In this episode of the Civil Engineering podcast, Macell Pascal is gonna talk about all of those things that civil engineers talk about doing, but they never actually do. Like getting into sales and business development, working internationally all over the world, getting involved in STEM activities and leaving a real legacy behind. And she also talks about working in the civil engineering field as a black woman and what that's meant to her and how she can impact other people. This is a value-packed episode. Let's get right into it. All right, now I'd like to welcome our guest for today's episode, Macell Pascal. Macell is the Regional Engineer and Sales Manager for the Menard Group. Macell, welcome to the Civil Engineering podcast. How are you? I'm good, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. So we're excited to have you. You look like you've had a kind of a well-traveled career for someone who is still young. So that's always exciting. Why don't you start by telling our listeners what it is that you do on a daily basis right now in your career? So what I do on a daily basis has drastically changed. So I think I'll have to give you the pre-COVID version and then the post-COVID version. Sure. Pre-COVID, it was my hat. I wear about three, maybe three and a half hats. I would say business development, education, sales and bids, engineering, and then a bit of probably people management is what I would call it. So before COVID, there was a lot of travel involved in what I would do. So I run the Southeast. So that goes from North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee. So a lot of ground to cover when doing business development. So I was on Delta a lot. I was on probably Southwest a little bit. So a fair bit of traveling, just going out, reaching out to new clients, maybe some old clients for us in the ground improvements field where our work, we wanna touch the geotechs, obviously, but we also wanna touch the structural engineers. We wanna talk to the owners. We wanna talk to the GECs. So there's so many people in any phase of a project that could bring us in that we want to be sure to be reaching out to all those people educating them about ground improvement and making sure that on their next project, they think of us. So that's a lot of what I did, especially when I just moved here. So I started out the office in Florida. We had not had a Florida presence before. So a lot of what I did was just saying, hey, we're here, we're here to help you and all of that. Once, I mean, the office, it's a lot of helping with my team with, I don't like to say my team, but helping our team with going over geotech reports, doing pre-bid designs, getting proposals together, getting bid estimates together. Obviously we have to bid on work to be able to get it. So there's that aspect. Some of that is talking to clients before trying to learn about the project, develop projects with clients or sometimes it's just a hard bid. We get a request for bid in, we go through it, we submit a proposal, we win or we don't. So it's a couple of different ways that works. And then I'm still an engineer and I still like to get involved in some of the technical aspects. So sometimes that just includes helping. We have a pretty good design team. They probably don't need me, but I like to poke my nose in and help whenever I can, just because I feel like I have a background in soils that can be pretty helpful. So that's reviewing stuff. Sounds like an engineer to me. Yeah, reviewing stuff when needed and all of that.  Me, so how big is your company just so the listeners get a feel for? So I guess I could go way back. Our mothership is Vinci Construction. They're out of France. Under that we fall under the, I think Vinci somewhere like a $40 billion Euro company, their construction and concessions. Under that we fall under the Stolettage Fresno umbrella and then under Menard. So Menard worldwide is about a 300 million Euro company. In the U.S. we have, I think about 100 and some odd full-time staff that's mostly office people and some full-time field people. And then depending on how the projects or how many projects we have going, we have more part-time union staff, et cetera, coming in. How about your office though? Like how many, when you said our team, what does that look like? Okay, so my office in Tampa is we, right now we have four people. So we have an estimated engineer, senior estimated engineer, Matt. Hey, Matt, there is Tanya who we just hired. She's a field engineer and Tony is our assistant PM. So those are the four people in the office in Tampa. And then we coordinate with our PM in Charleston and the shop in Leland. So that's the whole group for the Southeast. Okay, and so the reason I'm asking you is I think that this career path for a civil engineer is very interesting getting into sales and business development, which is what you do. And I think that a lot of engineers love the technical side of engineering, but they also like the people interaction. They like the idea of sales, business development, growing something. And that's obviously something that you're doing. Can you take us back to when and how you realized that that was something that you wanted to do? Because I feel like a lot of civil engineers are out there in their projects and they may not realize that your career path is even an option for them. Yeah, so I guess to answer that question, I'll give you a brief history of my career path. And that is, I started off at Manhattan College in the Bronx. Gojaspers did civil engineering degree there. Straight out of college, I worked.  Because at first I thought I wanted to be an environmental engineer and then I did one internship and decided that wasn't for me. And then I did a soil scores and I did an internship at Musil Rutledge. And then when I left, when I finished my undergrad, I worked at Musil Rutledge for a little bit. And I said, okay, this is I think where I wanna go. So then did my master's at Virginia Tech and then went on to work for Haley and Aldrich in New Jersey and then Golder Associates. And in that time, I went from your typical, entry-level geotech to what is it, project-level to senior geotechnical engineer. And I think it started a little bit at Haley and Aldrich, where my boss at the time, Ed Zumiski, Ed would take me to some of his meetings that he would go to. So if he was meeting with an architect in New York City, I would go along sometimes. And I started to see that sales, I guess, aspect of engineering. And then when I moved on to Golder, I started to spend a little bit more time doing business development. Again, still being taken along to meetings, to meet with prospective clients, having to put together presentations for different owners or stuff like that. So I started to see a little bit more of the business development side. I would say the one rub when you're a working consultant and you get into doing a little bit more business development is the, I would get the chargeability thing brought up where, well, you're not chargeable. Well, how do we get work if we don't do the BD? So definitely don't have that issue on the contract side. But so I started getting a little bit more into doing some business development while I was at Golder. And I definitely had people who encouraged that, encouraged me to do more of that.  So before we go further, I want to stop you for a minute there. So you started doing some of this, you saw some of the BD work with your boss when you went out to meetings and you kind of like did it sounds like and then you started doing some more at your next company. And I know a lot of civil engineering professionals are, I don't know if introverted is the right word, but like they're not comfortable speaking to people, you know, having these conversations and getting out there. Is that something for you that like you were always comfortable with? And so business development kind of spoke to you or did you like business development figure, you know, I better just learn these skills and develop them? It's funny because I always say I don't like people, but then I chuckle saying that. I seem to do pretty well with talking to people.  I'm pretty open. I have to get over myself a little bit in terms of fair rejection, I think when you especially if you go like to an ASCE meeting or something and you have to open up yourself and just go talk to some random person you've never met before. But I think once you get over that it's a little bit easier and you know, I don't think I'm the most personable person but I try and people seem to like talking to me. So that's kind of just how it developed. And that's something that you just developed some of these skills by just continuing to get out there and kind of working with people. I think so, I think so. I think you just have to kind of keep doing it and keep going at it because I'm very shy and reserved and some people if some people know me and they hear this they might say impossible, but I am, you know, by nature. I take a while to get to know people, especially new people. Once we're friends it's all good, but I'm like, you know, I take a while to get comfortable with people, which is something that you can't do when you have one interaction, right? Or that one interaction could mean the difference between you getting that job or not. So I think it's just something you have to work on and you have to, you know, keep trying at it. Do little things like go to, like I said, the ASCE conferences, TFIs, working with different groups like Future City and stuff like that where you just kind of slowly, you know, creep out of your shell. Interesting. And so you're at Golder and you started doing more of that and then at some point you must have kind of really felt like this is something I want to do on a more regular basis. So it didn't exactly happen like that, but I was at Golder in Atlanta and I moved to Houston and still working for the Golder Atlanta office. And I was a little bit, I guess, of a satellite employee, which is a little bit strange. And I went to a conference and was just yapping it up with some people, you know, just for, it was a mixer. And I said to, these guys were talking to me. I had no clue who they were.  