Pattern based strategy – is the sector agile enough?

I attended a session on the final day of Educause09 on applying pattern based strategy in higher education. The principle is that an organisation looks to identify patterns (from some of the softer indicators such as whether alumni would recommend your institution), analyse the impact of those patterns and then make a decision to adapt current business processes. The intention is to pick up those unplanned interventions and react accordingly – for example, the growth of the use of the iPhone might be seen as a pattern that could have an impact on the way an institution operates.

In order for pattern based strategy to succeed the organisation needs to have agile decision making. This is perhaps where the difficulty will be in implementing this in higher education. I don’t believe that institutions’ decision making is always based on sound business intelligence; where there is use of key performance indicators in decision making it is often to make a reactive rather than proactive change. Interestingly Brenda Gourley, the former Vice-Chancellor of the Open University highlighted such an agile structure in the final keynote of Educause09. She instigated scenario planning and a high level of performance based management. It is possible that the planning supplemented by pattern searching would work in such an environment.

However it is often the unplanned changes that have the biggest impact on an organisation. If institutions are to be able to anticipate and react to those unplanned changes then there need to be cultural changes within institutions to allow more agile decision making. Currently I believe that a significant amount of management is reactive rather than proactive. In my view this highlights the lack of leaders within the

Technology enabling the classroom

The final presentation of the day was from Michigan State University on building, renovating & maintaining technology enabled classrooms. This has been a long term programme starting in 1995 and updating around 25 rooms a year. At this time, the University set up a group to lead the project to renovate the rooms and allocated a substantial budget to allow it to carry out the work. The group remained the same for ten years which gave continuity of planning and construction specifications but also meant that they became a significant resource for the institution to consult when considering refurbishment of rooms.

The rooms are all equipped with computers, DVD/VCR players, projectors and microphones as a minimum housed in purpose built carts or lecterns. The group are also looking at repurposing other areas either as group work areas or more social collaborative space. There are a number of factors that have to be considered when converting an existing seminar room to a group work area. The cost is significantly higher ($50,000 compared with $20,000 for a traditional set up) and the room then has a reduced capacity (typically 48 seats from 60). The capacity is the more significant issue; Michigan State has invested and continues to invest large sums on maintaining the quality of their teaching rooms. The investment is not just in terms of capital funding. Sixty per cent of the budget goes on maintenance and equipment replacement and there is a headcount of 20 FTE to support the 300 plus rooms.

Naturally some faculty want more than the standard equipment. Where this is the case the central team produce a memorandum of understanding, reviewed on an annual basis, which details where the responsibility lies for maintenance and repairs of the non-standard equipment.

Overall a simple project that is reaping benefits – almost all centrally controlled rooms now have quality equipment in situ. However this has only been achieved through a significant investment both in money and resources.

Improving retention through social networking

Day two of Educause started with a presentation on using social networking as a retention tool. A study had concluded that students that are engaged with their institution, in terms of both their learning and campus life, are more likely to complete their course. A number of universities have set up virtual communities within their portal to attempt to improve student retention.
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The portal provides single sign on and access to a range of applications including directory services, Blackboard and business applications. Each university has set up several targeted communities including freshmen, parents, alumni, sports teams and subject based communities. The student records systems hold the data which defines which community a given individual will belong to. A daily message is sent to each community in order to keep the site fresh and ever changing; some of these messages will be time critical and will be set to expire once the message becomes irrelevant.

It is still early days for the projects. The universities are using Google analytics to track which sections of the portal are being used and are tracking usage and following up with any individuals that are not making use of the portal to try to establish why. But it is too early to establish whether the project is meeting its aim of improving retention.

Managing the budget in challenging times

The second stream session I attended was a lightning round of presentations from CIOs on the actions they were taking to address budget cuts.

Two of the universities undertook reviews in order to inform their budget decisions. Louisiana State University had undertaken an internal review in 2005 to look at how they could streamline their operation but were forced to repeat the review in 2008 when the economic climate began to worsen and cuts in state funding were predicted. The target was a 5% cut and the review focused on outsourcing and redundancies as the main tools to achieve that reduction. In addition to these planned cuts, the review team also looked at scenarios for cuts of up to 25%. When considering these cuts the focus was not on sharing the pain but on identifying which were the priority services that must be kept and the remaining services that were dispensable. However, in all the planning exercises there was a continued focus on services/investments that help provide institution with competitive advantage to ensure that these were ring fenced. The challenge is for the CIO to make the case for those services/investments to make sure they aren’t cut.

