EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Our university has come up with a thorough and comprehensive corporate plan for the period 2008-2013. It looks at the present situation critically, identifies potential opportunities and challenges the university faces. It targets very ambitious goals and outlines several steps towards attaining those goals.
Like any other corporate plan, how well it is executed and delivered depends largely on the serious commitment and collaborative efforts by all the stakeholders. Cognizant of this fact and being one of the stakeholders, our work delves into some key areas of the plan that we believe our contribution will positively impact in order to realize the stated objectives by the year 2013.
This report begins by detailing the project background. In the project background, we identify some problems that are likely to hinder the achievement of the corporate plan objectives. We give a detailed description to each of the problematic areas identified.
After the identification of the problems, we proceed to develop a six point plan strategy to address the problems. The points covered in the strategy are use of agile methods, use of virtual learning environment, providing placement opportunities, productivity and efficiency, sharing best practices and research. The use of agile methods covers some innovative ways to automate some existing manual processes. The virtual learning environment addresses some current drawbacks of the existing environment. The gap between what is taught and practised by industry is covered under placement opportunities. All the aspects of the six point plan in one way or another address productivity and efficiency. The sharing of best aspects aspect of our strategy advocates reuse and sharing of practices that have already proved to be beneficial. Finally, our strategy proposes some thought-provoking ideas on how research should be looked at from cross-departmental view. An interesting model to enhance student experiences as stated in the corporate plan is introduced.
After developing a strategy, we go ahead and explore IT resources to support the strategy. The IT resources are anchored on social networking tools that Web 2.0 provides. Such networking tools include use of wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting and a recent virtual space called Second Life. We finally conclude with a brief summary our findings.
Our university has come up with a thorough and comprehensive corporate plan for the period 2008-2013. It looks at the present situation critically, identifies potential opportunities and challenges the university faces. It targets very ambitious goals and outlines several steps towards attaining those goals.
Like any other corporate plan, how well it is executed and delivered depends largely on the serious commitment and collaborative efforts by all the stakeholders. Cognizant of this fact and being one of the stakeholders, our work delves into some key areas of the plan that we believe our contribution will positively impact in order to realize the stated objectives by the year 2013.
This report begins by detailing the project background. In the project background, we identify some problems that are likely to hinder the achievement of the corporate plan objectives. We give a detailed description to each of the problematic areas identified.
After the identification of the problems, we proceed to develop a six point plan strategy to address the problems. The points covered in the strategy are use of agile methods, use of virtual learning environment, providing placement opportunities, productivity and efficiency, sharing best practices and research. The use of agile methods covers some innovative ways to automate some existing manual processes. The virtual learning environment addresses some current drawbacks of the existing environment. The gap between what is taught and practised by industry is covered under placement opportunities. All the aspects of the six point plan in one way or another address productivity and efficiency. The sharing of best aspects aspect of our strategy advocates reuse and sharing of practices that have already proved to be beneficial. Finally, our strategy proposes some thought-provoking ideas on how research should be looked at from cross-departmental view. An interesting model to enhance student experiences as stated in the corporate plan is introduced.
After developing a strategy, we go ahead and explore IT resources to support the strategy. The IT resources are anchored on social networking tools that Web 2.0 provides. Such networking tools include use of wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting and a recent virtual space called Second Life. We finally conclude with a brief summary our findings.
1 PROJECT BACKGROUND
Being in a very competitive and volatile higher education industry, universities have to think through and continuously plan for innovative ways and tools to provide leading edge knowledge and research (Franklin and van Hermelen 2007). Our university has already in place the detailed five year corporate plan covering the period 2008-2013. The aim of this plan is to sustain our success as a university, but candidly admits that:
“The sustainability and success of Middlesex University depends entirely on its ability to continue to attract sufficient students to its courses to enable the University provide the quantity of courses and a quality of experience that will place the reputation of the University high among its main competitor group”
The question then is: Would this sustainability and success come on its own or by efforts of the few in the top management who are responsible for driving strategy? Definitely not. All those affected in one way or the other by the university – collectively called stakeholders – need to play a supportive role in order for the targets in the plan to be achieved. We being one of the stakeholders have identified problems in the following areas of the plan:
• Learning, teaching and research
• Students’ experiences
• Productivity and efficiency
• Technologies and tools used in learning and collaboration
1.1 LEARNING, TEACHING AND RESEARCH
There is a perception that the learning and teaching environment provided by Middlesex University is slightly lower compared to other universities in UK. These perceptions stem from impressions created by circulation of league tables that show lower ranking of the university. As a result, a good number of students do not seriously consider Middlesex University as their first choice institution of higher learning.
The issues here touch different aspects of knowledge creation, sharing and transfer.
1.2 STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES
At the moment our university provides limited placement facilities to a certain extent (for example placement arrangement provided for nursing and teaching) which need to be increased. In our experience of the past 6 months and from informal talks gathered from other students, the placement opportunity has not been arranged by the university, but by students themselves. The issues here touch on acquisition, sharing and transfer of knowledge because if students complete their studies without a real world experience through industrial attachment, then the knowledge gained is not immediately useful when looking for a job. This puts the student without such experience at a disadvantage compared to his/her counterparts who have had such an opportunity, which can lead to bad student experience.
Experiences we obtained from international students show that the international consultancies they dealt with gave misleading advice when choosing their programmes of study. For instance, one student mentioned a case where, when going through different programmes to choose, was impressed by International Finance programme. She thought that the word ‘International’ meant that the programme had an International appeal and would make her improve her knowledge to International status. The consultants strongly encouraged her to take up the course without evaluating her basic background to see if it suited the demands of the programme. As a result, the student frankly admits that such advice was wrong because the course is rigorous beyond her previous preparations. The issue here is the wrong application of socialisation as mentioned by McAdam and McCreedy(1999).
1.3 PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY
One issue concerns multiple international consultancies handling international student affairs that should ideally be handled by regional offices. The broking services that these consultancies offer create duplicate roles which increase unnecessary costs. We link this to wrong application of socialisation as mentioned by Al-Hawari (2004). The consultants are lacking knowledge in regard to programmes offered and career options in order to give proper advice.
1.4 TECHNOLOGIES AND TOOLS FOR LEARNING AND COLLABORATION
The challenge with regards to the current learning, teaching, research and collaboration platforms, technologies and tools is connected to productivity. By productivity we mean the student achieving learning outcomes and efficiency refers to the effectiveness in gaining knowledge. The factors that affect these aspects are:
resources being spent for unofficial use
platforms/applications not being much user friendly
interactivity between staff & students
1.4.1 RESOURCES BEING SPENT ON UNOFFICIAL PURPOSES AND IMPACT ON PRODUCTIVITY
When we enter into the university library, it is well seen that a good number of students use the computer for personal use rather than study purposes. For example, students spend their time checking their personal e-mails, downloading chatting software, chatting with their friends, accessing social networking services like orkut and face book etc that have no bearing to the learning purposes. It has also been noted that some of the students watch video clips and listen to songs with the resources available for learning purposes.
The student using the resources available for learning purposes is acceptable. However the student using the resources for unofficial purposes to access external unnecessary sites for personal gain increases the usage time and wastage. Hence with respect to time, productivity decreases and also efficiency degrades. Again, resources being unnecessarily used for personal use increase operational costs. When a large number of students do it this way, then the place being occupied for such activities make other students uncomfortable due to the unavailability of computers in library.
The issue here is that the knowledge about internet and e-mail policy is not being shared or transferred properly. Such an issue can affect the student’s ability to grasp knowledge (Nonaka 1995).
1.4.2 PLATFORMS/APPLICATIONS NOT BEING MUCH USER FRIENDLY
With reference to the conversation with some of the students in the university, it was noted that many students are not much aware of how to use the learning resources to access data-bases to get the study materials. For example, a good number of students doing Business Information Systems Management programme were not conversant with accessing data bases or journals in the digital library. However, a session was arranged where two members of staff gave a presentation on how to access the available resources.
