Round Table Report

Jul 18

Posted by Frank in FOTE11 | No Comments

The full report of our June Round Table discussion on budget cuts and outsourcing is now available to download. Our panel of IT experts discussed if shrinking budgets and increased outsourcing are cause and effect or if there is more than meets the eye.

A short excerpt is available below:

Introduction

All HE institutions are under financial pressure. At the same time the coming of tuition fees means that they are increasingly in the position of having to provide services to demanding and discerning customers. As this Round Table event was taking place, the Office ofthe Independent Adjudicator was reporting a record rise in student complaints against universities.

According to the BBC,

“Rob Behrens, head of the adjudicator’s office, said the rise reflected a more ‘consumerist’ attitude among students”

Clearly if universities operate in an increasingly competitive market place, IT services are very much a shop window, the first point of contact even before a student enrols. How can IT Leaders manage that pressure on a tight budget, and will outsourcing of selected IT services help them to do so?

Download the complete FOTE Round Table Report.

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The Filter Bubble

Jun 28

Posted by Frank in Digital, Learning | 1 Comment

Last week I attended my first public lecture at the LSE called The Filter Bubble – What The Internet Is Hiding From You. The premise of Eli Pariser’s book of the same title is that era of personalisation on the web is coming with some serious side effects, many of which are happening unbeknown to the average internet user. The Amazon UK page for his book reads:

Imagine a world where all the news you see is defined by your salary, where you live, and who your friends are. Imagine a world where you never discover new ideas. And where you can’t have secrets. Welcome to 2011.

He pointed out that by using 5 simple ‘data points’ modern algorithms can predict answers to consumer preference questions with an 80% accuracy. A data points in this context doesn’t mean personal data such as DOB, address or marital status but things like age range, gender and simple everyday choices. Some interesting and funny examples from his talk included:

  • If you prefer milk over wine, you are likely to be conservative
  • A cluttered desktop means you are 12% more likely to be liberal
  • Knowing the preference of at least 5 of your Facebook friends makes it possible to predict yours, without having to know anything about you

As a marketer – and someone with a keen interest in digital and social media – I have to admit this doesn’t sound like a bad idea in principle. But you’ve guessed it there is a dark side to the power of predicted relevance, something on which Miles Metcalfe shared his thoughts on during his FOTE10 talk entitled ‘Asset-Tagged’.

According to Pariser the problem with ‘The Filter Bubble’ is that code does the filtering and it is done passively, rather than by active choice. So what does it mean when you’ll only be able to access information that confirms your set pre-conceptions? And looking at education are there likely to be further implications of presenting highly personalised & filtered content within a VLE; something which could ultimately lead to what the Germans charmingly refer to as ‘Fachidiot‘.

Isn’t the role of education to teach reflection and challenge us to critical thinking? How worried – if at all – are you about ‘The Filter Bubble’?

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FOTE11 Panel Poll

Jun 16

Posted by Frank in FOTE11 | 7 Comments

Panel discussions  are a great way of hearing two sides of an argument. Drawing on experience from our day-to-day jobs and discussions taking place throughout the sector we have come up with a selection of possible panel discussions for this year’s FOTE11 conference. We have outlined the five topics below and are giving you the chance to vote for your favourite topic.

Desktop Virtualisation

Is desktop virtualisation the silver bullet for delivering scaleable and affordable IT solutions to the student, and is it likely to be a viable option for universities to consider in the next 12 months?

The VLE is dead, long live the VLE!

Back in 2009 James Clay proclaimed – albeit tongue in cheek – that the VLE is dead. Not surprisingly this caused some heated debate in the run up to a talk by the same title at the 2009 ALT-C conference. During the discussion he pointed out that ‘VLEs provide guidance and framework’ for learners and educators. Where are we two years later? Has the VLE become an outdated institutional concept about to be replaced by free web 2.0 tools? Or is its very existence crucial to ensure quality of teaching & learning?

Lecture Capture

There has been an increasing interest in lecture capture over the past 12-months, the likes of LSE now deploying campus-wide solutions and with the provision of lecture capture equipment being included in the budgeting stages for refurbishments & new buildings. Does it support and further enhance the anytime, anywhere learning approach students demand? If it does, what challenges are institutions facing – copyright, storage, access, etc. – something that just today is going to be discussed at the ALT Lecture Capture conference. Or does lecture capture undermine the very foundation of the university experience, the lecture and the lecturer?

