Photos of Sam presenting at the last FSD Event

Sustaining Innovation and Enterprise Architecture

The last month has been quiet, mainly due to holidays and attending workshops that have resulted in giving me long to do lists! The month started with a workshop here at Staffordshire University, Sustaining Innovation via Organisational Development Workshop. This was a great day that resulted in some useful discussion around how we engage Senior Management in supporting innovation and embedding it into the day to day. We had guest speakers from Australia, Manchester and Plymouth (among others). I tweeted heavily on the event (and others I have attended) and to read them and others on Enable check out Twapper Keeper http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/jiscenable. Useful thoughts from the day included

• Mark Stubbs rethinking what we do with the curriculum. Asking fundamental questions, why is approval process face to face?


• interesting question from @markstiles about institutional values and data: secretive? open? risk-taker? risk-averse?


• Enterprise Architecture as a model for managing innovation but role of effective governance also critical


• USQ's Australian Digital Futures Institute - yes please! Can we have one?


• Strategy & structure need to be scrutinised & regularly realigned

After this event it was back to interviewing faculties about their involvement in working with External Examiners. We have learnt a lot with these interviews and discovered extra stakeholders involved that had not been considered during the review. We are now planning an extra round of interviews to get them engaged. The best way we have done this is with three of us attending each meeting, one specialist from QIS, our Technical Manager to roughly bring together a model as we talk and me, to make a narrative note of the processes and issues faced by stakeholders. This seems to work well with each of our different perspectives opening up more questions about what is happening in faculties at the moment and what they would like to see happen. Everyone (so far) has been pleased that something is happening to support the work taken in this area.

This week I have attended the Enterprise Architecture Workshop in Birmingham. A useful blog post has been written on this by John Townslend (http://jwt23.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/jisc-enterprise-architecture-practice-group-workshop-june-21st-ea-impact/), who usefully has blogged about the management stream that ran at the same time as the practitioner session I attended. The hands on session was very useful, with discussions about whether there is a right way to model, with a practical example that we could model using Archi (http://archi.cetis.ac.uk/) I was able to use this time to talk to our technical manager about my first attempt at modelling for one of our SURF colleges, which resulted in me re-modelling more explicitly and getting me up early on the second day to continue working on it before the sessions. You can certainly find yourself losing hours to working on models if you're not careful! The second day focused on the future of the group, what did we want over the next year, where did we want it held and did we see a future for the group to become a professional practitioners group as it grows in experience and numbers. There was also discussion around supporting the development of a foundation programme to support those who are just entering the EA arena, there were a lot of takers for the programme, including wanting to get Senior Management to get engaged with the programme so that they understood terms etc used by staff - although not have them attend the full 4 days. At the moment I am preparing for next weeks visit to Flordia for the EISTA 2010 conference where I am talking about managing strategic change in HE. I will let you know how that goes!

Communication is the key

The last two weeks have been busy dealing with the fall out from Ning changing its charging model. After doing analysis of a number of different tools the choice was made for Grou.ps which makes much of its ability to merge with Ning content. Our first step was to merge the user accounts so people did not have to re-register. This did cause some confusion as the Grou.ps site sent an automatic email out to all the users using a generic email address. Still the confusion was kept to a minimum due to contact with the partner colleges and staff via the SUN network and Twitter.

As part of the launch of the new network, Hamza and I visited  Newcastle Under Lyme College. This included going over a history of Enable and why we picked social networking as one of the tools to support the partners engage with Enable. This event was to a small team, however the discussions around their experiences around CDD were very useful.

As part of the new network launch and the modelling work we are planning I posted a query on what the processes and roles are used at the partner colleges – using a demo flowchart start discussions going. One college has been quick to respond to this which has  enabled me to do my first attempt of modelling using the Archi tool provided by CETIS (http://archi.cetis.ac.uk/) and some helpful Archimate websites. This first attempt was difficult for me, from understanding the different relationship links and spotting the holes in the information I was given. This has required a number of subsequent emails to the partner college. I have passed my first attempt on to Sam, our resident expert for comments before I move further on it – and doing any others.

More modelling is taking place around external examiners with our first meeting with quality staff in the faculties. This was very useful and we have a number of these schedules in the next few months. It helped to have one of us typing notes about the process while the other worked on the model.

This week I attended the JISC cross programme meeting on Employer Responsive Provision (ERP). This was a great event which involved meeting some new people and sharing experiences around ERP, and recognition that work in this area impacts on all CDD. 

I’m off on holiday next week, but will be back on the 7th to see what interesting discussions pop up at the workshop “Sustaining Innovation via Organisational Development”

For the Greater Good

Sorry about the Hot Fuzz start to this blog, but it matches the out comes quite nicely for the programme meeting we had yesterday.

Last week has been interesting for the project. In discussions with one spoke it was clear that some changes had been made to the processes around course design with little expectation of making a large impact on the creation of more flexible awards. This matched discussions at the programme meeting about whether changing processes and documentation alone will make the desired changes we need within institutions. There is hope that the changes made as part of the spoke will support more responsive curriculum design and a slicker curriculum portfolio. Discussions then turned to how these expectations would be evaluated, there is some difficulty in this a much of the baseline for the spoke was based on perceptions. The spoke will be using the expectation spreadsheet it completed at the start of the project along with the JISC Evaluation workshop notes, to support the evaluation process. The spoke is also reviewing the usefulness of recording date information against each stage of the process for faculties to measure responsiveness.