And I mentioned that I was in Houston and then they said, you know, oh, we just had, we have a office in Houston and we just had someone actually leave and we're looking for someone to do BD. Would that be something you're interested in? And that's how I ended up at Menard. It actually, I don't think I ever applied for the job. It kind of just happened that way, which I guess makes sense because in the sense that I put myself out there to talk to people and then it ended up turning into a BD position, you know? Wow, wow. And that's like what we talk a lot about in the pockets. When you get out there, you build your network, you kind of create opportunities for yourself and then it's up to you to take them or not. And it sounds like, you know, you jumped at the opportunity and kind of the rest is history more or less. Now, I've been interested to talk to you because I feel like you've done things that a lot of civil engineers want to do, but they never do. Like number one, go into sales and business development and then number two, working a lot of different locations. You've worked in a lot of different parts of the world. Can you talk about that a little bit? So one of the, I guess the most interesting pulls about moving to Golder was the fact that they were in an international company and they had offices all over the world. So what that allowed me to do was actually, I was single, I had no kids, no attachments basically. And at the time, Australia was really just booming. I don't know if you remember that. Their mining industry was just going gangbusters and they were just looking for help and a fair number of people from Golder ended up going over to Australia to help in just different capacities. So I threw my hat in my name in the ring and I said, I'd love to go over there to help. And it took a little bit of time and finally my boss, Mark McNeely with Golder, helped me get that through. And I picked up and went to Australia and didn't know anyone or anything and almost had a panic attack on the flight from LA but I picked up and moved over there for about six months and it was, I think one of the best things I've ever done. I got to see things a little bit differently, got to see how people approach geotechnical engineering. They do stuff like pressure meter tests in and actually use that to do their drill shafts and their rock socket and micro piles and they're able to just get so much more capacity out of that than what I feel we were doing at the time and probably still are doing it. So it just seemed like they were taking, pushing things further because they were spending more time and effort doing the field testing that sometimes I know geotechs get pushed back on here in the US. That's interesting, I can't imagine that plane ride. I mean, geez, I think really a life, it's really a life-changing thing that you did there and that decision, I mean, what was that decision-making process like for you? Well, I think when I accepted the job, it's one of the things that I said I wanted to do. I didn't know where it was going to be, but I kind of said, hey, I'm interested in traveling and working in other places. I mean, Golder at the time has a big Canadian presence, so I wasn't sure it was gonna be in Canada, but it's something that I definitely wanted to do. And so I think once I started to, what I did is I spoke to a few ladies who had done it before me and found out about their experiences, things that they wish had been done better, things that had to be sorted through and kind of use that to propel myself. It was interesting, I mean, every time my mom would call and say, what's the time over there? I got fed up of trying to explain the time, but I'm like, mom, it's like 4 a.m. or whatever time, random times she would be calling me, but I mean, once you decide to do it, you get on that plane and you just, you know, no turning back now. And how would you say that those experiences, those overseas experiences have impacted you just beyond your career, like in life? Well, you know, it's, I think that it's always good for people to get out of their comfort zones and, you know, getting out, meeting new people. I have still have people that I consider my close friends in Australia that I feel like if I pick up the phone and say, hey guys, I'm coming over, they'd welcome me into their homes. You know, I still see their pictures on Facebook and we wish them happy birthday or whatever it is. So it just broadens your horizon. A couple of years ago, we were working on a project that we needed some help with some rock socket and drill shafts. And because of my connections with the guys in Australia, we were able to bring in some expert advice from them that helped with the project, you know. So it's just learning and just growing, just expanding. I was able to go over to New Zealand where my aunt had done her some dentures, she was a dentist, but before she was a dental hygienist, she had done some studies over in New Zealand and I was able to go over there and meet one of the ladies who helped her through it. And I stayed with them and it was, you know, it was just such a great experience to see all the places that my aunt had spoken about when I was a kid and you know, teach my aunt died a few years ago.  And, you know, sometimes we think that America is all that there is and, you know, that's not the case. So I'm not, I wasn't born here. So I don't think that, but you know. It's true, you know, I studied abroad as an engineer in Brussels, Belgium and, you know, I was just a college kid like having a good time at school and a friend of mine said, you know, we're going to go to Brussels. The engineering program has a program over there and I'm thinking of myself like, who would want to leave here?  But luckily enough, I went and my wife who's also a civil engineer, she went on the trip as well. And, you know, it was definitely one of the greatest things we've done. And I think to your point, I think what it really does is it kind of like, you know, kind of like enriches you both professionally, you know, and personally and professionally, like you said, you learn different things, you met different professional contacts and build your network. And then on the personal side, you made relationships that you'll, I'm sure, continue to lean on for the rest of your life. And also it just, like you said, it broadens your horizon. It gets you out there traveling, understanding that there's a lot of different cultures out there, which is something that we don't always get to experience outside of our own country. So where were you born, Mesa? I was born in Dominica in the Caribbean. Okay. And when did you come? You came to the U.S. at some point? First? Yeah. Oh my goodness. I think it was 97 or 98. Okay. Somewhere around there. Yeah. All right. So that was like just before college, kind of a few years. Yeah. Okay. So Mesa, you came from outside of the U.S. and attended college here in the U.S., which I'm sure must have been very challenging for you. Can you talk about that experience and how it has affected your career overall? So it was interesting. I remember the first day that I went to class, civil engineering class at Manhattan College. And I walked in the room and lo and behold, there was another black girl in there. So my friend Denise, who works for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Hi, Denise. And so it was, you know, I think we both smiled because we both probably felt a little bit less alone or a little bit less different. And I think, you know, it's weird because I was going through some of the questions and before we spoke and one of the things that I really wanted to touch on in some way is how much representation matters and how much not being represented, you know, has an effect on a person. And I don't think people who don't have that issue truly, you know, get it. I remember going to school in New Jersey and I think I did that as part of ASCEK through 12 or something, it was a career day. And I went to talk about being an engineer and I had little girls telling me that they didn't think black girls could be engineers. And I was like, what is that?  So I hear that was a little bit of a shock to me. And, you know, I've grown to learn and understand a lot more because every time I go to, you know, conferences and stuff, yeah, we're starting to see a lot more ladies, which is good, but there's still not many people of color, not many minority people reflected. So it's tough.  So people are always talking to me, hey, you're at this conference again. And I'm like, where do I know this guy from?  Well, you have a personality that stands out. I hope so. I've only been talking to you for 30 minutes and I can tell that, you know, people can remember you for a lot of reasons, but, you know, going back to that for a minute, Masell, I mean, you know, we're going through times right now in the United States.   Do you ever feel that pressure? Do you feel like that's something that you, like it's your job to do that? Yeah, and I don't think of it as pressure. Like, I had this moment, a couple, like, you know, when I was not to get it political, but when I was looking at protestists in DC, getting pushed back, where I stood at the TV and literally cried. And then I went and asked my husband. I said, you know, what am I doing with my life? I said, I don't feel like I'm doing anything. I'm like, there are these people out there, you know, fighting for a change, putting their life on the line. And I don't know what I'm doing. I said, I don't know what's my legacy. I don't know what, you know, what change I'm effecting. And I called my buddy, Brian, who works with our company. And I said, Brian, have you recently thought of like what your legacy is? Hey, Brian. And it just, it made me feel like I wasn't doing enough. And I used to do a lot. So I used to be involved in all of these things. And then, you know, you get married and then kids come along. And, you know, it just seems like your focus changes. So what it has done for me is that it has made me, you know, say that I need to figure out how to get back out there and how to be more visible. Because I don't think of it as a pressure. I think of it as a privilege. I'm always trying to figure out ways to give back. And I want kids that look like me to know that, you know, it's possible and that, you know, their color or their country of origin or whatever should not be a determining factor in, you know, where they can go to in life. Even though I know that, you know, it can be, I just, you know, mentally, we gotta, we have this thing called mental slavery. You have to at least start to think that you can before you actually can, right? So I want them to see Macyl and say, you know, Macyl can do this. My niece thinks that I build every building in Tampa. So everything we pass by that's in construction. She says, Hensie, did you build that one? So in her head, she can build anything, you know, that's what I want other little girls to think that they can do. Yeah, that's great. And I think that, I think you're right. I think it's a privilege. I think that, and I think what's important is that, you know, every kid is different, of course. And, you know, different children of different cultures will look at people differently, right?  So like we all need to do, I think, our part, like in our own way and however we can do that. And it was, it's great to hear your story there about how you've got inspired around legacy because you have done, you know, a lot of STEM work in the past, I know, you know, from reading up a little bit about you in terms of the future city, the math counts, you know, the volunteering that you did with Goldertrust and tutoring refugee students. And so it obviously is important to you.  Yeah, I mean, it has. I mean, Goldertrust is such a great thing that started once Goldertr started a office in South Africa and basically companies from all over the world do things to raise money for these different NGOs that work with offering kids. Most of the kids are often because they're, you know, because of HIV and AIDS. And so every year, and I don't know if they still do it, but every year they would have this volunteer trip to a different part of Africa to go spend time at one of those NGOs where it was all on you. You had to pay for everything and you spent two weeks, you know, it was, it was a two weeks a week. I can't remember, but so when I did it, our group went to Durban and we went to an orphanage there and again, you know, it was the first time I think these kids had seen one of the volunteers who was black. So again, it's just, you know, sometimes it, sometimes it feels a little daunting, but I, you know, if that's what it takes to hopefully have left an impression on someone, we helped them do homework, we built a playground for them, we cooked with them, we sand with them, we ate with them. And, you know, we just showed them our support. I mean, the trust bought an X-ray machine for the community that, you know, that a big issue that people with AIDS and HIV deal with, I think is TB, tuberculosis.  