergers and closures as part of the change. This is similar to previous survey results – which seem to say,” yes there’ll be closures, but it’ll be someone else.”

July 

This was  a quiet month – I must have been on holiday, but managed to get a piece about zombies into the blog.

August

This month we learned that HEFCE were going to reallocate SNC numbers from universities that under recruited to those that did well, from 2014. Clearly at this time HEFCE had no idea of what the Chancellor would say in December. This month I also started to get more interested in the ideas of Bourdieu and how we could develop social or cultural capital of students. I built this into a HEFCE project bid, but sadly didn’t get the funding.

September

And the final big league table of the year was produced, this time it was the Times/Sunday Times. Again I blogged about this, and provided plenty of analysis and information internally.

October

This month there weren’t may posts, but some crucial ones on how we might improve as an institution and on evaluation of teaching. By this point in the year, I’ve pretty much laid out my stall of what I think is important, and how we need to develop certain things further.

November

This month I took on responsibility for e-learning, and promptly had a day out with Blackboard, hearing what other universities are doing, and what the future of that software might hold for us. Also this month, UUK published its report on the funding challenge for universities, which started to suggest multiple sources of loans for students. Clearly finance is going to be the biggest challenge to universities (have you realised MOOCs don;t get much of a mention as we go through the months?)

December

You’d hope that this would be a quiet month, but once again university finance, and the marketisation of HE became dominant themes. First and excellent essay by Stefan Collini (which I to seem to refer to in all of my faculty talks) and then the bombshell of the Autumn Statement, announcing the complete removal of student number controls. HEFCE have yet to provide detailed information on the change to number controls, but on one hand it’s pleasing to see the recognition that HE has a positive impact on the economy and on society. On the other, there does seem to be a gaping hole in the finance, and a degree of scepticism that selling off the loan book is a good idea.

And finally

So in the 50th year since the publication of the Robbins report, HE seems to be changing more quickly than ever. The disruption forecast at the beginning of the year, which was going to be all about technology, doesn’t seem to have arrived in the quite the way some had predicted. The disruption to come in terms of increased marketisation and changes to funding will be significant, and much more likely to have serious impact in the near future.

Next year I’ll be continuing to push student attainment as a key part of my agenda, analysing league tables, providing data models of award and module performance and really pushing hard on the work with BME students. I’ll also be making sure we use technology enhanced learning as best we can. Hopefully I’ll have time to keep blogging.

Happy Christmas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scrapping Student Number Controls

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In last week’s Autumn Statement, the Chancellor of he Exchequer made a surprise announcement, that student number controls would be scrapped in 2015-16. While he was still answering questions in the House, I wrote a short blog piece on why this might not be completely good news.

Let me make absolutely clear – opinions expressed in this article (and in the previous one) are personal, and in no way reflect the opinions or decisions of Staffordshire University.

Since I wrote that piece, plenty of other commentators have provided their views, across Twitter, blogs and other more established news outlets. I’ve also received comments via Twitter and even phone calls (how retro) to talk about exactly how serious this is.

Since writing my piece, all of the various mission groups have come out with their reactions, and this is reported in the THE. HEFCE welcomes the change, especially the commitment to STEM subjects; OFFA say it is “excellent news for fair access”; UUK welcomed the news, but cautions of the need for more details about long term sustainability; the Russell Group argue that quality should be prioritised over quantity; Million+ welcome the commitment to mass higher education; University Alliance said that the increase in graduates will enable the UK to meet for skilled graduates, and QAA said this presents an unprecedented opportunity for universities and colleges.

David Willetts writing in “Robbins Revisited” states “analysis suggested that the number of additional qualified applicants who could enter higher education by 2035 will be 460,000 (an increase of about 100,000 on the current level of entrants).”

There is a clear commitment to increasing the number of students in higher education, as it is recognised that there are signification benefits to the economy by having a more educated workforce. In addition, there are a large number of non-market benefits that obtain from higher education, which have an indirect effect on government spending on crime and health for instance.

