Keep calm and call control...

Quick wrap up of things I've been doing this week.  As well as meeting Faculties, I've chaired a meeting of our Business Continuity Operations Group where we looked at a number things including how we respond to student occupations of our buildings, what emergency procedures the city has in place which might affect us, and a review of our major incident plan. We have a really good set of web pages about what to do in an incident, which everyone should be familiar with, and a neat little poster:

I've also taken part in a forum of Heads of Academic Departments and Director of Professional Services about how we should interact both with the University executive Board 9UEB), and with each other. Some very interesting discussions, and a general view that the current UEB/HoDS forum doesn't work well and can be improved. A set of recommendations will follow....

Finally, this morning I had a conference call with other members of the Steering Group for one of the JISC Co-Design projects which is looking improving the digital skills of staff in HE.   It's title is Building capability for new digital leadership, pedagogy and efficiency, and you can read more about it here. The project intends to provide clear guidance over what digital skills are required, and equip leaders and staff with the tools and resources they need to improve digital capability at a local or institutional level. This will cover all areas of the University - technology enhanced learning, Administrative processes, and research.

Digital Student

One of the JISC projects to come out of the codesign process is Digital Student, which is exploring students expectations and experiences in using technology, and they have recently published almost 50 exemplars of effective practice in support of students’ digital experiences. You can see them here, and I'm pleased to see that Sheffield is represented by All About Linguistics. There's some really good ones, and a real variety of case studies - a good set of resources for anyone interested in improving the students digital experience. They are categorised under the following headings:

    •    Prepare and support students to study successfully with digital technologies
    •    Deliver a relevant digital curriculum
    •    Ensure an inclusive student experience, using technology to overcome disadvantage
    •    Provide a robust, flexible digital environment
    •    Develop coherent policies for ‘Bring Your Own’
    •    Engage students in dialogue about their digital experience and empower them to make changes
    •    Take a strategic, whole-institution approach to the digital student experience

Ten great things and a murder mystery

Busy campus today as its an open day. As usual we have a stand telling students what to expect when they get here, and what they might need to know about IT facilities.

Building on our success as being number one for student experience this year, we've devised a new set of web pages and a small booklet with the Ten Great Things in IT here in Sheffield.

Also today, the Student Summer of Innovation awards were announced - I blogged last week about the selection process, and now can tell you about the 20 projects that will be funded. You can see a complete list here and read about them in detail. There's some really good ones. To give you an idea of the diversity of them they include:

• An app to encourage female students to break gender stereotypes

• A flashcard revision system for veterinary students

• The Duct Tape University - an Open Education Resource discovery and publishing tool for learning communities

• Homicidium  - a nomadic campus game which aims to introduce students to elements of their modules in a day long murder hunt. 

Will be really exciting watching them all develop over the summer.

Diamonds, students and stolen tapestries

Started the week with a Senior Management Group meeting for our new building, The Diamond. We're into the design freeze now, so discussion is about progress on the building, and interior layout and details. Progress is good. Fascinating discussion about concrete. Who knew it was so interesting. Listening to the progress reports, and watching the webcam, as well as hearing about the lorries of concrete lined up at intervals and managing the tower crane capacities makes you realise what a massive logistical exercise it is.  And also now starting to appreciate what a huge, and stunning, building this is going to be.

Today I had a meeting with JISC to discus one of their latest innovation projects which I'm going to be involved with. Called from Prospect to Alumnus this is a big project which aims to provide a joined up digital student experience from pre-application to employment.  More details in this infographic. Just at the scoping stage at the moment, but I'm looking forward to being involved.

Finally, a piece of news tonight which made me smile. We used to have a meetings room called The Tapestry Room, with two Eighteenth Century tapestries. About 20 years ago one was stolen, rather brazenly by a couple of guys who walked in wearing brown coats, rolled it up, carried it out and calmly nodded to the porters as they went. It was some days before someone realised it hadn't been taken down for cleaning....

So, one of the tapestries remained until recently when the room was refurbished and decorated, and it was taken down.  We were going to sell it, but it's origin was traced to a French chateau where it had been looted by the Nazis in WW2. So, we've returned it! How cool.

Back on the UCISA Exec...