And we worked with doctors without borders. I saw nurses there who volunteered. So it was just great to be a part of that.   Yeah, for sure. Sounds amazing, sounds invaluable. And so I got two questions left for you, Miesel, before we put you on the civil engineering hot seat, which we have to do. The first question is for those civil engineers listening right now that are, you know, thinking about doing something different in their career, whether it be sales or whether it be, you know, working international, kind of taking a risk, I guess, more or less, like, what would you say to them? Go for it. I had a college professor once tell me, why would you want to do your masters at the same place you did your undergrad? He basically said, you're learning from the same people. He said, go out there, learn from different people, do different things. And I think that applies.  So people go and stay, you know, that you can use. If you want to try sales, you know, go try it. If it doesn't work out, you know, there's always an engineer in front of looking for a geotech or we seem to be a dime a dozen. So, you know, I always say people have to live.  Companies do what works for them. You have to do what works for you. You have to, if what works for you is trying something else, then, you know, by all means go for it. Yeah, that's a great, first of all, I love that philosophy of, you know, learn from different people. I think that that's great. But also what you said there, you know, it's kind of like what's the worst thing that can happen, right? Like it doesn't work out. You come back. I mean, listen, if you're in the world of infrastructure, civil, structural, geotechnical, you're going to have a job somewhere in the next 10, 20 years.  It's getting worse and worse. So, you know, you could always double back and get a job somewhere. So that's a good way to, I think, think about it. All right, last question here for this segment. Let's say that it's time for you to retire whenever that may be, I don't know, 20 years from now, whatever it may be.  You know, I wanted to accomplish this in my career. I did this in my career. What would that this be? What is that that you really want to accomplish? Kind of like getting back to your legacy that we talked about before. Huh, that's a good one. I think I want people to remember me as someone who cared. I think I have a big heart and sometimes that's good. Sometimes that's bad. It makes me a little bit too sensitive at times and maybe not let things drop as quickly as they should. But I would like, you know, to make a mark in such a way that when people remember me, they smile because I've had some, you know, kind of good influence on them. I think it goes back a lot to also that representation. I don't want to wherever life takes me, I don't want to fall into the background because I think I owe it to those coming after me to be visible, to be loud, to be outspoken. To be outspoken, I resisted for a long time doing anything like this.  I don't need to go on a podcast so I don't need to have anything written about me. And I'm telling you, this year really changed my mind about stuff like that. So, you know, no more trying to be what they call it a shrink in violet. I want people to say, one, she cared and two, she was visible and, you know, maybe she made a little bit of a difference for me because maybe if, as I said, if she can do it, you know, maybe I can do it. I feel like I have a responsibility to my daughter and my nieces and those other little girls out there who don't think that they could do it to say, hey, you know, that you can do it and then it is possible. And to try to continue to work the foster environments that allow for them to be able to do it because that's a big part of, you know, getting there. That's great, Maiselin. And I think that if, you know, if a lot more people had that goal of, you know, wanting people to care for them, I think we'd be in a much better place over on the world. So I hope that that works out for you. All right, so stick around. We're going to come back with Maisel in a minute. We're going to finish up by putting her on the civil engineering hot seat for a few last questions. Stick around. I hope you are enjoying this episode of the Civil Engineering Podcast, which is produced by the Engineering Management Institute. Please be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel here for more podcast episodes and for all of our engineering manager, 8020 Shorts videos that we publish weekly where we interview successful engineering managers. Now it's time to jump into our civil engineering hot seat segment. All right, we are back with Maisel Pascal from the Menard Group, and it's time to put Maisel on the civil engineering hot seat. All right, first question, Maisel, are there any specific rituals that you practice every day, you know, whether it's a morning routine or a lunchtime routine, realizing this may be totally different post COVID-19, but are there any things that you've done consistently throughout your career that have contributed to your success? I don't really think I have rituals. I don't like, I don't like things to be too structured. So I just, you know, go with the flow. I try to be thankful and realize that I'm blessed and thank God for his blessings. I don't know if I remember to do it every day, but it's something that, you know, I, if I had to think of a ritual that I shouldn't be doing, that'd probably be it. And just keep trying to stay true to myself, I guess. That's great. I mean, listen, your routine could be that you have no routines, right? I mean, everyone's different. So if they, whatever works for you, it works for you. So all right, another question here. What is one book that you might have recommended to engineers or just one book that might have been helpful for you personally or professionally? Any book that comes to mind if someone said, you know, you could take one book with you somewhere you're going away. So I always laugh when people ask me about books because I say I used to read. So when I was like in my 20s, I was like reading every, you know, biography and all of these different things. And I don't, I feel like, I don't know what happened in my 30s, but I've definitely slowed down on the reading. But one book I would say is The Alchemist. Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Yeah, great book. And I mean, that book is just, it's a small book, but it has a lot, it packs a lot of punch, right? And it talks so much about fulfilling your destiny and that sometimes you go on this long journey to try to find this thing that you think is what you're destined for when it was right back where you started because you didn't open your eyes to see it. So I think that's probably a good book for anyone who's thinking about making a change or, you know, trying to figure out what's their next move. They probably offer some inspiration. Yeah, that's a great book for anybody, you know, whether you're making a move or not really. And it is a small, and I think a relatively quick read. I think I've read it like five times at this point because I just love the ending in the book and the story and I've told the story of my kids. But yeah, that's a great book, the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Definitely check it out if you haven't.  I used to read, that's what she tells us until she got a phone and now, you know, that's out the window. But no, reading is hard to keep up with really for people, honestly. I mean, that's why we do the podcast just because a lot of people don't have time to read that much anymore. And so there's different ways to stay informed. But certainly a great book there. All right, we've got one final question for you, Macell. We call it the Civil Engineering Career Elevator Advice Questions. So if you got into an elevator with a civil engineer and you had 30 to 40 seconds with him or her to give career advice in that short period of time, what would that advice be? So I think it goes, some of what I've already said in terms of learning from people, try to keep learning and keep growing. I don't think there's ever a time not to. I had a boss make a joke that he was too old to learn a new program. And sometimes I feel that way, but you have to keep keeping our minds open. I think give credit. Give credit where credit is due. That's I don't like when people don't give credit. That's a peeve of mine. Acknowledge when you made a mistake, own up to it. Speaking truth, at least try to. We're not perfect if we're not, but I think especially with your coworkers and people that you want to build a trust with, speaking in truth and speaking up when it matters is important. Un-truth can make a workplace debilitated. The lack of trust can make things definitely hard. I mean, so just speaking truth, I would say mentor if you can. I've had some great mentors along the way, people like Bob Steadcar at Golder who as a young woman coming to a new company with a little bit of experience. I mean, that man, I would say, took me under his wing. He never spoke over me. He always listened. He explained. He took his time to edit stuff and explained to me why make comments and take me on meetings whenever possible. And he's someone that, even if I wasn't in the room and someone said something about me that I would have always felt had my back. So have your people's backs. It goes a long way in developing trust. And I think trust is something that will take you a long way in your career because when people trust you and they believe in you, I think it makes a world of difference. So keep learning, speak your truth, give credit, give back how, if you can, even if it's in the smallest of ways it'll make the biggest difference. That's great. And that'd be a very, very valuable elevator ride for a civil engineer to get that advice. And I think all our listeners are gonna enjoy it. Mason, I think you have a great personality. You've got great stories. You've accomplished so much in your career and I'm really happy that you spent some time when it's here on the podcast and I'm confident that you're gonna certainly achieve that legacy. I think we're lucky to have someone like you in the civil engineering field. So thanks for taking the time with us today. Thank you so much for having me. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Civil Engineering Podcast on YouTube produced by the Engineering Management Institute. We're always looking for new ways to help engineers become effective managers and leaders. You can view all of our content on our website at engineeringmanagementinstitute.org and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel here for our weekly videos. Until next time, please continue to engineer your own success.