Traditional v Open Education

Is the very concept of traditional lecture-style education sustainable and viable? Or is the traditional lecture an obsolete concept with plenty of open education resources available from the likes of P2PU and Open Learn?

Bring your own IT

Being mentioned at the last FOTE round table discussion, this seems of particular interest for IT managers and directors. Is ‘bring your own IT’ a feasible concept and if so how can it work? Or is the very idea of allowing students and staff to bring their own kit every IT managers nightmare? What are the security issues and concerns around it?

Let us know your thoughts via the comment section and don’t forget to vote for your preferred panel discussion. Voting will close on the 30 June 2011 7 July 2011 so make sure you have your say!

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Shrinking Budgets = Increased Outsourcing?

Jun 14

Posted by Frank in fote, FOTE11, Technology | 1 Comment

This was the theme of the second FOTE Round Table session which took place last Friday (10 June 2011) at Microsoft’s offices in Central London. A more detailed report will be published shortly but here are our key take-aways from the day.

  • Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and financial flexibility are key concerns for IT directors
  • Yet, cost is often not the main reason for outsourcing but support & business continuity are
  • IT services (in HE) often can’t be or aren’t costed properly which can lead to over-optimistic cost-saving estimates
  • Some institutions will always consider outsourcing as part of an IT service review
  • ‘Opportunistic outsourcing’ being suggested as tactical tool to use outsourcing on a short-term project basis
  • The point for ‘insourcing’ services was made to manage risk and realise savings
  • Re-educating staff in vendor management is a key issue when outsourcing services
  • Aim for a mutually beneficial partnerships within academic circles to find suitable vendors, negotiate SLAs and take advantages of economies of scale

Towards the end of the round table session the need to collaborate more actively, by for example combining resources and secure competitive SLAs with external service providers was raised. The JANET (UK) broker service was mentioned as sector initiative, yet it seemed unclear to what extend it would address the issues raised by the panel members and what service would be catered for.

What is your experience in outsourcing services to third parties? What would your top tips for vendor management and SLA negotiation be?

If you would like to take part in future FOTE Round Table session, please contact us.

 

 

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FOTE11: Save the date!

Jun 9

Posted by Frank in FOTE11 | 4 Comments

We just wanted to let you know the date for this year’s Future of Technology in Education conference:

7 October 2011

FOTE11 will be held at Senate House again and as always are working hard to put on another great event to showcase trends and technologies that will impact teaching and learning in the coming 1 to 3 years. Taking into account the higher education reforms, the resulting rise in tuition fees and wide-spread student protest we want this year’s conference to help shine a light on the student.

FOTE11 – Meeting student expectations

(It’s the student stupid!)

 

We are hoping to answer a number of questions, such as:

  • Can the innovative use of technology reduce costs and/or deliver efficiencies to keep fees down?
  • Does new (or the creative use of existing) technology help deliver a student experience worth £9,000 a year?
  • What do students actually expect?

In order to address these questions we are looking to hear from policy makers, IT service providers and practitioners to find out how the future of education is being shaped, what the next big technology development could be and which current technologies impact on day-to-day teaching.

The conference hashtag will be #fote11, so make sure to use it when you tweet & blog about the event.

FOTE community

FOTE10

FOTE has always been about the bringing the education community together since we first held it at Imperial College in 2008 and we are working on some upgrades to the FOTE website to further build and support that community.

We are planning to bring together blog posts from past conferences, building a continuous resource of FOTE guest posts, discussions and past keynote recordings. Add to that the ease of sharing across a range of social networks and the BuddyPress plug-in, we will have all the right ingredients to keep the FOTE community buzzing all year round.



The 140 Challenge – Your time to shine!

We wanted to get the FOTE community a little more involved on the actual day this year. We are looking for 10 people to present to the FOTE audience for 140 seconds and tell us what they see as the future of technology in education. We’ll be setting a few ground rules in forthcoming posts, but those successful entries will receive a guaranteed ticket at the FOTE event with a +1 and the best presentation on the day (as judged by the audience) will receive a prize (TBC, but it will be worth the effort we promise). We’ll be posting more information on how to enter soon, so watch this space.

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The Horizon Report

Mar 16

Posted by Frank in Augmented Reality, eBook, FOTE10, Mobile, Technology | No Comments

With the first FOTE round table session on Shared Services written up and February fast becoming nothing else but a distant memory we are starting to put our minds to this year’s FOTE conference. Looking back at the previous three events and scouring the interweb is always a good way to start a) to see which of ‘our predictions have come true’ and b) what technological topics the education community is discussing.

