How often do you leave a conference feeling inspired, and then end up getting dragged back into the daily grind?

I think that this year the UCISA conference has challenged me to make some changes. So – I want to go back and do at least one thing that has been mentioned during the last 3 days. It could be changing the way I engage with students, (Stephen Heppell), having an evening meal with my colleagues (Tim Smit), developing partnerships with the community (Michael Ahern and Craig Hickson), or by working with the students rather than against them (Brian Kelly), or something else that has been inspired by one of the speakers.

So – a challenge for me to go back and do something differently. And a challenge for all UCISA delegates (and others reading this) – change something about the way you work, or deliver a service. If you want, leave a comment to say what it is.

How often do you leave a conference feeling inspired, and then end up getting dragged back into the daily grind?

I think that this year the UCISA conference has challenged me to make some changes. So – I want to go back and do at least one thing that has been mentioned during the last 3 days. It could be changing the way I engage with students, (Stephen Heppell), having an evening meal with my colleagues (Tim Smit), developing partnerships with the community (Michael Ahern and Craig Hickson), or by working with the students rather than against them (Brian Kelly), or something else that has been inspired by one of the speakers.

So – a challenge for me to go back and do something differently. And a challenge for all UCISA delegates (and others reading this) – change something about the way you work, or deliver a service. If you want, leave a comment to say what it is.

To describe this as a presentation doesn’t do it justice. Tim Smit is talking – you may know the name from the Lost Gardens of Heligan, and the Eden Project.

This is going to be impossible to blog I think – you really need to be here. Tim speaks with real energy, pacing the floor as he talks. He has passion and conviction. This talk, combined with the one from Stephen Heppell, have inspired me, and made me want to achieve things – unspecified ‘things’ – but nevertheless – I want to go away and ‘do stuff’.

Perhaps the best thing I can do to get over some of the talk is mention Tim’s philosophies for life:
The Tinkerbell Theory – if you can get enough people to believe in something, it will come true.
Last Man Standing – if you have a certain amount of charm, and you won’t go away then people will give you money to do so.
Third Invitation – accept every 3rd invitation you get. This may seem an odd thing to do, but it means you don’t go to the things that will live down to your expectations.

And some management rules from the Eden Project:
You may not start work until you have said good morning to 20 people
You must make a speech about why you love working at the Eden project every year – or resign
You must read a book that is totally outside your interest every year
You must go to see a film, theatre, concert totally outside your interest every year
You must learn to play samba drums.

No doubt some of these rules seem pretty out there – but Tim speaks with such conviction and passion, I find myself understanding why he believes in these things, and agreeing with him.

Finally – and he stresses this as the thing we should all take away from today – eating, and working by candlelight with colleagues after ‘work hours’ is something you should do regularly. Stop being your work persona, and bring all your other experience, skills and ideas into play.

Presenter: Prof Stephen Heppell

Slightly sparse audience this morning – which is a shame, as this was brilliant. Perhaps it is a sign of a good talk that it is hard to blog. I need more time to reflect on some of what has been said. Stephen jumped around quite a bit using a lot of examples – but all the time challenging our notion of how people learn, the nature of the spaces they learn in, the way we engage with them.

My notes capture only bits and pieces, although hopefully some of the links will lead to more examples.

Everyone should hear Stephen Heppell speak – inspirational. (and you can by subscribing to his podcast)

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Stephen starts out by saying that universities seem not to be designed around learning – architecturally or socially – and he is challenging us, as we are in a uniquely privileged position to change this.

So, Stephen suggests that the difference between the 20th and 21st century is:
In the 20th century we built big things that did things for others
In the 21st century we build things that help people to help each other

Stephen is working with the Chinese government at the moment – and suggesting that within the next 5 years China will be a net importer of students. This is a pretty big issue for UK HE.

If the World Bank understands that learning is changing – why don’t universities?

Try typing ‘buy an essay’ into google. Huge number of hits. Who is writing these? Students of course. Even suggesting that you ‘work your way up’ when purchasing essays – don’t go from failing to A grades – start with a few Cs and Bs.

So – why are we going around trying to find ways of trapping this, rather than setting tasks that are really challenging in a 21st century way? As an example, get students to critique other essays (possibly bought online) rather than writing their own.

Stephen is mentioning a project he is currently working on – learnometer which is about how we measure learning.

Teacher’s TV – aimed at teachers. But students are watching it. Students are reflecting on learning more than we are? Quite amazing. An example of a project in primary school with 2 girls who have composed a ‘grammar rap’ – and reflect on how it’s helping with boys literacy. Also an example of students engaging with an immersive online environment as a story, complete with characters who text them, and interact with them. This stuff will be available at heppell.net shortly.

