Jisc case studies wiki Case studies / Transformations Teesside University
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Transformations Teesside University

Project Name: Virtual Business Engagement Network

Lead Institution: Teesside University

Project Lead: Karen Race

 

Addressing an urgent need to attract more academic staff to work in BCE, this project will implement a virtual collaborative network for University staff. This will underpin other organisational development measures to embed BCE and will also support the work of the Department of Academic Enterprise in delivering its Internal Communication Strategy.  


See the full Transformations programme playlist

 

Background

Teesside University’s Business Engagement strategy is a key institutional strategy with the aim growing the commercial income and the range and scale of partnerships.  There is an urgent need to attract more academic staff to work in BCE.

 

Examining the HEBCIS figures for our family of universities shows that we perform well with £22,347 of BCE income per member of academic staff, the second highest in the group. However the CRM system reveals that only 30 academics [out of around 650] are systematically involved in the delivery of BCE projects.

 

Barriers to engagement are well documented and explored and  an Internal Communication Strategy was launched at the beginning of 2011/12 to address them which integrated with other organisational measures, e.g. HR policies and staff development.

 

Aims and objectives

To implement a virtual collaborative network for University staff to underpin this work and support the work of the Department of Academic Enterprise in delivering its Internal Communication Strategy.

 

Context

Teesside University’s Business Engagement strategy is recognised as integral to the University’s overall strategy. The BE Strategy’s aim is to become one of the leading universities for working with business and we are progressing well to achieve this aim. In 2008 we were awarded one of the largest Strategic Development Fund contracts in the Workforce Development strand by HEFCE. This £5m project has recently ended and has achieved a significant culture change in the way we manage our relationships with businesses.  From 2012 onwards the task has been to embed the culture change achieved and continue to drive up the range and extent of business engagement activity.

 

The business case

The business case for increasing commercial income is not a difficult one to make.  Following the end of the SDF project there is still significant investment being made in to driving up demand so activities to make commensurate gains in academic involvement continue to be essential.

 

Key drivers

The project has been driven by the Department of Academic Enterprise. Managed by Karen Race and Andy Price it has used the existing team of Business Development Managers to champion the project in academic schools and has enlisted the support of a number of academics and experienced developers to contribute to the User Design workshops. It has also draw the expertise of Prof Paul Van Schaik, a specialist in Human Computer Interaction. The DVC for Research and Enterprise has sponsored the project and received monthly reports about its progress, intervening to ensure smooth progress.

 

JISC resources/technology used

See Appendix

 

Outcomes

The site has been live for several months and almost 70 members of staff have subscribed to date.

 

Achievements

A user designed participatory business engagement platform, Teesbe, was delivered on time and to budget.  The project was delivered systematically so that, each stage was fully achieved before moving on to the next. 

 

Activity

Achievement/Outcome

Audit current on line tools

Mapped all existing tools and discussed with stakeholders their appropriateness.  Implemented an additional tool rather than using an existing one.

Review JISC tools

See Appendix

Scope platform, goals and objectives

2 workshops were held firstly with business engaged academic staff and then with those who are not yet engaged.  From these the following principles were formulated:

  • Teesbe.net will provide relevant news and information to both business engaged and as-yet-to-be business engaged staff at Teesside University.
  • As such, it aims to improve the overall effectiveness of staff involved with business engagement and provide an accessible platform to those who are yet to engage.
  • It will facilitate the building of a community of practice around business engagement within the institution.
  • Its Information Architecture will reflect the internal organisation and understanding of the major strategic themes of business engagement strategy.
  • It will aim to integrate with other major social platforms and services to provide as many ‘channels’ to content as possible and represent real-world use of digital tools.
  • It will run on a decentralised model with stakeholders in schools and departments able to easily add content.
  • Future development will be based on an on-going user-centred design process and will integrate new modes of user engagement as they arise.

 

Conduct user centred design workshops

A further workshop was then held to filter and refine the requirements.  The key achievement was the prioritising of information required to: opportunities, successes and resources and the use of a second dimension of ‘theme’ (loosely relating to business sector)

Solution development

Wordpress was used as the platform for the solution.  A range of plug-ins were explored and other university wordpress sites researched for ideas.  An associated LinkedIn site was set up, solely for University staff, to act as one of the dissemination routes for news and alerts

UAT

The site was systematically tested to ensure the functionality was robust and reliable.  Staff in the Department of Academic Enterprise provided a sounding board and the group of Assistant Deans for BE also attended a presentation and provided comment

Launch

The prototype of the site was launched during the staff BE conference in November 2012.  A presentation to the Business Engagement Policy Committee followed and a roadshow took place in each Academic school. Feedback from the launch was very positive

The purpose of the launch was to drive up the number of subscribers to the site.  To date almost 70 people have subscribed

Promotional activities

Since the launch a number of further promotional activities have taken place:

  • Article included in the BE Staff newsletter (paper format) and sent to all staff
  • Article included in the University on line newsletter  

Evaluation

The final stages of the project took place just before the end of the academic year so the evaluation plan is now set to be implemented in the new term.

