A report for the University of the Arts, London
Pete Cranston
September 2010
becoming digital
Table of Contents
1
SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................................ 3
2
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 4
2.1
2.2
POISED FOR (DIGITAL) ACTION ..................................................................................................... 4
THE PROBLEM .............................................................................................................................. 4
3
THE DIGITAL DIMENSION .......................................................................................................... 6
4
CAPABILITIES AND RECOMMENDATIONS ........................................................................... 8
4.1
UAL ONLINE................................................................................................................................ 8
4.1.1 What it would look like ........................................................................................................... 8
4.1.2 How UAL scores ................................................................................................................... 14
4.1.3 Recommendations ................................................................................................................. 16
4.2
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS ................................................................................................... 18
4.2.1 What it would look like ......................................................................................................... 18
4.2.2 How UAL scores ................................................................................................................... 19
4.2.3 Recommendations ................................................................................................................. 19
4.3
BACK-OFFICE SYSTEMS.............................................................................................................. 19
4.3.1 What it would look like ......................................................................................................... 19
4.3.2 How UAL scores ................................................................................................................... 21
4.3.3 Recommendations ................................................................................................................. 22
4.4
ICT INFRASTRUCTURE ............................................................................................................... 23
4.4.1 What it would look like ......................................................................................................... 23
4.4.2 How UAL scores ................................................................................................................... 24
4.4.3 Recommendations ................................................................................................................. 25
4.5
LEARNING AND TEACHING ......................................................................................................... 26
4.5.1 What it would look like ......................................................................................................... 26
4.5.2 How UAL scores ................................................................................................................... 26
4.5.3 Recommendations ................................................................................................................. 27
4.6
DIGITAL CAPACITY IN THE STAFF BODY ..................................................................................... 28
4.6.1 What it would look like ......................................................................................................... 29
4.6.2 How UAL scores ................................................................................................................... 29
4.6.3 Recommendations ................................................................................................................. 30
4.6.4 Leading by example .............................................................................................................. 32
4.7
MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE ....................................................................................................... 32
4.7.1 What it would look like ......................................................................................................... 32
4.7.2 How UAL scores ................................................................................................................... 32
4.7.3 Recommendations ................................................................................................................. 33
5
APPENDICES .................................................................................................................................. 35
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
6
LCC ON TWITTER (WWW.TWITTER.COM/LCCLONDON) .............................................................. 35
CCW MEDIA LAB– A HYBRID PROJECT SPACE ........................................................................... 36
INFORMANTS ............................................................................................................................. 38
TERMS OF REFERENCE ............................................................................................................... 40
END NOTES .................................................................................................................................... 42
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1 Summary
This aim of this report is to outline a vision of a UAL that is
digital by default1. It draws on 17 days of research and
engagement in UAL, reviewing the wide range of
interconnected activities and processes that are in some way
affected by digital technologies. EB confirmed the crucial
strategic importance of this area to the University but was
unable to rate how UAL scores on a digital scale, on the basis
that different areas within UAL are at different levels. I suggest
that, in terms of its current position and taken as a whole, UAL is around the mid-point
on a scale of 1-10. While there are many areas of good practice as well as much high
quality innovation and development, change is constrained by business and
management processes and structures which are out of step with current realities; by
limited staff awareness of and engagement with the digital environment; by a
technology base that is not geared to support innovation and change and above all by
tensions between Colleges and Central Services over direction and ownership.
However, I rate UAL much higher in terms of potential for
rapid improvement. Significant resources have been
committed to addressing ICT constraints while projects
such as SICOM are addressing organisational processes
and standards Above all, there is experience, talent,
originality and energy within the staff – and student –
body that would, if harnessed and coordinated, enable
UAL to take a great leap forward, both in its own terms
and relative to its competitors. Importantly at this time, I
also believe that this effort would not require significant new investment. It would
however require commitment from all levels of management to leading change,
learning from and embedding good practice across UAL, coordinating more efficiently
between project streams and investing in staff capability. The report below:
 Identifies four areas where the boundaries between colleges and centre should
be reviewed and accountabilities clearly agreed
o
o
o
o
UAL’s public and internally facing web presences
Core, back office management systems
Access and Infrastructure
Teaching and learning
 Outlines a vision of what a digital UAL could look like in 20132, poised to respond
flexibly and effectively to future waves of change in the digital realm
 Proposes a coordinated activity programme, with recommendations in seven
areas
o
o
o
o
o
o
The UAL public digital footprint, including its social media presence
Internal communications
Back-office systems
ICT infrastructure
Teaching and Learning systems
Staff capacity, building on proposals for Digital Literacy standards and
training developed within UAL3
o Management
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2 Introduction
2.1 Poised for (digital) action
In terms of its digital posture, if UAL were a Greek statue, it would
be closer to one from the archaic period, standing firmly planted
with equal weight on either foot, the feet close together, than a
figure from a later period, standing poised at the point of moving
to a new state, ready for action. The core issue for UAL is not
how it is to catch up with the status quo, it’s already too late for
that, but how it is to become an organisation that responds
flexibly, creatively, efficiently, coherently and responsibly to future
developments in the converging worlds that are affected by
continuing rapid changes in digital technology. In this report I am
using the concept of organisational capability4 as a way to frame
the analysis since this captures the crucial issue that systemic
weaknesses across UAL have constrained its advance.
