Digitalisation of learning will have a greater impact than the new Higher Education and Research bill

Debate about the new Higher Education and Research Bill continues along predictably fraught lines.  On one side are the free marketeers who see deregulated competition as the main tool for invigoration and improvement. 'The student is clearly a customer', they assert. On the other side are the public good folks who see institutional autonomy as the way to preserve diversity and richness. 'The student is clearly a student', they retort.

Both see the University as a route to fulfilment for our young people and we all want more of the value that this brings. We want more learning. Every student wants to be the best they can be. And what's good for them is good for our society too. The two sides differ only in the way they would like Joe Johnson to catalyse this with his new bill.

I wonder how much the bill can or will support this fundamental joint intention. It will certainly be disruptive for civil servants and University administrators. We can and should debate the structure and processes of our system. However, what we cannot stop and what we ignore at our peril is the inevitable march of digitalisation. This is having a greater, more immediate and far reaching impact than any procedural tweaks to the way the money flows.

So what do we need to create a fertile context in which the student can learn in cyberspace? Three ingredients must be there:

• Encouragement of curiosity - an environment that encourages questioning, exploration and challenge. 
• Powerfully aspirational examples - the personal stories and role models of excellence that provide a glimpse of what can be. 
• Opportunity and accessibility - access to massive online communities of learning, inspirational teachers, rich media resources, signposted pathways and challenges to overcome.

This is all possible, Joe. What should we be doing to make it happen?

Innovators live between the cracks

Have the large monolithic organisations in which most of us work had their day? Is blindness the inevitable consequence of too much history,  certainty and success.  I think so.

We all have blind spots.  Some of us work hard to see past them.  Science and data can help.  As a physicist I remember the huge effort needed to believe in quantum mechanics when this ran counter to my lived experience.  The first step was to let go of everything I had previously learned about the way objects behave in the world - a deep knowledge that I'd acquired from my first breathing moments.  It was deep knowledge and had served me well but it turned out to be wrong!

In the same way, organisations have blind spots.  They too have deep knowledge which stops them being open minded and emotionally ready to accept other truths and other ways of doing things.  They can't let go.  They can't see themselves from an 'outside in' perspective.  They can't innovate. 

This makes me wonder if the innovators of this world are going to run to the open spaces - the cracks between organisations.  Here there are no ingrained patterns of behaviour to overcome.  There are no revenue streams to be protected and new ideas can flourish. (Necessity is the mother of invention as they say.) Perhaps it's easier to see things from an 'outside in' perspective in when you live outside yourself between the cracks. 

Think of the CEO!

He's the leader of a great organisation but people tell him he's got to digitalize his business.  What does this even mean? 

Things still seem OK.  He understands his customer and the market.  He knows and loves his products.   He's run a tight ship and kept his shareholders and auditors happy for years.  Assets are assets and make him feel invincible.  The view from the top floor is still impressive!

But there are signs of change.  Tiny businesses are popping up from no where.  They are breaking the rules.  They don't have 'assets'.  They don't own buildings, or SAP systems or have a huge workforce.  They move like lightening. They make crazy mistakes and bounce back. They seem to employ kids and people who do things for free. They are more about 'art and feelings' than 'science and processes'. 

And our poor CEO is feeling uncomfortable.  He doesn't get tech or the way young people use it.  He's too busy to play with this stuff himself.  He's too scared to invite youth to join the board but he wonders if 30 years of experience and wisdom counts for much these days.

How vulnerable must this feel? For his organisation to change,  he must change too but he doesn't know how.  It's easier, so much easier, to deny the evidence, surround himself with people just like himself and keep turning the handle on the same tried and tested processes.  There is still money coming in and no one will blame him for missing this particular revolution…yet!   

The digital tipping point is about to hit Higher Education!

We in Higher Education are woefully ill-prepared for the disruption that lies ahead. We've seen other industries in tumult.  Our researchers have published papers about the 'Digital Future' as it pertains to them. Yet our own world remains a bastion.

I see four tipping forces coming together.  As these strike with simultaneous impact, the University as we know it may have to change rather fast.

1. Tech 

The technology now works! A limitless cloud of stuff and apps really is available from any device, anywhere, any time.  Innovations are coming faster than ever.   

2. Pedagogy

We now understand how learners learn online.  The best MOOCs have shown that it really is possible to educate at scale - for peers to help each other towards mastery - for online relationships to be real and meaningful.

3. Culture

Bright young people are increasingly resentful of the debt associated with their 'boarding school degree'.  They want more choice and flexibility as they move on and up. They advise others - their younger siblings - to seek different routes to career fulfillment.     

