PFHEA - A Data-Driven Approach to Improving the Student Experience
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Reflecting on a 29 year career with Manchester Metropolitan University to present a case for becoming a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
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PFHEA - A Data-Driven Approach to Improving the Student Experience
- 1. PFHEA â Professor Mark Stubbs I have a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. I have developed those skills through experimentation, reflection, mentoring and feedback from a PLN of critical friends - this is my story
- 2. How it started ⌠a new career in a new department Information Systems Engineer & Sabbatical Student President Systems Integration Consultant & Knowledge Engineering Trainer Improving Practice commitment to learn from the best to make a difference for students Plan Do Reflect Think Advice Opportunity Approach
- 3. Module and Year Leadership âNew to teachingâ + sought out mentors {A5} Designed & led UG modules {A1,A2,A3,A4,K1} Ran school & industry liaison {V1,V2,V4} Thrived as Pers. & Year Tutor (1st Gen) {V1,K3} Created digital learning innovations {A4,A5,K1} Piloted student voice-led improvement {V3,K5,K6} Graham âBest Lecturerâ (and developer of FIL referee community) memorable & engaging humour & respect 1 Ian Innovator with IT industry experience (& a talented artist) weekly mind-maps & authentic assessment 2 seeking & assimilating good practice data-informed improvement memorable visuals authentic assessment interactive blended learning student experiences systems thinking building skills with critical friends & mentors {A5,V3}
- 4. Programme & Faculty L&T Project Leadership Led Departmentâs UG portfolio {A1,A2,A3,A4,K3} Joined FASC and FL&TC {K6} Became External then Lead External {K6,V4} Led Quinquennial Review {A1,K6,V3} Developed Workload Models {A1,V4} Introduced Faculty Intranet {A4} & Student Survey {K5} Mary PG Prog Lead FASC Chair navigating QA/QE academic/admin roles 1 Dennis HoD/Dean BIT sector champion leadership, networking change management 2 data-informed improvement advising colleagues on innovation consistency of student experience curriculum design freeing time for innovation student & course data academic leadership building skills with critical friends & mentors {A5,V3}
- 5. Action-Research Projects Shared learning innovations {A5,K1,V3} Gained PhD in interorganisational learning {K1} Led JISC XCRI to set international standards {V2} Co-opted to UK Government ISB {V1,V4} Shaped ÂŁ8M JISC Curriculum Design work {A4,K3,K6} Helped found RS3G for learner mobility {V1,V2,V4} Scott edtech standards guru enterprise level e-learning & e-admin 1 Andy HESA UK Gov ISB data standards & sector processes 2 data-informed improvement lowering barriers to change learning to network networking to learn streamlining curriculum processes leading across boundaries student & course data reducing burden with e-admin building skills with critical friends & mentors {A5,V3} Sarahs Jisc L&T PMs SRC, TRAFFIC, XCRI running large change programmes 3
- 6. Cross-fertilisation: memorable visuals for XCRI Course Information âMiddle Earthâ (2008) for leading a âquestâ to navigate the course information landscape
- 7. Reflecting on skills for Strategic Leadership Improving Practice Plan Do Reflect Think lowering barriers to change leading across boundaries freeing time for innovation reducing burden with e-admin Improving Conditions for Improving Practice Plan Think Do Reflect consistency of student experience streamlining curriculum processes data-informed improvement student & course data advising colleagues on innovation
- 8. A double loop model Improving Practice Plan Do Reflect Think Improving Conditions for Improving Practice Plan Think Do Reflect Case Study ď D4 Module Lead Programme Lead Faculty Lead University Lead International Project Lead Impacts 700K Jisc funding for digital transformation UG curriculum redesign enabled Personalised digital learning environment Sector-leading support for innovation Unprecedented NSS improvement University-wide Internal Student Survey Data-informed improvement normalised University-wide online assessment Well-positioned for pandemic response Hybrid timetabling added at pace Student-focussed approach to digital enshrined in new Education Strategy
- 9. Enhancing Quality & Assessment for Learning(EQAL) ⢠Once upon a time there was a University that was underperforming in the league tables ⢠Every day, staff would do good things for their students but the metrics didnât change ⢠One day, the DVC asked what was really needed to make a step-change improvement ⢠And because of that I shared evidence that âcourse organisationâ was our blocker and re-oriented my Supporting Responsive Curricula workshop to understand barriers for addressing it ⢠And because of that the DVC flipped the consensus that we couldnât tackle it because weâd have to change everything to a consensus that we could address it if we changed our entire UG curriculum, systems and processes ⢠And in the end EQAL was born - the DVC secured Executive backing for the EQAL programme to re-engineer our UG curriculum, systems and processes to teach a new first year in 18 months!