Through the research for this report I have formed the view that there is sufficient
experience, talent, originality and energy within the staff – and student – body to enable
UAL, as a whole and in its constituent parts, to take a great leap forward in both its own
terms and relative to its competitors. To harness this potential effectively, I believe,
requires a coordinated programme of activities to address the weaknesses and build
on the strengths. However, importantly at this time, I also believe that this effort would
not require significant new investment. It would however require acceptance that UAL
needs to advance across the whole range of what David Garcia (CCW) calls its digital
dimension. This would require commitment from all levels of management to
addressing holistically a range of interdependent issues, including business process,
authority and ownership, management, governance, technology and innovation, global
marketing; to putting in place systems and processes that ensure UAL can learn from
and embed good practice from both academic and service functions; to managing more
effectively the dependencies and resourcing of UAL’s multiple project streams and,
above all, investing in staff capability.
Without such a focused and coordinated programme of activities UAL would doubtless
continue to advance into the digital realm but in a somewhat flat-footed and random
way. The issue is whether UAL wants to accelerate out of its current trajectory.
Acceleration would mean drawing on reserves of energy and resources and applying
them to specific leverage points. In this report I identify what I believe are key leverage
points and suggest what resources and energy could be applied. I suggest what being
digital5 might feel like in UAL and, using the organisational capability framework, what
needs to happen for UAL to advance to that state rapidly enough to be in a leading role
by 2013.
2.2 The problem
I have researched and written parts of this study in a café with
wifi opposite 272 High Holborn. I am a typical digital citizen in
that I dip in and out of multiple streams of activity while I am
working, online and using my iPhone. For the price of a cup of
coffee, I research online or write on my £350 laptop; I chat,
interact with friends and colleagues across the globe on Twitter,
Facebook and LinkedIn (my comments appear simultaneously
on all three); I store my work and collaborate on projects using
online platforms, mostly for free; I consume video, pictures and
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audio, integrating elements from them, on the fly, into my work; I receive automated
alerts relating to changes in websites, news, people and places; I am continually
experimenting with new sites and services, usually recommended by contacts, which
regularly entails downloading software clients and updates; I support clients in longterm learning and knowledge management projects using different conferencing and
chat programmes, interacting with them real-time on shared, online platforms, building
wikis and editing blogs together; without necessarily registering it, I have become
resistant to poorly designed, ineffective, non-interactive, relatively static web platforms,
although as an independent my own threadbare blog site doesn’t actually constrain me
because this interlinking, social activity, and engagement with the Internet of flows has
generated for me new contacts and contracts.
While there are exceptions, it is generally
true to say that I would find it hard to
operate as freely and easily as a staff
member or student in UAL. And I am
certainly not in the first flush of youth: many,
many current and prospective students
have similar patterns – if narrower networks
- and a small but increasing number of UAL
staff try to operate in the same way. If
Digital means anything it means registering
and responding to this environment and set
of behaviours, profoundly different to the
one for which many of UAL’s current
structures, processes and plans were
conceived.
“There's no doubt that our emerging information
environment is more complex – in terms of numbers of
participants, the density of interactions between them,
and the pace of change – than anything that has gone
before. This complexity is not an aberration or
something to be wished away: it's the new reality, and
one that we have to address. …..our collective
mindsets in industry and government are not well
adapted for dealing with complexity. Traditionally,
organisations have tried to deal with the problem by
reducing complexity – acquiring competitors, locking in
customers, producing standardised products and
services, etc. These strategies are unlikely to work in
our emerging environment, where intelligence, agility,
responsiveness and a willingness to experiment (and
fail) provide better strategies for dealing with what the
networked environment will throw at you.”
John Naughten, Observer, 20/6/2010
There is a general consensus that UAL is underperforming in its digital profile. Yet
there are examples from across UAL of excellent practice in exploiting modern digital
technologies that typify the approach and energy which would place UAL in the
vanguard. However, the examples of good practice are scattered through parts of UAL,
have often been surprisingly hard to achieve and are not being built upon
systematically. At the same time there are a large number of guerrilla projects,
instances where frustrated – or sometimes simply independent-minded – staff have
developed their own online sites for teaching and project work. There is also a history
of colleges and departments funding software and online developments in such a way
that, at worst, they fail standard quality criteria, and at best they provide specific
functionality that is not shared across the institution.
