Live – Learn – Create

Royal Festival Hall – OCA Graduation

Life has been very busy and challenging – In 2017 I joined the Open College of the Arts as Principal and Chief Executive Officer. It’s been a culmination of many years of working in senior roles in Higher Education, mainly at the Open University, that led me to this wonderful organisation. I don’t want to make this post reflective on my career so please check out my earlier posts to find out a bit more about why I feel a good fit to OCA with it’s mission to open access to the creative arts.

What I discovered about OCA (2017)

OCA is an organisation that was in deep financial water by 2016 and had effectively been assisted by the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) who took ownership from 2016 when OCA became a subsidiary, UCA invested in services to support OCA and whilst the vast majority of these services are invisible to OCA students they have helped OCA to remain in operation and to develop. I also discovered that OCA has a wealth of knowledge and expertise, with excellent staff and tutors and engaged students, but this was largely untapped. Finally I discovered that OCA was struggling to manage the transition to new (online) approaches. These are all problems I believed I could fix, so we began a turnaround.

Pre-pandemic

By March 2020 the turnaround was well underway. We had cleared the negative reserves, and we understood our costs and the fees we needed to charge and had discussed these with our student association and Board. We had a clear model for deferring income/revenue to ensure we had adequate funding to teach students for the duration of their course, regardless of the climate on enrolments. We were moving effectively to digital practices, with an eighteen month plan to embed the VLE and digital assessment and we had a clear strategy for curriculum development. We also had very good and tested disaster recovery plans (which would become very valuable shortly). What we hadn’t achieved at this point, despite goodwill on both sides, was any significant collaborative benefits from the merger with UCA.

Pandemic reflections

By the Summer of 2020 we had implemented remote working practice and were managing assessment digitally, establishing eighteen months worth of planned activity in around eighteen days. A huge effort. We were all managing additional enrolments and coping with higher volumes being assessed and a 400% increase in the numbers of student requests for support. These pandemic challenges meant trying to retrospectively scale staff, systems and processes to cope with demand. We know that we didn’t get everything right but we adapted quickly, and learnt. What we were not able to do was to assist UCA to any great extent. We did explore a joint project to manage international students onto OCA courses and then onto UCA courses at a latter stage, however the differences in curriculum, learning outcomes and study mode made this impossible to realise in the few weeks we had until the September intake. OCA did host webinars for colleagues in HE and we reached out to assist any HEI in general terms about facing the challenges to pivot to digital and online learning. We also created free learning resources for parents to assist children in lockdown through weekly creative challenges. We know the Open University did similar work and I was involved in a OU hosted webinar at one point sharing our experiences of online learning.

The pandemic brought both OCA and UCA to a point of reflection. We were at the five year review point of our relationship and our strategic directions continued to be quite divergent. The University for the Creative Arts operates in a space punching up to Russell Group expectations, particularly on research excellence, and on the selection of staff and students to meet that continued ambition. The Open College of the Arts operates with a focus on open access education, learning gain, employability, skills development, on professional practice and around giving opportunity for anyone to gain a career in the creative arts. In additional OCA can be seen as competing in the same (creative arts) space, with different mode of study and fee point. These are all challenges when operating as a group and ultimately when we talked it was clear that the two organisations have different visions for the future and needed to divest to fully realise those ambitions.

So why the OU?

Shared Values – The Open College of the Arts has been pioneering open education in the creative arts for over thirty years. Founded by Michael Young, one of the founders of the Open University, the two organisations share an identity in widening participation. Indeed the OCA was founded by Michael Young when people at the Open University told him that Creative Arts couldn’t be taught at a distance so he went out to prove that it could. What this means is that OCA and OU have a unique shared identity. The OU’s mission is to be Open to people, places, methods and ideas. OCA’s mission is Live, Learn, Create.

Complementary curricula – Indeed there are only two areas of overlap with music and creative writing however in both those areas there is distinction between the offers, for example the OU music degree covers studio practice whereas the OCA music degree is around classical composition.