- 10. EQAL | evidence for change ⢠Machine Learning Analysis of Surveys ⢠NSS ⢠ISS ⢠Student Focus Groups ⢠âI want to be on a well organised course where tutors know me as an individualâ ⢠âPodcasts on the bus are nice, but I really want to know where Iâm meant to be when and when my work is due, cos Iâm not sure if weâve been given an extensionâ Hypothesis ⢠Addressing course organisation âhygiene factorsâ that are driving dissatisfaction will lead to a rise in overall satisfaction Alan Stats guru Machine Learning with R 1 Jean Service Design Student Journeys Derby Dashboard 2 data-informed improvement
- 11. EQAL | a new curriculum ⢠Change module credits = rewrite 800 new module specs / year ⢠Less summative, more formative assessment ⢠Fewer but clearer learning outcomes ⢠Constructive alignment of learning outcomes & assessment ⢠Single source of truth for weightings, deadlines ⌠⢠Consistent module identifiers across all systems student & course data streamlining curriculum processes reducing burden with e-admin lowering barriers to change
- 12. EQAL | consistency with digital ⢠Migrated from WebCT to a personalised Moodle Core+ VLE for ALL modules and programmes: ⢠Joined-up, personalised, consistent Recognised: we watch & learn how staff use tech Core: we set up & train staff and tell students to expect a consistent âfront doorâ Arranged: we set up institutional accounts & train staff to use Recommended: staff set up & we train to integrate reducing burden with e-admin consistency of student experience The âOnionâ
- 13. EQAL | wrapping the institution around the learner megamashup mws reducing burden with e-admin lowering barriers to change consistency of student experience student & course data freeing time for innovation
- 14. EQAL | sector-leading support for innovation ⢠Established locally-responsive, centrally-coordinated model for TEL advice alongside CELT ⢠Encouraged action-research philosophy for partnering on TEL innovation ⢠Mentored TEL team in how to glean actionable insights from the ISS ⢠Nurtured a network of TELAs and e-learning champions to âspider plantâ good practice ⢠Supported bids, promotions, HEA, CMALT applications ⢠Encouraged formation of a supportive community of practice Gareth Morgan (1997), p. 73 leading across boundaries data-informed improvement advising colleagues on innovation
- 15. EQAL | impact NSS: OVERALL NSS: ASSESSMENT
- 16. EQAL | awards & recognition âYou may notice that there are a number of case studies from MMU in this [JISC] collection. In fact so many started to emerge that we asked the contributors how they felt the institution was supporting digital students so effectively. A robust digital environment was seen to provide an essential context for innovation. It was also useful that the University manages learner data strategically, and collects thousands of comments and survey responses from students every year in a bid to understand their needs more fully. However, most contributors have focused on the role of the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and the Learning Innovation team which works closely alongside them ⌠The student experience is at the heart of the University's mission, and the digital environment and digital curriculum are seen as critical to delivering on that missionâ Consultant in HE, 2015-01-11
- 17. EQAL | the sequel Listen to Student Voice Be Bold & Joined-up Balance Consistency & Ownership Address Dissatisfaction Embed Student Voice Empower Programme & Module Leads with Actionable Learner Analytics Empower Students & Personal Tutors with Actionable Learning Analytics Data to Improve Data to Personalise 2010
- 18. University Data Warehouse Data Warehouse (2014) for explaining progress on âlines of enquiryâ Enrolment Attendance Submission Marks Usage Programme Courses & Units Mandatory Sessions Resources Assignments Leader Tutor Marker Board Outcome Department Head Dean Faculty Left, Failed, Withdrew Resit Work Timetable Curriculum Hierarchy Learning Resources Provider Type Assessment Staff Admission Entry Targets Entry Quals. Application Enquiry Bio- demographics Student R&A Course Entry Employment or Study (elsewhere) Satisfaction Questions Surveys Type Accommodation Progression Level & Subject Grad Data Warehouse Lines of Enquiry Student R&A Course Entry Engagement Curriculum Hierarchy Staff Partial coverage Opening 2015 Opening 2015 Terminating at Course Delays expected Timetable Surveys Learning Resources Assessment Opening 2015 Partial coverage Opening 2015 Good coverage Further Study This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence | Mark Stubbs (@thestubbs) University leading across boundaries data-informed improvement student & course data