4. Regulation

The HE bill is opening up the UK market to new entrants - new suppliers of degrees.  And employers will want value from the big new Apprenticeship Levy they now have to pay.  Will they start bringing in the talent through this different door?

We had better hold on tight! 

A digital strategy for Nottingham!

We've made it! IT Strategy Board has approved our strategy. It's been 18 months in the oven but is all the better for the slow cook.

The vision will be unsurprising for generation Z. Indeed they may be surprised this needs saying at all - so immersed are they already in the digital world.

But it does need saying, because funding this is going to take a radical shift of investment from the physical to the digital. There are some XXL items here. Once we've delivered our immediate priorities - Project Transform , the Research Information System, the move to Office 365 and our Smarter Computing Programme we'll be ready for the next big thing. Where should our focus turn next?

'e-strategy' has become 'digital strategy' but that's not all that's changed in 16 years!

So it's 16 years since I joined the University of Warwick to write it's 'e-strategy'.  The new century had started and the age of the internet was upon us.  What did this mean for Universities? 

 

I recently found a dusty old copy of that e-strategy.  Reading something you wrote 16 years ago can be uncomfortable - such naiveté!  We missed some things that now seem obvious (there's no mention of WiFi) but we made some good guesses too:

 

• Ubiquitous mobile devices
• Any time anywhere learning
• Tools for rich collaboration
• Video streaming and On demand multimedia content 
• Student portal
• Digital library
• Dynamic web presence
• High performance computing and large data - (not 'big' data!)

 

And we certainly have seen huge evolutionary change in all of these areas.

 

Now of course, we have a 'Digital Strategy' but this is more than a name change.  It predicts much deeper change.  It responds to the 'why's not just the 'how's of University life. 

 

The real disruption - the big revolution - is still ahead and my life in Higher Education could be about to get even more interesting!

A working culture worth striving for!

As part of our IS Renew Programme we've been consciously creating the kind of IT service we want to be - capable, reliable, trusted, agile.  We've designed our target operating model. We've eaten the manuals - TOGAF, ITIL, PRINCE2... We've recruited the talent and built the 'know how'.  

At the same time, we've been consciously creating the culture. The right working culture doesn't happen by accident. This is where our Pathfinder programme came in.  It gave us a collective approach and language for coaching each other, facing fears and doing it anyway.  It gave us the foundations for a new culture in which every individual brings the best of themselves to work. We aim for a richly collaborative environment in which ideas grow and people excel.     

I was reminded of this when I read this article about a young tech company called Slack. If you want to know the culture we're striving for in Information Services, here it is..

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/25/slack-butterfield-emoji-chat-nasa-harvard-silicon-valley

Three ages of IT - where do we need to be?

Held a great workshop with our executive team. We've talked a lot about the three ages of IT and the need for 'digital' to be part of the thinking so this was a good chance for a progress check. I asked each of them to place a  red sticker where we are now, a yellow one for where our students need us to be, a green one indicates the target for researchers and a blue one for business operations. 

It seems we are firmly in the age of the service provider. We've managed to 'put the suit on IT' but we've got a long way to go to meet the needs of generation Z!   

Choose a device that's right!

How do we please everyone, keep the auditors happy and minimise cost? Counter-intuitively, we need to let people choose the deal that works for them!
  

Here's the Bring-Your-Own deal:

Use your own device - whatever you happen to be on today. Office 365 is the heart of our digital workplace and it's open to all on any device.  We are one community!

Here's the Choose-Your-Own deal:

If you need a service warranty for all our software, opt for the fully managed Windows service.  Choose one of the 'standard' laptops or desktops with a wide range of standard software. You can be sure your data is safe. Additional applications can be downloaded and installed from the application store. 

Here's the Do-It-Yourself deal:

If you are an academic with advanced IT skills and sophisticated needs  you can opt for the DIY deal.  Buy whatever you need (or convince your boss to buy it).  With freedom comes a little responsibility. It's down to you to read and meet those information security policies.  Sign here please!

A digital workplace that works for everyone

The vision is simple. Office 365  will be the heart of our digital workplace - providing the everyday tools for communicating and collaborating that everyone uses.   Anyone, anywhere across our global community will use these from any device using Eduroam Wi-Fi. 

My stuff goes in One Drive.  Our stuff goes in Sharepoint.  It all goes in the cloud! 

Most specialist applications will be part of our 'flexible desktop'.  Anyone, anywhere  will use these from any device.  Application data will go in One Drive too. 

Others are already part way there. I like what this team at Deakin University are doing with Office 365.

The impossible squeeze

Sometimes this seems an impossible squeeze.  Our budget is standing still.  We're spending less than 10% on investment projects that make a real difference to learning and research.  The other 90% is barely keeping the lights on.   Meanwhile we live in a world that is changing so fast we can barely imagine the next new reality before it arrives. 