Another complication with regards to the same is that a student needs multiple logins for separate systems, such as accessing MISIS, OASISplus, email, Athens, the digital library etc. These different logins in most cases require different user IDs and passwords to access. These make students a bit uncomfortable and as a result, students’ learning is restricted by these complications and unawareness.
The issue here is that the knowledge about the platforms or applications is not explicitly expressed in a manner that users like students can understand and comprehend.
1.4.3 INTERACTIVITY BETWEEN STAFF & STUDENTS
As of normal, there may not be any issue for any official not to respond to mails sent to them by students. However, it has been noted that when a member of staff goes on holiday, it sometimes becomes critical when a student needs some advice or information from the officials as a matter of urgency, but don’t get response in time. This then becomes a complicated situation for the students.
The issue here is the restriction of academic knowledge transfer.
Being in a very competitive and volatile higher education industry, universities have to think through and continuously plan for innovative ways and tools to provide leading edge knowledge and research (Franklin and van Hermelen 2007). Our university has already in place the detailed five year corporate plan covering the period 2008-2013. The aim of this plan is to sustain our success as a university, but candidly admits that:
“The sustainability and success of Middlesex University depends entirely on its ability to continue to attract sufficient students to its courses to enable the University provide the quantity of courses and a quality of experience that will place the reputation of the University high among its main competitor group”
The question then is: Would this sustainability and success come on its own or by efforts of the few in the top management who are responsible for driving strategy? Definitely not. All those affected in one way or the other by the university – collectively called stakeholders – need to play a supportive role in order for the targets in the plan to be achieved. We being one of the stakeholders have identified problems in the following areas of the plan:
• Learning, teaching and research
• Students’ experiences
• Productivity and efficiency
• Technologies and tools used in learning and collaboration
1.1 LEARNING, TEACHING AND RESEARCH
There is a perception that the learning and teaching environment provided by Middlesex University is slightly lower compared to other universities in UK. These perceptions stem from impressions created by circulation of league tables that show lower ranking of the university. As a result, a good number of students do not seriously consider Middlesex University as their first choice institution of higher learning.
The issues here touch different aspects of knowledge creation, sharing and transfer.
1.2 STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES
At the moment our university provides limited placement facilities to a certain extent (for example placement arrangement provided for nursing and teaching) which need to be increased. In our experience of the past 6 months and from informal talks gathered from other students, the placement opportunity has not been arranged by the university, but by students themselves. The issues here touch on acquisition, sharing and transfer of knowledge because if students complete their studies without a real world experience through industrial attachment, then the knowledge gained is not immediately useful when looking for a job. This puts the student without such experience at a disadvantage compared to his/her counterparts who have had such an opportunity, which can lead to bad student experience.
Experiences we obtained from international students show that the international consultancies they dealt with gave misleading advice when choosing their programmes of study. For instance, one student mentioned a case where, when going through different programmes to choose, was impressed by International Finance programme. She thought that the word ‘International’ meant that the programme had an International appeal and would make her improve her knowledge to International status. The consultants strongly encouraged her to take up the course without evaluating her basic background to see if it suited the demands of the programme. As a result, the student frankly admits that such advice was wrong because the course is rigorous beyond her previous preparations. The issue here is the wrong application of socialisation as mentioned by McAdam and McCreedy(1999).
1.3 PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY
One issue concerns multiple international consultancies handling international student affairs that should ideally be handled by regional offices. The broking services that these consultancies offer create duplicate roles which increase unnecessary costs. We link this to wrong application of socialisation as mentioned by Al-Hawari (2004). The consultants are lacking knowledge in regard to programmes offered and career options in order to give proper advice.
1.4 TECHNOLOGIES AND TOOLS FOR LEARNING AND COLLABORATION
The challenge with regards to the current learning, teaching, research and collaboration platforms, technologies and tools is connected to productivity. By productivity we mean the student achieving learning outcomes and efficiency refers to the effectiveness in gaining knowledge. The factors that affect these aspects are:
resources being spent for unofficial use
platforms/applications not being much user friendly
interactivity between staff & students
1.4.1 RESOURCES BEING SPENT ON UNOFFICIAL PURPOSES AND IMPACT ON PRODUCTIVITY
When we enter into the university library, it is well seen that a good number of students use the computer for personal use rather than study purposes. For example, students spend their time checking their personal e-mails, downloading chatting software, chatting with their friends, accessing social networking services like orkut and face book etc that have no bearing to the learning purposes. It has also been noted that some of the students watch video clips and listen to songs with the resources available for learning purposes.
The student using the resources available for learning purposes is acceptable. However the student using the resources for unofficial purposes to access external unnecessary sites for personal gain increases the usage time and wastage. Hence with respect to time, productivity decreases and also efficiency degrades. Again, resources being unnecessarily used for personal use increase operational costs. When a large number of students do it this way, then the place being occupied for such activities make other students uncomfortable due to the unavailability of computers in library.
The issue here is that the knowledge about internet and e-mail policy is not being shared or transferred properly. Such an issue can affect the student’s ability to grasp knowledge (Nonaka 1995).
1.4.2 PLATFORMS/APPLICATIONS NOT BEING MUCH USER FRIENDLY
With reference to the conversation with some of the students in the university, it was noted that many students are not much aware of how to use the learning resources to access data-bases to get the study materials. For example, a good number of students doing Business Information Systems Management programme were not conversant with accessing data bases or journals in the digital library. However, a session was arranged where two members of staff gave a presentation on how to access the available resources.
Another complication with regards to the same is that a student needs multiple logins for separate systems, such as accessing MISIS, OASISplus, email, Athens, the digital library etc. These different logins in most cases require different user IDs and passwords to access. These make students a bit uncomfortable and as a result, students’ learning is restricted by these complications and unawareness.
The issue here is that the knowledge about the platforms or applications is not explicitly expressed in a manner that users like students can understand and comprehend.
1.4.3 INTERACTIVITY BETWEEN STAFF & STUDENTS
As of normal, there may not be any issue for any official not to respond to mails sent to them by students. However, it has been noted that when a member of staff goes on holiday, it sometimes becomes critical when a student needs some advice or information from the officials as a matter of urgency, but don’t get response in time. This then becomes a complicated situation for the students.
The issue here is the restriction of academic knowledge transfer.
2 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY
2.1 USE OF AGILE METHODOLOGIES
Agile organizations manage the expected and unexpected changes in the environment to operate profitably in dynamic situations (Berlin 2004a, 231).
To be more competitive, the university should become an agile organization where they can anticipate the latest trends and demands for education among the public and update their educational systems accordingly. This approach will enable it to achieve the high level goals which are clearly specified in its corporate plan.
The demand for education is very dynamic. It changes very quickly, and therefore it cannot take long time to implement changes or carry out more innovative projects. In order to deal with the problem, many innovative projects use the latest agile methodologies such as extreme programming (XP). By using XP, we can greatly reduce the chain of knowledge transfer, sharing and maintenance because it is a more adaptive and people oriented methodology (Berlin 2004b, 215-8).
XP is one of the best tools available to develop innovate projects that have high risk, high uncertainty and that are of higher management interest, even though some can argue that extreme programming has lack of transparency and it doesn’t have some definable milestones which can help management to monitor the progress of ongoing projects (Lippert, Rook, and Wolf 2002; Berlin 2004a, 231).
But we can also use XP in more innovative ways to improve student satisfaction. For instance, we can use it to do away with the manual register for lecture attendance. A student ID can be reprogrammed using extreme programming so that we can tell whether a student has attended a lecture that is being held in a particular classroom or not. This saves a lot of time. So when a student flashes his ID at the infra-red port in front of a classroom, it means that he has entered the classroom and he is attending the class.