Welcome to my YouTube channel, if you're new this isn't what it normally looks like. To be a golf YouTuber you need to have certain attributes, most of which don't come natural to me, forced enthusiasm, animated body language, continual smile on face, awkward attempts at humour or worse still banter.  Those thumbnails also require the colours of green and blue and include a red arrow and a misleading title that can often be described as clickbait. And I hold my hands up, I've been guilty of all of the above and it's time to stop, but it is of course a risk, because as much as viewers might complain about all of the above they continue to be drawn in by it all, so why change? Well quite simply I don't enjoy it anymore and I want to produce content that I can be proud of. In the coming weeks you may see less volume of content but hopefully better quality. I plan to travel alone, sleeping in my van and enjoying solo golf. The return of cinematic on course footage from the good old days of Scotland's less obvious will be the main goal, but a new and improved version which will include my scoring and my performance on everywhere I play. The product reviews will continue but be very different than before and hopefully more useful to golfers. Thumbnails will have a new look and the use of red arrows will become obsolete. Enthusiasm and laughter will be minimal and only visible in extreme circumstances. Banta will not be allowed on this channel, however sarcasm will be very prevalent. This change in content and oddly a change in thumbnail strategy may well mean in the short term I lose viewers, but I hope that in the long term producing content that I am happy with will be appreciated by a wider audience, but only time will tell. So for now thanks for all the support over the years, I hope you continue to watch but understand that if watching a less enthusiastic, miserable, sarcastic, less animated but more authentic version of myself won't be for everybody. Either way I can't wait to get started. If I could just say that sounded like enthusiasm and that title of this video seems to me like clickbait. See you next week.


Idina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with notable our Jupiter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning, and smart campus technology. Idina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with notable our Jupiter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning, and smart campus technology. Idina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with notable our Jupiter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning, and smart campus technology. Idina's work with learning technologies helps to develop skilled data literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with notable our Jupiter Notebook service. Our DigiMap services deliver high quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning, and smart campus technology. Hello everyone, welcome to the session just after lunch. I hope you had a good lunch and plenty of yummy food. So all of the sessions this afternoon in this part are around the critical frames of reference and our first talk is from Michael Flaven on what the world's leading universities think of tell. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I'm going to look at what the world's leading universities think of technology enhanced learning as expressed through their strategy documents. Just to give a little bit of background, last year together with my co-author Valentina, we had an article published in Research and Learning Technology which examined 44 strategy documents from UK higher education looking at how they articulated technology enhanced learning. We used disruptive innovation theory as our lens through which to conduct that investigation. I'll move on to the theory in a moment. The article went on to be the most downloaded article from Research and Learning Technology in 2018. It was run up in last year's research project of the year and it was also translated into Chinese and published in Distance Education in China. So we were quite pleased with the impact that had but then we started to think about how we might conduct some follow-up studies that came out of that original research. One thing because we'd done our research, effectively desk research, publicly available strategy documents, it had brought us into collision with a lot of mission statements and if there is a clinical condition called mission statement fatigue, we both had it by the end of the research. One of the things we did therefore as a follow-up was do an analysis of 127 mission statements from UK HE 76% of the entire sector. It was about as thrilling as it sounds now I'm narrating it but that was published a couple of weeks ago in the Journal for Higher Education Policy and Management. If you want to take a look at that though I haven't exactly made it seem very appetizing. The other thing we did and this is where this presentation comes in, one of the things that had been suggested to us was that we might want to look at not just a UK-bound sample, so for the research we undertook as a follow-up, we looked at 84 documents from international higher education institutions and what we did was take one of the world ranking tables, the QS world rankings, go from one to 200 and then our sample was drawn from the publicly available documents from those sources. So we used disruptive innovation theory which I'll move on to a second but I'm going to bookend this presentation with reference to a separate case study published by Carl and Groedl in 2016. This wasn't a tell case study. It's actually a case study of the market for insurance for domestic goods in post-World War II America. Clearly I've made that sound thrilling as well but if you bear with me I'll outline its relevance. It's actually really interesting and in post-World War II America it was the beginning of a long economic boom and so ordinary people began to acquire what previously been luxury goods for the first time, cars, fridges, washing machines and they wanted to ensure them because they had these luxury products. Well there was therefore a growth in the domestic insurance market but because it was clerical, bureaucratic work, it was quite labour intensive work and the insurance companies didn't really have the personnel to develop this because of the casualties inflicted by wartime. So the main companies were looking for effectively computerisation, some technological solution that would allow them to respond to demand and make more profit. There were two companies that were at the forefront of this industry, IBM and Remington Rand and it was IBM that won in the struggle between the two. Now one interest Carl and Groedal was it wasn't as though their products were technically superior, intrinsically they were pretty much the same nor was it a question really of an explicit marketing strategy because they both attended the same trade fairs but what Carl and Groedal argued quite persuasively is that IBM won out over Remington Rand because of what they call its discursive strategy, the language that they use to articulate their products to their marketplace and whereas Remington Rand talked about the technical specification of machines and talked about how transformative they would be, IBM used much more homely language about how these devices, these computers will enable you to do what you've been doing a bit better than before. I'm going to come back to this study at the end of the presentation but the lens we use for looking at our 84 strategy documents is disruptive innovation theory. My apologies to those of you who already know it, I'll keep this synopsis fairly brief. It's not a theory about technology enhanced learning or indeed education, it's a theory about goods and services that came out of the Harvard Business School in the 1990s and is most closely associated with the work of Clayton Christensen. His most synoptic definition of disruptive innovation is in his first monograph, his first book from 1997. What interested Christensen was how good firms fail because in a way it's obvious why bad firms fail, they may have a poor product range, be badly led, managed but Christensen was interested in why good firms fail and the thesis he came up with was it happens when a competitor emerges who has a product that's simpler, cheaper, smaller, more convenient than the powerful incumbent. Now it's not as though the powerful market player doesn't see this but because this product is often technically inferior, they ignore it because this new product or service just cares to the periphery of the market whereas their most profitable sector is left untouched. So in fact they're kind of pleased because it allows them to focus on their most profitable customers. But then the disruptive technology having gained a foothold proceeds incrementally along sustaining innovation lines to such an extent that it poses a threat but by the time it's reached that stage the powerful incumbent really is no longer so powerful and can't dismiss it. His method is the case study, just to give one to illustrate the theory and as shown there, it's the Sony transistor radio in the 1950s. Prior to the Sony transistor radio, radios, I don't know if anyone's folk memory goes back that far, were valve based and were these colossal things that were often with a wood veneer and looked like items of furniture and prior to the mass advent of television they were the main form of family entertainment. So what got listened to was dictated by the head of household and indeed the programs that got made then reflected those domestic power hierarchies because in the United States these were sponsored programs by commercial organizations rather than a state broadcaster. So when Sony introduced its transistor radio in the mid-1950s the sound was poor, it was really tinny, it was laced with static and with the transistor radio if you got the signal right you then had to stand infuriatingly still for some unspecified period of time if you wanted to keep it going. So the valve based radio manufacturers weren't bothered in the least but the Sony transistor radio could be afforded by people who couldn't afford the valve based radio and that was teenagers who themselves in that post-war American period were earning wages for the first time and had notable disposable income. So Sony gained a foothold in the market through selling transistor radios to teenagers. It wasn't a marketing strategy, it just happened that way. And because teenagers started to buy these devices and socialize around them it then led to the advertisers who wanted to reach out to this market with a lot of disposable capital. To start saying to radio stations you need to start producing programs