The JISC programme meeting raised an interesting discussion around institutions expectations of learner and staff cultural attitudes to technology and how this differs between institutions. As we, in the project, talk a lot about culture being a barrier to change is there a practical way of addressing this? Bolton spoke briefly on training they are providing for staff around supporting using technology for learning. Does Enable need to think about putting together training for staff to help manage these cultural attitudes, using faculties who we have identified as already making those changes? I’m not sure we would be the right people to do this but we can try talking about it to the right people. Some projects in the programme have created tools to help staff identify their teaching approaches and what others are doing in their institution.

The final part of the day was a discussion summarising the work projects have been doing and how it can be used to help others, stopping duplication of effort at a higher level than simply within an institution. The projects discussed whether it would be possible for them to bring together the combined effort using design studio or whether it was something that needed to be organised centrally with everyone in a room. The idea of an information roadmap was seen to be useful and projects were happy to provide information to support it, although what information was needed and in what form was difficult to determine. Some felt that information needed a context within a process map (or in a model) and Bolton demonstrated the work they were doing with the FSD programme. I personally feel that a generic model to support staff with a starting point for discussion would be useful, and that validation documents themselves would be of little value. Perhaps a quick model/map with each stage a clickable link to a list of information collected/used would be best. It will be interesting to see the out come of this session will be.

Added 24/05/2010

Further relevant blogs:

http://jisccdd.jiscinvolve.org/2010/05/19/sustaining-curriculum-change/

http://blogs.cf.ac.uk/palet/entry/jisc_programme_meeting_brass_tacks

Supporting Innovation

The last week and a half has been a busy one, with the cluster meeting in Bolton at the end of March (read here for coeducates summary of the day), meetings around our new “mini” project and discovering Ning was changing its charging model. This has highlighted issues with innovation when it occurs outside of the “safe” environment of the university, as tutors as well as the Enable project are looking at alternatives to the Ning environment. We have had to manage how we look at these alternatives, we can’t spend too much time on it as otherwise we would be better off paying for the new service, however we also need to ensure that the choice we make does not impact negatively on the end users. We are, however coordinating our effort with others in the university and it is almost a project on its own – with stakeholders in each faculty.

The cluster event went extremely well, with discussions firstly around managing innovation and the shared experiences of the different projects. This lead to some thoughts around how we could work together towards a single output, rather than working in isolation, and to support our institution making the changes felt needed for the new environment we are finding ourselves in. The afternoon discussion was around managing course related information (CRI) and competencies. As a side product of this day, and the work the Staffordshire University LDI team have been doing towards a conference, a new expert workshop is being promoted at Staffordshire Uni  “Sustaining Innovation via Organisational Development” (more information, or register here).

Our project has been moving forward with the focus on modelling the processes, information and roles around supporting external examiners. We have had meetings with the university QI Service and they have offered to give expert advice and attend meetings with QA staff within faculties. As this work progresses a lot of it will be on the shoulders of the Technical Manager, Sam, as I am taking a lot of holiday before going on maternity leave in September. I am working hard at ensuring that the same level of communication occurs during my absence but please bear in mind that blog entries may drop off a little over the next few months.

Working together

This week has me reading a number of blogs from our partner colleges, this has made for some interesting reading. Mainly they pick up on the same issues that we have already noted but every now and again a real gem of an issue appears, two examples include:

• If validation can't occur before Sept 2010 college is looking at having to wait a year to deliver - is this because of the university? because the college doesn't like "mid" year starts, or don't the learners?
• Awards are running but access to the VLE across partners is difficult or can be delayed by a year - again why?

With these issues (and others) I am feeling a bit like the kid in school who likes to pick at scabs! As part of this scab picking process we are organising meetings with the UK Partnership office to put a model together of how they deal with CDD with the partners and to see how processes etc help/ hinder or have gaps that need to be filled. This will be my first attempt at modelling although I will have Sam there to help me. I am also planning to try out the new CETIS Archi tool as my laptop with BizzDesign on it has been taken in for another repair.
We are also starting work on the "mini project" which is our pilot on testing not simply technology solutions to issues around External Examiners but Programme Management and Enterprise Architecture also get in on the deal. We have our first set of interviews around this work at the start of May, before that our Technical Manager is sorting out the technical issues around this "mini project".

The end of this week we have a cluster meeting in Bolton which will be very interesting, this will be a one day event with a focus on the use of technology to support CDD - including what I am hoping will be useful discussions and demonstrations around using Wookies, Widgets and using XCRI. I am sure this will result in another blog post!

Everybody's talking

We have had some quiet meetings this week, as staff have been trapped abroad. This, in particular, has meant that the partner voice was muted at the curriculum group meeting. During this meeting we talked about the SURF Portfolio Review that is occurring at the university, with the support of the Enable project. There were some useful points being raised by partners not directly linked to the Enable project. These points are very similar to those previously raised by partners within Enable.

• The partners have noted that there needs to be a clear link between the business strategy at college level to those held in faculties and the university.
  
• They noted that issues weren’t with validation but CDD overall, and often they felt that it was much like a project without a project manager, thus problems with timings, access to information and managing meetings.

These points link with the work we are doing with the modelling, which hopefully should highlight that this role is missing until towards the end of CDD when a link tutor is provided by the faculty, and how strategies need to be linked to the faculties and partner colleges.

As I have been talking to Sam about modelling I am considering attempting the SURF level model on my own to get some real, hands on experience of using BizzDesign and Archimate. I have been putting this off for sometime, allowing Sam to take the lead, however as work progresses on the External Examiner mini project I believe it is important that I get some practical practice on the modelling.

In other areas of the project we are preparing our interim report, I have asked Mark and Sam to review this as they will be responsible for doing the next one on their own as I will be on maternity leave when it is due. We are also attending a one day cluster meeting next week at Bolton and the programme meeting at the start of May.