We can extend this to record the meetings of a group of students. For example, 4 students can form a group and their IDs coded to indicate so. When they hold a group meeting in the library and all the 4 flash their IDs in the infra-red port in group meeting room, it means that all the four have attended the meeting. And any person missing means that he is absent and the lecturer will be forwarded a mail immediately regarding this so that he comes to know about the updates of a particular group immediately. This enhances the students experience in the university.
The good thing about XP is that it continuously adds more features in a detailed manner. And as an on-site customer is present always while implementing XP, it helps as a student can suggest changes that have to be made so that he is satisfied. The same case may be taken in case of a lecturer. A lecturer can also personalise his web page by receiving only updates he is interested in. And when a student updates the information, the lecturer receives immediate updates on his students so that he can guide them in real time whether the student's approach towards the topic is correct or not. In short this creates a real time virtual environment where a student can interact with their lecturers in real time without wasting the time to run to the lecturers’ cabin to clarify a doubt. It is here where our university's mail becomes ineffective as a lecturer does not receive immediate alerts on tracking a student.
The alumni play a major role in enhancing the productivity and effectiveness of the university. In implementing XP, we can create software which interacts with the alumni of our college and take valuable suggestions from them on a regular basis. That software can then be seen on an individual’s homepage and is updated immediately so that the students can adapt to the changes according to the market's requirements. In this regard, no one can give a better feedback than the alumni. Following their feedback and experiences, the university can implement necessary changes in the university immediately so that the students are aware of the market's requirements in real time and adapt to those changes with immediate effect. This increases the effectiveness of both the students and the university. As the students compete in a tough market environment, by getting to know the requirements in the market and changing according to those requirements, then in future it can impact on “increase the pool of potential donors for our university which in turn increases the Development income” as stated in the 2008-2013 Corporate plan.
2.2 USE OF VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
In Middlesex University the Virtual Learning Environment like OASISplus plays a key role in knowledge sharing. However, it has limitations which we need to address.
Discussion and communication are the keys for exchanging knowledge and experiences among students and lecturers which can create a sense of identity and community of practice. With this communication, more personal experience can be expressed to establish a basis for good university culture (Zhou and Lin 2005).
The VLE used in the university can be improved to enhance communication networks. Discussion boards, chat room and email are part of VLE that can be used to share knowledge. Students can virtually talk to each other in the chat room or on their group assignments while lecturers can give their advice when they require them. Also a lecturer can arrange e-tutorials in a set of predetermined time to discuss the issues faced by the students to complete their assignments and course works, which increases their confidence level to face the exams (Perrie 2003).
Some of the problems faced by the students can be avoided through virtual learning environment mainly in learning skills which don’t match with the individual expectation due to lack of guidance and materials provided.
Let’s now see the problems faced by the staff namely academic as well as support that can be avoided through virtual learning environment. These are mainly in the teaching skills namely: lack of time, complexity and lack of updated technology.
These problems can be overcome by having good relationship between students and staff, flexibility in accessing internet for learning materials and providing feedbacks.
When these functionalities are successfully incorporated, implemented and practiced by both students and tutors, then it will ease the workload of the tutors and increase the satisfaction of the students that will result in increased reputation of the university amongst its competitors as mentioned in the corporate plan.
2.3 PROVIDING PLACEMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Creating placement opportunities for students while undertaking their courses is one of those major issues the university can assist to enhance the experience of students.
At the moment some career opportunities provided by the university have drawbacks. For instance, one of the job creation opportunities provided by the university is the postgraduates open day where new graduates meet different partners and employed past Middlesex graduates. While this grateful opportunity is appreciated by any graduate, it would be great to have at least some hands-on experience at the completion of the degree course to write a good CV which maximizes job finding. Most of these career services are provided after graduation, but it is better to have some experience while undertaking the course.
We thus make a suggestion that in order to get a better career opportunity, the university should strongly lobby for relevant industrial placements for all graduates. In order to make this possible, we would like to give a suggestion that will link students with the companies via the university. It is the responsibility of the university to maintain a wiki in which a student will be able to publish his/her area of interest and the experience he/she would like to get. This wiki should be advertised to all the graduate recruitment and placement offering companies so that the companies can go through it and find the interesting proposals. They can then contact the student through the university to arrange for an interview. This placement service should be extended even to international level and thus an international student can be able to do his/her placement in home country.
The experience a student gains from the industrial placement will provide insight into the realities of working life and as such enhance employability skills, personal development and social skills which enhance communication skills and development of “maturity, self-confidence, time management and the ability to work in a team” as stated in the corporate plan. And also, it builds bridges between higher education and the world of work.
This will improve the knowledge creation process (Nonaka 1995) about the real world companies and make students more effective when doing research studies in a particular area of interest. It will also increase the job opportunities for students – thus enhancing their experience while studying at the university. In addition to graduate benefits, the university will be able to attract local and international students who will feel confident to develop their careers with the university.
2.4 PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY
In order to improve productivity and efficiency it is useful to apply knowledge management with current technology. For example, establishing corporate libraries would enhance the knowledge of the student as well as teachers. Rather than having a separate library for each university location, a central library, accessible to all other locations leads to better efficiency because fewer staff resources are used. Productivity will also improve because the students and staff will collaborate more in gaining knowledge within a centralised placed as opposed to different locations.
Now to the challenges posed by the intranet. The intranet resources need to be used in a much efficient manner by improving the productivity and reducing unnecessary operational costs.
The university has an extranet, but the problem is: Does it perform all the functions that should be implemented in extranet? And if so, does it help to improve organisational knowledge? Since it has world wide access, extra caution should be taken to limit its accessibility to only university’s critical stakeholders. For example, OASIS plus can be considered as extranet which can be accessed by the students and academic staff. If students and staff do not take the advantage of using the existing system up to the maximum, it can be seen as a waste of resources.
Instead of using common and classical technologies like E-mail, simple real time knowledge flows such as chat can be used to transfer knowledge among students and academics. As been mentioned earlier students should be encouraged to collaborate with teachers more effectively. It is also helpful for teachers to enhance their own knowledge in order for them to produce good quality knowledgeable students. This in turn will indirectly boost the financial base.
2.4.1 WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
Even though there is an Internet and email policy in place, it is not being enforced. We make the following suggestions which should be implemented immediately as they don’t have any financial or costs implications:
To make the maximum utilisation of the available resource, the intranet system is to be re-designed in such a way that no one can access any of this public chat sites and none of the external software could be installed through the university network.
All the activities in the usage of intranet are to be monitored and a warning given to the students performing illicit actions. If not heeded, strict penalties should be imposed on those who continue to violate the intranet resource. In this regard, the use of automated network services, such as the network monitor which accurately measures the incoming and outgoing packets of data from a given workstation, can be used to effectively trace the source culprit. Using remote login, the culprit’s current inappropriate usage is captured in a form of a screenshot to act as evidence in case the culprit disputes that he/she was not in the wrong. With other system utilities, a strong warning message can be sent to the culprit’s workstation in real-time. We demonstrate this in the following diagram (Figure 1) below:
University members, i.e. students and academic staff, should have their own personalised web pages and virtual memory available in the computer servers. That means if one opens our 24x7 right now, he should have the freedom to customise it in a way that he likes. i.e., a person should easily access the material he wants instead of searching for the correct link again and again. One should be able to customise his homepage as he wants it to be so that only materials relevant to him remain. It saves a huge amount of time than we can imagine. When one opens the customised page, he can only see the content related to his studies or his choice. And he does not get any unimportant material on his web page which diverts his concentration to unwanted content. This in turn improves the student satisfaction, the student experience, and even the efficiency of a student as he is not diverted from his work at times.