However, before exploring these examples in more detail and reviewing options for
bringing the activity and innovation together more coherently, it is important to sketch
out the territory and features of the digital dimension.
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3 The Digital Dimension
Word cloud from the text below, generated using Wordle.com 6
In recent years we’ve seen fundamental shifts in the tools and technology people are
using to communicate, work and play. We live in a world where traditional print media
is in decline, Google is omnipresent, Facebook has unprecedented take-up, Twitter
sets the news agenda, the iPhone has reshaped mobile usage and the iPad looks set
to change the way we think about computers. These developments all have digital
technology at their centre, but the term Digital is used about a much wider realm than
technology. At one and the same time it can be used in connection with:
 the unifying impact of using a numerical code to represent real-world information,
illustrated by the range of material stored on my own iPhone (see below)
 the emergence of digital technologies, based on advances in electronics and
miniaturisation, resulting in the extraordinary growth of modern computers, by
which these codes are manipulated, copied and communicated at high speed
 the convergence in technology and media that resulted from these trends, along
with others such as compression software, illustrated by the fact that my iPhone is
actually a very powerful portable computer that can also communicate using radio
waves. For example, it can be a multi-functional reporting tool at conferences, used
for broadcasting live or recording video, to be uploaded for online viewing or
embedded into a blog or other open, collaborative platform, possibly with added
soundtracks and effects.
 the intersection of human social drivers with technology, entrepreneurship and
commerce from which has emerged the astonishingly rapid advance of online
social networks such as Facebook and Twitter
 a set of behaviours and associated underlying attitudes that have evolved as we
have interacted with - and influenced – changing technologies and applications that
dominate the web, such as YouTube, Google, Amazon and Facebook. Among
others, notions of privacy, connectedness, Intellectual Property rights and personal
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space are changing or being challenged, especially between and across
generations.
 some of the more powerful currents in globalisation, including the reducing
significance of geography and time-zones, international terrorism, global media
giants and stars, convergent and emergent generational cultures
 upheavals and corporate re-grouping in national and international media,
technology and service industries
I consume a lot of
media on my iPhone
when I travel. Using wifi
or the normal phone
channel I check email,
and catch up
on
snippets like test match
scores or weather
forecasts. I listen to
podcasts,
read
downloaded
news
stories,
and
watch
video clips. I have a
large collection of music, converted from
vinyl, copied from a CD or bought online, as
well as a collection of photos. I interact with
other people on the move using the phone
as a phone, texting, emailing and tweeting
- using SMS or a separate downloaded
application that tracks different groups and
issues. I often use Google maps or other
tools for directions to my final destination,
using the convenience of its location finder
functionality and still marvelling that it tracks
me in real time as I move. I wonder even
more at being able to identify the nearest
Thai restaurant by pointing the camera on the
phone and using augmented reality
applications, or playing with the Museum of
London application shown opposite which
displays historical overlays of locations.
Expressed more formally, UAL digital includes
 The development and delivery of digital content and media (delivered online or in
other platforms)
 The creation and management of large-scale datasets
 The creation and management of digital surrogates of physical things
 The delivery of teaching and learning services online
 The use of technology to enable back-office functions
 The management of access to and from the Internet for staff and students
 The supply of secure technology systems to protect University resources and
users
 The provision of tools for interaction, collaboration and user-generated content
 The usage of technical tools for monitoring and evaluation
 The arrangements for licensing and ownership of digital assets
 The challenges of long-term digital preservation and web archiving
 The emergence of new business models which depend on different technologies
and platforms (such as image licensing)
 The use of digital tools and platforms for marketing and brand management
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4 Capabilities and Recommendations
Keeping pace with the scale and pace of the digital wave is especially difficult for large,
established organisations. Their planning and budget cycles are designed for slower
moving times while their internal organisational divisions relate to previously
understood frontiers between disciplines and function. Pedagogically “digital collapses
interdisciplinary boundaries” (D. Garcia). Conversely, for IT, IS and web teams, digital
presents new platforms and tools that use technology but no longer fit within previously
agreed definitions of their remit.
In this main section of the report I focus on seven areas of capability that I believe UAL
should address as part of becoming digital:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
A digital footprint that conveys vividly and interactively the vibrancy and quality
of college programmes in a recognisable, coherent University brand.