Geographic benefits – OCA is based in Yorkshire where the OU has no current base. This offers both organisations the opportunity to explore localisation agendas in the North East of England, particular in areas of reskilling and meeting the levelling up agenda. On a wider scale the OU operates across the four UK nations. The OCA has only 3% of students from Wales and a similar percentage from Scotland, so access to regional funding and support for the nations will allow both organisations to bring creative education to a wider UK audience.

Student Support – The Open University can assist OCA in many ways, a world leader in online learning and an understanding of wellbeing and support for distance learning students, with a vibrant and enthusiastic community of students, means that as we grow together the OCA student community will benefit in many ways from the achievements the OU has made in improving student satisfaction and wellbeing. The OU continues to perform well in the National Student Survey and this is something that is extremely important to us as we look to the future.

Future opportunities – In 2025 the government will roll out Lifelong Loan Entitlement – consultation is currently underway on this and, if done correctly, is likely to represent a siesmic shift in adult learning. Working together the Open University and Open College of the Arts can meet the challenges and provide amazing opportunities in adult learning. In 2023 the first Craft and Design T Levels will be introduced, and again there is a great potential opportunity for collaboration in the pre-degree space. The Open College of the Arts has started some short course programmes that are proving popular and with the collaboration of the Open University and OpenLearn in particular, these courses can be supersized to reach a global audience at scale and open up further access to the creative arts for a wider audience. Finally the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Open University and the Open College of the Arts can together form a partnership for bidding and funding opportunities and joint scholarship and research – exploratory activity has already begun and this is a super exciting and rich area of exploration.

And finally

Not everyone will agree with the decisions I’ve taken or even agree with our rationale for choosing the Open University over other providers. We were not able to consult fully with students at all stages of the change process which involved eighty people across three organisations, and this has been unavoidable and has made the work to explain the change now much harder. I am sorry to students that we were not able to do so, however If I had to do this over again I would still have made the same choices. Although there is still much more work to ensure a smooth transfer, I’m very heartened by the positive messages of support from colleagues, tutors, students and even from comments made by public on social media.

By way of explanation, the UCA/OCA graduation in July this year at the Royal Festival Hall was an astounding and awe inspiring event (see image above). I met forty-two OCA graduates from many different backgrounds, cultures, abilities and all ages. The biggest cheer of the whole ceremony when out when OCA graduate 94 year (young) Dorothy Flint came on stage to collect her award. It made my heart swell and I firmly believe it’s why we are all here.

Many younger learners now choose OCA and I both hope and expect to see many more graduates of all ages live, learn, create and celebrate success like Dorothy over the coming years through the collaboration between OCA and the OU.

Everything In Balance

Martin Weller has written some excellent posts on disruption and disruptive innovation. In his most recent blog post on disruption and the unenlightenment he argues that “knowledge of any area itself is viewed as a reason not to trust someone.” I’ve come across this myself, or more critically I’ve seen others placing a higher value upon knowledge which is unencumbered by context, so for example in our own environment having business acumen is treated with higher value than having knowledge of the higher education sector. This has been reflected over the past decade in Job Descriptions and recruitment processes in HE and also applies to politics where Farage and Trump are seen to have more value through coming from outside the political system. Within higher education this has resulted in a rash of appointments of people from outside the sector to senior positions.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. I see the higher education sector like an ecosystem and too much inbreeding within too small a gene pool will lead to stagnation and mutation  – in HE this can be seen as people adopting confirmation bias since meetings with the same cohort provide no novel insight or new interpretations on the original plan. On the other hand too much migration and churn will lead to a different but equally serious problem where specialist knowledge is lost to the organisation and sector and therefore decisions are not based on a full evaluation of evidence. The past influences the future so there is a balance to be struck. When you get new people and talent into an organisation you provide opportunities for cultural advancement and change. Ideas can move across domains in a way that allows things to happen. People ask questions like “why can’t you do it like that?” and you realise that because you had issues previously you have mentally blocked off an opportunity.

As an example I have had some of my richest conversations recently with Rosie Jones the new Director of Library Services. In her induction we discussed using gaming approaches in the workplace to stimulate new thinking as we both have backgrounds in serious gaming.

