From Cradle to Grave

Yesterday I was at a JISC workshop looking at prioritising strands for one of the co-design projects, From Prospect to Alumnus, or From Cradle to Grave as it quickly became renamed.

Basically this project is looking at how we might provide a more joined up experience for students in their interactions with different bits of the university. Currently this tends to be disjointed, not coordinated and must be confusing for students. One of the things we looked at was the different "touch points" a student has with different parts of the University. These are many and varied, from initial enquires about open days and application, through registration, their academic department, tutors, the IT Helpdesk, libraries, accommodation helpdesks, to graduation, careers and alumni. Data is collected at many of these touch points, but it isn't collected in similar ways, and is often not shared across different agencies. We compared this with some good examples in the private sector.

We also looked at sharing of information across institutions, which will become more important as mobility between institutions increases. At the moment, most of us focus on retention.

We discussed the many cultural and process barriers to sharing information, which are often more important then the technical.

We agreed that the learner needed to be put at the heart of this journey, not the institution and not the systems.

We ended with a list of priorities for further development, including customer relationship management, vendor management, data structures and integration and employability. All of these will have action plans put against them which I'll share as soon as they are published. All very timely for our own student system review.

Today I've been meeting with senior executives from Computing magazine, discussing with them our current issues and what we would like to see them cover in future publications and events. A very mixed set of attendees from commercial private and not for profit sectors so a variety of views expressed!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Gadgets...

I have to admit it, I'm a bit of a gadget person. Ruby Wax once referred to me as The Geek Girl. The last gadget I got was a Fitbit which I wear all the time (except in the shower) to measure how many steps I take, how many miles I walk, and how many active minutes I have in a day. when I first got it it was quite scary how little exercise I got on some days. Now if I haven't reached my target when I get home, I go for a walk. Headphones in, music or audiobook on and off I go. Much to the amusement of my neighbours, given that I live in the city centre. Made a real difference to how much exercise I take.

But, I've been looking recently at whether sitting down for long periods of time, which I often do, is good for me. The simple answer is, it isn't! I often get pains in my neck and shoulders, and I know I hunch and tense my shoulders when sitting over a keyboard. So, a few days ago I got a Varidesk - allows me to stand up when I want to, and sit down when I don't. Interestingly, in the 3 days I've had it, I've barely sat down. Don't feel the need to, and feel so much more comfortable. And no shoulder ache. Also, my step count has gone up considerably, presumably because it's very difficult to stand still.


I can't write a post about gadgets without mentioning the latest addition to the department  today -
Google Glass. Given us all much amusement today,  and it was quite weird when one of the Assistant Directors appeared at my door looking like The Borg and said - "I can take a photo of you by slowly winking"....


And this is the picture -  my standing up desk, taken with Google Glass.

Value for Money

One of the things we've been doing over the last few days is writing our value for money report - part of a series of reports produced for the University to show how we're achieving value for money, pointing out areas where we could do it better, and looking at future strategies. We have some excellent examples from CiCS, especially around infrastructure, voice and data and printing.

We've expanded our local cloud server and storage infrastructure making use of aggregation, resource sharing, standardisation and thin provisioning. This means we only grow capacity when it is really needed. We make the best use of resources by sharing - we supply capacity that meets peak demand, but not all peaks are at the same time. It also means we can clone test systems from live data ensuring that upgrades have a good chance of success with minimal storage overhead. We can also snapshot systems prior to upgrades etc quickly reverting if things go wrong.  This usually answers my main question at our weekly CAB (Change Advisory Board) which is "what happens if it all goes horribly wrong?" Usual answer - we'll have taken a snapshot so we revert. I have to admit that the "we" in the above paragraph definitely doesn't include me - some much cleverer people than that do it all.
Last year we had 750 virtual servers in production and development, this year we have 1063.