Accessible and personalised internal communications for students and staff
based on communities of interest and practice, plus need-to-know information
Efficient, secure, universally used software systems that support core student
and staff management processes
ICT infrastructure and support systems that enable staff and students to travel
seamlessly between their home and work environments, using the most
common personal digital communicators or computers
An easy to use, flexible, open toolset to support learning and teaching that is
universally used because it saves staff time, provides accountability, enables
knowledge sharing as well as distance learning and teaching
A critical mass of staff use modern digital technologies confidently and capably
in their professional and personal lives
A coherent, future-focused, adequately resourced management structure that
ensures continued focus on becoming digital, coordinates programmes,
prioritises resources and schedules and enables shared learning between the
different elements of digital UAL
Tight or Loose
There is a common theme throughout the report which is the need to adjust the
balance between tight or loose management controls7 in the first five of these areas
and in particular, where there is no absolute need for tight controls, to genuinely let
staff loose to explore and enjoy the extraordinary vitality and richness of the Internet
ecosystem.8 That way innovation and advance comes, as testified by the examples of
good practice dotted through the University.
4.1 UAL online
A digital footprint that conveys vividly and interactively the vibrancy and quality of
college programmes in a recognisable, coherent University brand.
4.1.1 What it would look like
By 2012 www.arts.ac.uk will present users with a bright, contemporary-looking,
dynamic site. It will signpost clearly areas targeting standard information queries, which
will be linked to content structured hierarchically, starting with quick answers and
leading to more detailed information. Made up of a tapestry of blogs, videos, audio,
shows, and interviews, much of the content will differ from day to day, since it will be
fed from and authored by different sections within UAL. There will also be clear links to
college and/or project sites. Some of the college sites will look similar to the main site
while others will present a very different look and feel, expressing the personalities and
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distinctive identities of those colleges. Throughout, however, it will conform to
navigation and interface standards designed to ensure it is accessible to all potential
users. International students from UAL’s principal recruitment sources will find at least
standard UAL information content in their own language, and like the rest of the site,
the site will link to and reflect content from social media. Feeds to main content areas
and media types will be standard, and there will also be a series of widgets, some
customisable for different languages, that provide regular multimedia content reflecting
life at UAL and providing news updates.
4.1.1.1 Some pointers to UAL online 2.0
The homepage
changes daily:
as in the
current MIT
site, whose
“spotlight
exposes to the
world the
research,
technology and
education
advances
taking place at
the Institute
every day”. The
content is
provided from
across MIT
Different
identities
expressed via
a common
navigation
framework and
user interface,
as illustrated by
OxJam – an
Oxfam GB
Community
Fundraising
project using
the MySpace
social network,
where the page
structure is
defined by the
open platform 9
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Pigeons &
Peacocks from
LCF is an
example of an
arresting design
that projects a
college
specific
identity and
provides a
compelling
narrative, within
a minimal UAL
framework
Decentralised
content
generation
and ownership
with options to
do more than
simply provide
copy into a
standard
format, as in
this example
from the Yale
School of Art.
Yale uses a
wiki for it’s site.
Almost all
pages are
editable by
everyone,
within common
navigation
standards.
An active part
of the Internet
of flows,
linking, citing,
embedding and
annotating
images from
other people,
tagging or
‘favouriting’
media clips or
stories or
photos;
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Dialogue is the
expectation:
passive oneway
communication
has been
replaced with
interactivity and
conversation,
as shown here
in Paul Lowe’s
Ning10
community,
OPENi: a global
network of
visual
storytellers and
documentary
photographers.
Another
example from a
leader in its
field, investing
in a platform
built with a
global
audience in
mind:
balancing
localised and
multilingual
content with a
corporate
identity and a
dynamic
presence
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The UAL students
union has a style that
is becoming a standard
for such communityfocused sites,
encouraging people
to share their
experiences: whether
it’s sharing photos or
video, writing blog
posts, updating their
Facebook status, or
tweeting about what
they’ve done
4.1.1.2 Social Media & UAL
In Nairobi, the cost of a basic smartphone – enabling access to
the Internet – starts at US$2511. 1 Mb of data costs between
US$$ 0.02 to 0.10. ‘I use my phone for email and Facebook
status updates and I never use up all of the Mb’, said Tezira
Lore, a twenty-something African communications executive
working for an agricultural research organisation. Like her peers
across the globe, Tezira is constantly in touch with friends and
colleagues using social media (largely Facebook). They connect
over mobile phones or wi-fi, from their laptops. And it isn’t only
the young or those from larger urban areas: at a recent workshop
a Mozambican community worker was chatting on Facebook
during workshop sessions with an older, more experienced
colleague in Maputo to share what he was saying and bring in
her contributions.
Kenya isn't one of the largest sources of UAL students, yet, and Africa as a whole is
behind the rest of the world in its adoption of online media. Apart from being a startling
illustration of how rapidly the global 'digital divide' is narrowing in many places, the
relevance of this to UAL of this picture is that culturally this generation - and therefore
younger generations across Africa, as well as in the rest of the world - now operate
with Social Media as their primary form of online communication. For many of those
who haven't had access to the web, platforms such as FaceBook, Orkut (Brazil),
RenRen (China) or Ibibo (India) are an alternative route into the web.