The e-mail system for students is to be converted into internal, that is within the university network and disabling the system of sending external mails outside the university network. However, one can receive any external mails. All the e-mails of the students are to be tracked in order to avoid risk and also to avoid personal mails within the organisation.
2.4.2 WHAT HAPPENS BY APPLYING ALL THIS?
The available resource will be utilised to the maximum for the student learning and organisational support.
The efficiency of student learning increases.
Number of students repeating examinations decreases.
The academic exam result improves.
Standard of the university improves.
The productivity increases.
The operating cost of the intranet is decreased.
More students will get access to the computers in the library.
In sum total, the university ranking improves.
2.5 SHARING BEST PRACTICES
In any organisation, every department has its own tasks, different practices and processes. An organisation can capture the best ways of doing the tasks (Sarshar 2006). For example, in our university different tutors use different approaches to students’ coursework submissions. Our organisation experienced three different ways of doing this. First one was using OASIS plus extranet while second was burning a CD - totally unacceptable for UK University- and lastly blogs by using web 2.0 technologies. The usage of three different methods within the same university, same year, and same programme named Business Information Systems Management to submit course works is quit perplexing. We identified the problem as no knowledge sharing.
Sharing best practices here means that we encourage members to share what best has worked for them. For example, if one lecturer has managed to use OASISplus to help students submit their coursework, why can’t he/she share such knowledge with the rest who have difficulties? If this is done, then doesn’t one see that burning a CD is an archaic method?
2.6 RESEARCH
Though professors have different areas of interests in which they do considerable amount of research by publishing different papers or books, it is of less use unless students get to know about it. This is because there might be students who are interested in the same area and aspiring to work on the recent technologies under the guidance of their professors. If such students complete their education without the complete knowledge of the areas in which they want to continue their education or do some philosophical research, they cannot survive in that field even though they have a chance here to get the guidance from their professors. That is, even though we have the resources (e.g. professors) to help the students; they cannot go for it because of the lack of knowledge transfer (tacit to tacit in this case). This links to learning, teaching and research mentioned earlier.
Here in Middlesex University, we want to address this problem by conducting different presentations and seminars which will talk about the ongoing trends in technology where students who attend these will have an idea of what is going in the market. At the same time, as different professors and alumni will address the different areas or topics in which they are working, it helps the students to get the guidance from the right professor. At the same time, we make appropriate arrangements by advertising these seminars and presentations so that students from different universities will get a chance to attend these ones and have a chance to know more about the university, ongoing research, different professors and alumni. This in turn will create an impression in their minds about the university which is likely to enhance the reputation associated with the university. Such reputation will attract students aiming for higher education (Master’s, PhD).
This knowledge management research issue can also be solved by including a mandatory course in the first semester of each graduate student who attends the university. The curriculum of this course should be tailored to cover the following information of each academic staff member:
1) Interest areas of each and every professor.
2) Work done so far in the respective fields.
3) Ongoing research in the interest area.
4) Career opportunities related to that field.
This will greatly enhance the research interests of the students while at the same time identifying research areas where the university lacks faculty to cope with ongoing market demands.
2.1 USE OF AGILE METHODOLOGIES
Agile organizations manage the expected and unexpected changes in the environment to operate profitably in dynamic situations (Berlin 2004a, 231).
To be more competitive, the university should become an agile organization where they can anticipate the latest trends and demands for education among the public and update their educational systems accordingly. This approach will enable it to achieve the high level goals which are clearly specified in its corporate plan.
The demand for education is very dynamic. It changes very quickly, and therefore it cannot take long time to implement changes or carry out more innovative projects. In order to deal with the problem, many innovative projects use the latest agile methodologies such as extreme programming (XP). By using XP, we can greatly reduce the chain of knowledge transfer, sharing and maintenance because it is a more adaptive and people oriented methodology (Berlin 2004b, 215-8).
XP is one of the best tools available to develop innovate projects that have high risk, high uncertainty and that are of higher management interest, even though some can argue that extreme programming has lack of transparency and it doesn’t have some definable milestones which can help management to monitor the progress of ongoing projects (Lippert, Rook, and Wolf 2002; Berlin 2004a, 231).
But we can also use XP in more innovative ways to improve student satisfaction. For instance, we can use it to do away with the manual register for lecture attendance. A student ID can be reprogrammed using extreme programming so that we can tell whether a student has attended a lecture that is being held in a particular classroom or not. This saves a lot of time. So when a student flashes his ID at the infra-red port in front of a classroom, it means that he has entered the classroom and he is attending the class.
We can extend this to record the meetings of a group of students. For example, 4 students can form a group and their IDs coded to indicate so. When they hold a group meeting in the library and all the 4 flash their IDs in the infra-red port in group meeting room, it means that all the four have attended the meeting. And any person missing means that he is absent and the lecturer will be forwarded a mail immediately regarding this so that he comes to know about the updates of a particular group immediately. This enhances the students experience in the university.
The good thing about XP is that it continuously adds more features in a detailed manner. And as an on-site customer is present always while implementing XP, it helps as a student can suggest changes that have to be made so that he is satisfied. The same case may be taken in case of a lecturer. A lecturer can also personalise his web page by receiving only updates he is interested in. And when a student updates the information, the lecturer receives immediate updates on his students so that he can guide them in real time whether the student's approach towards the topic is correct or not. In short this creates a real time virtual environment where a student can interact with their lecturers in real time without wasting the time to run to the lecturers’ cabin to clarify a doubt. It is here where our university's mail becomes ineffective as a lecturer does not receive immediate alerts on tracking a student.
The alumni play a major role in enhancing the productivity and effectiveness of the university. In implementing XP, we can create software which interacts with the alumni of our college and take valuable suggestions from them on a regular basis. That software can then be seen on an individual’s homepage and is updated immediately so that the students can adapt to the changes according to the market's requirements. In this regard, no one can give a better feedback than the alumni. Following their feedback and experiences, the university can implement necessary changes in the university immediately so that the students are aware of the market's requirements in real time and adapt to those changes with immediate effect. This increases the effectiveness of both the students and the university. As the students compete in a tough market environment, by getting to know the requirements in the market and changing according to those requirements, then in future it can impact on “increase the pool of potential donors for our university which in turn increases the Development income” as stated in the 2008-2013 Corporate plan.
2.2 USE OF VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
In Middlesex University the Virtual Learning Environment like OASISplus plays a key role in knowledge sharing. However, it has limitations which we need to address.
Discussion and communication are the keys for exchanging knowledge and experiences among students and lecturers which can create a sense of identity and community of practice. With this communication, more personal experience can be expressed to establish a basis for good university culture (Zhou and Lin 2005).
The VLE used in the university can be improved to enhance communication networks. Discussion boards, chat room and email are part of VLE that can be used to share knowledge. Students can virtually talk to each other in the chat room or on their group assignments while lecturers can give their advice when they require them. Also a lecturer can arrange e-tutorials in a set of predetermined time to discuss the issues faced by the students to complete their assignments and course works, which increases their confidence level to face the exams (Perrie 2003).
Some of the problems faced by the students can be avoided through virtual learning environment mainly in learning skills which don’t match with the individual expectation due to lack of guidance and materials provided.
Let’s now see the problems faced by the staff namely academic as well as support that can be avoided through virtual learning environment. These are mainly in the teaching skills namely: lack of time, complexity and lack of updated technology.
These problems can be overcome by having good relationship between students and staff, flexibility in accessing internet for learning materials and providing feedbacks.
When these functionalities are successfully incorporated, implemented and practiced by both students and tutors, then it will ease the workload of the tutors and increase the satisfaction of the students that will result in increased reputation of the university amongst its competitors as mentioned in the corporate plan.
2.3 PROVIDING PLACEMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Creating placement opportunities for students while undertaking their courses is one of those major issues the university can assist to enhance the experience of students.