An example of a learning space in Thailand – on the 6th floor of a department store – so different to our typical learning spaces. Instead of rows of computers and books, it is a really exciting space, with funky furniture, and forces interaction – you have to climb a climbing frame to get at the bookshelves.

How often do we involve students in the design of our buildings?

Why do we wait until children are 18 to get them into University – some examples of students at 11 sitting in on university classes.

Every 4 days a new school opens in the UK – can this possibly be true? Building spaces that ‘just work’ – example of a school in Richmond upon Thames where Stephen was aiming for any device the student brought into the space would just work – phones to PSPs to …

Look at notschool.net – an example of engaging children in learning in new ways. Apparently shortly to be joined by a similar scheme for prisons – notnick.net

Universities are obsessed with measuring learning by counting words. They are assessed by essays that are 1500 words ‘or equivalent’. But what is equivalent to 1500 words? There seems to be a real issue with other tasks being judged as somehow trivial next to 1500 words. But which is harder – 1500 word essay, or a 3 minute scripted podcast? Why should these not be seen as equivalent? There is a tendency to undervalue non-essay tasks when judging what is ‘equivalent’

New model of research. From ‘we know what we know’ – peer review, external research, submit, review, publish. To – detective work (look in unexpected places), reflective practice (workplace – embedded).

Presenter: Mike Lloyd (Microsoft)

Mike is the Education Marketing Manager for MS UK, and comes from a teaching background. He is going to talk about:

Students Today
Changing nature of work
Massive change
Skills for a globalised economy
Towards student centric services

Some interesting thoughts about how students are changing. However, compared to Stephen Heppell’s talk (see other entry), I don’t think Mike really got down to some fundamental changes in students behavior or expectations. Mike essentially said that students are more focussed and work harder. This may be true – and certainly it rings a bell with me. However see some of the examples from Stephen Heppell’s talk to see some really challenging changes.

Mike reflected on what work be like for todays students.
Lifetime employment is over. Stable employment at large corporation is gone.
The average career will most likely encompass two or three ‘occupations’ and a half-dozen (or more) employers.
Most of us will spend sustained periods of our career in some form of self employment.

We are only at the start of massive change:
Craig Barrett (Intel) recently said “The world has arrived at a rare strategic inflection point where nearly half its population – living in China, India and Russia – have been integrated into the global market economy, many of them highly educated workers, who can do just about any job in the world. We’re talking about three billion people”

Anyway, business is also being changed substantially by the internet. Sales of Music, Books and Films have been transformed by online services. This is not about downloads of music (as such) – but that you reach a much wider audience – illustrated ‘long tail‘ graph (from Wired) showing how a ‘top 10’ is no longer that relevant – there is a ‘top 500,000’ which make up sales.

What skills are needed to thrive on massive change:
1. Spin out your network
-people are now entering the workplace with hundreds of contacts
-Interns are using their networks to get work done. e.g. if there’s a tech problem, first instinct is to IM a geek friend or post complaints on a blog
2. Put your best face forward
-Manage your online image and reputation
-There are even services (e.g. Zoominfo) who will groom the ‘online you’
3. Post your CV forever
-Online job services are mixing it up – and allowing both job seekers and employers to find better fits

Tools for thriving on massive change
Collaboration (including gaming)
Conferencing
Visualization

Mike asked a student (sample of 1) what they wanted from their university:
My university to aid me in making my CV easily accessible to potential employees online
Employers to come to me having matched my CV with their job requirements via the web
Visibility of the network my university has with key employers
Access to email addresses of key contacts

Mike mentioned a couple examples of tools that Microsoft is working on:
Wallop – a social networking tool, which shows graphical representations of networks of people. Microsoft is currently testing this with small groups of people (doesn’t seem to be any way to join in)
Knowledge Interchange (or KI) – this is an expertise database – which it does by going through your mailbox and checking what questions people ask, and what you answer, and then deduces your expertise! There seems to be a notable lack of information about this on the net, but from the screenshots on the slides the following quote:

“Microsoft Knowledge Interchange is social networking software for business users. Knowledge Interchange helps you collaborate with your coworkers by sharing valuable information and contacts.