This is particularly important in terms of UAL’s international recruitment, brand profile
and longer-term engagement with its international community. Social networks are now
expanding as fast in many parts of the world as they originally did in the US and UK.
Interestingly, the four countries where Facebook isn’t the leading social network are
amongst UAL’s top recruitment territories (China, Japan, Korea and Russia).
UAL is increasingly visible through the social media component of its digital footprint,
although not in a coordinated way. For example, the primary UAL Facebook group is
growing - 14,633 in July 2010 - and active. At the same time, like many organisations,
UAL has opened and is promoting a FaceBook page, which has 875 members12. But
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even a cursory search finds 100s of UAL related groups and pages. Some are college
sites, some are formally managed by parts of UAL – featuring courses or shows - but
many are informal, started and managed by current or ex-students. This diversity is
stimulating but experience from other organisations suggests there is a need to review
and define the UAL strategy for engagement with Facebook and other social media
sites. Questions to be considered include:
 Whether there should there be college pages and/or groups, as well as primary
UAL sites
 How UAL can – or should - track and stay in touch with the myriad sites that carry
its brand and other information as well as, probably more importantly,
conversations about UAL, which in turn show up on searches
 What resources UAL can put to managing these sites: it takes at least half to one
person day per week to manage an active Social Media space, given that the
currency in such spaces is comment and connection, which requires people to
read and respond to postings and requests.
 How that resource can be supported, and through which budgets
 Since the most powerful corporate communication in social media comes when
supporters, friends - or enemies - take on the cause of an institution, or an issue
with which it is associated, how UAL can engage with the myriad conversations
that relate to its work, and the multiple sites on which those conversations take
place
 What the relationship should be between UAL web site(s) and Social Media and
how they should connect, noting that there aren’t links from the UAL home page
nor consistently through the college sub-sites, which is unusual for a
contemporary website
The issue is as important for staff and their own connections as it is for students and
UAL's communication with them. Specialist, niche sites are a large and growing part of
web ecology. LinkedIn is finally reaching the critical mass necessary to make it more
generally useful for connecting, finding jobs etc. The UAL LinkedIn page has 415
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followers, more staff than students. Curiously, there is a disclaimer: "This page is not
endorsed by or affiliated with University of the Arts London", and it isn't easy to identify
the administrator. The same questions about resourcing, ownership and branding are
relevant to this and other social media sites such as the increasingly important - for
staff - of the specialist academic social spaces such as academia.edu, where a search
for UAL throws up lots of connections, as shown above. academia.edu, alongside other
related sites such as the huge network.nature.com, are growing in importance as
sources of connection, reputation and promotion.
Like most institutions, UAL is only partially in control of its digital footprint. Comprising
1000s of individual, searchable, archived web-references, such a composite image can
be manipulated to a certain extent, but at significant cost. UAL has to determine an
effective social media strategy in a time of growing austerity.
4.1.2 How UAL scores
Unusually, there is a lot of consensus across UAL about its main website. Arts.ac.uk
undersells UAL, is old-fashioned, non-interactive, minimally dynamic and, above all,
doesn’t “tell the story of the colleges”. It has no non-English content. It displays little of
the dynamism and traffic on UAL’s growing social media presence in Facebook, Twitter
and other niche sites, such as those developed in Ning. However, the imminent
deployment of the new Content Management System (CMS)13 and the re-orientation
being led by Dee Searle, the new Director of Communication, presents a once-in-threeyears opportunity to make the necessary radical changes.
This is not to say that there is no innovation at all: there is good and growing
collaboration across the college web teams and innovation is shared. “A recent good
example was LCF’s live video feed of the graduate catwalk show, complete with live
twitter feed. This generated good online buzz for LCF, demonstrated their awareness
of modern communication tools, and, critically, drove a lot of traffic back to the website
when individual designer profiles were highlighted as models went down the catwalk”14.
Social media is a major area for experimentation, partly because this is an area of
online activity which was too new to fall under the current tight management structures.
Looked at broadly, and given that this is new media in which most organisations are
finding their feet, I judge that UAL is in the mainstream in terms of spread and activity.
4.1.2.1 International online presence
The decentralised nature of UAL’s international
recruitment, involving local agents, complicates the
picture in relation to UAL web presences. Some
agents have their own web presence, and those do
not comply with UAL standards. They are,
appropriately enough, often in local language, which
makes it difficult to review and monitor what is being
said about UAL, and how. In terms of brand,
promotion and user experience the quality of these
sites varies enormously. Finally, they do not appear to
drive a lot of web traffic to UAL. Over the past year, the top ten referrers to the
international site, comprising 84%, are a mix of search engines and college sub- sites
(40%), with only 10% of those coming direct to the international pages.