At the moment some career opportunities provided by the university have drawbacks. For instance, one of the job creation opportunities provided by the university is the postgraduates open day where new graduates meet different partners and employed past Middlesex graduates. While this grateful opportunity is appreciated by any graduate, it would be great to have at least some hands-on experience at the completion of the degree course to write a good CV which maximizes job finding. Most of these career services are provided after graduation, but it is better to have some experience while undertaking the course.
We thus make a suggestion that in order to get a better career opportunity, the university should strongly lobby for relevant industrial placements for all graduates. In order to make this possible, we would like to give a suggestion that will link students with the companies via the university. It is the responsibility of the university to maintain a wiki in which a student will be able to publish his/her area of interest and the experience he/she would like to get. This wiki should be advertised to all the graduate recruitment and placement offering companies so that the companies can go through it and find the interesting proposals. They can then contact the student through the university to arrange for an interview. This placement service should be extended even to international level and thus an international student can be able to do his/her placement in home country.
The experience a student gains from the industrial placement will provide insight into the realities of working life and as such enhance employability skills, personal development and social skills which enhance communication skills and development of “maturity, self-confidence, time management and the ability to work in a team” as stated in the corporate plan. And also, it builds bridges between higher education and the world of work.
This will improve the knowledge creation process (Nonaka 1995) about the real world companies and make students more effective when doing research studies in a particular area of interest. It will also increase the job opportunities for students – thus enhancing their experience while studying at the university. In addition to graduate benefits, the university will be able to attract local and international students who will feel confident to develop their careers with the university.
2.4 PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY
In order to improve productivity and efficiency it is useful to apply knowledge management with current technology. For example, establishing corporate libraries would enhance the knowledge of the student as well as teachers. Rather than having a separate library for each university location, a central library, accessible to all other locations leads to better efficiency because fewer staff resources are used. Productivity will also improve because the students and staff will collaborate more in gaining knowledge within a centralised placed as opposed to different locations.
Now to the challenges posed by the intranet. The intranet resources need to be used in a much efficient manner by improving the productivity and reducing unnecessary operational costs.
The university has an extranet, but the problem is: Does it perform all the functions that should be implemented in extranet? And if so, does it help to improve organisational knowledge? Since it has world wide access, extra caution should be taken to limit its accessibility to only university’s critical stakeholders. For example, OASIS plus can be considered as extranet which can be accessed by the students and academic staff. If students and staff do not take the advantage of using the existing system up to the maximum, it can be seen as a waste of resources.
Instead of using common and classical technologies like E-mail, simple real time knowledge flows such as chat can be used to transfer knowledge among students and academics. As been mentioned earlier students should be encouraged to collaborate with teachers more effectively. It is also helpful for teachers to enhance their own knowledge in order for them to produce good quality knowledgeable students. This in turn will indirectly boost the financial base.
2.4.1 WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
Even though there is an Internet and email policy in place, it is not being enforced. We make the following suggestions which should be implemented immediately as they don’t have any financial or costs implications:
To make the maximum utilisation of the available resource, the intranet system is to be re-designed in such a way that no one can access any of this public chat sites and none of the external software could be installed through the university network.
All the activities in the usage of intranet are to be monitored and a warning given to the students performing illicit actions. If not heeded, strict penalties should be imposed on those who continue to violate the intranet resource. In this regard, the use of automated network services, such as the network monitor which accurately measures the incoming and outgoing packets of data from a given workstation, can be used to effectively trace the source culprit. Using remote login, the culprit’s current inappropriate usage is captured in a form of a screenshot to act as evidence in case the culprit disputes that he/she was not in the wrong. With other system utilities, a strong warning message can be sent to the culprit’s workstation in real-time. We demonstrate this in the following diagram (Figure 1) below:
University members, i.e. students and academic staff, should have their own personalised web pages and virtual memory available in the computer servers. That means if one opens our 24x7 right now, he should have the freedom to customise it in a way that he likes. i.e., a person should easily access the material he wants instead of searching for the correct link again and again. One should be able to customise his homepage as he wants it to be so that only materials relevant to him remain. It saves a huge amount of time than we can imagine. When one opens the customised page, he can only see the content related to his studies or his choice. And he does not get any unimportant material on his web page which diverts his concentration to unwanted content. This in turn improves the student satisfaction, the student experience, and even the efficiency of a student as he is not diverted from his work at times.
The e-mail system for students is to be converted into internal, that is within the university network and disabling the system of sending external mails outside the university network. However, one can receive any external mails. All the e-mails of the students are to be tracked in order to avoid risk and also to avoid personal mails within the organisation.
2.4.2 WHAT HAPPENS BY APPLYING ALL THIS?
The available resource will be utilised to the maximum for the student learning and organisational support.
The efficiency of student learning increases.
Number of students repeating examinations decreases.
The academic exam result improves.
Standard of the university improves.
The productivity increases.
The operating cost of the intranet is decreased.
More students will get access to the computers in the library.
In sum total, the university ranking improves.
2.5 SHARING BEST PRACTICES
In any organisation, every department has its own tasks, different practices and processes. An organisation can capture the best ways of doing the tasks (Sarshar 2006). For example, in our university different tutors use different approaches to students’ coursework submissions. Our organisation experienced three different ways of doing this. First one was using OASIS plus extranet while second was burning a CD - totally unacceptable for UK University- and lastly blogs by using web 2.0 technologies. The usage of three different methods within the same university, same year, and same programme named Business Information Systems Management to submit course works is quit perplexing. We identified the problem as no knowledge sharing.
Sharing best practices here means that we encourage members to share what best has worked for them. For example, if one lecturer has managed to use OASISplus to help students submit their coursework, why can’t he/she share such knowledge with the rest who have difficulties? If this is done, then doesn’t one see that burning a CD is an archaic method?
2.6 RESEARCH
Though professors have different areas of interests in which they do considerable amount of research by publishing different papers or books, it is of less use unless students get to know about it. This is because there might be students who are interested in the same area and aspiring to work on the recent technologies under the guidance of their professors. If such students complete their education without the complete knowledge of the areas in which they want to continue their education or do some philosophical research, they cannot survive in that field even though they have a chance here to get the guidance from their professors. That is, even though we have the resources (e.g. professors) to help the students; they cannot go for it because of the lack of knowledge transfer (tacit to tacit in this case). This links to learning, teaching and research mentioned earlier.
Here in Middlesex University, we want to address this problem by conducting different presentations and seminars which will talk about the ongoing trends in technology where students who attend these will have an idea of what is going in the market. At the same time, as different professors and alumni will address the different areas or topics in which they are working, it helps the students to get the guidance from the right professor. At the same time, we make appropriate arrangements by advertising these seminars and presentations so that students from different universities will get a chance to attend these ones and have a chance to know more about the university, ongoing research, different professors and alumni. This in turn will create an impression in their minds about the university which is likely to enhance the reputation associated with the university. Such reputation will attract students aiming for higher education (Master’s, PhD).
This knowledge management research issue can also be solved by including a mandatory course in the first semester of each graduate student who attends the university. The curriculum of this course should be tailored to cover the following information of each academic staff member:
1) Interest areas of each and every professor.
2) Work done so far in the respective fields.
3) Ongoing research in the interest area.
4) Career opportunities related to that field.
This will greatly enhance the research interests of the students while at the same time identifying research areas where the university lacks faculty to cope with ongoing market demands.
3 APPLYING KM MODELLING
3.1 APPLICATION TO ENHANCING STUDENT EXPERIENCE
There should be only direct consultancy i.e. direct link from college. Each consultancy should have a knowledgeable person who shares their ideas or knowledge about the courses, career opportunities and also should be able to understand the student needs and their interest as can be demonstrated in the diagram below (Figure 2). This will automatically increase the marketing and revenue of our university; decrease the second exam attempts by students which will also increase the ranking of our college.