- 19. Normalising data-informed improvement ⢠Dashboards for Heads, Programme & Module Leads {K6} ⢠Students ⢠Progression ⢠Marks ⢠Satisfaction ⢠Comments ⢠Action Plans
- 20. Normalising data-informed improvement ⢠Dashboards for Programme & Module Leads {V1}
- 21. Normalising data-informed improvement ⢠Dashboards for Programme & Module Leads {K5}
- 22. Enabling informed conversations for Personal Tutors Data Warehouse Student Enrolments Moodle Usage Submissions & Marks Attendance
- 23. When push comes to shove ⌠So what have SRC, EQAL, TRAFFIC, EMA, ISS, CMI, SEM, LRT, the TELAs, ⌠ever given us?
- 24. The acid test: responding to the pandemic ⢠Secure and scalable systems working with a single-source-of-truth about the administration of teaching and assessment backed up by sector-leading support for innovation and intelligence on what makes a difference enabled ManMet to pivot online successfully to complete the 2019/20 academic year ⢠However, I argued that starting a new year in a pandemic was different, ran scenarios and concluded new digital capabilities and new ways of working were needed that recognised: ⢠Learning communities need to be formed and nurtured ď comms/collaboration/groups ⢠On-campus and online mix may need to change at short notice ď hybrid timetabling ⢠Not all students will be able to come onto campus ď remote access ⢠Quality of experience will be paramount ď monitor engagement & adapt support ⢠And created the new capabilities for the institution at pace in time for September 2020
- 25. Responding to the pandemic â Sep 2020 - Month Focus SEP-20 Unprecedented digital usage: 1.8M Moodle hits, 20,000 Teams meetings created, 79 packages for download ⌠and then âŚ
- 26. The legacy of TRAFFIC & EMA 1. Reduced Academic Admin Bulk creation of online assessments 2. Personalised the Student Experience My Assessments â personal submission & feedback return schedules 3. Reduced Exceptional Factors claims Short self-certified extensions 4. Personalised feedback return Auto-adjusted for extensions 5. Reduced Academic Admin Supported marks transfer 6. Provided Assessment Analytics Highlighted emerging practice Collaborative approach ensured a robust online assessment capability supported University pandemic response and continues to innovate to improve the student experience and maximise effectiveness of academic time 7. Resilience increased to cope with Over 200,000 online submissions in 20/21 reducing burden with e-admin consistency of student experience leading across boundaries
- 27. Feeding in to the new Education Strategy ⢠Student-centred approach to digital enhancement ⢠Flexibility in ways to engage but âlonging for belongingâ ⢠Learn from pandemic: âsame storm, different boatsâ ⢠Look wider than course at holistic experience ⢠Recommended ⢠a concerted effort on skills for staff and students ⢠(co-)evolve campus and digital facilities ⢠a community of practice to support innovation ⢠embed holistic (C3PO) design into approval & review ⢠empower staff to innovate within parameters ⢠engage students as partners ⢠be clear with our students about what they can expect ⢠avoid âtragedy of the commonsâ where community eroded by well-intentioned flexibility ⢠share what works
- 28. PFHEA â Professor Mark Stubbs I have a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. I have developed D4 skills through experimentation, reflection, mentoring and feedback from a PLN of critical friends. I am immensely grateful for their support. Improving Practice Plan Do Reflect Think Improving Conditions for Improving Practice Plan Think Do Reflect
Editor's Notes
- A bit of background. My father was an engineer, who founded his own business; my mother was a teacher. I studied information systems engineering at Durham and stayed on to become sabbatical president of the largest college (Hild Bede), leading a team of volunteer officers and working closely with university senior staff in a role I enjoyed tremendously. I then joined an American management consultancy and specialised in joining up systems but found that I particularly enjoyed teaching at their campus in Chicago, so sought a new role that would give me more of that and less of setting an early alarm to fly all over. When preparing for this presentation, I found the two books I looked to when preparing my application to Manchester Poly â the first of many contributions of Graham Gibbs to my thinking! I applied to become a Senior Lecturer because I wanted to make a difference for my students, but I was conscious that I had a lot to learn, so set out to make a conscious effort to learn from the best â that approach stayed with me.
