TODB has new Team Member

TODB has new Team Member

Hi, I’m Anne Clarke and I have taken over from (couldn’t attempt to replace) Matthew Jones on the TODB Project. I have had a varied career in IT which included working in a baby clothes warehouse near New York, some time in Coutts Bank and working on Stock Exchange feeds for Reuters. I am now back in Cambridge where I took my first degree so am familiar with the academic system here.

It was good to get a chance to ‘meet’ people from both JISC and other JISC projects during the Elluminate Shaping Change session yesterday.

I have been reflecting on some of the points that Steve Outram made about managing effective change in his introduction and how they were later illustrated during later sessions:

• Support of Senior Management

Pretty much goes without saying but helps to gain the necessary staff commitment such as that needed for the steering committee used by the e-Assessment Project.

• Early Engagement

The Erewhon project choose to demonstrate an early working version to overcome resistence. During the afternoon session we discussed that it was important to engage all who would be affected as early as possible.

This has been highlighted in my own project, TODB, where the staff who use the system to enter data have given valuable input into what would work best for them.

• Sell Benefits

The ECCILES project used a visit to a power station to show those who would be impacted by their project the importance of saving energy. The TAG project encouraged student involvement in their project by showing them that this would improve their employability.

E-Assessment and ASSET both talked about starting small (1 faculty or a pilot) which allowed them to get things right before rolling out to other departments. Again this is something we have been able to do on the TODB project where we have started with a working application developed for one department that we can demonstrate to others to show the benefits.

• Support Risk Taking

Innovative projects by their nature involve risk and funding from JISC can be used as a way of mitigating this risk.

Throughout the day, there was emphasis on the final outputs of our projects. The format of the final report does need to comply with JISC standards for auditing purposes but it is important to also produce a package that allows the benefits of the project to be realised elsewhere. Lawrie Phipps suggested the use of magazines and podcasts such as used by http://magazine.openhabitat.org/page/open-habitat-magazine. Ruth Drysdale said that the commenting on the learning from things you have not been able to accomplish were as valuable as your successes.

Thank you to everyone involved in such an interesting day.