Matt Atkinson, Managing Director of FE Associates, reflects on the ETF ‘Thinking Differently, Thinking Digitally’ workshop for leaders that he led at the end of 2023. He considers the difference between developing a strategy and simply buying the latest kit, the importance of context in divining a way forward, and how well artificial intelligence is really understood. He is keen to point out that he himself is more curious explorer then digital expert.
Get ten sector leaders in the room and ask them to write down their current priorities for change, development and improvement, and it is highly likely that digital transformation, in some form or another, will appear on those lists. Digital technology is clearly on the minds of sector leaders, and everyone is talking about AI, VR, AR, XR and many other acronyms you can think of. This is all hugely exciting and the levels of investment in digital technology, largely funded through the Strategic Development Fund (SDF) and now the Local Skills Improvement Fund (LSIF), are impressive. However, do those making decisions really have the knowledge and understanding to make the right decisions and are those decisions grounded in vision and strategy?
To help sector leaders enhance their leadership confidence and capacity around digital innovation, the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) commissioned FE Associates to design and facilitate a one-day workshop, ‘Thinking Differently, Thinking Digitally’. Twenty-two individuals from across the sector joined the event, which took place at USP College’s Xtend Digital Campus on Canvey Island, Essex. It built on the work being done on the ETF’s highly popular Strategic Innovation for Skills programme and enabled delegates to spend a whole day learning from best practice and building their digital leadership capacity.
At the start of the session, delegates were presented with a number of provocations about how organisations were approaching their digital journeys and were challenged to think about whether current approaches to digital development in their organisations were really underpinned by a clear vision for digital and workable strategies and plans, or if they were simply buying the latest ‘kit’ and jumping on the back of what they are seeing others doing. In a rather challenging provocation, delegates were presented with the image of someone walking into a room full of metal cabinets in 2030, opening one of those cabinets and collapsing to the floor under the weight of 200 dusty unused, unloved VR headsets falling on top of them. If we are being honest, we have all worked in organisations that have invested in the latest kit and that kit soon became out of date or was never adopted by staff.
The point of such provocations was to underscore the importance of vision and strategy in the life of an organisation’s digital transformation journey as, without a clear vision and a well-thought-out strategy, we will simply be maintaining the status quo; albeit with some fancy items of kit around us. Real digital transformation has the potential to radically improve teaching and learning, to improve the way we work, and to significantly enhance the great things we do for our learners. However, this will only be the case if we have the foundations of a solid vision and strategy in place.
To build our understanding of vision and strategy in digital transformation, we heard from USP College’s CEO, Dan Pearson. What we got was a very clear identification of the issues and challenges that the college needed to address, and an explanation of how technology proved to be the solution to those challenges, and, actually, how the technology turned the issues into opportunities. Dan skillfully drew upon design-thinking methodology to craft a problem statement as the cornerstone of the initial digital strategy pursued at USP. We also got a very clear vision for the future of learning that had the student experience at the heart of it.
Dan’s input left us asking really important questions about the leadership of digital transformation. Who should lead it? Where should the vision come from? Who should be tasked with taking it forward? What we saw at USP was a vision and strategy being led from the very top of the organisation and decisions being made in a very strategic manner.
Being at USP’s Xtend digital campus also enabled us to see the investments the college was making in support of its digital strategy. In many ways, the campus felt like a research and development centre; we saw game design learners experimenting with motion capture technology and we saw demonstrations of immersive suites and had the benefit of discussing these developments with practitioners. Whilst seeing the investments the college had made was deeply impressive, and we learnt a lot about a range of new technologies, it did leave us thinking about whether there is sufficient knowledge and understanding of technology at a senior leadership level to make sound decisions related to digital transformation, i.e. what should be invested in, how it should be implemented and rolled out, and how much future proofing has been considered?
When designing this workshop, it was really important that delegates could be provided with a range of views and approaches. Yes, it is very impressive to experience the latest technology in areas such as immersive classrooms and extended reality, but other organisations may be on a very different digital path. This is why we invited Simon Kay, Director of Digital at South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, to showcase the work the college has done in the development of its e-campus using Teams.
SGS College was the first in the sector to adopt Teams as its VLE and, through an iterative development process, the college has created an e-campus which has resulted in a rich, engaging and highly accessible platform being in place for students. Essentially, everything the student needs is now in one place and available to them via their personal devices. While the approach was impressive and highly advanced, what was clear from Simon’s input was that organisations really need to consider what is right for them, their staff and their students.
The SGS approach was fundamentally concerned with improving the wider student experience and now SGS students essentially have an app on their phones with their timetables, their assignments, enrichment opportunities, work placements, tutor feedback mechanisms, careers guidance and well-being initiatives. Very different from the USP strategy, but equally as powerful.
What became clear from the input from both Dan and Simon was that, in order to make the right decisions, we need to have the right level of knowledge and understanding, and this took us into a discussion about artificial intelligence. Given how comfortable the group were with our earlier provocations, we posed another one: Artificial Intelligence – who knows that they are talking about? It seems that wherever you go there is a discussion taking place about AI and most people have a view about it. But, beyond saying ‘Hey Siri’ and messing about with ChatGPT, have we actually spent any time learning about it, experimenting with it and considering how it could be of benefit in areas such as workload or staff experience?
We wanted to give delegates the opportunity to experiment with AI, to make them aware of its potential in key areas of work and to get them building and training AI themselves. With this in mind, everyone accessed a free AI builder tool and had a go experimenting with building virtual brains to assist in key leadership activities such as quality improvement planning, report writing and staff recruitment processes. What became clear from this session was that leaders had not quite considered how powerful AI could be in areas such as workflow, process improvement and the staff experience. Thus far, much of the discussion has been about the impact of AI on learning and this reminded us that digital transformation also has the potential to impact positively on the way our organisations work behind the scenes as well as in our learning environments.
As we approached the end of the session, and we were all well and truly immersed in digital technology and digital thinking, we engaged in a discussion on the potential for mistakes and failures in digital transformation. What became clear was that risk taking is key to a successful digital transformation journey and it is highly likely that mistakes will be made along the way. However, whilst failure might be part and parcel of transformation, we need to fail fast and put corrective measures in place before the failure becomes so significant it undermines the whole transformation journey. With a clear vision underpinned by a sound and well-thought-out strategy being driven by well-informed leaders, failure will be minimal, and the status quo will only be a rock band of a past era!
As part of the Spring 2024 ETF series of innovation-themed webinars for leaders. FE Associates will be hosting ‘Presentations with Impact: finding your winning formula for presentation success’ on Tuesday 5 March. Booking will open later in January and details will be available on the leadership programmes page of the ETF website.