Another issue related to consultancy is building a strong student union. The manager in the consultancy should have full details of the admitted students in the university such as attendance, coursework submissions, semester assessments etc and also have a soft contact between the individual students. When a new student named X wants to do his/her masters, the manager can help him/her by giving the details of the seniors and help X. This can help X to share the knowledge from her/his seniors and the seniors can forward him/ her to the common INDIA union. Then everybody will finally be linked to the main student union which deals with basic needs of any student. See the demonstration diagram below (Figure 3).
This not only helps in socialization but also helps in understanding the lecture slides faster in videoconferencing between students (junior and senior) with the help of podcasting technology. It will be not only for academic purposes, but also general information.
All these issues are emphasised by Nonaka (1995).
3.1 APPLICATION TO ENHANCING STUDENT EXPERIENCE
There should be only direct consultancy i.e. direct link from college. Each consultancy should have a knowledgeable person who shares their ideas or knowledge about the courses, career opportunities and also should be able to understand the student needs and their interest as can be demonstrated in the diagram below (Figure 2). This will automatically increase the marketing and revenue of our university; decrease the second exam attempts by students which will also increase the ranking of our college.
Another issue related to consultancy is building a strong student union. The manager in the consultancy should have full details of the admitted students in the university such as attendance, coursework submissions, semester assessments etc and also have a soft contact between the individual students. When a new student named X wants to do his/her masters, the manager can help him/her by giving the details of the seniors and help X. This can help X to share the knowledge from her/his seniors and the seniors can forward him/ her to the common INDIA union. Then everybody will finally be linked to the main student union which deals with basic needs of any student. See the demonstration diagram below (Figure 3).
This not only helps in socialization but also helps in understanding the lecture slides faster in videoconferencing between students (junior and senior) with the help of podcasting technology. It will be not only for academic purposes, but also general information.
All these issues are emphasised by Nonaka (1995).
4 TECHNOLOGIES SUPPORTING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS
4.1 WIKIS TO ENHANCE STUDENT EXPERIENCE, LEARNING AND TEACHING
A private wiki containing departmental programme details should be created by each departmental head. Such a wiki would then be linked to the knowledgeable consultant mentioned earlier. In case an international student has any specific doubts regarding the programme details, he/she can approach the consultant who in turn can access the private wiki to provide him/her with the requested details.
Many companies use wikis and blogs to share the knowledge and they have already succeeded (Miller 2008). But these wikis have their own issues as well. For example, as a university, it will be cumbersome to use common wikis because there are many people who might not have requisite knowledge about a particular subject.
One suggestion is to use a knowledgeable person to control the wiki, but the problem will be: How can we measure his/her knowledge? Does he have all the knowledge about the published article? For instance, suppose there is a heading called knowledge management and then one person publishes a contra article, say, nonsense of knowledge management, whose content is to challenge the knowledge management heading. Will this person’s article be allowed to be published by the person in control of the wiki?
In order to avoid some of these problems, another suggestion is to have a wiki edited only by academic staff. Also, each and every subject should have its own wiki which can be modified by subject students and related academic staff. Then students’ new ideas will boost the module leaders. If there is anything very important, that can also be published in a staff’s wiki. All these thoughts are demonstrated in the following diagram (Figure 4):
As in the above example, the module leader can notice that some colleagues are not aware of latest technologies that are available, but when it is published in a staff’s wiki, others will come to know.
When each subject has its own wiki, then anything of importance about the module would be published in the wiki. Doing that, module leaders can save time that they spend to open and close emails from students and others. This is because feedbacks will be displayed on the wiki page itself. All they need to do is to scroll the mouse. This way, the use of a web 2.0 technology will significantly enrich the quality of teaching, research and knowledge transfer.
4.2 RSS (REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION) TO SUPPORT LEARNING, TEACHING STRATEGY ASPECTS
RSS is a successful technology that makes it easy to share resources across networks as it brings content from different sources (e.g. new blog posts, podcasts) to a learner’s personal space once the person has subscribed to the feed source. The captured information can also be managed individually or collectively. A blog is a very valuable tool for personal information management and wiki is highly effective forms of collaborative information management.
Using RSS technology will encourage advertising through the network about Middlesex University to Middlesex university regional offices, about studies, facilities, services etc. This will extend the combination process to international students who can learn more about Middlesex. In turn, it will help MDX productivity in future.
With RSS, one can:
1. Create a set of resources that can be accessible from any computer which is connected to the internet: Through this the students can conduct research and share their knowledge with their colleagues. Also through the book marks, the students can share the authors and book updates.
2. Pull class blogs together for easy tracking: by doing this, the lecturer can quickly deliver feed back to the students and can monitor the student’s writing development. Commenting on the blog will encourage students to help each other in writing.
3. Form a discussion board: if the lecturer feels that the discussion board is more appropriate for a classroom, he/she can arrange one and with RSS one can track the discussion and track responses to specific issues.
4. Share the subject specific feeds: by creating a linking list of all of the subscription lists on a particular topic or a subject area and publish it one central space so all the students who are interested can share and benefit the feeds that others have found.
5. Photo share with Flickr: this service enable the student’s to embed the photos of any university events into a blog or website and share them via RSS. By this, students can learn to be more creative and the parents who live far away from their children can view their progress.
6. Create a repositories of ‘Learning objects’ and make them accessible by RSS feeds:
Learning object’ repositories are a key benefit that can be gained with education reusability through the use of internet. Through this, the educators from different universities can capitalize their work by sharing their work and knowledge without redoing things that are already available.
7. Create university website that can be easily updated and the visitors can be informed more quickly: the university website can be developed using a series of blogs that are interconnected, allowing the lecturers to contribute to their portion of their website and weekly feeds from the classroom. Students’ blogs can be posted and updated to reflect what is going on in the university.
Ideas supported by D’Souza( 2006).
4.3 PODCASTING AS A MEANS TO IMPROVE LEARNING, EFFICIENCY AND STUDENT EXPERIENCE
The university can podcast their services to a new student, a current student and a returning student. Some examples of podcasting services currently available in Middlesex University are:
Money & Welfare
International student
Student placement
Careers
Even though these podcasting services are currently available, it seems they have not been fully utilised to help students learn more about the university, its facilities and promote the students welfare. This problem links to learning and teaching strategies that have been mentioned earlier. If fully utilised, they can contribute significantly to the productivity and efficiency – necessary ingredients the corporate plan intends to achieve by 2013.
How can this podcasting technology be used to support the enhancement of learning and teaching at Middlesex University? Let us give an explanation.
Anyone gathers information from some or other source. But the person who gathers the information very quickly ahead of everyone is more likely to benefit than others. So, here comes a new technology that enhances the chances of getting information based on a topic or to the topic subscribed very quickly without even asking you and thus reminding you that these are the latest issues that you need to cope up with. With a podcast, a server checks the latest updates from the university ranging from the change of timings to the latest events happening in the college. So now no one will be in darkness and miss some valuable opportunities. They can miss in case they were unaware of the things going on in the college. Updated lectures show up in podcasts when subscribed, enabling or paving way for e-learning.
If there is a very important notice that you want it to get noticed by everyone in the university nowadays, do no continue using old methods like paper pamphlets. Go hi-tech and share those valuable points via podcast. Whoever has subscribed to it will receive your message in a matter of minutes.
Lecturers should encourage the use of podcasting services such as videos in their classes. This will encourage students to easily and quickly learn the subjects. This in turn will increase students GPR scoring points and improve the overall standing of the university.
In the case of student union mentioned earlier, if lecturers use podcasting, it will be easy for seniors where they can recollect the information and teach the juniors. It also helps the students to discuss among themselves to learn fast.