Last Thursday I was in Oxford for a meeting of the UCISA Executive Committee. After 3 years absence, it was good to be back :-)

We kicked off with a good session about our relationship with JISC, how we might work with them in the future, and what projects we will be involved in. It was an interesting discussion, and covered many areas. JISC has been restructured in the light of the Wilson Report, and funding arrangements have also changed. All Universities now have to pay a subscription for JISC services which is mandatory for three years. After that Universities will be able to decide what they subscribe to. Lots of discussion about the business model, and how services will be costed.  The major part of the discussion was about JISC's innovation funding which is now all being channeled through the co-design process. I've blogged before about the pilot which took place and the workshops which happened recently to come up with themes for the next round of co-design projects. The JISC Baord have now agreed which of these will be funded, but I'm not sure I can release details yet - will let you know as soon as I can.

Another major discussion was the changes being made to the structure and governance UCISA, which involves setting up a separate trading company, UCISA Services Ltd (USL), and changing the charitable status of UCISA from a charitable trust to a charitable company limited by guarantee (CCLG). All very complicated, but it will allow us to expand our range of services we can offer to members.

New projects coming up for the future include a revamp of the Security Information Toolkit, a Learning Space Toolkit, a Social Media toolkit, and possibly, a Staff Summer of Ideas, similar to the Student Summer of Innovation.

Innovation and ideas

Yesterday I was at a workshop run by JISC as part of their Co-Design programme, which involves a number of stakeholders working in partnership with JISC to agree on priorities and projects for innovation funding.


Our job yesterday was to come up with ideas - a very well run day, and a lot of good ideas came out of it. We started with challenges that we thought technology could solve, grouped them into themes, and then spent some time working on them in groups, refining and defining them.  In the end we had to produce elevator pitches for each, and pitch to the rest of the group - we came up with about 15 challenges, with defined outcomes and benefits - which finally we voted on. JISC will now work on them and come up with some suggested projects to take forward. The main themes in the groups I was involved in were around Digital Literacy and the Student Experience

Digital Literacy is vital for all staff. Academics need to feel comfortable with new technologies and the best pedagogic way to use them in their teaching. Professional support staff need to know how to use technologies to make processes and procedures more efficient, and all staff need to feel part of the community and conversation which takes place on social media. There's a wide range of digital literacy out there, with different skill levels, and there is a lot of work to do to ensure that everyone has the skills they need.

The student experience is important for so many reasons - for student satisfaction, for league tables such as those based on the NSS, to make students feel connected with the University. We need a digital environment that is fit for the 21st century which covers the whole student lifecycle from enquiry to graduation and employment. this is a huge project which could take in many things, including some of the issues around identity which I posted about after Tuesdays meeting.
Quite intense hard work,  but the view made up for it!

Today I was in Oxford for the Organising Committee of the UCISA Conference. UCISA14 only finished a couple of weeks ago, and we're already planning UCISA15 - and I'm now Chair of the group. The feedback from delegates which we got today confirms that is was very successful, and many said it was one of the best. So, we've got to follow it next year in Edinburgh.  No pressure there!

Innovation....

Kicked off this week with our Human Resources Committee - good progress being made on our Talent First strategy, and we had a interesting discussion about what an ideal Reward and Recognition strategy would look like. Answers on a postcard please :-)

We're looking at making some major changes to our service cataologue, and we're working on a much higher level Service Portfolio which describes what we do, and how it brings value to the Univeristy. Made a lot of progress, and it's been good recently to catch up with the Gartner Analyst who's been advising us. Glad to know he was very complementary and thinks we're going in the right direction!

Its also that time of year for planning, budgeting, forecasting, looking forward to the next academic year, and sorting out our objectives, making sure they align with what the University's plans are, and that we have the necessary funding to achieve them. Lots of work.

Finally today I had a conference call about the Summer of Student Innovation - blogged about it before so this is another plug! There's £5000 available, and a lot of help, for students who have a great idea about how to improve student life with technology. All they have to do is go here and enter. One of the major points of discussion was how we get the message out to students. Blanket email we know don't work, and although there's a press release and a number of media articles, that's not going to get to the students. We know how hard it is - even Fileman didn't get to all of them.  I'm looking for an eye catching, maybe whacky, graphic image that basically makes it clear that there's money available for great ideas. Hopefully this year we'll get an idea from Sheffield.