that cater to this market. So I don't think anyone has yet written the PhD on how the Sony transistor radio created rock and roll. But if anyone here does if you just cut me in for five percent of the resultant royalties we'll say no more about it. But in a way this kind of a typical example of how a technology takes hold at the periphery and then moves on. So Christensen has these core categories of disruptive innovation that original technology that disrupts the market creates new forms of practice. But then once it's bedded in it proceeds along sustaining innovation lines i.e. incremental improvement. In more recent years there's been a third category arisen which is efficiency innovation. For those that it's simplest efficiency innovation is about using technology to do more with less. So if I go to a supermarket and go to the self-service tool rather than to one with a human being behind it I'm utilizing an efficiency innovation. Efficiency innovations are often good news for organizations because it reduces its overheads. But they can be bad news for jobs. So essentially with the disruptive innovation theory there are these three categories and what we did was apply those three lenses to a total of 84 documents from 71 higher education institutions. Some had more than one. Because we use the Quoccarelli Simmons the QS World University rankings our sample was weighted towards North America and towards Europe a small number from Australasia. At the time we undertook the research the United Kingdom was part of the European Union. I'm going to park that one there if I may because you know it's complicated. The first look at the data the average mentions of innovation per document. There really wasn't much to choose between them. But what we found when we then started to do content analysis of the strategies was something we'd also found when we'd looked at a simply UK based sample. And what we found was that quite often these documents will make a bold statement of how innovative they are. But then when you start to drill down you find something different. So to take one from our sample Auckland digital disruption will be long fuse and big bang sounds transformative. But then when you start to look at it in a little more detail you get these rather tame adjectives of desirable and cohesive. We found the same with Geneva in a capacity for innovation in the use and development and new digital technologies. But then on the other hand look again at the adjectives appropriate responsible. And right through our sample this happened Queensland efficient and effective services efficient and expedient efficient and effective Boston efficient of Targo efficient all we looked and found sustaining innovation delft using technology to enhance look at how Trinity College Dublin and Glasgow have almost the same formation of words. Throughout the sample we found we were much more likely to come across sustaining innovation or efficiency innovation than we were to come across disruptive innovation. About the one notable outlier within our data sample came from Bergen in Norway where in talking about using technologies that were outside the institution's control and being self-explanatory being understood and utilized by everyone that was the closest alignment we found within the sample to the Christensen's definition of disruptive innovation and subsequent writing on it. So in ten of the sample that we subjected to close analysis we were around about fifty percent more likely to find sustaining innovation or efficiency innovation than we were to find disruptive innovation. So on one level that was kind of the end of our research we did what we done with the UK sample with a larger international sample and found pretty much the same thing. Quite bold surface claims to innovation but then a closer content analysis actually suggested that what technology was there to do was much more modest and ameliorative than in any sense transformative. So that ends that part but the way I'm feeding that forward now into the work I'm slowly starting to gestate is to think about why these strategies are really rather modest documents and part of my thinking at this stage is that well institutions are geared towards sustaining innovation and efficiency innovation. When we get new technologies we tend to relate them to prior experience and to use them to what we've always done a little better than before. So maybe now that these technologies we've had a full generation of them it's time to start thinking less about the facilities of technologies their capabilities and start to think about how we create a narrative for technology enhanced learning that can facilitate genuine transformation which takes us back to the case study and how in the marketplace conflict between IBM and Remington Rand IBM won out because of its discursive strategy its ability to articulate a narrative that took non-technical stakeholders with it and I think without knowing yet what that tell narrative looks like I think it's opposite to start thinking in terms of how we can create that narrative so that we can truly start to use the transformative potential of the technologies we've been working with. By way of a plug my last book in 2017 uses disruptive innovation theory as one of three critical lenses to look at tell the others being activity theory and the community of practice theory and I'm currently writing a follow-up study also for the same publisher Paul Grave and Ruth Mullen on using disruptive innovation as the sole lens to look at technology enhanced learning. The full manuscript is due on the first of June next year which I've got filed under good luck with that but nonetheless it's there and what I'd like to do is a follow-up to this presentation is to have conversations with people interested in the same space so that we can start to just state a narrative with an aim of creating an appropriate discursive strategy to enable transformation. Those are the references that I've used here. Those are my contact details at Kings I'll be delighted to hear from you and I'm delighted that you heard me. Thanks very much indeed. Thank you Michael. Have we got any questions from the audience? Yep we've got one. Hi Martin, Martin Mella from the Open University. Hi Michael, big fan of your work. Thanks for presenting it. Then the thing I would say is my personal view about disruption theories is just a big hot mess of nonsense so I wondered why you chose that particular theory was it because it's what people tend to talk even if you don't even if there's kind of flaws in theory or whether you think it actually has anything valid to say in this space? I mean it was serendipitous that I called the disruption of innovation theory wave. I actually came across it when I was studying a fascinating master's qualification in online and distance education run by the Open University. Great, very cool. I think it may have been the work of Manuel Castells but I came across it and as soon as I thought about it it made me think about the VLE in that I was part of a generation of teachers who when I first came across the VLE it was about 2003. I remember going to a session where we were shown it and we were told this was going to change everything that students would be forming informal learning communities in this space they'd be bouncing ideas and sources back and forth and then I ran one for the first time and I had virtual tumbleweed running across it and after that original spike of hi everyone I'm it just and the first time I thought well I'm just perhaps haven't taught it very well because it's a new tool but the same happened the second time and it wasn't just me it was pretty much everyone I knew. So I thought for all the fact that the VLE as was constituted in that first wave was presented to us in transformative in fact through its product architecture it was a sustaining technology not a disruptive technology it allowed us to relocate what we'd always done with the same hierarchy and was not transformative and that's when I found this theory is a useful way of thinking about which technologies are likely to work and which aren't and underpinning that why this works and that doesn't and I still think we're at the stage where that theory I set an assignment Google and Wikipedia and of course academics never use Wikipedia apart from several times day whereas I think those are genuinely transformative technologies that have changed practice and so my continued interest in disruptive innovation theory springs from that original interest and my view is that it's a useful lens through which to consider what works and what doesn't and why it works and why it doesn't. Laura from the University of Cape Town. I think your studies really important so I'm glad that you persevered with your strategy fatigue. My question is though about you said that the digital strategies were mostly modest and ameliorative rather than transformative and you made that sound like a bad thing there was a judgment in that. Can you elaborate because ameliorative isn't necessarily a bad thing and transformative as a kind of general good is also problematic. It is. I think it's because the technical technological affordances of the technologies that we've unearthed and worked with over the last generation exceed what we have done with them. It doesn't follow as an axiom that sustaining and efficiency are bad. But I think if that's what we want to do with technologies then an honest declaration to that effect would be helpful. What concerns me a little is pretty much every university strategies I'm encountering are loudly trumpeting. We are tremendous innovators yet when you look at what's actually done there is for me a noticeable space between surface proclamation and actual commitment and I think that space is interesting. Now if a university turns round and says look tell you the truth we use our VLEs to put up lecture notes but everyone's quite happy with that. That's a problematic discursive strategy but it's probably quite closely related to practice most of the time and I suppose I'm interested in that contradiction between proclamation and practice and I think it continues to be a fertile space and I think the capability of technology to be transformative is there though I accept it doesn't follow as an axiom that transformative is good. Thank you very much. Unfortunately we've not got any further time for questions but Michael are you here for more of the day today? I can stick around. Yeah so if you want to catch Michael later on. So now on to our next presentation from Lisa Gray. I'm here today to talk about creating a digitally capable organization, the critical success factors and if you've got any questions if you want to put them on the VVox app we'll