Miami University also carried out a review but used a panel of three higher education CIOs to establish guiding principles for making budget decisions. Having established these principles, they looked at which services could be cut then evaluated the initial plan looking in particular for any unintended consequences. The output from this review was the final plan. There was some concern that some of the investments to deliver competitive advantage may be lost and so Miami sought to make greater operational cuts to protect that investment.

Reed College was one institution that has been only marginally impacted by the recession. They suffered fiscal difficulties in the early 90s but some of the measures taken then was giving them protection now. They had taken the decision at that point to establish a technology innovation fund. This fund is controlled by the CIO who may use if for development and capital costs with no strings attached to how the money was spent. Although it is not intended that this fund will be used to meet operational costs, it may be used for this purpose at times of crisis. They also built equipment replacement costs as a budget line so it was not necessary to request capital funding to replace equipment. Finally they got agreement from some of their staff that they would consider part-time working at times of crisis. It was estimated that this could realise up to an 18% saving on staff costs.

One of the points that the CIO at Reed College made was that it is possible to overcut during difficult times which makes the road to recovery harder than when staff resources and services had been protected. Both Miami and Louisiana State talked about protecting the investments and services that delivered competitive advantage. Their future success may depend on how successfully they manage to do that and how they manage to maintain the expertise they need within their service to help them move forward in better times.

IT in a global university

The first stream session I attended at Educause was given by New York University on the work they are carrying out to attempt to implement a global network university. NYU is the largest study abroad institution in the US with a presence in Asia, Africa, Europe and South America. What they were striving to do was create a vertically integrated corporation – language which was rather at odds with the opening presentation from Collins which suggested that institutions should shy away from implementing business practices when most business are ‘average’. However, the focus was very much on the academic aims of the institution with seamless mobility of students, faculty and research at the top of the agenda.

The key to their programme was standardisation – the service in Abu Dhabi should be identical to that in New York. This is easy where the campus abroad is managed by NYU. However there are greater challenges where the NYU presence is hosted within another institution. In this case there is a need for greater partnership with the host institution (with the aim to deliver benefits to both) and strong identity management to ensure that only those that have the right to access NYU facilities can do so. Overall there is still much work to be done. The presentation highlighted the work that has been carried out between the New York and Abu Dhabi campuses. But these are only two campuses – there are at least eight others that also need to be brought into the fold before this can be deemed a successful project.

Cloudy over the pond…

I attended a meeting of vendor representatives and CIOs from a number of US universities to discuss cloud computing. After a couple of presentations to set the scene, we broke up into smaller groups to talk about the barriers to moving services out into the cloud.

A number of the tables focused on the technical issues – integrating remote services with those still being run in the institution and managing security. Our table concluded that the issues were not technical at all but more cultural. We began by asking why we were even having the conversation – what was the purpose of moving services out? Was it to save money or to improve services? Or because the institution’s president had read about it somewhere? All of which led us to conclude that there are leadership issues – the senior management in institutions need to understand what cloud computing is and what the risks are.

We also concluded that IT departments in institutions did not possess the skills required to operate in an environment where a number of services were being delivered from outside the institution. This is not just a matter of giving the members of staff vendor and contract management skills as there is a need for those staff to maintain some involvement in the operations that are being outsourced in order to enable them to effectively manage a contract.

So a couple of things for Educause to think about. There is a need to get CIOs, Chief Executives and Finance Officers together to talk about both the potential and the risks of cloud computing and to develop a common understanding of what can be achieved within their institutional aims. There is a need to develop CIOs and their staff to be able to manage outsourced services. And there is a need to share best practice and sample agreements and contracts. All of which are lessons we could apply in the UK.

Phase 3 of PBS live

The release of the software for the operation of the points based system went in on time on 5 October. The software seems to be running reasonably well although UKBA report that the level of usage has been low; only two applications for CAS numbers have been made so far. This is not entirely unexpected as most institutions have suggested that they will be waiting until the autumn rush has subsided before they start to consider starting to use the system.