The way in which the network is being designed and deployed is also relevant to VfM.  Wherever possible we install an appropriate amount of outlets that meets the users needs (not too many, not too few) and only patch those that are actually being used. This in turn means that we can install fewer switches than under the previous ‘standard’ model making savings on both capital and operational spend.
We’re also revisiting older deployments and retro-fitting the ‘only patch used ports’ model, enabling us to reduce the amount of kit needed in those properties (making operational savings there), with recovered kit then being deployed in other areas (making capital savings on those projects)
Continued roll-out of IP Telephony and underlying infrastructure provides better/easier access to voice services for users whilst reducing the amount of network equipment needed to provide it.


My final example, from many more listed in the report, is the My Sustainable Print Service which went live in April 2014; the service was made available to all Staff and PGT and the Students Union. Student print equipment was replaced in the Information Commons as part of this agreement improving quality and functionality. The recurrent annual saving for the university is £1.4M; 19 tonnes of carbon saved, reduced from 24T to 5T. A new fleet of approx 555 new multifunctional print, copy, scan devices has been installed on campus. The legacy fleet has been removed and so far totals 1500 devices which have gone to a Social Enterprise; toner cartridges have been removed and/or sold with an approx value to date of £5k.



As user expecttions increase and  IT becomes even more ubiquitous and critical, we will keep exploring ways of making our services more efficient and demonstrating value for money.

Nothing worse than a wet morris dancer....

Back from my annual pilgrimage from Whitby Folk Week, and I know you all look forward to the gratuitous picture of Morris Dancers, but contain yourselves.....

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd been helping  with the University's contribution to a civic event - The Sheffield Fayre.  Well, it's just happened, and I've spent the weekend there. Sunday was glorious, lovely sunny weather.  I only had one team to look after - The Sheffield Giants, who are magnificent.

I love this picture of the porters (who carry the Giants and dance with them), putting on their black large belts to help support them.

So, Monday dawned, on the day that I had 6 teams to juggle, and it rained. Rained, and rained. Threw away the programme, Tried to find dryish dance spots, and the show went on! Ably assisted by beer from the beer tent. So, here's a very wet, bedraggled morris team - actually the one I normally dance with.

So that's it. Your annual exposure to folky things. Normal CiCS service will shortly be resumed....

Clearing and donuts

So just before I disappear off on another holiday, time to make sure everything is going alright with clearing and confirmation. Very important day as students find out what their A level results are and whether they've got a place in the University of their choice. We set up one of our IT rooms as mission control for the temps to answer the phones and keep track of on line applications. The giant plasma screens are useful to give our temps messages keep them up to date with progress. When I got down there early today it was eerily calm!

We provide technical support for the network, phones, PCs and desktop - here they are working hard :-)

And our colleagues from Epigenesys who wrote the system are there to help and trouble shoot as well.

Of course, the staff need sustenance, and I was asked not to bring donuts, but something healthy. So I took donuts, with some fruit. Apparently it all got eaten....

Great teamwork from everyone across a number of departments, so well done everyone.

Dancing in the Park

So, the end of my first week back after the holiday. It's been a long week :-)  Most of it spent catching up, and looking forward to the new academic year. Perhaps the most important job I've been doing is looking at our budget for next year and how that compares with our financial forecasts. Its fair to say it's not an exact match, and we are looking at how we might manage it in terms of current vacancies. We're identifying areas where we believe the staffing resources needs to be protected, where it could reduce (albeit with a drop in service levels), and where we need to invest. There may be tough decisions to be taken....

Also this week I've caught up with some of the new student sabbatical officers. Always a pleasure to meet them at the beginning of the new academic year, and I'm afraid it only seems like a few weeks since I was was welcoming the previous holders. I don't envy them having such a short period to learn how the University works, and make their own impact on it. It's vitally important that we work together to achieve as much as we can in their period of office. This week we've talked about the design and operation of The Diamond,  how we might encourage students to vote and how we might better analyse our student data to look at the attainment of different diversity groups.

It was really good this week to meet colleagues from another university and exchange information about our strategies, service management implementation etc. It's always time well spent finding out what anther institution is dong, even if they came here to find out what we're doing.