hopefully get those after the five minutes of questioning that we get. Okay hello everyone. Delighted to be here and particularly in this very beautiful room. So as Laura said I'm Lisa Gray I work with JISC. I'm in the student experience team at JISC and I'm here to say a little bit about a model that we've developed a benchmarking tool around organizational digital capability. So I have spread a few of these around probably in some very small numbers of piles but they're just in the middle section here so if you do want to go and grab one you'd be very welcome to do so and afterwards as well. So before I get onto talking about the model in a bit more detail I just wanted to maybe just start with introducing our starting points for this work and where we've come from so far. So I'll tell you a little bit about the building digital capability service that we're working with such on organizational digital capability as a concept and then go on to introduce the tool itself. So I know that I don't need to say very much to this audience about why digital capability is important. We know that the world is changing our workplaces are similarly changing and we need to prepare learners for a very different future to the one that we would have maybe gone out into the world of work into and a world that we're transferable and digital skills are going to be increasingly important but we know there's also a skills gap and that is causing some trouble. So how do we as educational educational organizations ensure that our students have the skills to go and live, learn and work in a digital society. And that was the starting point really for the work that we've been doing the STEMs back over the last 10 years around researching into how we can enhance digital capability. And the service that we launched last October started from that point of trying to support UK educational organizations with building individual and organizational capability through the development of a whole number of resources and tools to support those. And hopefully many of you are familiar with the six elements of digital capability framework. I've heard it referenced throughout the throughout the conference. And that was really a starting point for getting a shared understanding for what digital capabilities were from an individual perspective. It broke them down into six broad areas. And I think has been influential across the sector in informing some starting conversations within organizations around thinking about you know, what do we mean by digital skills? How can we get that shared understanding of what digital capability is across our organization? But no one sets out to become digitally capable on its own. So we've also done a lot of work to think about contextualizing that framework for different purposes. And one of the ways in which the framework has been contextualized is around the development of role profiles, which unpick digital practices that might be relevant to particular roles. And each of we've got nine in total now and they've been developed in line with the relevant professional standards to ensure that digital skills aren't seen as something separate, that it's just part of that ongoing professional development conversation. So we got the understanding of maybe what digital practices are critical to different roles and then realized that we needed a starting point to enable staff and students to reflect on where they were with those digital capabilities. Once we understand what's needed, you know, how do we know where where people's starting points are? And that was where the discovery tools started from. And it's been developed as a self-administrative set of reflective questions that staff and students can run through and they get a little tailored report at the end of that, which gives some tailored next steps and links to some resources that might help them develop further. But at the heart of it was that it was developed as a reflective developmental tool, not as an objective test in any way because we recognize that it's absolutely critical to ensure that staff don't feel threatened in any way. This is about providing them with that space and time to really think about their skills. And that's just a little snapshot of the reports that they receive. And the important conversations around how the action planning happens as a result of those of running through that process. And from an organizational perspective, although the tool has been designed as a developmental tool, it also provides anonymized data as to where staff and students are in terms of their digital capability. And you can see from the dashboards here that it gives an indication, some indicative data around where staff and students then are so that that can hopefully help to inform conversations around where training needs might be best applied. So that was really just a bit of a run-through of where we've got to around supporting the development of individual students, staff, digital skills. But we also recognize that if we're truly to develop digitally capable organizations and enable our students to thrive, not just survive, we need to be building organizations that enable and support digital practices. So the organizational framework was an organizational lens on digital capability and developed back in 2017 in collaboration with Helen Beatham, our colleague, and really started to unpick the different areas within an organization where digital capabilities would have an influence. So in the center there, there's four core practices identified, core activities within an organization, such as learning and teaching practice, research and innovation, communication. And we have used that to start to think about how we can identify some indicators of good practice in relation to those different elements of the organization. And we've also been working with around 40 organizations and since the launch of the service back in October and started to unpick some of the critical success factors that needed to be in place to ensure successful rollout and implementation of the discovery tool. And we've been capturing all of that through a number of case studies and wanted to just stop and think about what those common messages were. And they tied into some of these factors identified here. So, you know, is there a common vocabulary being used across the organization about what maybe threshold digital capabilities were, what we meant and understood by them? Was it being led by a strategic lead? And was there a cross institutional stakeholder group that were responsible for driving forward's change with digital skills? Because it does impact on and affect all areas across the organization. Is there a strategy that is articulating the vision around digital capability? Has HR been engaged? You know, have conversations happened with HR around the various functions that they're responsible for about embedding digital capability discussions within those processes? Are the benefits clear to staff and students? Do they understand why this is important? What it means for them and why they need to engage with the agenda? Is there a culture of encouraging, recognizing and rewarding innovation? Because innovation with digital is just part of that wider agenda. And how are you building digital capability into the curriculum? Is that part of the curriculum design processes that are happening across the institution? And also harnessing the power of working in partnership to make the most of the strengths that the students and the staff bring together when they work in partnerships to improve and enhance and move forward with digital skills. So they were just some of the strands that were coming through some of the work that we've been doing with organizations and we're starting to see some movement across the board in some of those areas. But we wanted to formalize that further and develop something that would enable us to look across the organization, identify some indicators of good practice. So we took the original model that we had and with my colleague Dr. Jill Ferrell we wanted to move towards the development of a more action-oriented tool that institutions could pick up and use to self-assess across their organizations where they were. And we really value the power of a principle-led approach to change. We've done a lot of work in the past which has started from good practice principles before we start thinking about how the technology can enhance or lead towards the development of those good practices. And we've also used a benchmarking tool structure in the past. Some of you might be familiar with the NUS GISC Digital Student Experience benchmarking tool which has proved quite useful. And if you haven't, do come and see us on the stand. We've got some copies there too. So we took that approach and our first starting point was to identify a set of good practice principles for each of the six areas of activity across the organization as a way of hanging off some of the evidence and indicators of good practice. And you can see some of the indicators, some of the principles up here. And it was really meant to be a complementary approach to the individual framework that we have that started to look beyond individual capabilities to think more about how that was affected across an organization. So once we'd identified the good practice principles we identified three levels in terms of maturity and merging, established and enhanced. And then sought to identify a whole series of examples or indicators of what good practice looked like at each of those different levels. And they were drawn from many different sources but including the size of digital capability surveys and also all of the case studies that we've been capturing around the organizations we've been working with. And it's important to note that we're not suggesting that everybody needs to be aiming at enhanced. It's really contextual. So it may not be that your organization is seeking to achieve that end goal. It's really meant to be there as a way of suggesting some indicators that might be relevant to your context. There might be other indicators that you can identify and add to the model. So it's not set in stone in terms of its suggestions that it's offering. And they're certainly not exclusive. So just in way of a couple of examples, I know you won't be able to read the detail but hopefully you can pick up a model. One of the principles around organizational culture is that the organization embraces digital technologies as a key tenet of business success. And so there are some indicators in the model around the development of a digital strategy, around the importance of that cross institutional stakeholder group who drives the agenda because we know that it impacts on all