This was the message of Neil McAleece's brilliant presentation this week at our full team meeting.  We are going to have to do things differently  - know when to let go of control, jump into the Cloud, be prepared to play and occasionally to fail.  Here we come Office 365! 

Love his video compilation of changes that we can all remember if we are older than a teenager!   

Where did 2015 go!

I'm sitting in an Airbnb apartment in cool Lyon.  What a place!  All the fun of Paris without the 'do I look too English in this fleece?' 

It takes a holiday to remember that being too busy to blog isn't OK. 

2014 just disappeared.  That was the year we took Information Services apart and rebuilt it for the digital age - new structure, new leadership team, new ways of working, new culture! Just a little energy was required from everyone! 

Now we are ready.  And to prove it, we have the first full year of tangible results.  This is what happens when IT comes to the table..

2015 - a year to remember!

New rules of engagement!

Alarm bells ring for me when I hear you talk about 'IT projects'. Presumably an 'IT project' is something you can safely leave to the geeks. The geeks will work their magic and tell you when they are done.

This is magical thinking and dangerous.  It leads to familiar headlines - 'yet another IT project fails' - the ones that give politicians bad press days.  Those headlines make me shout, 'There's no such thing as an IT project!'

All projects are business projects. Ultimately, in our case, they must benefit learning or research else what's the point? None of them are just about new technology. None of them can be left to the geeks alone.

Technology means 'tool' and tools are useless until someone sees their potential and applies them with skill and purpose.  Most people are happy enough with the tool they have already.  It's familiar. Life is predictable and safe.  Why would they change? It's hard to convince them to adapt, and adopt the new.  In fact, this is nearly always the hardest part of any project.

This is where you need to lead and play the starring role. Yet, time and again, this is the part which is forgotten or underplayed. Time and again, this absence turns out to the be the truth behind the headline.

So here are our new rules of engagement....

1. There's no such thing as an IT project
2. Don't ask us for new technology. Tell us the business challenge you are trying to meet.
3. You play your role and we'll play ours. This is a double act

The 'e' should stand for 'excitement' not 'experience'

We talk endlessly about the 'student experience'.  We know this matters.  By coming to Nottingham students are investing in a life changing, challenging 'experience' through which they aim to discover their potential, become the best possible version of themselves and maximise their chances of a fulfilling life and career.  This is our product and it had better be different and special.  Why else would students choose our 'experience'.

For me, learning is exciting.  When I'm facing fears and learning fast, I feel energised, excited and happy.  These are the words I'd like our students to use about learning and being at Nottingham.  Excited and engaged students are more likely to be successful, more likely to speak affectionately about their University, more likely to remain part of a life long alumni community, and more likely to come back for more.

So here's the exciting thing for our IT geeks and creative geniuses - the University needs you!  You know how to put the 'e' factor into online learning and being.  You know that students  need no encouragement to use mobile apps and YouTube and Facebook and iPlayer and Netflix and Spotify…. Start thinking now and help us figure out how to build 'student excitement' in our digital University of Nottingham.  

I want a car not a list of parts for self-assembly

There's only one chance to be a 'new starter'. What a golden opportunity this has been - to experience what it is like to roll up as a new employee and be introduced to IT at Nottingham.

I ask for the standard.  What do you normally give the mobile professional?  What do you recommend?  I have simple needs …..I want one device.  I want to move around from wired to wireless, and get to my data wherever I am.  I work at home a lot. Please let me take my office home with me.  (I'm in my kitchen now.) I want to know my data is backed up and safely encrypted.  I want to be able to work off-line on the train sometimes and know that my email and data will synchronise again as soon as I'm reconnected.   I need a core set of applications.

But there are no standard services it seems.

I feel like someone who went to a garage to buy a car - something to get me quickly and safely from A to B.  What I'm given disappoints.  It is a long list of parts...an engine, a few wheels, a gear box.  I'm sure it's a great engine but I don't want to assemble the parts myself,  not even if there is a great instruction book.  (There isn't an instruction book.)

When I talk about service, I mean "a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks".  I just want a safe, convenient and comfortable way of getting from A to B.  You are the experts guys.  Walk tall and tell me the best way to do that.

New job, so many new people...

Started my new role as CIO at the University of Nottingham this week.  So here's the first challenge…..how to meet 210 people, remember their names, know what they do and where they sit across more than 25 locations.   This is my team and I need to know them all as individuals and by reputation as quickly as possible.  My diary's packed with introductory meetings but I can't meet everyone that way.  So I've sent everyone some introductory stuff about me and asked them to reciprocate  - an electronic business card, with a picture, and a personal profile, as well as hints and tips for me on what I need to know quickly about this place.  Fantastic response!  I have had 36 back so far - all really informative and interesting .  Now I have my pointers to some of the rich information I need.   It's always good to know what's growing in the garden before you start digging!

