Aligning IT and University Strategy - Paul Curran - Jisc Digital Festival 2014

Editor's Notes

• #2: I have been asked to make some general comments on trends in IT and reflect on the IT journey we are on at City.
• #3: Demand by staff and students is increasing: supply is changing rapidly and there are major challenges for universities where these demand and supply trends intersect.This is true in research, enterprise, education and university management but today I will focus on the challenges in education and how we have met them in our recent journey at City.
• #4: Some trends in student demand that have influenced our thinking at City :Humanising HE,Enhancing the education experience, andEngendering community spirit.I’ll say a bit more about each of them.
• #5: As we know, students are looking for a more personal experience.
• #6: Some universities are exploiting technology to provide a more personalised education experience for their students and to make learning resources more accessible. This is helped by the ubiquitous nature of technology (at the last count over 99% of City University London students owned a mobile phone with over 70% possessing an internet enabled device).
• #7: Technology can also enhance the education we offer. For example, the “flipped classroom” where students take greater control of their education by bringing their own devices; and academic staff preparing lectures in advance and then streaming them prior to more personalised face-to-face tutorials.
• #8: It can also build a sense of community.To ensure that learning through personal interaction is maintained we need a technologically robust estate that enables online and real life connectivity. Social Media, VLE, Self Service Apps and BYOD all have roles to play.
• #9: As quickly as student needs, interests and competences have developed, so have strong trends emerged in IT supply.Increasing standardisation of infrastructure components, the availability of outsourced infrastructure and ubiquitous wi-fi are among them.<Given the audience I won’t labour the point>
• #10: It will be helpful to illustrate these demand and supply issues and their implications by reflecting on our experience at City.I’ll describe the ‘before’ (how IT worked three years ago) and how we organised to align IT Services with our Strategic Plan.We can contrast the ‘then’ of three years ago with the ‘now’ of today and look forward to the ‘after’ of tomorrow.
• #11: Our Vision is founded on a commitment to academic excellence, including pride in the quality of our education.To achieve the educational aspects of the Vision, we needed to create a ‘sector leading’ experience in many of our areas of education.There were other things we had to work on but we realised that this was heavily dependent on exploiting the potential of technology.
• #12: In 2011, several things needed addressing<read verbatim from slides>The penultimate point was the most important. Each School had its own bespoke software that may have been documented, the designer may still have been on the staff but in most cases neither were true.Each School also had its own IT staff leading to considerable duplication and overlap.
• #13: We recognised that IT was a major enabler in the implementation of our Strategic Plan.Senior IT staff were fundamental to the Strategic Plan work streams, particularly those facing our students.Succeeding with Students andSucceeding with Research and Enterprise
• #14: Phase one involved preparation to capitalise on the supply trends I described earlier.This included full engagement of IT Services with the Strategic Plan,An efficiency programme to unify and simplify business processes,And a rationalisation of applications architecture to buy and integrate where possible.And IT Services was re-organised to recognise the transition from ‘make’ to ‘buy and integrate’.
• #15: With the preparations concluded, IT Services is now embracing commodity IT and external hosting.And the skills of our IT staff are changing. Relationship management skills, with suppliers and our internal customers, are now more evident.Although the infrastructure is commoditised, our developing customer-facing analysis and relationship skills are helping us develop unique services that directly enhance education and research.The stabilised and improved infrastructure allows energy to go into implementing sector leading devices in education and significantly improving customer service.
• #16: In 2013, things were being fixed.<Read verbatim from slides and contrast with 2010/11>
• #17: The slide shows some of the infrastructure improvements in detail and some of the financial and other benefits.<read from slide>
• #18: Whereas this slide shows the details of some of the educational improvements.<read slide>
• #19: Responsive design has been used where this will scale onto any type of device a student may have. This is demonstrating how the workspaces would reformat for a handheld device, allowing the student to scroll down to see more information.
• #20: Likewise we have a Tutees dashboard allowing them to track the progress of their students and to interact with them.
• #21: But there’s more to come as the supply and demand trends harden:Increased commoditisationCommodity IT sourced through third partiesUnified core processesIncreased and improved provision of education online with student access through own devicesBig Data analysis to assess student progress and offer individual course pathwaysEnhanced staff skills to purchase and integrate components on the supplier sideAnd to deliver differentiated services on the ‘customer’ sideStaff roles will morph from technical to hybrid: technical core with business analysis and relationship management
• #22: The challenges for some academic staff will be considerable:Technical skills will be as important as pedagogic skillsBecoming as adept n the virtual world as the physical worldMastering the skills of our Net generation students and meeting their expectationsAnd for IT staff:Supplier management and systems integrationAnd ‘customer’ management and requirements analysis will become more relevant than application development and maintenance
• #23: This slide, produced by A T Kearney, emphasises he declining importance of infrastructure management and application management, the two main areas of classical IT departments.And the growing importance of relationship management – both supplier and ‘customer’.
• #24: I hope I’ve been able to demonstrate the clear trends in ‘customer’ demand and IT supply in HE, particularly in education.These present significant challenges for both academics and professional IT staff.There is little option but to meet these challenges head on if student and staff satisfaction is to increase.At City we believe we’re making good progress as we stabilise and improve service, reduce overheads and IT staff and satisfy our students .Thank you