What is The Horizon Report?

Part of our research uncovered The Horizon Report, 2011 Edition, an annual paper produced in collaboration between The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative “examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry.”

The report covers critical challenges, key trends and technologies to watch. The former “considering important constraints and challenges” associated with technology adoption whilst key trends being based on “an extensive review of current articles, interviews, papers, and new research to identify and rank trends that are currently affecting the sphere of education and the world at large.” Finally “the six technologies featured in the 2011 Horizon Report are placed along three adoption horizons that indicate likely time frames for their entrance into mainstream use.”

Challenges & Trends

Challenges

Key trends
Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession The world of work is increasingly collaborative, giving rise to reflection about the way student projects are structured.
Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag behind the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized.
Economic pressures and new models of education are presenting unprecedented competition to traditional models of the university People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want.
Keeping pace with the rapid proliferation of information, software tools, and devices is challenging for students and teachers alike The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing.

Technologies to watch

The report features six key technologies to watch and maps them along three adoption horizons: near-term (12 months), mid-term (2-3 years) and far-term (4-5 years), indicating the likely time frame for uptake in the mainstream use for teaching and learning. Four of those were covered at last year’s FOTE conference and we embedded the videos accordingly.

Near-term

e-Books continue to generate strong interest in the consumer sector and are increasingly available on campuses as well. James Clay argued in his talk ‘The iPad is the future of reading!’ that books are wonderful things, but still, the iPad is the future of reading…



Mobiles enable ubiquitous access to information, social networks, tools for learning and productivity and much more. Mobiles are capable computing devices in their own right — and they are increasingly a user’s first choice for internet access. Hugh Griffiths, the founder and owner of oMbiel, has developed campusM™ which has become a leading mobile application for UK Universities providing an integrated suite of services for students, staff, alumni and prospective students that are available on the iPhone, iPod Touch and hundreds of other smart phones.


Mid-term

Augmented Reality brings a significant potential to supplement information delivered via computers, mobile devices, video, and even the printed book. Much simpler to create and use now than in the past, augmented reality feels at once fresh and new, yet an easy extension of existing expectations and practices. James Alliban, an Augmented Reality specialist and interactive artist from London (UK) showcased some of his experiments in AR which have developed a great deal of interest in the last year, leading to the founding of his company Augmatic.




Game-based Learning has grown in recent years as research continues to demonstrate its effectiveness for learning for students of all ages. For a variety of reasons, The Horizon Report sees the realisation of this potential is still two to three years away. in his talk at FOTE10 ‘Unlocking Learning: Computer Games in Education‘ he looked at the use of computer games in education, with a particular emphasis on schools. In this 20 minute whirlwind session a number of topics were covered including learning from games, learning about games, commercial games in education and games design. Short case studies illustrated a number of examples from the Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Consolarium.



Far-term

Gesture-based computing moves the control of computers from a mouse and keyboard to the motions of the body via new input devices. Depicted in science fiction movies for years, gesture-based computing is now more grounded in reality thanks to the recent arrival of interface technologies such as Kinect, SixthSense, and Tamper, which make interactions with computational devices far more intuitive and embodied. It would be interesting to see if any UK (or international) institution is currently using gesture-based computing to deliver teaching and learning, a perfect showcase for this year’s FOTE12 conference.


Learning analytics loosely joins a variety of data-gathering tools and analytic techniques to study student engagement, performance, and progress in practice, with the goal of using what is learned to revise curricula, teaching, and assessment in real time. Building on the kinds of information generated by Google Analytics and other similar tools, learning analytics aims to mobilize the power of data-mining tools in the service of learning, and embracing the complexity, diversity, and abundance of information that dynamic learning environments can generate.


Which of these trends are currently impacting your institution?
How are you addressing the challenges associated with the integration of e-books and mobiles into your delivery of teaching and learning?
Are you already using augmented reality or game-based learning? If so how has it changed teaching and learning?




Reference: 2011 Horizon Report Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., (2011). The 2011 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

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Shared Services: ‘It’s a no brainer. Why can’t we get it to work?’