- I attended the Universityâs ânew to teachingâ course, but actively sought out mentors to help build and refine my practice â I have called out two here, but I picked up top tips from many colleagues. Graham was very experienced and taught inside and outside the University, consistently winning âbest lecturerâ awards. I sat in on his lectures and tutorials and invited him to sit in on mine â I adapted the way he used humour and memorable set-pieces to engage the audience, and helped him use technology for his âresearchâ interests. Much later in my career, I realised that I had also been studying how he built and maintained a virtual community as Head Referee of the Federation of International Lacrosse. Rather than diving into detail, I have flagged on the slide the dimensions of the PSF that I engaged with at the early stage of my career: seeking out mentors like Graham and Ian, gaining the confidence to design and lead new modules, running school and industry liaison activities and working to inspire and support a predominantly first-generation cohort as a Personal and then Year Tutor. Whilst I lacked Ianâs flair for beautiful hand-drawn mind maps, I saw through peer observation the value of sharing knowledge through memorable visuals and worked to assimilate this into my own practice. I also gained the confidence through team-teaching to draw on our industry contacts to engage students in authentic assessment. When a back injury prevented me from coming onto campus, I turned my laptop into a chest-top and used my digital skills to create a personalised digital learning environment which students could use to run and test code in the build up their assessment, and created a tool for capturing their feedback on the experience to drive further improvement. I adopted an action-research philosophy and sought wider feedback on my digital innovations through conferences and journal publications, receiving special mention in Rhona Sharpeâs 2006 survey of blended learning for the HEA. Looking back on this early stage of my career as a Module and Year Leader, I can see how I was developing practice and appreciations I would come to rely on later by seeking and assimilating good practice from critical friends and mentors.
- The next stage of my career focussed on academic leadership, curriculum design and quality assurance and enhancement. As before, I have flagged particular PSF dimensions that I engaged with through programme leadership, committee membership and external examining, before leading my 25-strong programme team through a quinquennial review and then building consensus about fair allocation of work to deliver the new modules. For this new stage in my career, I sought out mentors experienced in academic management and leadership: Mary was very experienced at navigating the Universityâs QA/QE structures and had a research interest in changing divisions between academic and administrative roles; Dennis was a charismatic HoD and leader who subsequently became Dean and had established an international community of practice for those teaching Business-IT â they encouraged and provided feedback on my development as I gained confidence to feed into theirs. I was promoted to PL and asked to lead the design and implementation of a teaching materials Intranet and student voice mechanism for the whole Business School. I pioneered student-centred design and placements for students to raise the digital skills and confidence of academics to drive adoption of my new systems. I learned the importance of presenting evidence-based rationale for improvement in different ways to secure stakeholder buy-in, how time was a precious resource for innovation, how consistency is critical to student satisfaction and how the accuracy of student and course data is essential for scaling personalised digital experiences. These were extremely valuable insights.