4.4 TAGGING AND ATTACK CLOUDING
If the academic members of staff need information regarding a student, they can find it using tagging where the academic staff uses tags to reduce the time factor which in turn increases efficiency. For example to get information regarding an international Indian student the easiest way to find it is to go to the Indian category and then year of joining the university (international students, nationality and the year are the keywords). With the help of tagging, we can easily get the information about the student.
Attack clouding is like highlighting the subtitles of the main title. For example knowledge management can be the main title and knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, implementation of knowledge in an organization etc are the subtitles. So if the student wants to look at the lecture of the knowledge management with the help of tagging (attack clouding), he/she can easily get that. Here the keywords are lecture name, professor’s name, day room number. So these are the benefits for the students and also for the instructor’s (Wikipedia).
4.5 SECOND LIFE AND RESEARCH
Introducing the concept of Second Life into the university’s learning environment solves some of the strategic aspects mentioned earlier. The areas include improving different research fields of the university, increasing research income as mentioned in the corporate plan by increasing the coordination between the students and professors and advertising the interest areas and research works of the alumni to students and the outside world.
Second life is a free online virtual world created by its users. Hundreds of leading universities and organizations around the world use Second Life as a vibrant part of their educational programs. Second Life provides a safe and powerful platform for interactive learning experiences in different ways like holding meetings & seminars where students and alumni can meet, conducting online classes where the students attend classes, and create content together etc.
When we buy land in second life and create our own online campus (virtual world) for the university, professors and students can hold the online seminars & presentations. This provides the scope for different students around the world (from different universities) to attend these seminars who will be connected through second life. In this way, the students not only from the same university or geographical area can attend these seminars and presentations, but also the students who are connected to the university through second life can attend and will have an idea of the research undergoing in the university. Using second life, we can be able to reach any student interested in attending seminars and presentations in respective fields by overcoming the problem of lack of information flow between different geographical areas and universities, thereby creating an impression about the university in the minds of the students. In turn, it can help the university to increase productivity by attracting more students from different places around the world.
Second life can also be applied to the second issue of incorporating an optional course for graduate students in their last semester. It can be used to hold online classes or virtual classes for the students thereby avoiding the mobility issues and reaching the students in the same way. Source of our ideas: (Second Life n.d.)
4.1 WIKIS TO ENHANCE STUDENT EXPERIENCE, LEARNING AND TEACHING
A private wiki containing departmental programme details should be created by each departmental head. Such a wiki would then be linked to the knowledgeable consultant mentioned earlier. In case an international student has any specific doubts regarding the programme details, he/she can approach the consultant who in turn can access the private wiki to provide him/her with the requested details.
Many companies use wikis and blogs to share the knowledge and they have already succeeded (Miller 2008). But these wikis have their own issues as well. For example, as a university, it will be cumbersome to use common wikis because there are many people who might not have requisite knowledge about a particular subject.
One suggestion is to use a knowledgeable person to control the wiki, but the problem will be: How can we measure his/her knowledge? Does he have all the knowledge about the published article? For instance, suppose there is a heading called knowledge management and then one person publishes a contra article, say, nonsense of knowledge management, whose content is to challenge the knowledge management heading. Will this person’s article be allowed to be published by the person in control of the wiki?
In order to avoid some of these problems, another suggestion is to have a wiki edited only by academic staff. Also, each and every subject should have its own wiki which can be modified by subject students and related academic staff. Then students’ new ideas will boost the module leaders. If there is anything very important, that can also be published in a staff’s wiki. All these thoughts are demonstrated in the following diagram (Figure 4):
As in the above example, the module leader can notice that some colleagues are not aware of latest technologies that are available, but when it is published in a staff’s wiki, others will come to know.
When each subject has its own wiki, then anything of importance about the module would be published in the wiki. Doing that, module leaders can save time that they spend to open and close emails from students and others. This is because feedbacks will be displayed on the wiki page itself. All they need to do is to scroll the mouse. This way, the use of a web 2.0 technology will significantly enrich the quality of teaching, research and knowledge transfer.
4.2 RSS (REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION) TO SUPPORT LEARNING, TEACHING STRATEGY ASPECTS
RSS is a successful technology that makes it easy to share resources across networks as it brings content from different sources (e.g. new blog posts, podcasts) to a learner’s personal space once the person has subscribed to the feed source. The captured information can also be managed individually or collectively. A blog is a very valuable tool for personal information management and wiki is highly effective forms of collaborative information management.
Using RSS technology will encourage advertising through the network about Middlesex University to Middlesex university regional offices, about studies, facilities, services etc. This will extend the combination process to international students who can learn more about Middlesex. In turn, it will help MDX productivity in future.
With RSS, one can:
1. Create a set of resources that can be accessible from any computer which is connected to the internet: Through this the students can conduct research and share their knowledge with their colleagues. Also through the book marks, the students can share the authors and book updates.
2. Pull class blogs together for easy tracking: by doing this, the lecturer can quickly deliver feed back to the students and can monitor the student’s writing development. Commenting on the blog will encourage students to help each other in writing.
3. Form a discussion board: if the lecturer feels that the discussion board is more appropriate for a classroom, he/she can arrange one and with RSS one can track the discussion and track responses to specific issues.
4. Share the subject specific feeds: by creating a linking list of all of the subscription lists on a particular topic or a subject area and publish it one central space so all the students who are interested can share and benefit the feeds that others have found.
5. Photo share with Flickr: this service enable the student’s to embed the photos of any university events into a blog or website and share them via RSS. By this, students can learn to be more creative and the parents who live far away from their children can view their progress.
6. Create a repositories of ‘Learning objects’ and make them accessible by RSS feeds:
Learning object’ repositories are a key benefit that can be gained with education reusability through the use of internet. Through this, the educators from different universities can capitalize their work by sharing their work and knowledge without redoing things that are already available.
7. Create university website that can be easily updated and the visitors can be informed more quickly: the university website can be developed using a series of blogs that are interconnected, allowing the lecturers to contribute to their portion of their website and weekly feeds from the classroom. Students’ blogs can be posted and updated to reflect what is going on in the university.
Ideas supported by D’Souza( 2006).
4.3 PODCASTING AS A MEANS TO IMPROVE LEARNING, EFFICIENCY AND STUDENT EXPERIENCE
The university can podcast their services to a new student, a current student and a returning student. Some examples of podcasting services currently available in Middlesex University are:
Money & Welfare
International student
Student placement
Careers
Even though these podcasting services are currently available, it seems they have not been fully utilised to help students learn more about the university, its facilities and promote the students welfare. This problem links to learning and teaching strategies that have been mentioned earlier. If fully utilised, they can contribute significantly to the productivity and efficiency – necessary ingredients the corporate plan intends to achieve by 2013.
How can this podcasting technology be used to support the enhancement of learning and teaching at Middlesex University? Let us give an explanation.
Anyone gathers information from some or other source. But the person who gathers the information very quickly ahead of everyone is more likely to benefit than others. So, here comes a new technology that enhances the chances of getting information based on a topic or to the topic subscribed very quickly without even asking you and thus reminding you that these are the latest issues that you need to cope up with. With a podcast, a server checks the latest updates from the university ranging from the change of timings to the latest events happening in the college. So now no one will be in darkness and miss some valuable opportunities. They can miss in case they were unaware of the things going on in the college. Updated lectures show up in podcasts when subscribed, enabling or paving way for e-learning.
If there is a very important notice that you want it to get noticed by everyone in the university nowadays, do no continue using old methods like paper pamphlets. Go hi-tech and share those valuable points via podcast. Whoever has subscribed to it will receive your message in a matter of minutes.
Lecturers should encourage the use of podcasting services such as videos in their classes. This will encourage students to easily and quickly learn the subjects. This in turn will increase students GPR scoring points and improve the overall standing of the university.
In the case of student union mentioned earlier, if lecturers use podcasting, it will be easy for seniors where they can recollect the information and teach the juniors. It also helps the students to discuss among themselves to learn fast.