 

Benefits

User feedback, albeit in the early life of the solution, has welcomed a central source of information and inspiration for business engagement.   This is because the current central repository of information, using Sharepoint, is appropriate for document storage but not appropriate for fluid communication with responses. 

 

Although the project is still in its early stages the people responsible for the dissemination of information are already seeing the benefit of this alternative route.  The fact that the recipient of the information can tailor both the theme of the message and the route (eg email, Linked in alert etc) has made Teesbe the most flexible communication tool in the institution. 

 

The online community of practice is not yet fully formed.  However the very exercise of bringing people together to consult and test has begun the face to face part of the process.  The project itself has served to raise awareness of BE and of the role of the Department of Academic Enterprise.

 

Drawbacks

Whilst a digital solution may appear easily accessible via many devices, roll out and engagement across a large organisation will require significant organisation and face to face discussion.  This is necessary both to sell the benefits of Teesbe to encourage engagement and also to deliver one to one support for the initial set up.

 

Stimulating and managing content is likely to develop into a significant job.  The ‘editorial strategy’ of a participatory media form needs careful consideration and implementation and will need to adapt to ensure Teesbe becomes the resource that its target audience requires it to be.

 

Key lessons

The implementation of this project has provided a number of learning points to be noted for future similar projects:

 

Implementing a ‘user centred design process’ is worth the investment in time.  Although it was difficult to engage people in our project, particularly those who were not involved in BE, their involvement is crucial to success.  For example our solution may have adopted an existing platform but following the group’s discussions we decided to implement a separate platform.  Furthermore the potential aims of the system were narrowed down from simply ‘an internal communication tool’ to a mechanism to inform people about successes and opportunities, based on the priorities of the target audiences.

 

Involvement of potential users at an early stage also revealed important information about their digital habits.  The imperative became to offer flexibility in how the target audience is able to receive information.  The most striking lesson was the general dislike of email as a route for information by our target group.   

 

As with previous ICT projects, having senior management sponsorship was enormously helpful.  Regular progress reports to Business Engagement Policy Committee and the interest of the Deputy VC for research and Business Engagement were key to maintaining the momentum of the project and getting buy-in from the academic schools.

 

Looking ahead

Whilst we have been successful in developing and implementing the tool and engaging colleagues to use the system as a communication route, we have not yet ensured enough critical mass to call it an on line community of practice.   We will continue to promote Teesbe throughout the next year to grow the community.  We recognise that it will be vital to monitor user acceptance, driving up engagement and pursue ‘iterative’ design and development as ‘users’ identify new features and services.  

 

Furthermore our editorial strategy will develop, driven largely by the needs of the community, resisting temptation to use the site as a route for information from the centre, out

We consider that evaluation of the site is not a discrete exercise but an ongoing process which builds review and improvement into the evolution of Teesbe.

 

Sustainability

Having utilised ‘free’ tools and services and aligned the project closely with existing corporate systems in the development of ‘Teesbe’, sustainability looks reasonably secure.  HEIF is being used to provide the ‘back office’ support for the system and this is allocated until 2015.  The University’s central ICT Department has recently launched a Wordpress strategy to provide hosting and technical support for a number of sites, therefore contributing to the sustainability of the site.

 

Appendix

 

Review of JISC tools

 

This report  outlines the tools used and the rationale for their use.  For each tool we make comment  - in italics about the relevance of the tool in hindsight.

  

Jisc infoNet

“Collaboration is at the heart of Business and Community Engagement (BCE), manifest in three dimensions: within institutions (across disciplines and functions), across institutions, and between institutions and external partners.  While effective and sustainable collaboration requires initial (at least) face-to-face contact, the vast majority of BCE collaborative work is heavily dependent on virtual collaboration through email, telephone or online tools and resources. In a severely time-constrained and information-heavy environment, it is critical that tools that enable collaboration are simple to use, with minimal risk and mutually convenient. Web technologies, in particular, offer exciting opportunities to meet these needs.”

 

This project’s goal was to examine the successful trialling and piloting of specific collaborative online tools that aimed to ‘enhance and empower’ Business and Community Engagement (BCE) among a varied range of practitioners, institutions and external partners. Eight trials in a variety of different BCE situations took place. 

As the report states there are a “There is a bewildering array of online tools that could be used for Business and Community Engagement (BCE) collaborative work..” and partners therefore were free to choose the tools that they thought most appropriate for the trials. In general partners aimed to keep costs down to improve the chances of sustainability and in some cases similar or the same tools were used.  Technologies deployed included; teleconferencing, e-mail, videoconferencing, VoIP (e.g. Skype), Instant messaging, Wordpress, Plone, Wiki’s, FTP, SMS, Elluminate, Wimba Classroom and Moodle.  The report asks each partner to evaluate the ‘ease of use’ of each technology, the limitations and the costs.

