At a recent workshop session, the draft undergraduate student lifecycle experience developed by a small working party was shared with a wider group of colleagues for their input.

We are now in the position of having a reasonably robust staff view of the student life-cycle including fail points relating to different aspects of the perceived student experience. The next stage of work is to gather the views of students so that we can develop the front-stage : back-stage model of activities, contact staff, and student experience to help us target interventions where there are fail points that we can address within the remit of this group – the Learning Enhancement Forum.

This week the project presented the concept of Student Lifecycle Relationship Management, using the JISC cetis publication “Service Design in Higher and Further Education“, produced by the team at the University of Derby Enrolment Project.

Although the focus of their work was the initial contect with the University, the group found the methodology useful as away of helping us to think critically about the student experience in a holistic way.

A working-party has been established to use the methodology as a means of identifying the ‘fail points’ that contribute to retention issues and then devising an action plan to tackle them.

Method: eight practicing lecturers from a range of subject disciplines were given 1.5 hours to evaluate a selection of Jisc case studies from the Effective Assessment in a Digital Age publication using an evaluation grid followed by group discussion.  It is proposed that this approach can be mapped onto the Gartner STREET process with the track and rank element in effect being undertaken by the Jisc team who commissioned the report and the scope activity effectively being undertaken by the cross-institutional team who developed the modules and their learning outcomes based on the UoB strategic priorities and plans.  Clearly from a STREET ‘purists’ perspective corners have been cut, but this may provide a realistic and sustainable way of embedding a systemic innovation strategy.

Outcomes: This grid captures some of the views of the staff on the particular outputs they  evaluated.  In summary, the approach was welcomed by the staff involved, and in particular they reported that:

• the resources useful as a stimulus for new ideas that could be applied to particular issues and challenges they were facing;
• there were numerous examples of where staff were currently undertaking similar approaches and to read of other in similar circumstances was valuable in confirming they were ‘on the right track’;
• without the session, there would be little chance that they would ever read such a publication;
• although useful, the case studies would have been more valuable if they contained more ‘how too’ and some honest evaluations of the success of the approaches including their sustainability beyond project life-span;
• back in the department, away from the ‘time and space’ to think about developing practice it is hard to maintain momentum;
• being told about what and why things didn’t work would be just as useful as successful case studies.

Reflection and feedback for Jisc

As is well recognised, the first stage of impact is ‘engaging with ideas’ and from that perspective this approach can be said to have delivered.  The resources when actively used with their target audience were of value, but outside of that deliberate activity they were unlikely to encounter them.  The resources themselves could be better if authored from the perspective of the teacher who is seeking practical suggestions based on the experience of other teachers – warts and all!  A question that should be asked is can this be best achieved when they are mediated through Jisc who have are seeking to achieve potentially conflicting aims of telling a truthful story but also generating positive publicity. 

As a starting point we will use the Gartner STREET process and test and refine it with the particular focus on the identification of Jisc outputs focussing on academic staff development as an institutional priority.

Gartner STREET Process

The STREET process addresses “the challenge of reaching the adoption of the deployment stage” (Fenn and Raskino, 2008) by providing a decision making framework for the selection of innovations for adoption.

The STREET stages are:

1.    SCOPE: decide what your company values and determine your company’s ability and desire to manage risk
2.    TRACK: seek out relevant innovations from a broad range of sources and track their progress along the hype cycle to notice relevant advances in their maturity
3.    RANK: identify innovations that look most likely to bring significant benefits to your organization within a timeframe that fits your risk profile
4.    EVALUATE: use research, prototypes and pilots to better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with adopting each innovation; make strategic decisions about which innovations to adopt, which to shelve and revisit, and just as important, which innovations not to adopt
5.    EVANGELIZE: rally support for the chosen innovation with key players who can help champion the innovation and ensure its operational success
6.    TRANSFER: spark the enthusiasm and sense of ownership required for the innovation to take hold.

(Gartner, 2010)

In this form, the process is probably overly cumbersome with jargon that will be unhelpful in a HE context, but peeling back the surface there are some key ideas that we think worth of development to suit our needs.  At Bolton we propose to socialise & mainstreamed innovations through existing institutional learning and development processes as we think this offers the best chance of embedding the approach beyond the life-cycle of the project.

In conversations with CETIS colleagues it is apparent that a considerable amount of effort is put into publications like this and it seems reasonable that this Jisc funded Building Capacity Project should question how materials such as this can be made use of in the context of the University of Bolton.

A relatively simple proposition, but the challenge is to find an appropriate forum for their evaluation.  Over this semester I am teaching on the Post Graduate Certificate In Teaching & Learning in Higher Education which was developed for colleagues and I will suggest that one session focuses on this publication to try and understand its potential value.

Method

Eight practicing lecturers from a range of subject disciplines were given 1.5 hours to evaluate a selection of Jisc case studies from the Effective Assessment in a Digital Age publication using an evaluation grid followed by group discussion.  It is proposed that this approach can be mapped onto the Gartner STREET process (see earlier post for explanation) with the track and rank element in effect being undertaken by the Jisc team who commissioned the report. The scope activity will effectively be undertaken by the cross-institutional team who developed the modules and their learning outcomes based on the UoB strategic priorities and plans.

Clearly from a STREET ‘purists’ perspective corners have been cut, but this may provide a realistic and sustainable way of embedding a systemic innovation strategy.

Outcomes

This tabulation captures the views of the staff related to case studies they evaluated, against their own needs.  This approach was welcomed by the staff involved. In summary, they reported that:

• the resources useful as a stimulus for new ideas that could be applied to particular issues and challenges they were facing;
• there were numerous examples of where staff were currently undertaking similar approaches and to read of other in similar circumstances was valuable in confirming they were ‘on the right track’;
• without the session, there would be little chance that they would ever read such a publication;
• although useful, the case studies would have been more valuable if they contained more ‘how too’ and some honest evaluations of the success of the approaches including their sustainability beyond project life-span;
• back in the department, away from the ‘time and space’ to think about developing practice it is hard to maintain momentum;
• being told about what and why things didn’t work would be just as useful as successful case studies.

Reflection and feedback for Jisc

As is well recognised, the first stage of impact is ‘engaging with ideas’ and from that perspective this approach can be said to have delivered.  The resources. when actively used with their target audience were of value, but outside of that deliberate activity they were unlikely to encounter them.

The resources themselves could be better if authored from the perspective of the teacher who is seeking practical suggestions based on the experience of other teachers – warts and all!  A question that should be asked is can this be best achieved when they are mediated through Jisc who have are seeking to achieve potentially conflicting aims of telling a truthful story but also generating positive publicity, and sharing innovative practice with all of the challenges developing such approaches involves.