Animal Crossing 

I have now begun applying some of these approaches in events that I am facilitating for Leadership in Digital Innovation. I wouldn’t have been able to make the mental leap without her fresh perspective on some of the organisational issues, adopting what Dave Coplin might describe as non-linear thinking.

 

My point is that stimulation is a good thing as it can build the conditions for the new system to emerge – but disruption by it’s nature means that, as Martin describes it, “there is no collaboration, working alongside, improving here”. It’s what Bernard Stiegler describes in his interview How to Survive “Disruption” as “a form of widespread dispossession of knowledge, of life skills and indeed of livelihood across Europe through the rapid political, social and technological changes to work and everyday life.”

Crucially for both education and politics we must seek to understand, value, and then challenge the current system in order to create the system we need.

 

Customer Service and Quangos

I’ve went out with friend for a curry on Friday to a restaurant that none of us had been to before so I checked out the reviews online on revyu.com and several other revue sites via my iPhone. I found it had received mixed reviews and was a bit concerned about going on the basis of the feedback but decided to give it a go. I should have taken more notice of the feedback – The service was awful from the word go and even though the restaurant was only ever half full the staff couldn’t cope and it took 1.5 hours before we even got the starter. It was very much like an Eastern version of Fawlty Towers.

Some of my friends complained but to no avail. Even at the end it took more than half an hour and three attempts to wave down staff before we got the bill. The philosophy seemed to be (if there was one) that letting the customer wait allowed time for people to drink more and therefore bring in more revenue through beverages. This has been proven to be a poor business model since quicker turnover on tables (according to those that run restaurants, such as Monsieur Ramsey) is the best way of securing greater income and keeps staff motivated since there is more opportunity for tips etc.

By comparison this week I also took my bike to the bike shop to get it repaired since it has done 10,000 miles and needed a new sprocket. I had just recently bought a set of tyres from the same shop and noticed some lines down the side of the rear one so I asked them to check it at the same itme. They replaced the sprocket and checked the bike over and also replaced the tyre with one which would have cost £10 more than the one I bought originally and didn’t charge me any extra for it. This is the sort of service I value and it may only be £10 but it makes me feel good that they’re prepared to do that for me. I have bought three bikes from them in the past so they know that a small investment in my loyalty will secure future custom worth much more then the new tyre. Good Job CycleKing!

So to conclude my mini-rant on customer service I recently applied for a job at the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education) as Head of IMS. I went for interview and impressed them so they invited me back to meet the CEO and see around the place. I had always thought of QAA in the same sort of way as many other quangos and similar government inspired organisations in that they may be liable to greed or excess and permit luxury over the essential business of running their area of delegated authority. I was presently surprised however by how lean a business they are running and how their drive for efficiency and strategic management of their workforce mimics the drive within the HE organisations that they work with. I didn’t get the job but I have had a very useful insight into how QAA supports the business of running education in the UK and how this is benchmarked against international HE practice.  Let me explain by example…

The OU is looking at new models of providing courses. One of the most inspiring for me is the 2+2 model whereby students can apply to do two years of study at the OU remotely (part time) and then complete the final two years at another HE institution in the UK that is partnering with the OU on this scheme. This allows students to work at home (and save some money) in the first two years but then complete at a more traditional campus-based institution and receive a qualification through them. This could be particularly inviting to international students who wish to study here and continue on to work in the UK. It also allow other HEI’s to reduce the work in particular subject areas (and reduce costs) without having to remove the subject area from their curriculum. But how can such compleity in study and flexibility be managed to ensure quality and consistency? – enter (according to the CEO) the QAA and other bodies associated with ensuring quality and contributing to ensuring the awards are administered fairly. Without such a body, independently managing the quality assurance process the move to two year degrees, the 2+2 model or any other new form of degree awarding scheme would be much more problematic so in my opinion if these organisations can deliver good customer service then they have a vital role to play.

I’m not into quango bashing for the sake of it – by all means reduce complexity but if you want flexibility and quality in our UK education services then we need have independent oversight of that and continue to invest in mechanisms to benchmark and ensure quality across the sector.