 

Overall the report identifies a number of benefits from the initiatives including; the development of new business opportunities, enhanced information and knowledge sharing, savings in time & money and enhancement of learning & teaching as well as enhanced research opportunities.

 

The report also goes on to advise on ‘how to get the best out of working together’ and building genuine online communities:  Engaging Stakeholders, starting with established groups, using familiar systems, the provision of training and supporting of staff/partners and the involvement of senior colleagues.

 

2013 update..

As noted ‘user centred design’ is a crucial methodology in delivering service solutions, particularly in a world where there is a ‘.. bewildering array of online tools that could be used for Business and Community Engagement (BCE) collaborative work..”, which could otherwise lead either design paralysis or mission redundancy.  It is also worth recording that rather than ‘overcoming’ Institutional habitus to achieve our project goals by working closely ‘within’ it, in an informed and collaborative way we were able to make significant progress.

 


 

Developing Communities of Practice (CoP)

In May 2010 the ‘Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE’ project held an event looking at personal skills need to develop communities of practice (CoP).  A video of the discussion between Jeremy Davenport, Paul Lowe, Etienne Wenger and Brian McCaul chaired by the JISC BCE Programme Manager Simon Whittemore was subsequently produced.

 

2013 update..

The general points made here about project leaders having high institutional social capital and collegiate leadership skills certainly remain true, but perhaps more emphasis needs to be placed on actual experience of delivering similar projects either within or outside HE as well as being comfortable with highly ambiguous project life cycle development and resilience to mission creep.  A second observation was that in terms of the Teesside experience, staff were very open to the idea of communities of practice and seemed very well informed about the concept.

 


 

External Evaluation for the BCE-CT Project

Belanda Consulting 25 August 2010

 

The BCE-CT project was undertaken in the context of increasing emphasis on collaboration across traditional boundaries, both within institutions, between institutions and with external business partners and local communities. The BCE-CT Project was concerned with enhancing both the use and awareness of online collaborative tools to support BCE.

 

“While face-to-face contact may provide the initial thrust, a growing majority of BCE work is heavily dependent on virtual collaboration through email, telephone or web-based tools and resources (JISC, 2007). Co-creation and co-production can be especially effective through the medium of shared online resources and tools. However, in a study on social media in BCE, web2.0 technologies were found to be greatly underexploited among BCE practitioners (JISC, 2009).”

 

The contribution of the BCE collaborative tools project to the BCE programme was mainly in exploring how technologies could be used to enhance collaboration and co-operation between HE and FE institutions, business and the community and to facilitate fruitful and sustainable partnerships for knowledge exchange.

 

2013 update..

The scaling of the Teesbe project to include external partners was clearly identified by the project team, focus groups and staff demonstrated as an obvious further development; as such this will be under serious consideration moving forward.

 


 

JISC Sustaining and Embedding Innovations – Good Practice guide

 

Using technologies to support communities of practice https://sustainembed.pbworks.com/w/page/35754231/Using-technologies-to-support-communities-of-practice

 

This online resource from JISC Advance, aims to aggregate some of the JISC generated advice with regard to using technologies to support communities of practice.  In particular it draws attention to sector social network) The Open University Cloudworks site which they say “can be regarded as a sector resource for Communities of Practice”.  This JISC resource is separate from the info-kits.

 

Developing communities of practice

https://sustainembed.pbworks.com/w/page/35754198/Developing-communities-of-practice

Also as part of JISC advance is a section on developing communities of practice. It usefully outlines the key critical success factors for a Cop as being; Ownership, Ownership, Communications, Activities, Resources/outputs, Sustainability and Financial.  It also includes some specific advice on Cop from the JISC innovation forum 2010.

 

2013 update..

Valuable resources at the beginning of the project.  As previously mentioned the Teesbe team found that the notion of a ‘community of practice’ around BCE was well understood by academic and non-academic staff and the virtues of it widely anticipated.  If anything staff simply voiced their frustration at the organisational barriers that prevented more frictionless cross-disciplinary and cross-university work taking place.  They certainly view social and digital media as important tools in solving this.

 


 

CAMEL Collaborative Approaches to the Management of E-learning

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/camel

 

The CAMEL project was a pilot to explore the development of a Community of Practice amongst e-learning, systems, and learning technology practitioners working on aspects of promoting Lifelong Learning across institutions. The project was led by JISC infoNet in partnership with JISC, the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and the Higher Education Academy.

 

Dedicated CAMEL site http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/camel/camel-model

 

2013 update..

A useful overview and our focus groups corroborated the value of COPs to participants