This initiative is being funded by JISC, and we're meeting soon to look at other innovative ideas to fund - let me have any. My suggestion is a Summer of STAFF Innovation - I'm sure there are plenty of staff out there with ideas who just need a bit of time and funding to make them happen - what do you think?

Co-Design

Today's meeting was the JISC Futures Forum - the body steering the co-design innovation process which I've blogged about before. We looked at progress on all projects - including the identity management one I posted about yesterday.

One of the most exciting ones to be funded as far as I'm concerned was the Student Innovation one - or the Summer of Student Innovation as it became. We gave groups of students free reign to come up with an innovation, and from the 36,  21 were chosen to be funded, and help given to take the development forward. You can see the successful ones here. Of these, six are being funded to produce useable services with pilots running in institutions from February to September 2014. These will be showcased at the JISC Digital Festival in March, and we're already planning the next round. A great project and we're really looking forward to seeing what students come up with next time.

Another strand to this project was The Digital Student - investigating the digital expectations and requirements of students as they come to University. The project has completed its initial investigation, and is now testing the recommendations on the community. The initial recommendations (in summary) are:

• Manage student expectations
• Equip students to learn effectively with digital technology
• Support students and staff to use their own devices (BYOD)
• Ensure digital content is device neutral where appropriate
• Enhance the curriculum with digital activities and experiences
• Engage students in projects to enhance their digital experience
• Develop and reward innovators – models of accreditation
• Encourage a culture of continuous organisational research
• Consider digital experiences alongside other aspects of the student experience – importance of joining up with other support services including IT, Libraries, Estates etc

No real surprises there, but the second phase will look at these in more detail. There's a blog just started here which has more information.

As well as looking at current projects, we spent much of the day discussing the co-design process in general, and how to take it forward. This has been a new departure for the JISC, working in partnership with stakeholders, which up until now have included RUGIT, CURL, SCONUL and UCISA. New partners will now come on board and the innovation process expanded. Lots of discussion on what type of projects can be classed as innovation, how to generate a pipeline of ideas, top down vs bottom up, communication, prioritisation etc.


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Student innovation ideas - winners announced

I've posted before about the Summer of Student Innovation, and the winners have just been announced. 21 projects will get £5,000 and help with developing their ideas which will be showcased at the end of the summer at an event which we hope will be in September. Some great ideas, and it will be interesting to see what they come up with and how many actually develop into usable projects. You can read about the funded ones here.

Summer of Student Innovation, part 2

I wrote recently about the JISC Co-design process where as one of the innovation projects, we asked students to submit ideas to win funding to develop them, and I'm in the middle of marking them. It's a really difficult task as many of them are excellent ideas. This project obviously caught the imagination of students - the hashtag #studentideas was consistently the hottest topic on the JISC twitter stream for the duration of the project, and the ideas got 6,200 votes, 98% of which were unique.
Despite the short timescales, and it overlapping with exams, we had a great response, and 33 projects passed the voting threshold to go forward to the next stage. You can see them here.

The concept of crowdsourcing ideas was discussed this morning at a webinar I took part in for the whole process, and maybe if this happens again next year we'll involve some different groups as well as students.

The next stage in the project is to look at the concept of The Digital Student - what are student requirements as they enter University? Students are entering university with very different expectations and requirements for a digital experience than past students or university staff. This is driven by developments in mobile technology and by web trends. Universities may need help in establishing a detailed understanding of these requirements to enable them to tweak or reimagine the services they offer.

Summer of Student Innovation

Not had time to blog this week - sorry! So, what have I been doing? Well, one of the things was taking part in a webinar about the JISC Futures Forum which I'm a member of, and caught up on the progress of projects. The one I'm most excited about is the Student Innovation teams.

Branded as the  Summer of Student Innovation, we want to  put the power to enhance the university experience directly into the hands of teams of students, academics and experts across the UK.

Students who join the Summer of Innovation will get the chance to the chance to create real technology solutions, have the technology they create adopted by universities and join events where they can meet the other student teams as well as technical experts.
There's  £5000 per  student team on offer  to develop new technology that could improve education, research and university life. The teams will be selected through an open call for ideas, and after the projects have run, the technology developed by the teams will be embedded for a trial period in volunteer universities. Products that are successful in the trials will be provided to other interested parties through sustainable routes.  Lots more information about it here. Very exciting - hope it's a success.