There is also the readiness of suppliers to consider. I was at Oracle yesterday talking to their User Group and it was clear that Oracle’s development and associated quality processes result in a six month lead time. Institutions would then want to test the new functionality themselves before implementing the change as test data never wholly replicates real data. Other suppliers are in the same boat. The specifications for the data transfer files was only baselined in early April; the XML schemas were confirmed later than that. So it isn’t a great surprise that few suppliers completed their development in time for the October release. The next key date is February next year when use of the sponsor management system becomes compulsory. I am working with UKBA to try to ensure that all developed solutions, be they by suppliers or by the institutions themselves, are fully tested before February.

I had expected that my presentation to the Oracle User Group would be little more than an update on the current situation. However, there is still some uncertainty about how the system will work in practice and of course there are always ‘what if’ questions that individuals have for specific situations. So there is still the need to highlight how the system will operate. I also found myself having to explain some of the idiosyncrasies of the system. There was concern that the payment options were restricted to card payment or cheque (down to Treasury rules which don’t seem to be applied consistently across the Government systems) and concern about the amount of manual intervention that will be required to facilitate the flow of information between the SMS and student records systems. And there are concerns about the future. A colleague heard today that the next release will be the last from the developers – thereafter it will be handed over to the business as usual team within UKBA. We need to establish how potential changes will be captured, prioritised and implemented in the new business model.

Handheld learning ‘09

I attended the final day of the Handheld Learning Conference on Wednesday. The event promoted some of the innovative applications of mobile devices in education but also highlighted research into the effectiveness of these applications and the impact of technology on both society and teaching and learning.

Firstly, stating the obvious, mobile devices give people access to a wide range of functions and communities from wherever they happen to be. Consequently the boundaries between work and leisure are blurring and our lives are more fluid. This presents the education sector with a number of challenges – there is a need to engage differently with students who are used to acquiring information from a wide range of sources at their fingertips and who behave in a very different way from the traditional model. Universities and colleges are, however, geared towards mass production which tends to push towards controlled environments. It was suggested that the trend is to still want devices tailored to specific requirements; this trend may prevent convergence in mobile devices with the result that universities won’t be able to buy a single device to meet all the possible uses of mobile technology. It will be interesting to see whether convergence happens as a result of competition in the market or whether the suppliers will seek to maintain niche positions.

A number of presentations highlighted that, in spite of the pervasiveness of mobile phones, technology still seems to be something of an inhibitor. This was evidenced by a number of case studies. In one, where a single PDA was being used for field work, the one person who was familiar with the technology took control of the device and as a result rather over influenced what was supposed to be group work. In another example, the learning curve for the devices being used on a field trip was so steep that the students reverted to using pen and paper to record data. The presentations offered little in the way of evidence of the beneficial use of mobile devices on field trips. Whilst this could be due to the difficulty of use, it could equally be due to technology leading to different social interactions between the users of devices in field work.

Away from field work, several presentations highlighted the benefits of mobile technology in education. At Abiline Christian University iPod Touches and iPhones were introduced to groups of students and faculty members. The result was that the faculty started experimenting with usage and developing applications. The students felt more engaged with their teaching and felt that group working improved as a result. They were also more likely to attend class. The improvement in student engagement was also highlighted by the faculty members. There remain sceptics though and what the Abiline presentation picked out was that there was need for greater research on the impact of use of mobile devices, measured against control groups to convince the doubters.

Use of mobile devices is not just restricted to learning; they can be deployed to support students. There was one company present at the conference that had developed a number of applications for the iPhone which could interact with institutional systems and GPS to provide information to the student. The Open University adopted a more blended approach, deploying SMS texting, social networks and audio depending on the use. It was interesting to note that the OU’s students took so readily to receiving information by text when some institutions have reported that their undergraduates see their mobile phone as personal space which they don’t want invaded by their institution. The OU had come up with some interesting solutions. They had used audio in a number of ways including a course welcome, FAQs and for pre-exam stress busting.

Overall , an interesting and varied day. The session closed with an awesome presentation from Ray Kurzweil – I won’t attempt to summarise what he had to say largely because my words probably wouldn’t do it justice!