International marketing are keen to increase direct, personal engagement with potential
students and, to some extent, their parents. The conferencing tool Webex is used to
communicate directly with schools and institutions. Alumni are a key part of UAL’s
international network, and although there is a strong and growing UAL alumni
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Facebook presence there is otherwise not at present a strong push to use social
media, international or local. The international page on the UAL site gets some small
traffic from Facebook.in, and other Facebook territory sites, while referrals from Orkut,
in common with other networks, may come from the generic ‘Studying in England’
profiles. I believe that these networks could play an important role, particularly if alumni
become active and engage with potential students in the environment where they
spend their time, so that students have familiar faces to connect to, “to pin their hopes
and dreams on”15. This is now conventional wisdom for similar activities in the UK, US
and parts of Europe where social media are widely used.
4.1.2.2 Showtime and Jotta.com
Both these products promote
student work – Showtime,
developed internally, and
jotta.com,
developed
externally.
“Showtime
provides
portfolio
display
functions
for
UAL
undergraduates
as
they
progress
through
the
University and, especially, as
they approach final exhibition
time. Jotta’s audience is the
wider community of creatives
graduating from any and all universities once they have completed their studies, and
therefore looking for a wider range of services than Showtime.”16 Both products are
professionally produced and well used. While there has been tension in the past, both
teams of developers are keen to interlink and cross-promote, as indeed was agreed in
June 2009. However, there are useful lessons to be learnt from looking at how Jotta is
different, in its development and ambitions.
Jotta’s aim is to inspire and foster
collaboration in art and design both
within and between disciplines. Jotta
does this online at jotta.com and offline
in the real world through events,
exhibitions and commissioned projects.
Like Showtime, Jotta.com is a bright,
well-structured,
active,
innovative
platform. It is already in its second
major redesign, with impressive growth
figures: in May 2010 I counted 6,604
profiles which, even allowing for
duplicates and dummies is dot.com fast
growth from a standing start in 2009.
There has been a lot of collaborative
activity amongst that community –
creation of products, site-specific
installations, group exhibitions, books,
symposia, and animations.
Jotta goes further than Showtime in its community ambitions and it that it typifies an
important trend in the linking of social media, websites and human interaction. It’s a
collaborative platform targeting the sweetspot exemplified by the Obama election
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campaign: a virtuous circle of online activity generating offline – physical, face to face –
activity that in turn generates more virtual activity which leads to more ‘embodied’
collaborations and so on. Jotta’s other distinctive characteristic is that it is now a private
company owned in part by UAL, private equity and the founders. It has a revenue
model, and although not at all self sufficient – it’s early days – it does generate revenue
which it is able to control and direct, which is in contrast to the reality for many internal
organisational developments where income goes into a general pot.
Jotta as a model is interesting for a digital strategy. It has been developed by an
independent agency, but one closely connected to the University. Like all autonomous
organisations jotta can be more flexible than sections or divisions inside a corporate
body; it is able to focus on its own self-defined goals as opposed to always aligning
itself with central strategies; jotta also carries its own risk of failure, which can lead to a
more single minded focus on operational goals: it stands or falls on the service it
provides, like fully commercial sites, whereas applications developed inside
organisations are sometimes not measured with an equivalent degree of rigour. Finally,
the space and the development of the application is beyond the University’s own
accountability for security and privacy while the links into CSM and later the whole
University means they can benefit from the innovation which can flourish in that kind of
open but bounded, loosely controlled space
4.1.3 Recommendations
From my research it is clear that the web team and the new Director are well-equipped
to make the necessary changes. They have experience and knowledge of good
practice and trends on the web. They are also starting from a position closer to those of
the colleges than was previously the case. From my conversations with the web teams
and a review of the current sites, I suggest recommendations to help guide the
changes:
1
Achieving a ‘bright contemporary feel’ is best achieved by enabling the bright,
contemporary staff and students in UAL to have a major say in how the site
should look and feel. This should begin at design, continue through launch (it is
becoming standard practice to have a comments page for new web launches)
and continue through regular surveys and focus groups.
2
There should be a minimum set of standards to deliver the best possible user
experience to which all UAL sites must conform. This could include, navigation,
User Interface design and Information Architecture, some elements of design (for
the common areas), media embedding, preferred coding techniques, website url
structure, copyright / IP, search, course information (feeding from the SICOM
project).
3
Within that framework, Colleges with the resources and will to do so should be
free to develop a unique look and feel, to tell their story in their own terms.
4
When the planned brand refresh is complete, the central UAL site should be
more loosely connected to brand design principles than currently. To stay
dynamic, the site needs to be able to vary design and content.