And finally, I did some scheduling for an event I'm helping with - The Sheffield Fayre. To celebrate 20 years of The National Fairground Archive, the University is sponsoring this event.  Given my connections, I'd been asked to get some local traditional dance teams to appear. Yesterday I had to work out the timings for 6 teams, across two stages, making sure everyone had enough time to move between spots, and didn't dance with the same team. A post-it note nightmare :-) Looks like a good event - and it's free. So, if you're not doing anything get to Norfolk Park on Sunday 24th or Monday 25th August.

TELFest

While I was off, we successfully moved our VLE (MOLE) to a hosted service.  I missed the fun and games, but by all accounts it went very well - so congrats to all of the team. The only noticeable difference to our users should be that content creation is faster - everything else should be just the same, despite the fact is is now not running here, but on servers in a different country. It was a very aggressive timescale we worked to to get everything migrated in plenty of time for the beginning of the academic year, and I'm really pleased it was so successful.

Technology Enhanced Learning is an important part of our strategy, and this year we are running a

week long TEL festival in September and I'm pleased to see that arrangements for this have really come on in the past few weeks.  TELFest-2014 is designed to give help, guidance and support to anyone develop their skills in this area, no matter how much experience they have. There's workshops, drop in sessions, panel discussions and much more - the agenda looks really interesting, and we hope it will be a well attended event.

Graduation Round Up complete with Google Glass

Sorry for interval to blogging - been on my hols to Turkey for a couple of weeks. A bit earlier than we normally go, and as such I missed Graduation Week for the first time in many years. Very disappointed as I always love it - its the culmination of the year, and always brings it back home to me what our jobs are all about.

As usual, we tried to make it as good a day as possible for our students and family and friends, and our creative media team did a great job again. As well as live streaming of the ceremonies, and recording them on USB sticks and DVDs ready soon after the ceremony, we had out famous handshake videos - those few seconds as the graduand walks across the stage that everyone is really interested in. My favourite one was of Alan - famous for replying to the whole list about not having any robes, and starting the hashtag #prayforalan. He got his robes, and graduated to a huge cheer:

 A great moment!

We also had the gigipixel photos available again thanks to our friend Ed from Business Tours UK which are taggable on Facebook.  A new development this year was The University of Sheffield Yearbook, a set of photos taken during the week of students, staff and family and friends, together with their stories - definitely worth a look, there's some lovely stories.

And finally, our Corporate Affairs department showed what you can do with Google Glass - fantastic film:

The famous CiCS BBQ

Last Friday was the famous CiCS BBQ, in our lovely back garden and in glorious sunshine. Lots of people helped of course - to prepare the food, to put up the gazebos, to BBQ, to move furniture, to test the beer.... All under Alison's direction of course - so thanks to everyone, and those who stayed behind to clear up and wash up. Forgot my camera, so here's a few iPhone pictures of a great event:

MOLE is moving.....

This week has mainly been about catch ups with senior colleagues in CiCS and in our Professional Services Executive, and Liaison meetings. We're in our second round of meetings with the Faculties where we discuss our plans for the year, and look at their strategic challenges and how we might help.

One of our key priorities for the coming year is to improve the availability and performance of our VLE, (called MOLE). Hopefully we will have achieved that very soon, as we are moving it next weekend to a managed hosted service. We only took the decision a few weeks ago to move, and the team here have worked really hard to get  it migrated by the end of this month so it will be ready for the start of the next academic year. We've done a few test migrations, and next weekend we take the service down, migrate all of the content over to a datacentre in Amsterdam, test it and hopefully go back live again. Our staff and students shouldn't see any difference, except in performance, responsiveness and speed at which any faults get fixed. We hope then that our Learning Technologies team will be able to focus their efforts on supporting MOLE and helping staff and students to use its features to produce innovative and engaging online content to provide our students with the best learning experience possible.

As part of our commitment to Technology Enhanced learning, we are running a week long Technology Enhanced Learning Festival in September with sessions including Using Social Media to Enhance Teaching and Learning, Mobile Learning, Online Assessment and Feedback, Multimedia to enhance learning and teaching, E-portfolios and Flipped Learning. As well as the workshop sessions there'll be panel discussions and drop in sessions. Watch this space for details and programme soon.