Feb 22

Posted by tbush in fote | 1 Comment


As part of our series of FOTE Round Table discussion sessions, kindly supported by Microsoft, we gathered some of the leading IT professionals within the HE sector to debate the big issues impacting the sector over the coming 24 months.

Kicking off with the not uncontroversial topic of shared services, we expected a lively discussion and that is exactly what we ended up with!

With passionate feelings both for and against shared services within the HE sector, our facilitator did a great job in channelling the conversation to generate some interesting conclusions on the subject as a whole.

Touching on definitions, business cases and the practicalities of managing and implementing a shared services initiative, our round table session summary report presents a unique take on what the likes of Kings, Imperial, JANET(UK), UCL and Kingston University think about the topic.

“It’s a no brainer”, “We’ve got to stop talking and do the business” and “I have no particular interest in whether or not it’s a shared service, so long as it reduces my costs” are just a few of the statements shared during the session.

The full report can downloaded for free from our FOTE website. We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Alternatively, connect via Twitter at @FOTiE.

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Social Media Week – London

Feb 17

Posted by Frank in Social | 1 Comment

Last week @tbush and I attended the Social CRM workshop at Design Council and part of the week-long Social Media Week (SMW) which took place in London, Paris, Rome, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Sao Paolo and Hong Kong.

Social Media Week

SMW_logo_web_blue_london Held for the first time in February 2009 in New York City, SMW was launched as a “distributed conference,” with events taking place in locations throughout the city and the next run in February 2010 expanded the conference reach to an additional five cities across the globe. Since autumn 2010 SMW is run biannual adding further locations and keeping up with the pace of technological change. According to figures released this week over 600 individual sessions attracted over 30,000 delegates at the spring session of SMW 2011. NixonMcInnes helped put together the Social CRM workshop and Will McInnes (@willmcinnes), who spoke at the FOTE09 conference about ‘Our social tomorrow: How education and everything else is being positively and radically transformed‘, kicked-off the show with his take on what Social CRM means, how it integrates with your business and how it changes your interaction with customers (existing and new).

Social CRM workshop

On Social CRM – Will McInnes

Will’s enthusiastic take on what the ideal Social CRM world could/should look like – when good old fashioned CRM data seamlessly interacts with the myriad of social network gibberish (which may or may not be useful and of interest) offering a real-time and in-depth view of either individual customers or a wide-spread change of sentiment – started the panel discussion chaired by Vikki Chowney from Reputation Online. It was interesting to hear from Claire Kavanagh (@clairekav), CRM Manager for giffgaff, Eliza St.John, Online Marketing Manager for The Body Shop and Mark Squires (@DrPinball), Director Communications – Media Relations at Nokia how they are using social media to improve & manage customer service, create & maintain user communities, improve products & services and ultimately provide a great customer experience.

Key points

I won’t go into too much detail or transcribe the hour long session but will share the recording here once it has been posted online. Thanks to @Melmediasauce for pointing out they are already live!

Watch live streaming video from smw_london at livestream.com

Here the key points I took away from the session:

  • Get your house in order: Inherently more complex and fast-paced than traditional channels in the marketing mix, social media/social CRM needs a solid foundation of business processes to work. How are you currently managing queries or complaints and how is your interaction with new and potential customers? How will bringing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn into that mix change things?
  • One size fits all, NOT!: Different approaches work for different people/companies/products. With representatives from Nokia, The Body Shop, giffgaff and NixonMcInnes on the panel it became clear that what worked for one didn’t work for the other. Think of (or even better know) where your customers are and what they are interested in. Don’t built a new community if one already exists and if you do built one give them what they want.
  • Being social = Being successful: I just have to use Mark Squires’ domestic analogy. We, as human beings, are social; well most of us are. Being more social in our interactions with everyone around us is a logical step. Mark’s point if I recall correctly was ‘You wouldn’t talk to your wife only once a month, why do you think it’s okay to do it with your customers?’ He also made the point that Social Media/Social CRM is case of when not if, making it a competitive advantage to be more social and engaged with your customer base.
  • What’s your ROI: Having a thing for numbers and their visualisation and interpretation, hearing how The Body Shop tracks conversion rates and works out how many people come from Facebook, what their average spend and lifetime value is was impressive to say the least. I wonder if Eliza wouldn’t mind showing me a trick or two? This is powerful stuff, not only because it helps make the business case for the strategic use of social media but also because it shows in detail what works and what doesn’t. I don’t know about you but I rather spend more time on activities that help my bottom line.
  • Make mistakes and learn: This won’t be news for most of you, but nonetheless. The great thing about social media or digital in general is its low cost of entry compared to traditional communication channels. Once you have a clear idea of what you want to do and why, just do it. Just make sure you listen to feedback and improve/adapt your strategy and tactics accordingly.