Flexible service delivery – issues highlighted

Friday saw the first meeting of the strategic partners in the JISC’s Flexible Service Delivery programme. The meeting heard presentations from members of the group on what they are doing and what they are looking to achieve from their projects. This in itself should spawn greater collaboration between members and spawn new ideas (and is an approach that the HEFCE Shared Services agenda could have benefited from). As is often the case in such forums, there were a number or recurring themes:

• The need to baseline costs. This is essential in any programme that is looking to demonstrate and deliver benefits. There is recognition that the true costs of providing services needs to be established before the potential benefits can be assessed.
• Lack of understanding by vendors of what the programme is looking to achieve. Although there were a number of positive views expressed by vendors at the suppliers’ event held at the end of July, the feedback from the strategic partners was very much that vendors don’t understand. Whilst sales staff will want to protect their income streams (‘why would you want to buy modules from elsewhere when you can have all of it from us’) any potential loss could be balanced by a strong product in another area and this is perhaps what is not understood.
• Data quality. A number of the presentations echoed the message from the Data Efficiency review meeting held on Thursday last week, A recurring theme was that data in institutions remains in silos and the drivers for maintaining and managing the quality of data usually remains in those silos. There is no understanding that the data is institutional nor that changes in one aspect of that data may have impact on another.
• Governance. There were areas under this heading – the governance of shared services and institutional IT governance and engagement of senior management. Various governance models have been explored for shared services and there is no single solution. One project highlighted that, whilst a loose governance structure may allow greater flexibility it can be offset by the lack of institutional accountability and the budget that comes with it. There was recognition that there still remains something of a disconnection between business and IT when it comes to determining the services that IT departments should provide. Enterprise architecture (EA) is seen as a potential solution to this and although some institutions have demonstrated improvements as a result of adopting EA, not all have managed to engage senior management. Perhaps a case study directed at Finance Directors and demonstrating that EA has delivered effective use of resources may improve engagement.

There is perhaps a risk that programme is too broad and as a result may not maintain the momentum it has achieved thus far. A quick win would help as it would prove the concept and because it will highlight to suppliers that their customers are not wedded to monolithic solutions. In addition, there are still challenges within institutions to moving to a more flexible model.

Importance of data quality

I attended a meeting of the Data Efficiency Steering Group yesterday. The Group was set up to look at recommendations in a report by KPMG on the use of collected data in the higher education sector. The meeting is an interesting mix – on the one hand are the funding councils as the main stakeholders in the data collection and on the other are the various professional associations representing the views of those tasked with collecting, processing and using the data at an institutional level.

There are conflicting demands on the funding councils – they are looking to reduce the administrative burden of collecting data but are under pressure to demonstrate that the sector is meeting its statutory obligations. They also need to work together to achieve a consensus so that comparisons can be made across the whole of the UK and local needs met without ending up with a hotch potch of collections or one unwieldy one. These conflicts were brought into focus when talking about monitoring external examiners to ensure equal opportunities. One funding council representative expressed the view that external examiners should not be included; the sole responsibility was for the institution to ensure that they were appropriate in terms of their academic credibility. Another view was that they should be regarded as employees and included in monitoring. Against this, the institutions highlighted that data on external examiners was not held in a consistent way across the sector – in a number of cases there was no record of such positions on HR databases and monitoring would require an additional administrative burden.

In addition to ensuring that the data collected is appropriate and fit for purpose, there is a second stream of activities aimed at promoting the value of the HESA data itself. Often this is seen as a burden in institutions and there is a lack of senior management ownership of the data. As a consequence, the importance and impact of the data are not always clearly understood in institutions (the consequences of poor data quality only being highlighted with performance indicators or league tables are published). Some institutions are however focusing more on the data they collect and have to submit. As a result they are starting to use the data more effectively within their institutions to highlight problems, and are improving the quality of their own data to reduce the likelihood of mistakes in submissions. Case studies on these institutions may help others improve their game. Guidance on how the data comes together and is translated into performance indicators will also bring some focus on the importance of data quality.

So two strands of activity – making sure the data collected is appropriate, timely and does not increase the burden on institutions and promoting the uses of the data and the need for data quality. Progress is being made but it will take time to deliver on both fronts. There is some overlap with the work of the MIAP programme. It is a measure of how far that particular programme has to go to convince the sector of its value that one of the attendees commented ‘not that that [MIAP] will deliver anything until I am long in retirement’. The aims of MIAP are to improve data efficiency. But thus far, the sector has not been convinced that it will deliver savings or reduce the administrative burden. The proposed pilot studies will be key in demonstrating the business benefits and promoting the programme to the sector.