- My work was guided by an action research philosophy and commitment to exposing my innovations for wider scrutiny. I honed my approach through a part-time action-research PhD in interorganisational learning, bringing together a virtual network of key stakeholders to learn how to address environmental issues. My experience of leading colleagues through curriculum redesign and my knowledge of the potential for digital to streamline processes led me to develop a proposal for a new approach to the way curriculum data was handled that would free time for more important work. I won Jisc funding for the work, and led the eXchanging Course-Related Information (XCRI) project over 6-years, using the skills I learned about building and running virtual communities to sustain the project across organisational, national and international boundaries. I was co-opted to the UKâs Information Standards Board, and worked to set UK and European Standards for course information and learner mobility, supporting delivery groups in different countries through the Rome Student Systems and Standard Group (RS3G) and feeding into the Jiscâs 8M Curriculum Design initiative. This was change on an international scale, and I extended my PLN to include specialists in digital standards, e-administration and programme management, and was fortunate to be able to learn from my opposite numbers in the EU partners, as I continued to build skills with critical friends and mentors, which I would eventually bring back to the University through my strategic role.
- Looking back, it is interesting to see how I drew on skills developed in my earlier career - I developed memorable visuals for charting the course information landscape and drew on the skills Iâd seen Graham and Dennis use to build and sustain the international course information community and open up conversations about sector process re-engineering with the Lifelong Learning Networks and UCAS, which I suspect will be revisited. I was very fortunate to lead a wonderful group of talented individuals and built a deep understanding of the curriculum landscape through interactions with national and international experts
- I realised that I was translating the skills I had modelled and assimilated to improve my own practice to create the conditions for improving the practice of others, particularly by lowering barriers to change and getting the key enablers right. This diagram is an attempt to capture the recognition that I was harnessing these skills and insights to work at the D4 level of Strategic Leadership.
- I have conceptualised this as a double loop, showing how I harnessed skills, understanding and connections, from Module, Programme, Faculty and International Project Leadership, at a meta level that enabled me to create the conditions for improving practice across the institution as a whole. I will now demonstrate through a 12-year longitudinal case study how I have been operating at the D4 level in my practice, and highlight the significant impact my work has had on the University as a whole.
- I have borrowed this format from an external speaker who suggested it could be used as a concise pitch for the story for any movie. I use it here to wind the clock back to 2010. We were underperforming in the league tables Staff were doing good things but the metrics werenât shifting Frustration was growing I had won 400K of JISC funding for curriculum redesign, and commissioned some pioneering work to understand our barriers I supported the DVC with a Jedi mind trick that turned "we canât do anything cos weâd had to change everything", into "we could make a step-change if we changed our entire UG curriculum, systems and processes simultaneously", and subsequently became responsible for delivering the digital transformation strand of the unprecedented University-wide change programme.
- First to my case for change. I pooled available data and commissioned our leading stats guru to carry out work to understand our barriers and mentor me in machine learning with R. I also commissioned some student-focussed analysis of our administrative processes and ran focus groups with students to understand their vision for an improved digital experience of the University. All roads led to the same hypothesis: âhygiene factorsâ associated with perceptions of poor course organisation were limiting student satisfaction, so I presented a data-informed argument that addressing those 'hygiene factors' would improve overall satisfaction
- Having accepted that course organisation was our Achilles heel, the EQAL project identified that our UG curriculum had grown unwieldy and really needed to be rewritten on a new credit basis of 4x30s rather than 6x20-credit modules. Introducing the revised curriculum a year at a time meant capturing, approving and setting up over 800 new module specs a year, with an intended aim of reducing summative assessment and having constructive alignment with fewer but clearer learning outcomes. I drew on my international expertise with course information and used my digital skills to propose a streamlined module spec form that limited summative assessment and enforced constructive alignment but required busy academics to enter the minimum amount of information once and then flowed relevant single-source-of-truth data to all systems where it was needed. The form was used University-wide and automated the set up of the new UG curriculum in all University systems, enabling the project to meet its challenging timescales.