Can we afford choice?

How often do we find ourselves in conflict? Someone wants something slimmer, lighter or prettier than the standard HP PC.  The argument has been rehearsed for more than ten years and is getting boring.  It's the total life time cost that matters.  Let's not squander our money on being different just for the hell of it.  

Here’s the data to show why standardisation is so much cheaper for the University in terms of total life time cost of running a PC, based on the most recent, very detailed, data from Gartner.

All these numbers are in dollars, but they make the point.

Key assumptions:

·         Desktop costs $972 with monitor

·         All PCs are replaced every four years

·         ‘Managed PC’ means there are tools, processes and policies for centralised management and the users cannot install software or change settings without involvement from IT

·         ‘Unmanaged PC’ means there are little or no management tools and the users can install their own software

Total four year direct cost of running a unmanaged PC: is $8,152 or 8.3 * initial purchase cost

Total four year direct cost of running a managed PC:- $6,896 or 7 * initial purchase cost

Saving per year per user is $296.  On an, estate of 3000 PCs this represents a saving of $888K per year for the organisation.

Gartner also has data for the additional ‘indirect’ costs of the time spent by users fiddling with their own computers in unproductive ways in these two scenarios. (Don’t pretend you haven’t done this!) The numbers are simply boggling then, with estimated total savings per year per user of $2,485 or $7,450,000 for 3000 PCs.

These are based on US labour rates so we’d come out a bit lower.  Nonetheless, the point is made.  We have to pursue the savings when we can, so that we can afford to do things differently for researchers when necessary, as it so often is. 

Please can we have a new home?

We just completed a useful experiment.  For two weeks we tracked the hours spent by my team walking back and forth between the five locations that now house us.   It turns out that we are spending 1.5 FTE staff time, or £80K per year, walking.  No doubt this has consequential health benefits  but the University didn't budget for this.  I'm more concerned about other losses - all the waste effort, missed opportunity and general dysfunction that occurs  when teams can't work naturally together.

We are about to reorganise ourselves with the express aims of breaking down silos, reducing handoffs, improving teamwork, improving the first time fix rate, reducing waste effort and, above all, getting better at innovation and problem solving.  We categorically know that we can't do this without a new, properly designed space in which to operate.

Great meeting today with Estates, turning these ideas into a proper business case for investing in a new open plan environment - one in which people can work fluidly together, choosing where they want to work based on the task at hand.  Spaces need to be designed accordingly,  some being appropriate for quiet concentrated work, others more for project or problem solving teams.  And please can we have some social spaces in which to have the kind of relaxed conversations which make for accidental genius?  Good things happen when people can talk to each other without appointment or agenda.    

What's the value currency in a University?

Why is a University such a confusing place for someone who served their professional apprenticeship in the private sector? It should be easy.  Senior executives are simple creatures aren't they?  They only care about three things: the top line (are we generating revenue?) the bottom line (are we managing costs?), risks (what bad things might happen?). Not in a University it seems. Here no one knows what anything costs, or whether anything is profitable and they certainly don't want to hear bad news.

So what do they care about? Finally it dawns. Knowledge, not money, is the value currency around here.  A university is a knowledge factory, its job to create, share and breed wisdom.  And this isn't a zero sum game either.  We can all have more of it.

What a surprise then, that so many attempts to prioritise one investment over another have ended in dissonance.  How stupid to ask the venture capitalist which project will give the best return when we can't quantify this knowledge currency.

Strangely though, we often witness remarkable consensus.  Many will have the same gut feel that something is a good idea. I guess we are going to have to carry on following these hunches. If the purpose is true, and we have a way to serve it, let's JFDI and hope.

Time to walk tall

As A.A. Milne aptly wrote, 

"When I was one I'd just begun,

When I was two I was nearly new,

When I was three I was hardly me,

When I was four I was not much more,

When I was five I was barely alive,

But now I am six! As clever as clever!

And I think I'll stay six now for ever and ever!"

Our IT Services is now six years old and it's time to walk tall. 

At the start it was about professionalising, setting up the Project Support Office and the Service Desk, implementing ITIL disciplines, benchmarking costs, building a governance framework…..

Then it was about modernising the infrastructure  so we could run it efficiently, reducing risk, information security policy…...

Now at last, we can become the trusted IT partner we always envisaged, helping the University to create a digital campus in which students and staff can be productive and creative as possible as they learn, teach, do research and run the organisation.  This is going to be a lot more fun.

It was so useful to hear from Gartner this week that this is the common experience of many, and the pace for us hasn't been any more painfully slow than their's.