Living with 100 things

The last session at the SSG conference last week was a keynote from Jonathan Munn, a 26 year old who two years ago made the radical decision to give away all of possessions and live with no more than 100 things. He's since written a book about his experience called How to be Radical, with some suggestions about how we can all do something radical to change our lives.  Currently he has about 74 possessions I think, and yes that does include pants and socks, and a pair of socks counts as 1 item.

Although he wasn't suggesting that we all did what he's done, he did ask us all to do something different - to step out of our comfort zone and agree to DO something. Then do it, stop talking and do it, tell everyone we're doing it to make ourselves accountable. Simplify what we can - focus on what matters, and not distractions. He eats the same meal every day and has so few clothes he doesn't have to make decisions about what to wear. For someone who loves food and clothes, that would be a tad too radical for me :-)  Most importantly, and I cannot disagree with him here, live for the present - enjoy it!  As a rather nice parting piece of work, we all had to write down three things we were going to do, and give it with our email address to someone we didn't know. They will contact us in three months to check on progress. My biggest problem is I can only remember two of the things I wrote down....

Innovation, Ideascale and a pet cow

I'm trying to catch as much of the SSG conference as possible while I'm here, and yesterday I managed to see Gareth Edwards talk about how they are handling innovation at the University of Surrey.

He began by posing the question, What does innovation mean to us? The conclusion was that it was solving problems with new ideas in response to external drivers such as changing technology and student expectations. It's something we should all want to do and we should be encouraging our staff to.

One the things they tried was giving some staff a 20% policy for two months where providing the day job was under control they could work in innovative projects with colleagues. This came up with some excellent small improvements. But didn't prove to be scaleable across the department.
They decided to set up an ideas board using idea management software and have implemented Ideascale, which is what we have been using in our Information Commons to collect ideas from students, and we are hoping to roll it out further.
Their experience came up with a number of lessons:
Get the commitment of management
Encourage staff to be involved
When you launch it to the department - explain it,  sell it, get participation.
Emphasise that failure IS an option.
Early adopters play a big role. Cultivate them.
Consider having a facilitator to keep up the tempo
Work out how to deliver stuff - its no good collecting good ideas if you do nothing with them
Use gamification - rewards, points etc to encourage people.

A really good talk, and some good pointers for when we roll ideascale out further.


I also had to give my Petcha Kucha talk yesterday  - surprisingly for someone who enjoys presenting and talking I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. The rigid structure of slides moving automatically after 20 seconds I found difficult. Anyway, it seemed to go OK, apart from a stumble over a word on the first slide! I was last on in the day, so gave what a hope was a reasonably
entertaining look at my life story in pictures and lessons learned. But they won't mean a lot without the preceding slides ;-) Oh, and I cheated on the format..... 

Tree in a sweater and other things

Yesterday I spoke at a seminar for PhD students and research workers about careers outside of their subject area, not in academica. it focused on opportunities in Professional Services, so there were a number of colleagues there across the institution.  I tried to get across that you learn a lot of transferable skills in doing a PhD, and when thinking of possible careers you need to think where you can use them. You also need to be able to draw them out on your job application or CV, and that's true for all of your experiences both at work and outside for all job applications.

Transferable skills I specifically mentioned were:
Time management
Project management
Complex problem solving
Writing skills
Self reliance
Attention to detail
Academic rigour
Self confidence, especially with academic colleagues


I also took part in a CV clinic where we spoke to students about their CVs and how they might improve them if they were interested in pursuing a career in our area. Really interesting morning.

Today I'm at Crewe Hall for three things - meeting of the UCISA Conference Orrganising Committee, meeting of the UCISA Executive, and I'm giving my Petcha Kucha session later this afternoon at the Support Services Group annual conference.

Crewe Hall is an amazing place, a Jacobian Mansion with a tree wearing a sweater in the grounds.

This morning we had the Conference Organising Committee meeting and its all going well so far - quite a few speakers already confirmed, and several others we're waiting for confirmation of.  Got a nice spooky vibe organised for one of the dinners as well.