- As part of my digital transformation strand, I also led a project to establish a new student-focussed VLE for the University, and proposed that it could be a key way to improve satisfaction by transforming studentsâ perceptions of poor course organisation through presenting joined-up, personalised and consistent resources to support learning, teaching and assessment. My âOnionâ diagram for balancing consistency with ownership has been referenced across the sector, as it seeks to clarify what all staff are expected to use as a consistent âfront doorâ and the level of support colleagues can expect to receive when broadening their use of digital tools beyond the core supported set. This is the original from 2010, but it continues to be updated and valued as a memorable visual.
- Another of my diagrams that has appeared widely in sector presentations, is this model for âwrapping the institution around the learnerâ â it illustrates how driving the VLE from student records data and using consistent identifiers across all university systems (from library to timetable) enables a âmegamashupâ service to talk to relevant systems on a studentâs behalf and present aggregated personalised information about deadlines, timetable, recommended reading, past papers, useful videos within the VLE, or a mobile view of it. Developing the approach with disabled staff and students proved really enlightening as initial plans for specially-adapted views were replaced by a bring-your-own-tools approach of facilitating access to content for users to use the tools they were already comfortable with. Work on accessibility is far from over and I have empowered specific champions for accessibility and raised its importance in strategic planning conversations to ensure that it is not regarded as work complete. My strategic approach of automating provision of personalised administrative content frees academics from providing this information themselves and improves the consistency of student access to definitive study data, creating more time for academics to concentrate on using available digital tools to improve learning, teaching and assessment. This has been a fundamental part of my philosophy for improving the conditions for improving practice.
- However, both time and support are needed for innovation, and I fought hard to establish a locally-responsive but centrally-coordinated Technology Enhanced Learning advice capability alongside our centre for learning and teaching. I founded the team on the basis of my action-research partnership philosophy, encouraging use of data to understand and benchmark what works and prioritised sharing lessons learned. Having pioneered the institution-wide Internal Student Survey tool for amplifying the student voice, I mentored the team and strategic planning colleagues in how to discern patterns and insights from the data, using both quantitative and qualitative techniques. I have followed Gareth Morganâs âspider plantâ metaphor for replicating mini versions of an original and supported bids, promotions and professional body applications that have embraced the reflective, action-research, cross-department partnership approach to innovation that characterised the work of my TEL team, and reinforced the approach by supporting formation and ongoing operation of a wrap-around community of practice for digitally-enhanced learning, teaching and assessment. Earlier strands of specialist innovation advice, working across boundaries to make a difference and data-informed improvement are apparent in the DNA of my approach.
- EQAL was set up to make step-change improvement. My hypothesis was that addressing the âhygiene factorâ - the course organisation dis-satisfier - would enable factors that drove student satisfaction to come to the fore, leading to an improvement in scores for overall satisfaction â it worked, and particularly for assessment where definitive personalised information about deadlines and return dates was particularly appreciated.
- I submitted the project for the inaugural Guardian Student Experience Award and it picked up the first of a number of awards, including the European Universities Information Systems (EUNIS) award for digital transformation. However, I am most proud of the recognition it received from our student body for my student-focussed approach and that the integrated approach to digital systems, data and support was picked up by a JISC consultant whoâd noticed that Manchester Met academics were providing a disproportionate number of digital innovation case studies.
