The weather made a definite shift this week, with hot summer days, which though was a nice change from the wet and grey days we had in August was slightly mitigated by the fact that I was working at my desk.

At the end of last week we went to a drive-in cinema, something that I had seen in American films, but not experienced here in the UK.

The week started with a culture session. As with frameworks, defining the culture is a very small part of the story. You can define what you want the culture to be, however unless you can define your current culture, then it can make it challenging to see what has to change. Much more challenging is how you move from the current culture to the new model. There are factors that impact on this, shared understanding is one of these. Something I think I need to reflect more on at another time.

Jisc launched their findings of their 2020 student digital experience insights HE and FE publications. 

I did think this opinion piece in the Guardian was quite hard hitting, Britain’s universities have been abandoned to fight Covid-19 alone.

… the challenge ahead is exceptionally daunting. Immediate financial fears have faded a little, with more UK students taking up university places, having gained high grades from their teachers. But everyone in the sector can see the coronavirus crisis unfolding on many campuses in the US.

The conclusion of the article is that universities will be making decisions in isolation with minimal support and guidance from government, and will be working with students who don’t always follow the rules or are totally rational (then again who is).

I have continued to work on some strategy documents for Jisc as well as formulating questions about how Jisc can support HE learning and teaching.

I have been continuing to work on a series of guides this week that arise from the Learning and Teaching Reimagined programme here at Jisc. They cover blended learning, teaching, learning, assessment and other parts of the student experience.

The Twitter #LTHEChat which I popped into for a short time.

The first question I think was hard to answer.

How can we effectively use large teaching spaces on campus to facilitate small group in-person learning?

My response on Twitter was this.

A1 I think this is a real challenge, to make these effective sessions. I have been thinking about this for a few weeks now, and I don’t have an answer.#LTHEchat

— James Clay (@jamesclay) September 16, 2020

I think this is a real challenge, to make these effective sessions. I have been thinking about this for a few weeks now, and I don’t have an answer.

I spent some time on the Data Matters 2021 conference themes, programme planning and who we could invite to speak at the event.

Jisc launched a new survey for teaching staff in higher education to capture their experiences of moving teaching and learning online. The responses will help to shape resources for university leaders

I have been reflecting on the Jisc Digital Leaders Programme, which was something I am quite proud of having worked on. I joined Jisc in June 2015 and at that time Lawrie Phipps, having conceived the idea of the Digital Leaders Programme, asked me to help him develop it and deliver some pilots in October alongside Dave White and Donna Lanclos. After those successful pilots, we moved into delivering the course as a paid for training programme. We continued to develop the programme with feedback from delegates and a changing landscape. After running successful courses in Loughborough, Manchester, Belfast, the last one I was involved in was Leicester in January 2018, where we then  passed the programme onto a delivery team within Jisc. Another outcome from the programme was this briefing paper, written by myself and Lawrie. A key aspect is aimed at those tasked with writing strategies, where we argue that in order to get stronger “buy-in” there is a need to apply digital lens to all strategies. At that time I wrote a blog post exploring how I bought into this concept and how it made its way into the programme and subsequent briefing paper.

Digital leadership is a core strategic priority in Jisc’s HE Strategy I have been developing.

My top tweet this week was this one.

Hi @Morrisons I bought two cucumbers from you this afternoon and they weren’t very nice. As a result we had to bin (food waste) them. Looks like they were stored badly. Very disappointed. pic.twitter.com/8XNMhmoUTH

— James Clay (@jamesclay) September 11, 2020

The post Reflecting – Weeknote #81 – 18th September 2020 appeared first on eLearning Stuff.