Other things this week include Senate Budget Committee where we had a very productive and interesting discussion with the Vice-Chancellor about how funds are allocated in the institution. Senate Budget committee has put together a web site to try and demystify how finances are handled for those who are interested. Various other meetings and ad hoc catch ups took up the rest of the week. Oh, and a fairly major incident this morning.......

Innovation and Apocalypse

Today I've been in London, halfway up Millbank Tower which has a splendid view, at a JISC workshop looking at priorities for funding from their innovation fund. I've blogged before about the first workshop where I was there with other representatives of RUGIT ( Russell Group IT Directors), and other workshops were being held with UCISA, RLUK and SCONUL. Each one of those workshops came up with a series of possible projects, and they have been refined over the past few weeks. Today, two reps from each group were there, and together with JISC our task was to prioritise the projects down to a manageable number on which work will start as soon as possible.

Given that each of the four groups had their own pet projects, you might think that would be difficult. Well, I wouldn't say it was easy, but we did it. We got about 17 possibles down to 5/6 high priority and 2/3 next on the list in a matter of hours, with little or no bloodshed. There's a good spread across the themes of improving the student experience, achieving research excellence, managing national collections and improving institutional efficiency. There's also a good mixture of library and iT related ones, as well as some that involve a wider constituency. Looking at cultural, social and policy issues around Identity Management for example will involve HR, Student Services and many other areas.

I was pleased that one of my original ideas made it to the top 5, and I think was probably felt to be number one, that of setting up student teams to come up with innovations, real blue skies stuff. Risky, but exciting. We also applied agile techniques as far as possible, and where we had two projects we couldn't decide between, agreed to set up two teams for a 1 month sprint on both. At the end of the month, the project with the most chance of completion will continue, the other will stop.

A good day, and I'm looking forward to being part of this process. I had about 15 minutes to kill in the walk back to the tube, and popped into Tate Britain which is a bit like a building site at the moment. I only had time to get into two galleries, but was amazed to see lots of John Martin works, huge apocalyptic paintings which I last saw at the Millennium Galleries in Sheffield. This one is a brilliant example, The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum.


My only complaint is that one of his most famous works, three enormous paintings, a Triptych representing The Apocalypse, were not hung next to each other, but on 3 different walls. But a great end to the day nevertheless.


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Co-designing Innovation

Today I've been in London at a workshop organised by JISC, to work with

them to put together a programme of Innovation projects.
A bit of an unnerving start to the day to hear reports of a helicopter crashing into a crane and bursting into flames, and it was across the river from where we were meeting. Tragic news and of course my thoughts are with the people and families involved.

JISC have £2m to spend over the coming year and are working with four agencies, UCISA, RUGIT, SCONUL and RLUK to co-design the programme.
I was there as one of 6 representatives from RUGIT, and by the end of today they will have run a workshop with each of the groups.

JISC provided a list of possible innovative projects, and we had a chance before today and during the workshop to suggest others. Following the workshops JISC will be setting up a Futures Forum to oversee the programme of work. We agreed that we and the programme needed to be focused, user centric, open, agile and willing to experiment. Some risks will have to be taken, or the programme will not have been innovative. We also need to work together in a collaborative and pragmatic way with a joint commitment to making this work.

I'm afraid I did have to question whether we were the right people to be discussing innovation in the use of digital technologies, when the amount of digital technology in use in the room was minimal - paper, pens and notebooks seemed to rule :-).

However, we did have a very good discussion, with lots of good ideas which we had to prioritise. One of the major themes was the Digitally Enabled University, with projects particularly around technology and students. This theme included ideas around putting technology in the hands of students and seeing what they do with it, assessing the use of BYOD, the mobile student, use of technology by academics and how technology can can improve processes.

My top rated idea, (well it would be, it was mine) was to set up a team of creative people including students with different IT skills, lock them in a room for a few weeks, figuratively speaking, and see what they come up with. Don't constrain them by giving them a problem and ask them to solve it, just let them do some blue skies thinking.

I would love to do this, and am having some thought about setting up an innovation team in Sheffield, possibly using student interns.

Altogether a very good day, and I look forward to seeing the results and to being further involved.

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