Mediating Boundaries
Free One Day Conference with Etienne Wenger
The ‘Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE’ project is glad to announce booking is now available for the ‘Mediating Boundaries: traversing the landscapes of online communities of practice‘ event.
This free one day conference will explore how technology can mediate and enhance the relationship between the academic community and the wider world. With a keynote presentation and interactive workshop from Dr Etienne Wenger, we will examine how online environments can act as boundary spaces for engagement, collaboration, and innovation between academics, practitioners, industry partners and other stakeholders, enabling informal and formal networks and communities of practice to emerge in ways impossible to imagine even just a few years ago.
For more information visit: http://collaborativetools4bce.jiscinvolve.org/events/mediating-boundaries
Embedding Business and Community Engagement…
…Through Business Process Improvement and Internal Engagement.
John Burke (Project Manager) and Clive Alderson (Project Consultant) launched the ‘Embedding BCE’ project outputs at the Lakeside Conference Centre to over 40 delegates from across UK Further and Higher Education (FE/HE) on 10th December 2009.
Funded through the JISC BCE Programme, and collaboratively delivered by JISC Advance, the resource provides FE/HE with a framework for evaluating and developing their approach to BCE. This was achieved using a self review methodology that looks in-depth at key enablers of BCE across a range of institutional functions and the way in which we can evaluate/develop what’s being done in those areas.
After the event one delegate commented on what they thought was the most valuable aspect of the conference:
“Hearing the different experiences from various organisations and the collective benefit of carrying out the process of self assessment and open discussion to create a strategic approach to BCE”
John Burke (Project Manager) mentioned:
“This resource helps an organisation identify any ‘disconnects’ between the way it supports traditional streams of activity e.g. T&L/Research and BCE-related activities. The project identified that core functions should consider whether BCE requires any different ways of working within the function, even if the decision is that it does not. An assumption that current ways of working will be sufficient can lead to placing barriers in the way of exploiting BCE opportunities. The resource offers a structure and methodology for review, some examples of both good practice and potential issues that each core function should test for and a downloadable tool to start the BCE conversation.”
Simon Whittemore, who leads JISC’s Business and Community Engagement programme, emphasised the value of the Embedding BCE online resource in the wider context:
In general, institutions have enhanced their strategic approach and capability in business and community engagement (BCE) in recent years, supported by Funding body grants for knowledge exchange and employer engagement. However, the infrastructure, business processes and information management needed to support effective, integrated BCE are less well-developed. In a challenging economic climate, ‘Higher Ambitions’ urges institutions to maximise their efficiency, play to their strengths and selectively pursue new opportunities. Data sharing across departments, defining internal processes and external markets, and ensuring operational reality reflects strategy are vital to both BCE and these ambitions. The ‘Embedding BCE’ online resource equips institutions with the means to evaluate these processes and target areas for improvement.
The online resource is available on the JISC infoNet website: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/embedding-bce
JISC BCE and the New Engineering Foundation
Staff from the JISC Business and Community Engagement programme were pleased to be involved in the New Engineering Foundation Innovisions Conference held on 8th January 2010 in London. In addition to the programme being part of the exhibition at the event which included demonstrations of the recently launched Embedding BCE Online Resource, Simon Whittemore, JISC BCE Programme Manager, addressed delegates on the Impact of Secondments on Higher Level Skills.
The New Engineering Foundation is a grant-awarding charity that promotes the development of vocational education in science, engineering and technology and is a key stakeholder and partner within the BCE programme. They have recently produced a series of Golden Knowledge Bites. These are a series of videos commissioned by the JISC BCE Project Supporting Training, CPD and Staff Exchange for BCE to illustrate the value and importance of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) with a focus on secondments to build up knowledge and skills, and engender a culture of knowledge exchange.
This series of videos will be launched by the project and made available through the project website in Spring 2010.
Driving Transformational Change for Employer Engagement
The University of Salford recently held a conference to showcase their work in Employer Engagement. The University has produced a model by identifying barriers to employer engagement which they have developed into enablers. These include Communications and Marketing, Costing, Quality Assurance and Staff Development.
In addition to these, as part of an enabler ‘IT Systems and CRM’, the University has recently implemented a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Prior to implementation their CRM processes often resulted in fragmented engagement, and there were no standard processes which led to a large number of standalone spreadsheets and databases. To overcome these issues, the University chose Agresso as their software solution. The university looked initially to use their own in-house IT department to implement the CRM system, but decided that they did not have the resources to do so and took the decision to use technical expertise from Agresso in the form of a full-time secondment of an Agresso consultant to the University.
This approach has resulted in a two way process of sharing knowledge. The university has learned a great deal about the system from Agresso while the Agresso Consultant seconded, as an employee of the University, has learned a lot about how the institution operates.
The scope for the system was to manage business relationships, record and progress leads and opportunities, administer non credit-bearing CPD courses and to integrate the CRM system with their Agresso Business World finance system. The commitment of the Vice Chancellor has been an important driver for the success of the system and has resulted in buy in across faculties. The system also includes scope for capturing impact statements for use in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and will be used for funding bids, KTPs and essentially everything other than credit bearing students.
There are currently 80 cross faculty users, with the intention to increase this to 120 by Spring 2010. In recognition of the work carried out so far, the JISC Business and Community Engagement programme has recently funded a project to allow the University to carry out further development of their CRM system and processes and to undertake dissemination of their activities.
Find out more about Employer Engagement at the University of Salford
Engaging Employers for the Learning Sector
The national Engaging Employers for the Learning Sector conference took place in Birmingham on 24 September, and was attended by representatives from JISC and the JISC Advance BCE Team.
The conference provided an opportunity to learn about a number of initiatives which exist to support Employer Engagement, and to find out about the changes to support provision which are now in place as a result of the Business Support Simplification Programme, which has reduced the number of products and services to support business from 300 to 30 and utilises Business Link as the primary access point for businesses to access the new package of support.
Representatives from a number of support iniatives presented at the conference, including Train to Gain, the National Apprenticeship Service and the Learning and Skills improvement service who presented the World Class Skills Programme which aims to improve employer responsiveness by offering a range of support through events and online resources, including e-learning modules, multimedia resources to capture the experiences of pathfinder projects, and an electronic market information tool.
Representatives from the education sector also presented some of their experiences in employer engagement, including the use of CRM and to highlight the importance of account management.
Slides from the event are available.