areas across an organization. We need to have people from estates, from HR, from careers, academic research, all in the conversation thinking through how this is going to be driven forward. And the importance of partnerships. And we have some wonderful examples. This is one of our case studies from the University of Leicester. They started with a, articulated the role of digital in achieving their wider strategic goals through their digital strategy. And their approach is one that puts digital really at the heart of what they do. Recognizing the importance of people, not just the culture, not just the technology. So they're really looking at taking a whole organization view. And they have a multi-stranded approach to delivering that strategy, which includes the development of a framework. They took the JISC framework as a starting point and then adapted that to fit their context. They have a number of digital innovation partnerships running across the institution. There's a digital skills strand running through, as well as a strand around digital infrastructure, establishing governance structures, enhancing digital leadership, and importantly, about communicating the vision. And a whole strand of work focusing how they can communicate the benefits of the approach to staff and students. Just to unpick another example around the learning and teaching area, and one of the good practice principles is around using technology to demonstrate achievement and prepare learners for a future workplace. And there are indicators in there around identifying learner outcomes around digital, inclusion of digital practices within the curriculum, and using relevant digital tools as part of that curriculum experience. And that touches on a whole number of indicators spread through the model as a whole around the importance of developing some threshold standards for digital skills. You know, what are your minimum expectations of your staff and your students? How can we articulate that? And how then can we start to assess the starting points in terms of where they are with their strengths and their weaknesses? And the University of Derby has made some really important strides in that direction. So their TELS strategy has the development of digital capabilities as one of the core five goals. And to achieve the goal, one of their initiatives has been to work with subject teams to identify those digital capability profiles and standards. They've established a digital practice baseline, working with over 160 programs around benchmarking and action planning, which is leading to developing a set of best effective practice in course design and program design. So really taking forward that whole process from understanding what the expectations are all the way through to understanding what that means in terms of changing changes to curriculum practice and how that can be embedded within the curriculum. They've also implemented some digital capability courses as part of induction. And I just wanted to touch on that critical importance of HR and having conversations around how these digital capabilities are embedded through retention and through recruitment, through selection, through induction processes, professional appraisal processes. And we did a little study which just explored some of the core HR functions and how that might relate. So where are you on your journey? We have some templates at the end of the model which just provides some ways of you being able to look through the indicators, see where you, across the organization, might be. And it's there to be used in cross-team conversations. We have a little radial diagram at the end where you can plot where you might be in terms of the different areas across the organization. So there are really tools there to support your conversations in terms of where you are and where you might hope to get to with some prompts. Next steps and what we really want to do is try and link through more clearly through the indicators to effective examples of practice. So we've developed an interactive presentation tool where we're just sort of exploring how to make those connections and best easily communicate how that works. And at the moment, we're aiming that the tool will be available to the service subscribers, but we've got it here today also that you can see the draft with very much welcome your comments and feedback on that and any conversations around it. So as a final plea, if you haven't already, please do come and join our community of practice. We have our next event on the 27th of November in Edinburgh. We'd very much like you to come and join the conversations. They're not just about the gist work. This is about sharing practice sector-wide and taking forward those conversations around how we can continue to build digital capability across our organizations. So thank you. Thank you very much, Lisa. So I think we've got time for a couple of questions. If anybody's got any questions in the audience. And I will be on the stand in the next break. If anyone wants to come and have a chat about it or pick up some copies. And I just want to say thank you for name-checking the University of Dalby. It was almost planned. Okay, thank you very much, Lisa. And now we've got Alison Clap. And she's talking about the educational experience supported and enhanced by technology. Just a quick reminder, if you've got any questions, feel free to put them on the V-Vox app as well. Okay, good afternoon. And thank you for giving me the chance to speak in the beautifully refurbished McEwen Hall where I graduated far too many years ago. I've come to talk, my name's Alison Clap. I'm an e-learning lecturer in Newcastle University Medical School. And I've come to talk about this study which is currently running. It's a long-winded way of saying, what are we doing in the university with technology-enhanced learning? And where should we be putting our training and stopping barriers and problems with its use for the future? This study's come out of the university's strategy for increasing blended learning for their students. And to do that, we need to know what's happening now. How are staff using technology in their teaching? What are students using? And what do they think about it? We've also found that we've been looking at the barriers to the actual use of technology-enhanced learning and what helps people use it. And all this is aimed towards providing future training for both staff and students. Our study is a mixed methods sequential exploratory study. And it covers all the campuses of Newcastle University. So that's Newcastle, London, Singapore, and Newmed, which is Newcastle University Medicine in Malaysia. And we have been running focus groups for both staff and students in theory, in all campuses, but unfortunately London didn't supply anyone for their focus groups. But from these qualitative focus groups, we have thematically analyzed the transcripts. And from that, we've come up with a questionnaire. That's as far as we've got at the moment, but this questionnaire will be used as a quantitative study sent out to all staff and students this September. And hopefully that will give us further barriers and facilitators identified for our future planning. We've already, from the focus groups, made quite a lot of advancement in our knowledge of what people use. For a start, and hardly surprisingly, everyone expects to use technology. And as you see a quote from one of the staff, it's part of standard teaching practice. And there's a huge range of technology types that are widely integrated into the learning and teaching. There are barriers, and I'm sure it's the same in every single higher education institution in Britain that time is a problem. Time to actually create technology-enhanced learning, and also time for training to do this. Training can be a problem that it might not actually be available. We've found that students are incredibly confident in their own use of technology. But actually, this is quite often is misplaced. Some staff complain that students can't do some basic things with Word, Excel. We've found that there's a few differences between the cultures and campuses. Now, in the UK, quite often staff train themselves, whereas in the Eastern campuses, staff prefer somebody to do that for them. So, although they use very similar technologies, they are expecting more training. There's been a very wide range of uptake as predicted by the diffusion of innovations theory, which I'll come on to next. This is a very old chestnut. It was coined by Tade in 1903, and it's actually describing the behavioral psychology of the uptake of an innovation. And the innovation doesn't have to be technology. For instance, it can be changes in health behaviors following a public health campaign. But Sahin in 2006 described the diffusion of innovations model as being the most appropriate for investigating the uptake of technology in higher education. Rogers sort of developed the diffusion of innovations from Tade's model in the late 50s, early 60s, and it's defined as the process in which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time in a social system. Well, the innovation is anything that's perceived as new, and in our case, for some of the staff, that's blended learning. And in our case, the social system is the entire university. The innovation decision process consists of having a knowledge of the innovation, thinking about it and being persuaded it'll work, making a decision to use it, and then using it and confirming that it's okay, and they'll use it again, or rejecting it. And some people will go through this process much faster than others. The rate of take-up of the innovation, in other words, the slope of the curve, gets steeper the faster it is diffused. And whether somebody takes up the innovation, it depends on their perceived characteristics of the innovation and their previous beliefs and experiences. So if you've had a bad experience with technology and somebody says, use this, you might not want to, there's different adopter categories of innovations. You have the innovators who really are ahead of the curve. They're not worried about uncertainty, the will it work. They're very experimental. And you have early adopters who are also quite ahead of the curve. And they tend to be the opinion leaders, the ones that the rest of the world look to for advice. The early majority of people that are quite happy to use an innovation once some of the uncertainty has been taken away from it. And the late majority are those who would really rather not use it but have to because of peer pressure. And we have the laggard, which sounds sort of, you know, we're being rude about the laggard. Quite often they don't use the innovation because actually it doesn't suit