What does that mean for Education?

University website: actual v needs by XKCD

University website: actual v needs by XKCD

All this got me wondering. Is this applicable to the education sector? Are HE/FE institutions already embracing Social CRM and if so how? I for one don’t know, or haven’t really looked into it to be more precise, but my assumption is someone somewhere must be doing something. If you know examples of how Universities & Colleges (not only in the UK) use social media beyond the ‘our-facebook-page-has-15,000fans-approach’ please share it here.

I remembered the nice graphic on the left when pondering the implications of social media in education. Wouldn’t it be great to give (prospective) students the information and support they need rather than doing the same old, same old? Does your institution know what students really think about their course or lecturer? Do you want to know and if you do know what are you going to to with that information?

Wouldn’t it be great to know that Facebook & Blackberry Messenger are the preferred social network and mobile device of student X so when the timetable changes, rooms are switched and assignments are due notifications are pushed to those devices rather than his student email which he hasn’t logged into in the last 4 weeks? Where do you see the future of Social Media/Social CRM in Education? What is already happening and what are the challenges?

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FOTE Round Table Sessions

Jan 11

Posted by tbush in ULCC | No Comments

Building on the success of our Future of Technology in Education (FOTE) Conference, we are looking to introduce a number of complementary FOTE themed initiatives throughout 2011.

In an attempt to more thoroughly address and answer some of the core trends and challenges facing the sector over the coming year within a more intimate forum, the first in our planned series of complementary FOTE conference activities is to host a programme of round table discussion events.

Consisting of a group of IT Directors from the HE sector and spread over 4 dedicated sessions, the FOTE Round Table events will address the following topics:

  • Shared Services
  • Managing IT budgets in tough economic times
  • Cloud computing/outsourcing
  • Business strategy

The series of round table events will be supported by Microsoft, who have kindly provided the venue, and will be facilitated by a 3rd party organisation. The core outputs of each session will also be written up by a freelance journalist and made available to the wider community for free via our website.

The first of the 4 sessions is scheduled for the 28th January and will be addressing the subject of shared services and how the academic sector can collectively make this a reality.

We want to ensure that these sessions are addressing the needs of the community, so if there is anything you would specifically like the panel to discuss please feel free to leave a comment below. Additionally, if you have any resources that you think would be useful to share with panel members or readers of this blog, again please leave a comment in the section below.

We look forward to your contributions and feedback on the sessions as we go. As mentioned previously, we want to make these sessions as valuable to the community as possible, and your contributions really help. Thanks in advance for your support!

More news regarding our second complementary FOTE Conference activity will follow soon. Watch this space…

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New ULCC Enterprise Level Media Service – Got Any Feedback?

Dec 8

Posted by tbush in Podcasting, ULCC | No Comments

With our media service now approaching 3 years old and a great selection of organisations that we are proud to call customers using the system, we have been thinking over the last few weeks about how we can continue to add value to our customers with this service.

With the way that our customers use the system changing over the years, recent conversations with clients have revealed that something that addresses the needs of the whole institution from a podcasting and video streaming is becoming more important.

With this in mind, we have been playing around with the specs for a new top level enterprise package. Initial thoughts around what this would consist of are as follows.

We would love to hear what you think. Please leave any feedback or suggestions in the comments below.

  • Updated player with customisable embed codes and sharing capability – Twitter, Facebook and email
  • Ability to brand flash video player – customers logo is shown in the corner of the video player
  • HTML5 capability – ability to view content on an iPad/iPhone
  • 500 episodes – with more available on request
  • Exportable (PDF, Excel) reporting – traffic sources, downloads, subscriptions etc
  • Categorise content – group content/feeds by faculty and department
  • LDAP integration (or similar)
  • iTunes & iTunes U compatible
  • iTunes U public site manager integration
  • Full branding opportunities across the site
  • Password protect access to content

These are obviously just some ideas at this stage and have not hung our hat on the final list of features.

Rather than develop the service in a vacuum, though, we thought it would be great to ask our customers and wider community what they would like to see.

Thanks in advance for your help and look forward to reading your suggestions in the comments.