5
Innovation: I believe that innovation from the web team should be focused on
user experience and access. UAL should explore:
 Developing ‘widgets’, portable content objects and feed containers that can be
placed on other sites, whether mainstream web or social media, and
showcase UAL material. These could be constructed so that their frame
advertises or describes the content in languages other than English while the
content is fed from the standard UAL sites. This will be particularly important
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for international recruitment since they can provide standardised content on
non English-language and other local websites.
 Ensuring that the UAL sites are accessible from convergent devices such as
Smartphones and Tablet computers
 Developing applications for Smartphones which provide information or
services (fashion show dates, location aware UAL mapping and navigation)
and/or showcase UAL material dynamically
6
“Do what you do best, link to the rest”17: a key aim for all the sites should be to
showcase the richness and diversity of UAL creative output while at the same
time embedding UAL into the Internet of flows. Arts.ac.uk should be springy, not
sticky. The web teams should avoid the trap of seeking to build an enormous
database of content but achieve the goal through aggregating and linking to
content from the ever-growing number of web presences where UAL work
appears, and driving traffic to those sites, in order to reward their authors for the
effort of publishing content. The use of feeds, therefore, should be increased –
feeds open new sources of traffic for sites – but also because they impact on
search and other rankings. Given that, in the year to August 2010, around 42%
of traffic to arts.ac.uk comes from search engines this is an important
consideration.
7
Social Media: as well as their promotional potential, the main opportunity
presented by social media sites is for building community and increasing
engagement.
a. Current practice in social media should be reviewed and a strategy
developed for coordinating, monitoring and evaluating activity. An important
output from this review should be case study material, such as the case
study in Appendix One from Michelle Lukins of LCC on setting up the LCC
Twitter account.
b. The relationship between the main websites and social media presence
should be reviewed, aiming to:
 reflect the diversity and energy of social media on the websites in a more
comprehensive and dynamic way than at present, where there are simply
links to specific sites. This could include using widgets or feeds or
considering more radical options such as having parts of the sites
constructed specifically for students given over largely to social media
presentations
 identify ways in which referrals from social media to UAL sites can be
increased.
8
There should be a review of the relationship between Showtime and Jotta.
Involving CLTAD, college web teams and the Jotta team this review should be
located within the context of CLTAD’s review of e-portfolios and the development
of the student portal by IS. The review should
a. Find ways to marry the strengths of the existing platforms and engage the
whole University community in their development and use as part of the
development of an e-portfolio environment (see below).
b. Review what level of personalisation will be provided, and through which
combination of platforms.
9
Work with IS, CLTAD and other relevant UAL units to review the organisational
and technical implications of open data trends and directives.
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10 Staffing issues: the structure of the central web team may need to be reviewed,
acknowledging in particular the need for a senior post within Communications
whose remit covers the complete range of the UAL digital footprint, including
social media, sites relating to international promotion and recruitment, as well as
access to UAL through convergent technologies such as Smartphones and
tablet. The aim of this post would not be to attempt to control this diverse output
but to communicate with the different teams, ensure that knowledge is shared
about good and bad experiences and flag up to senior management overlaps,
resource competition and potential risks. To support this role, the central web
team will need to include social media, content and technical integration skills.
11 All web specialists, including the central web team should play a more pro-active
role in training
12 International presence: I believe there should be increased investment in:
a. A review of UAL’s international and multi-lingual web presence and digital
activities to clarify medium-term needs and opportunities.
b. Coordinating and, as much as possible, aligning and harmonising
international sites promoting UAL. Clearly, UAL cannot dictate to its
independent agents except where there is an authorised web presence or
sites are run from the UK. However UAL could provide good practice
guidelines and recommend strongly that agents follow them. Widgets can
play a role here
c.
In discussion with the International team, translating core static informational
and promotional content, starting with the most important recruitment
languages (Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Russian and possibly
Hindi18) and progressively increasing the amount of non-English content. to
include other available for prospective students, their families and other
partners.
4.2 Internal Communications
Accessible and personalised internal communications for students and staff based on
communities of interest and practice, plus need-to-know information
4.2.1 What it would look like
Klaus is a lecturer and researcher in typography19. Originally
from Bremen, Klaus started work twenty three years ago in
printing and graphic design. He is not particularly comfortable
with technology. He uses email or his mobile phone for
communication – he uses SMS a lot – and word processes his
documents. Apart from that Klaus doesn’t use digital tools for
his creative work except where he has to, and hasn’t learnt
more than he has to about the Teaching and Learning toolset: he can’t change his
password, for example, and has only minimal profile information.
In 2013, when Klaus logs on he is met with a screen that gives him a three views of the
UAL systems. His personal profile, derived from his membership of a college and a
school, gives him his timetable on his screen along with any urgent messages from
students. He knows his students have a similar log-in screen with their own timetables
along with messages from him and other staff members. The community section of his
homepage displays alerts and messages that he has signed up to receive. That
includes notes from the online communities of practice he belongs to, events he is
interested in, discussions around topic areas he engaged, updates from ongoing
projects as well as calls for new ones and information about jobs and staff changes.