their purposes at all. But they do tend to be quite traditional and distrust the innovations themselves and the change agents who try and bring about their use. Well, why is this relevant to the rollout of blended learning or any technology enhanced learning in an institution? It depends on your communication roots. New technologies being communicated by interpersonal networks will be taken up much faster across an institution than if they're in silos and you need opinion leaders to spread the word. The change agents tend to be the learning technologists or people like myself who have a pedagogical interest in technology. So they should be targeting or we should be targeting the opinion leaders and helping the opinion leaders spread the news of the use of these technologies through interpersonal networks. So from our data, the results of our qualitative study, staff and students have a huge range of innovation adopt categories and depending on what a doctor category you're in, you have different barriers and facilitators to the use of technology. This quote is from a member of staff showing that we do have a huge range of adopt categories. The complete rejection of technology is incredibly rare. Students really enjoy an innovators approach to learning. One of the quotes from Newcastle students was, he'll create these videos beforehand and then place them in the lecture and they're really good. He'll get 3D models of anatomy on the screen. But we have some quite agist comments from students as well which really puts me in my place. But there are younger lecturers who can use the technology better and they're the ones that are likely to use these anatomy things or Ombir whereas some of the older ones won't necessarily do that. In Newmed, in Malaysia, the staff like the ones in Newcastle think that using technology is part of what we do in our roles. So we're all probably continuously looking for what else it is we could be doing. What's new, what's different? The staff in Newmed also recognise the need for good training and they're quite happy to have champions. Someone said, in the institution, you've got to have some people who are enthusiastic enough or tech savvy enough and good enough teachers to be able to teach the teachers. The Newmed students though complain of tokenism for technology enhanced learning in their teaching. There was a comment on lecture voting systems. It feels like a bit forced in and kind of well the content with it because it's not the first step in terms of teaching you because the teaching method is still very much traditional. Students over in Malaysia are quite happy to use one note, things like Khan Academy videos and none of these have been actually signed posted by the university. The foundation students in Malaysia, they, unlike the South African students of this morning, they practically asked for blended learning because they thought they learned better in this mode. So students are very switched on about this. Singapore staff, it's a very small community in Singapore and they said, so in terms of technology, we share with each other and we help each other out. Though if you have a smaller family, you're going to get a smaller rate of diffusion of innovations because the interpersonal networks are not wide enough. As I've said, barriers have been time and you can see some of the quotes from the staff for time, for training. We need to narrow the gap between teachers and learning technologists and also reward. Very often, people get their promotion from their research, not from their teaching and perhaps we should do something about that. The students, as I said, the inconsistency of older versus younger staff using technology-enhanced learning and also some of them complained about a lack of availability of specific technologies. These were mostly quite specialist technologies and in the far eastern campuses, technical problems were specifically mentioned. They get more power outages than we do. So facilitators, obviously training, I'd love to say time as well but I don't think that would happen, and communication. The change agents need to communicate with the innovators and early adopters to start with but don't leave it just there. Come back later to facilitate the early adopters spreading the word through that interpersonal networks so you can expect the early adopters coming to learning technologists workshops but it would be nice if they could use workshops to spread the word amongst their colleagues about what they're doing. The students are very savvy about whether staff have received training or not. Also, students like using technologies that are easy to use. They love OneNote, for instance. Okay, we've had various strengths and weaknesses of this studies. The mixed methods was great for the development of our survey. We probably wouldn't have asked the questions that we are asking if we just started with the survey. We had real difficulty, though, recruiting enough participants for our focus groups. And despite bribes of food, so they were very small focus groups but there were a lot of them because of that. And also participants might have self-selected because they had an axe to grind like we can't get this technology or we haven't got training or various complaints. And I thank you for listening and thank you to the Newcastle University Education Committee who funded the project. Thank you very much, Alison. So we've got a couple of questions on VVOX. So the first one is what do you mean by the gap between learning technologists and teachers regarding training? I think when the person... Well, a couple of people mentioned a gap between learning technologists and teachers. It wasn't so much knowledge of... They expected the learning technologists to have lots of knowledge, but it's the gap between getting to see them and getting that knowledge put over to them. So providing time for training and opportunities to train. Is there anybody in the room who has a question? No? OK, so we've got another one on VVOX as well. Any ideas of mechanisms for promoting better communication between colleagues in the university? We do have, in the Learning and Teaching Development Services, we do have webpages for best practice, so that can be put out. We also have technology groups such as Newcastle Nutella. It's not chocolate spread. It's Newcastle University Technology Enhanced Learning Advocates. And they will train people and explain new technologies that are being rolled out. So there are mechanisms there, but like a lot of things that go on in the university, there's silo working, and I'm not sure how you can get around that on an institution-wide basis. OK, we've got one here that relates to you mentioning rewards. So it says, institutions are so dependent on early adopters, how can we best reward them for being part of the discourse? Oh, that's difficult. It certainly should be part of... The Teaching and Scholarship should certainly be part of... the pathway to promotion rewards. I know the official line is that yes, it is, but in some faculties it's more difficult than others. It should be consistent across the board. OK, we've got one here about your continued plans. So are there plans to continue collecting feedback from staff and students in future years? Once we've finished this study, we will use future feedback on blended learning that is developed by the new people in the university who are coming in to help us develop the blended learning. The student feedback on those courses, we will also gather staff feedback in the future to see how it's going. OK, we've got one here about the extent to which blended learnings used at Newcastle. Is it small groups or is it extensive? And with that, the extent to which that's being done impact the findings? I think it... Yes, I'm sure it will impact on our findings because they'll be the ones that fill out the questionnaire, I would imagine. I think it is small groups. There are not huge programmes that are entirely blended. We have programmes that are entirely online, but as far as I know, there are not many programmes, if any, that are entirely blended across the board. OK, we've got one here about what strategies are best when it comes to engaging staff in staff development opportunities? Million-dollar question. I think a lot of it is word of mouth. If you have staff talking to their colleagues that, hey, I went to this and it was really good and it was really useful, that will help a lot. Showcasing what people have done with the training they have received, that will help as well. OK, and then we've got a final question here. Does the feedback influence choices of systems and improvements to them? I would imagine it will, but I'm not at that end of the... I don't choose the technologies, I'm not part of that, but I imagine the feedback will help that. OK, thank you very much. Has anybody got any further questions in the audience? No? OK, thank you very much, Alison, and I'd like to take a chance to just thank all of our speakers for the session. Data Literate students who can change our world for the better. Teachers and students can develop and share coding skills with multiple or Jupyter Notebook services. Our DigiMap services deliver high-quality mapping data for all stages of education. Future developments include a text and data mining service, working with satellite data and machine learning, and smart campus technology.


What is it about him that you think allows him to kind of step into that situation, just play as if he's most comfortable? Have you known Cam before here? This is the first time I've seen him play? No, I just haven't. That doesn't answer your question. Well, watch the LSU tape, a lot of people get it confused when people ain't playing, like you can't hoop, you all can hoop.  He banned like that. He's showing them. He's proving it. I love it. Proving, prove everybody wrong, goodhead. He apparently kind of joked like that. He said, oh, the all-time leading scorer in our... Oh, stay ready. He ain't played one time. I'm like, can't even play. Stay ready. He's like, man, I'm an all-time leading scorer. No, that was funny though, man.


Από την ΔΕΜ25, καλύτερες και καλύτερες χρόνια. 2022 έδωσε ένα πρόσφυρο και κρυπλήνες σχέδια. 2022 έδωσε ένα πρόσφυρο και κρυπλήνες σχέδια. 2022 ήταν το year our dire predictions about Europe's failures and of the new Cold War grasping and crippling the world were confirmed. But at the same time, 2022 was a year that brought us closer to people resisting creatively and thus generating precious hope. I hope and trust that 2023 will empower us to do important things together because, as an old comrade once said, the necessary struggles are never futile. Let this thought be our guide for 2023. Happy New Year and of course, cappellium.