Posted
on June 2, 2010, 11:41 am,
by stephenp,
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Over the past few months we have been thinking about how we can identify and embed innovations at the University of Bolton, taking a sociotechnical perspective and including new technology, processes ways of working. To help us with this we have begun to use the Gartner STREET (Scan, Track, Rank, Evaluate, Evangelise, Transfer) process (this book covers it in detail) which is approach to picking the innovation that is right for your organisation informed by the notion of the Hype Cycle.
The Hype Cycle diagram is pretty intuitive when looked at and will resonate with many people’s experiences. Put simply it is a way of plotting the expectations of an innovation (vertical axis) over time (horizonal axis) and illustrating how over inflated these can be initially (‘peak of expectations’) , leading to a reappraisal (‘trough of despair’) and possibly as the innovation matures adoption through a ’slope of enlightenment’ to a ‘plateaux of productivity’.
The purpose of this post was to consider how the track part of the STREET process might be informed by Google Insights which is a tool that allows you to ‘compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.’ Below are a few that we tried, do they tell us anything when viewed through the lense of the Hype Cycle? Of course many problems with this approach but it might be that as the period of time over which this kind of analysis is available extends it becomes a useful step in the tracking of innovations.
Posted
on May 25, 2010, 11:49 am,
by stephenp,
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Over on the Coeducate project blog I have posted about open learning as a business model for the UoB. The main idea is illustrated by the diagram below where I have attempted to encapsulate the key dimensions of the model. I think the key question I struggle with, however, is whether HEI are capable of transforming the way they do their business. My observations are that HEI are great at ‘doing’ isolated islands of innovation, but relatively poor at systemic change.
Posted
on January 18, 2010, 5:55 pm,
by stephenp,
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Reading the website about this new BBC project I couldn’t help but think back to the Ultralab project ‘Every Object Tells a Story‘ with the Victoria and Albert Museum back in 2004. Not a project I worked on myself, but the parallels with the BBC are obvious, particularly the ability to ‘add an object’ with an account of their significance to individuals and groups participating. Truly original ideas are hard to come by…
Posted
on January 4, 2010, 3:40 pm,
by stephenp,
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Great as BBC iPlayer is, I like many mac users had struggled when using Firefox to download programmes. For some reason, after each download I was prompted to install the iPlayer desktop application again, but in doing so was still only able to download a single programme before being stick in the loop again.
The work round for me was to install Google Chrome which works fine although this is a ‘clunky’ solution as I still use Firefox for my main browser – Google adoption has to stop somewhere!
Posted
on August 11, 2009, 3:09 pm,
by stephenp,
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Hours wasted compiling this spreadsheet and associated Google Gadget, Motion Chart. The data still needs refining and but for many values it works well giving the user the opportunity to view three different parameters (axis of a graph and relative size of the plot) for related items. In my case, measures of different English universities related to the nature of their student populations. To help get the hang of it, set colour to ‘unique colours’; size to ‘total all students’ then play around by choosing data on both axis and select a particular institution you are interested in tracking. Finally, start the timeline…
Posted
on May 15, 2009, 1:06 pm,
by stephenp,
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As a part of my work on the Coeducate project I recently attended a project day with representatives from 11 other UK HE institutions.
As us often the cases at such events the most value to be gained is from the surrounding off topic discussions and in one such conversation with someone from Cambridge University I was struggling with the comments that a big challenge for Cambridge was that they “lose too many students”.
After some time and as the conversation progressed it became apparent that this wasn’t a reference to a problem of retention but to one of not recruiting some of the the brightest and best students who were leaking away to the competition, Oxford, Harvard, etc.
The irony of the conversation wouldn’t be lost on anyone working in a recruiting university.
Posted
on March 9, 2009, 6:04 pm,
by stephenp,
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Work requirements mean that I can no longer resist using Microsoft Office (my convenience not a University of Bolton dictate) and the first step of migration was the relatively simple export and import of contacts. 30 minutes of fiddling with export and import options and the only answer I could find was:
1. export vCard from Mac Mail
2. import vCard into GoogleMail
3. export from GoogleMail as csv
4. copy file from OSX environment into Windows environment that now runs on my Mac in the Parallels environment (complete with the startup and shutdown tune all sane people loath
Next will be my calendar, all very depressing on many levels:^(
Posted
on January 20, 2009, 8:57 am,
by stephenp,
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A requirement of the Coeducate Jisc funded project is that we have a project Blog. The easiest choice and the one I took was to use wordpress.com with the addition of a sub-domain re-direct (Wordpress charge $10 to allow this) so that we can use the URL http://coeducate.bolton.ac.uk thereby assuring a little bit of advantage for the University of Bolton and the project in ‘tying’ them together.
Posted
on December 8, 2008, 11:48 am,
by stephenp,
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Most adults feel exams failed to gauge real ability:77 per cent of adults believe that exam results should not be used to judge their suitability for jobs
(Via Education Guardian).
The overwhelming majority of adults believe school exams do not reflect their true abilities or predict their future success, according to a new report published today. As many as 77 per cent feel that formal testing fails to measure their real intelligence, yet the exam results are used to scrutinise them through their academic careers and when applying for jobs.
They would be right wouldn’t they?
Amid reports accusing schools of ‘teaching to test’, the CIEA said the survey pointed to the need for a more well-rounded form of assessment.
And who could argue with this?:^)
Posted
on November 14, 2008, 12:33 pm,
by stephenp,
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idibl.
This has been a well run conference: 11am – 6pm Thursday & 9am Friday until 12.30pm – a sensible schedule that allows for people to attend the whole event.
Richard and I did a uvac-idibl-presentation slot that wnt down well, lots of commanality with the Middlesex Work-based learning approach as described by Alan Durrant Head of Work Based Learning, School of Arts & Education.
The biggest impression that I am taking away is of the development of a two tier market growing up. Numerous examples of large employers working with Universities to develop bespoke courses – lots of resource required for this not to mention the challenge of curriculum set in aspic.
I suppose it takes us back to one of the core ideas behind Ultraversity & now IDIBL and that is trusting in the ability of the learner to negotiate the curriculum (focus of their inquiry) with the University in line with their needs and the needs of their employer.
Perhaps this is the clear blue water between us and other work-based approaches:
- one is high overhead negotiations with individual employers for particular groups of workers developing a prescribed curriculum that matches exactly what an employer defines;
- the other is a generically defined process curriculum that allows for personalisation through the design of individual inquiries focused on improving work-practice.