So with all of that general feeling that this is a good thing (apart from the inevitable Russell Group opinion), why am I, and others still concerned?

As I wrote before, opening up the market, and removing the current controls might remove a degree of protectionism. If numbers going to university are going  to rise (and figures of 60,000 extra students are mooted initially), where will they go? Oxbridge and Russell Group universities will not be increasing their intake massively. To deliver the education that they do, requires fantastic staff student ratios that are supported by high levels of research income, and research to inform their teaching. There is a limited amount of research funding out there to bid for, and equally, there might be a limited number of staff who are capable of generation it. This group are unlikely to take up significant extra numbers

The universities in the middle of the league tables may be best placed If they have used the recent years of easy loans and cheap finance to reinvest in their campuses and facilities, and their overall market offer, They will have risen up the league tables (see Coventry a an example) and they will be desirable enough to be able to expand and take on more undergraduate students. Their greater focus on student experience could mean an attractive offer for full time undergraduate students, and so they will be able to recruit students who might otherwise have gone to the universities lower down the league tables.

And so we come to them. Fishing at the bottom of the pond, and recruiting student with low UCAS tarrifs might be  a risky place to be. Potential students will be able to trade up to the group described above. Equally, there will be a greater challenge from HE in FE provision and from private providers, both of whom can undercut on price, and for whom restrictions will also cease.

Writing in the Financial Times on 5th December 2013, Emran Mian (of the Social Market Foundation) suggests that the “flipside of changes is they will increase pressure on poor-performing universities”.

” Removing the cap on the system overall should mean that any individual university, including new entrants, can recruit without a cap on their growth as well. At the moment, numbers are controlled both at the level of the system as a whole and at each institution. If both caps are removed in 2015-16 this will mean that universities can choose to “go for growth”, providing innovation in their course offerings, improving the student experience or potentially dropping their fees to win students from their competitors.

The flipside of these changes is they are likely to increase very significantly the pressure on poor-performing universities. In a system where supply is constrained and demand exceeds supply by a comfortable margin, everyone can fill their classrooms. Lift the caps and then quality and price start to matter much more.”

And from the Social Market Foundation website:

“Expanding student places makes a lot of economic sense. A third of the increase in labour productivity between 1994 and 2005 was due to higher numbers of graduates in the workforce. By allowing universities to increase recruitment, the Chancellor is encouraging strong, middle-rank universities and new entrants to expand and put pressure on the universities at the bottom. This should mean those universities have to innovate more and offer lower fees.”

So where does this leave us?

Firstly, we need to see the detail from HEFCE on how next years extra places will be allocated in the last year of SNC, but then this university and others will need to have some hard conversations about what we really need to do now, as we could clearly be one of the universities under pressure (remember, this article is based on personal opinions).

Here’s what I would suggest doing immediately:

  • Work as hard as possible to make sure that the university is NOT at the bottom of the league tables, so that we can become a destination university.
  • Make sure that improving student attainment, satisfaction and employability is central to everything that we do.
  • Review our current recruitment planning process – for one year it won’t be worth looking at targets for ABB students an others, and centrally developed targets across faculties. Once the cap is removed there will be no need to allocate numbers to faculties, provided they are able to resource activity. Use the time to develop a recruitment strategy for 2015-16
  • Use management information on portfolio performance more rigorously – if an award produces only 29% of students with good degrees, it damages our league table performance – do we want large numbers of students in that area, or do we need to improve their experience and outcomes?
  • Quality and price are going to matter, we won’t want to reduce price, so how do we drive up quality -we need to make a significant step change?
  • Identify what we have that really is unique – some specialist courses maybe, or 2 year fast track awards?
  • Develop opportunities for recruiting students from growing markets such as the “MINTs” (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey)

This could be the time that the free market really starts to hit higher education. Changes to fees and finance are probably not far away, but there could be a feeding frenzy at the bottom of the market in a very short time. We need to make sure that we are not part of that.