- I had always seen the step change as a pre-cursor to ongoing improvement and championed the use of data to drive continuous improvement of student satisfaction and outcomes with senior colleagues. The Internal Student Survey I first developed for the Business School was adopted University-wide and I worked with leading academics inside and outside the University to refine it to maximise its values as a source of insight for all Programme and Module Leads. I established projects to prototype and then deliver dashboards that would empower Module and Programme Leads to improve student outcomes and help Personal Tutors to understand how their tutees were progressing, and secured OfS funding to explore how a student view could provide actionable insight.
- This visual, which I originally created to provide a progress update in 2014, has been used widely in the sector to illustrate how data need to be organised to support actionable insights. The idea of collating data in a University Data Warehouse to open up âlines of enquiryâ resonated and the points of intersection between different lines highlighted how common keys were essential for reporting across different lines. For instance, definitive data about the hierarchy from University, through Faculties/Schools to Departments down to Programmes and Modules was essential for drill-down and roll-up reporting of data about student enrolment, satisfaction and progression from one year of study to the next, with some going round an engagement sub-loop for re-assessment, some withdrawing but most progressing to employment or further study. Trusted, actionable insight requires solid foundations and I led considerable behind-the-scenes work on data quality and testing before dashboards could be shared.
- I designed the Dashboards through focus groups with Department, Programme and Module leads, balancing requirements with technical feasibility. The simple visuals were used University-wide to drive conversations about improvement. They are currently being updated with more modern PowerBI technology, but the principles have endured of highlighting trends and supporting drill-down/roll-up scrutiny and I am pleased that the data-informed improvement philosophy I championed is now normalised.
- The dashboards have also provided an opportunity to visualise patterns of differential attainment and raise awareness of the changing make-up and diversity of student cohorts, so that teaching, learning and assessment can be tailored appropriately. In addition to fore-grounding this work through University dashboards, I have also been involved in mentoring and supporting particular working groups in drawing insights from available data on progression and differential attainment.
- My Internal Student Survey (ISS) has ensured that all programmes and modules benefit from a formal voice mechanism that provides both qualitative and quantitative insights and supports cross-referencing between the two, as in this example of filtering to show all comments from students who were satisfied with feedback for a programme. Not only has the ISS provided insights for academics but Professional Services colleagues have been able to run keyword analysis to understand institution-wide perceptions of timetabling, library, the physical estate and use of digital technologies, which have a significant impact on service improvement plans.
- Data collected about individual student engagement, such as attendance, submission, marks and VLE usage, has been summarised and shared as week-by-week visualisations with Personal Tutors to enable informed conversations with tutees about whether things are on track, with follow-up for those whose engagement gives cause for concern. I was successful in securing OfS funding to pilot a solution for and by students that made engagement data usable in a âFitbitâ-style visualisation, and have been supervising a PhD on student perceptions of learning analytics.
- Supporting Responsive Curricula Enhancing Quality and Assessment for Learning Transforming Assessment and Feedback for Institutional Change Electronic Management of Assessment Internal Student Survey Continuous Monitoring and Improvement Student Engagement Monitoring Learning and Research Technologies Technology Enhanced Learning Advisors It took over 10 years to move all these acronyms into place, but the acid test was how they enabled the University to respond to the pandemic.
- Having secure and scalable systems working with a single-source-of-truth about teaching and assessment was critical to our pivot to online teaching, as was our support arrangements for innovation and the intelligence weâd gathered on what makes most difference to the student experience. Whilst there was some toilet-roll style panic-buying of synchronous communication tools, for the most part the pivot to finishing the year online went well as we had a personalised online assessment capability that coped. I know from the experience of friends and family and recent review meetings I have attended as a critical friend for some other universities that this wasnât universally the case. However, I argued against complacency and made the case that pivoting at the back end of the year when support networks and friendship groups were in place was very different to dealing with the uncertainty of starting an academic year in a pandemic. I ran scenario sessions with key stakeholders and concluded we needed some extra digital capabilities and some new ways of working, which would need to be established at unprecedented pace. I argued that a planned rollout of Microsoft Teams for staff needed to be repurposed to prioritise teaching and proposed creating a âhybrid timetablingâ capability where Teams Meetings were created automatically if we had to flip classes from on-campus to online. I had to envision and specify the technology as it didnât exist and coordinated 7 different parties to deliver the end-to-end solution, including appealing to Microsoft to create a feature globally to make the solution possible. The aim was, as ever, to let technology pick up the burden of education logistics so academic colleagues could focus on learning, teaching and assessment, and I am incredibly proud of how our small team delivered a working, University-wide solution in only 3 months and that my TEL team ensured we had a viable and coherent package of technology and guidance for September.