4.4 TAGGING AND ATTACK CLOUDING
If the academic members of staff need information regarding a student, they can find it using tagging where the academic staff uses tags to reduce the time factor which in turn increases efficiency. For example to get information regarding an international Indian student the easiest way to find it is to go to the Indian category and then year of joining the university (international students, nationality and the year are the keywords). With the help of tagging, we can easily get the information about the student.
Attack clouding is like highlighting the subtitles of the main title. For example knowledge management can be the main title and knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, implementation of knowledge in an organization etc are the subtitles. So if the student wants to look at the lecture of the knowledge management with the help of tagging (attack clouding), he/she can easily get that. Here the keywords are lecture name, professor’s name, day room number. So these are the benefits for the students and also for the instructor’s (Wikipedia).
4.5 SECOND LIFE AND RESEARCH
Introducing the concept of Second Life into the university’s learning environment solves some of the strategic aspects mentioned earlier. The areas include improving different research fields of the university, increasing research income as mentioned in the corporate plan by increasing the coordination between the students and professors and advertising the interest areas and research works of the alumni to students and the outside world.
Second life is a free online virtual world created by its users. Hundreds of leading universities and organizations around the world use Second Life as a vibrant part of their educational programs. Second Life provides a safe and powerful platform for interactive learning experiences in different ways like holding meetings & seminars where students and alumni can meet, conducting online classes where the students attend classes, and create content together etc.
When we buy land in second life and create our own online campus (virtual world) for the university, professors and students can hold the online seminars & presentations. This provides the scope for different students around the world (from different universities) to attend these seminars who will be connected through second life. In this way, the students not only from the same university or geographical area can attend these seminars and presentations, but also the students who are connected to the university through second life can attend and will have an idea of the research undergoing in the university. Using second life, we can be able to reach any student interested in attending seminars and presentations in respective fields by overcoming the problem of lack of information flow between different geographical areas and universities, thereby creating an impression about the university in the minds of the students. In turn, it can help the university to increase productivity by attracting more students from different places around the world.
Second life can also be applied to the second issue of incorporating an optional course for graduate students in their last semester. It can be used to hold online classes or virtual classes for the students thereby avoiding the mobility issues and reaching the students in the same way. Source of our ideas: (Second Life n.d.)
5. CONCLUSION
In the corporate plan, there are some issues concerning learning, teaching and research that need to be continuously addressed in order to support the plan achieve its objectives by 2013. In this report we have identified some of the issues and proposed strategies to address them. Also there are issues affecting students’ experiences which in turn touch on the corporate plan. Part of the strategy addresses the experiences.
We have noted issues regarding productivity and efficiency and their ramifications on the corporate plan. Strategic aspects have been proposed for these issues. Implemented accordingly, they have the ability to significantly improve productivity and efficiency. IT resources have been explored to support the strategy that we have proposed. We note that our recommendations have got no significant financial/costs implications to be considered and implementation can be effected without much ado.
In the corporate plan, there are some issues concerning learning, teaching and research that need to be continuously addressed in order to support the plan achieve its objectives by 2013. In this report we have identified some of the issues and proposed strategies to address them. Also there are issues affecting students’ experiences which in turn touch on the corporate plan. Part of the strategy addresses the experiences.
We have noted issues regarding productivity and efficiency and their ramifications on the corporate plan. Strategic aspects have been proposed for these issues. Implemented accordingly, they have the ability to significantly improve productivity and efficiency. IT resources have been explored to support the strategy that we have proposed. We note that our recommendations have got no significant financial/costs implications to be considered and implementation can be effected without much ado.
REFERENCES
Al-Hawari, M. 2004. KM Styles and Performance: a Knowledge Space Model from both Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. The University of Wollongong. 31-59. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/uploads/approved/adt-NWU20050308.141504/public/02Whole.pdf (accessed March 25, 2009).
Berlin, S. 2004a. Large Scale Agile Software Development. Extreme Programming and Agile Methods. 3134/2004:231. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg. http://www.springerlink.com (accessed March 25, 2009)
Berlin, S. 2004b. XP: Help or Hindrance to Knowledge Management? Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering. 3092/2004:215-8. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg. http://www.springerlink.com (accessed March 13, 2009)
D’Souza, Q. 2006. RSS Ideas for educators. http://www.teachinghacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/RSS%20Ideas%20for%20Educators111.pdf (accessed March 13, 2009)
Franklin, T., and van Harmelen, M. 2007. Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. JISC. http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/148/1/web2-content-learning-and-teaching.pdf (accessed March 25, 2009).
Lippert, M., Rook, S., and Wolf, H. 2002. Extreme programming in Action. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
McAdam, R., McCreedy S. 1999. A critical review of knowledge management models. THE LEARNING JOURNAL. 9(3): 91-101.
Miller, R. 2008. Law firms using wikis for knowledge management. http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/law-firms-find-km-wikis/2008-10-07 (accessed March 14, 2009)
Nonaka, I., and H. Takeuchi. 1995. The Knowledge Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York. Oxford University Press.
Perez-Bustamanthe, G. 1999. Knowledge management in agile innovative organizations. Journal of Knowledge Management. 3(1):6-17.
Perrie, Y. 2003. Virtual Learning Environments. The Pharmaceutical Journal. 3:795-6.
Sarshar, M. 2006. Sharing good practice across construction organisations: The search continues. http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/BLT/BUE_Docs/sarshar.pdf (accessed March 10, 2009).
Second Life. http://secondlife.com/ (accessed March 25, 2009).
Zhou, Y., and Lin, X. 2005. Proceedings of 2005 IEEE International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering, October 30- November 1, 2005: Mechanism of school organizational knowledge development.
Al-Hawari, M. 2004. KM Styles and Performance: a Knowledge Space Model from both Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. The University of Wollongong. 31-59. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/uploads/approved/adt-NWU20050308.141504/public/02Whole.pdf (accessed March 25, 2009).
Berlin, S. 2004a. Large Scale Agile Software Development. Extreme Programming and Agile Methods. 3134/2004:231. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg. http://www.springerlink.com (accessed March 25, 2009)
Berlin, S. 2004b. XP: Help or Hindrance to Knowledge Management? Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering. 3092/2004:215-8. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg. http://www.springerlink.com (accessed March 13, 2009)
D’Souza, Q. 2006. RSS Ideas for educators. http://www.teachinghacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/RSS%20Ideas%20for%20Educators111.pdf (accessed March 13, 2009)
Franklin, T., and van Harmelen, M. 2007. Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. JISC. http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/148/1/web2-content-learning-and-teaching.pdf (accessed March 25, 2009).
Lippert, M., Rook, S., and Wolf, H. 2002. Extreme programming in Action. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
McAdam, R., McCreedy S. 1999. A critical review of knowledge management models. THE LEARNING JOURNAL. 9(3): 91-101.
Miller, R. 2008. Law firms using wikis for knowledge management. http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/law-firms-find-km-wikis/2008-10-07 (accessed March 14, 2009)
Nonaka, I., and H. Takeuchi. 1995. The Knowledge Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York. Oxford University Press.
Perez-Bustamanthe, G. 1999. Knowledge management in agile innovative organizations. Journal of Knowledge Management. 3(1):6-17.
Perrie, Y. 2003. Virtual Learning Environments. The Pharmaceutical Journal. 3:795-6.
Sarshar, M. 2006. Sharing good practice across construction organisations: The search continues. http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/BLT/BUE_Docs/sarshar.pdf (accessed March 10, 2009).
Second Life. http://secondlife.com/ (accessed March 25, 2009).
Zhou, Y., and Lin, X. 2005. Proceedings of 2005 IEEE International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Engineering, October 30- November 1, 2005: Mechanism of school organizational knowledge development.
