No sooner had the Old Boss become the New Boss once again, than she pulled one of her classic Boss moves and sent me away to the other side of the country!
Jisc’s Framework for Digital Transformation in Higher Education has been around for a few years now, with the aim of helping HEIs to transform and improve their digital infrastructure and services. Bath Spa University has been one of the 24 universities piloting this with Jisc, and this event was an opportunity for them to share their experiences with other interested institutions. For Bath, this has included a major VLE upgrade, a transition from Google for Education to Microsoft, and the implementation of an AI chatbot powered by LearnWise.
The day began with a keynote session delivered by senior staff at Bath Spa talking about what they have done and learned, and ended with a panel discussion which included staff from Jisc who fielded all of our questions. A key takeaway, reiterated by Jisc at several points, was that the most important factor for success was that the technology doesn’t matter as much as the people, culture, and processes in an institution: people over technology.
In between we had three breakout sessions covering how digital assessments had been implemented in an arts department with great success; an interactive session exploring the competencies of ‘digital fluency’; and the third on the challenges of developing a collaborative culture within your institution. In this one we explored an alternative to stakeholder mapping, using a Venn diagram to reframe the groups as collaborators that can help us to achieve the goal, instead of more passive people who need to be managed. In my group, photo of our chart above, we used an example of building up a satellite campus, as we were all involved in such a project, at different stages.
Written case studies from 12 of the partners Jisc have been working with, including Bath, are available on their Report and Case Studies webpage.