- As one of the first universities to start back, you may remember that Manchester Met hit the news, soon followed by the University of Manchester as cases rocketed and we received the call late one Friday to move all first-year teaching online by Monday morning. Within an hour the hybrid timetabling capability had updated over 10,000 individual timetables with personalised Teams links, ensuring colleagues could forget about the logistics and concentrate instead on running classes online. It was a global first, and I was proud of being able to coordinate a global network to deliver it in only 3 months, and can only apologise for driving my wonderful PM crazy!
- I am also proud of the transformational effect my work has had on assessment across the institution. When I wrote the JISC bid for the TRAFFIC project, less than 5% of assessments were online and they were set up and managed by pioneering, enthusiastic academics. As a result of TRAFFIC and the EMA project I followed it with, every assessment in the University has a digital footprint for tracking submission, marks and feedback return and the burden of setting up assessments has been removed from academic colleagues. Every student now has a personal submission schedule that shows due dates and return dates and is adjusted automatically for extensions. I established a contractual and working relationship with our digital partner (CoSector) that enabled us to add new functionality rapidly, which enabled the University to address pain points in processing extension requests by allowing short self-certified extensions and ensured the burden of entering marks into the student records system was removed from academics through automation. As ever, the work was characterised by inspiring colleagues from across the institution to come together to imagine a better way of working that improved the student experience, minimised the administrative burden for academic colleagues and provided insights to drive improved practice for the future. And the solution was for the whole institution â handling the peaks inherent in over 200,000 online submissions without fuss.
- The work Iâd initiated to amplify the student voice and the analysis techniques Iâd mentored my team in deploying meant we were able to learn what worked and what didnât work in our pandemic response. It was clear that inequalities that had been mitigated to some extent by resources available on campus were laid bare by the pandemic and student experience was not equal â it may have been the same storm, but a student in a quiet room with good WiFi and the support of the parental home was in a very different boat to the main carer who was trying to juggle studies with home-schooling kids without a quiet space to work on a low-spec device with limited bandwidth. Some students really valued the flexibility offered by digital in terms of when they engaged, for others a Teams meeting with cameras off was no substitute for the friends and support theyâd hoped to find by going to Uni, and âlonging for belongingâ was an emergent theme that runs wider than course to touch on community and career dimensions of the overall experience. I am pleased to see that focus group input that I coordinated (summarised on the slide above) and the student voice mechanisms I established are feeding in to the Universityâs new Education Strategy and am confident that the futureâs bright for the students I joined to make a difference for.
- I hope this candid reflection on how skills and insights honed in my early career in my conscious efforts to improve practice have been developed through my commitment to experimentation, reflection, mentoring and feedback to operate at the strategic D4 level of creating the conditions for improving practice across the institution as a whole. Throughout my journey, I have nurtured a Personal Learning Network (PLN) to assist with my development and been generous with sharing lesson learned with the wider sector through JISC, publications, conferences and through countless knowledge-sharing sessions which I have illustrated in the appendix to my submission. I am hugely grateful to my PLN: Rachel, Rod, Neil, Helen, Lawrie, Sheila, Richards Tony, Alex, Janet, Andy, Osman .. all those Iâve called out along the way and so many more whoâve so kindly spared time to bounce ideas and provide feedback. I hope youâve found my story interesting and the evidence for Principal Fellow status compelling, and I look forward to answering any questions or expanding on any elements as you require.