With Knowledge Interchange you can gain access to your organization’s network of knowledge and relationships to find people who can help you solve problems, provide hard-to-find information, and connect you with other important people”

Closing thoughts:
Preparing student for a world of massive change:
Give them tools they need to collaborate and communicate
Help them build networks
Help them build a presence on the Internet

A question about whether Universities are able to prepare students in the way outlined by Mike – Students are much better at providing their own methods of collaboration etc, than Universities are. This does ring a bell – comes back to this IT service as ISP, and IT service as a service provider – where do we go beyond an ISP and where do we fall short.

Presenter: Eduard Murray

I found this a bit dry (as a topic, rather than the speaker). Also in that post lunch lull, so just one quote from this, which isn’t about outsourcing:

The BBC wants “to ensure that by 2010 the majority of programme creation and post-production will be carried out on commodity technology using general business networks and storage, producing content packages that can be created once and published everywhere”

The UCISA conference is at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool. Slightly unusual to find an amusement arcade in a conference venue, but this is Blackool after all. Anyway, apparently one reason for being here is that it can accommodate all the delegates in a ’round table’ format – in the Empress Ballroom. Probably the most unusual conference space I’ve been to.

The UCISA conference is at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool. Slightly unusual to find an amusement arcade in a conference venue, but this is Blackool after all. Anyway, apparently one reason for being here is that it can accommodate all the delegates in a ’round table’ format – in the Empress Ballroom. Probably the most unusual conference space I’ve been to.

Presenter: Rob Cooper

Rob Cooper is Deputy Chief Executive at the West Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority. He is talking about something called ‘shared business services’. This is a centre which consolidates transaction processing (it seems to be in both a physical and virtual sense). So bringing together processing of payroll, accounting, procurement etc.

All sounds very worthy – but I’m finding it hard to get excited. Of course, £224m saved over 4 years is hardly to be sniffed at. But Rob is saying it isn’t significant in terms of NHS. He doesn’t believe this is where benefit is going to be for the NHS.

Some great double-speak here – if an Invoice without a PO is received in the Shared Service Centre, a “custom workflow notification is triggered” – i.e. an email is sent.

Some nice stuff on what the budget holder gets out of it. Daily reports on invoices paid, with drill down into the detail, down to the actual invoice that has been scanned in.

Despite the fact I find it hard to get very excited about all this, it does provoke some thought about how we could look at reporting from the budgetary control in our library management system (my own bias of course, if I understood more about our finance system, I expect I’d see the possibilities there as well). Could we think about scanning in our invoices (would it be worth it?). What daily reports should be given to the budget holders in the library (yesterday you bought…)

Suprisingly (perhaps – although this isn’t really an IT presentation) no mention of electronic invoicing, which our library is now doing for Serials invoicing from certain suppliers (Swets and EBSCO at the moment)

Rob is now getting down to what he sees as the real benefits once you centralize payment processing. You can see what is bought from where – and what you paid for it. He has thrown up a slide which shows the variety of prices paid for the same thing, from the same suppliers, across 3 trusts in the Health authority – they vary considerably – so immediately you can see where savings can be made.

Presenter: Rob Cooper

Rob Cooper is Deputy Chief Executive at the West Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority. He is talking about something called ‘shared business services’. This is a centre which consolidates transaction processing (it seems to be in both a physical and virtual sense). So bringing together processing of payroll, accounting, procurement etc.

All sounds very worthy – but I’m finding it hard to get excited. Of course, £224m saved over 4 years is hardly to be sniffed at. But Rob is saying it isn’t significant in terms of NHS. He doesn’t believe this is where benefit is going to be for the NHS.

Some great double-speak here – if an Invoice without a PO is received in the Shared Service Centre, a “custom workflow notification is triggered” – i.e. an email is sent.

Some nice stuff on what the budget holder gets out of it. Daily reports on invoices paid, with drill down into the detail, down to the actual invoice that has been scanned in.

Despite the fact I find it hard to get very excited about all this, it does provoke some thought about how we could look at reporting from the budgetary control in our library management system (my own bias of course, if I understood more about our finance system, I expect I’d see the possibilities there as well). Could we think about scanning in our invoices (would it be worth it?). What daily reports should be given to the budget holders in the library (yesterday you bought…)

Suprisingly (perhaps – although this isn’t really an IT presentation) no mention of electronic invoicing, which our library is now doing for Serials invoicing from certain suppliers (Swets and EBSCO at the moment)

Rob is now getting down to what he sees as the real benefits once you centralize payment processing. You can see what is bought from where – and what you paid for it. He has thrown up a slide which shows the variety of prices paid for the same thing, from the same suppliers, across 3 trusts in the Health authority – they vary considerably – so immediately you can see where savings can be made.