Tag: higher education
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Institutional appetite for change – Leadership learning for higher education (HEPN)
At the start of the month I attended the Higher Education Partners Network (HEPN) North event and represented the experiences of the online learning operational teams who implemented new technology and processes in a people-centred way. Here are some of the leadership points from the day I attended. Entrepreneurial universities One of the ironies of…
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Institutional readiness for the future of education
There is an increase in demand for skills-based education, largely arising from the perceived impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on a wide range of professions, industries and job sectors. Formal education providers need to consider how this demand will influence and inform the future provision of educational programmes and the broader, lifelong learning offer. Impacts…
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Expanding the role of higher education: professional learning
Short post. Open thinking. UK higher education is going through a period of significant change and it looks like it will continue for some time to come. Office for Students (OfS) financial sustainability forecasts in May 2025 were grim reading and six months later their update did not hold back with language of “tough decisions”,…
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Learning Engineering: Collaboration, Context and Challenge
There are many approaches to improve what we do in education, with a sometimes overwhelming number of internal and external factors that bring opportunities and challenges. Learning Engineering (an engineering-inspired approach to educational design, as opposed to the study of engineering) provides a method to tackle these opportunities and challenges in a collaborative, data-informed and…
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Skills-first: responding to the threat to higher education
Short post. Open thinking. Here’s an angle on where we are at this moment in time: Higher education is in an existential crisis. The concept of higher education as a public good is eroded with anti-education politics and populism, costs outpacing funding, and value propositions being dismantled. Institutions are chasing both revenue and relevance to…
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2024 retrospective and a view to 2025: can we make an opportunity out of higher education’s challenges?
As 2024 draws to a close, I’ve taken the liberty of consuming a few minutes of your time to capture some highlights of my work from the last 12 months and also to ponder what role online education may have in 2025. Looking back I’ve learnt a lot from the wider educational sector both in…
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Recognition: Opening doors to new learning journeys – Reflections on ePIC 2024
A key aspect of inclusivity is to establish the ways in which learners are supported to bring their knowledge and understanding into an educational environment. At the ePIC 2024 Open Recognition conference in Paris (6-8 November 2024), the ideas of recognition, qualifications and learning journeys were debated and discussed. For me there are three concepts…
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Connected conversations: ALT Annual Conference 2024 – Day 2
Initial reflections and summary of sessions from Day 2 of the ALT Annual Conference, Manchester, 3-5 September 2024. The common theme I extracted from the day is about purposefully connected digital education. This is not just about connecting learners and connecting spaces, but also connecting the curriculum to professional skills through the use of technology. Student…
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AI and higher education: skills, humans and educational experiences
Opinion piece. When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on education, it’s fair to say we’re currently in the murky waters of the unknown, trying to make sense of change and any level of certainty is ill-founded. The current context and rapid pace of change doesn’t offer much in terms of evidence…