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His students have a similar range of options. Finally, Klaus gets a limited amount of
communication from the University, information that it is essential for him to know
including official messages and practical information.
In general, although sceptical initially, Klaus is impressed with the improvements,
recognising that it saves time and makes administration easier. He was recently given
a Google phone by his children. He is unaware that he is using the Google Open
Source operating system, Android, nor is he interested in the bewildering range of
applications and communities that it opens up for him. One of his children has gone
back to Germany and the other is teaching in New Delhi. They installed Google’s video
conferencing application to stay in touch. It also means that Klaus is able to review his
timetable and messages while he is moving between UAL sites, though he remains
unconvinced that this feature makes a lot of difference. It does mean, however that he
is able to benefit from the programme put in place to implement UAL’s vision of its staff
and students moving seamlessly from the online world to the physical world of teaching
and learning, with information and communication animating teaching and learning.
4.2.2 How UAL scores
There is general consensus that UAL needs to overhaul its internal communications.
This was highlighted recently by one of the working groups in the leadership
development project (LDP) which identified internal communications as a priority. They
surveyed staff and found that communications organisation and processes are
fragmented; people feel isolated yet, at the same time, they both fail to get the
information they need and are bombarded by too much information that they don’t want
or need. The LDP project indicated a range of reasons for this, of which the lack of
appropriate digital tools and communications is an important one. The proposed
introduction of the staff and student portal has the potential to address many of these
issues but, as with all portals, it is the quality of the supporting systems, design and
content that will determine whether staff and students are able and willing to engage
with it.
4.2.3 Recommendations
To function effectively, the internal communication function has to be resourced
properly, with responsibilities and accountabilities clearly defined. This is likely to
require resources equivalent to a full-time staff member (FTE), for content generation
and curation as well as activities and materials. UAL has a particularly complex array of
internal and quasi internal audiences (including staff at colleges and centrally, students,
alumni and supporters), so any systems and processes must be constantly reviewed
and updated to ensure that they continue to address the needs of these diverse
audiences and stakeholders.
4.3 Back-office systems
Efficient, secure, universally used software systems that support core student and staff
management processes
4.3.1 What it would look like
It’s April, 2012. Jay from Morristown New Jersey20, just
leaving High School, finds out about UAL online. Jay is
more motivated by wanting to have an experience in
London than any awareness of UAL or any of its
colleges and finds UAL through a web search about
studying abroad. She fills in a form online (choosing not
to have it filled in by UAL staff in person or over the
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phone), presuming unquestioningly that the information she enters will be the basis for
her subsequent journey through the University. By the time she arrives, her parents
have chosen from the range of payment options to pay her first year fees in full, online,
and set up a direct debit for her first term accommodation. Once enrolled, her ID gives
her access to the student portal where she can review her programme, see profiles of
her tutors, contact staff from her course, connect with the students Union and of
course see and link to social networks in which UAL staff, students and alumni are
active. She herself is an avid user of Facebook and is pleased to see that Facebook
has the same status as other sites in terms of access to UAL staff and advisors.
However, whenever she chooses to connect to an external resource she is warned that
she is leaving a secure space and may have to log in again if she wishes to access her
personal data or university records.
As she progresses in UAL jay.arts.ac.uk gives her access to her student assessment
record, the online components of her course and the standard University set of online
collaboration tools. It also gives her access to the college resources available for her
programme, some of which have a very different look and feel, and reassure her that
she is joining a culture which she likes, as the University site seems anonymous to
someone used to a small college. In fact, as she passes into her programme, she
spends most of her time online in sites connected to her course, working with tutors
and students across a range of Internet and local platforms. She takes for granted that
the system will do what she needs to flourish at UAL. She was able to amend the
financial arrangements when her personal circumstances changed and takes for
granted that her assessment record – including records of her tutorials - is up to date.
The connections between the college sites and the UAL personal online promotion
spaces (POPS)21 – she had an account as soon as she had an ID - means that by halfway through her course Jay is already having conversations with people outside the
University about her work, and is pleased that her parents were able to brag about the
work she had chosen to make publically accessible. Over the final part of her course
the well structured, personalised community facilities in the UAL POPS means that she
connects and hears about the work of alumni and other students as well as potential
projects and exhibitions. On leaving, her ID gives her permanent access to a space
where all her work and records are available, as well as news generated by feeds from
alumni, UAL and related online spaces, and carries summaries of other alumni
achievements.
Also, in March 2012, Michel, who is a practising artist and curator
from Belo Horizontale in Brazil22, is thinking about coming to teach
Fine Art at CSM, although she has also heard about Chelsea
College as an alternative. She’s highly engaged with technology,
and like most of her friends, has been active on Orkut23 since her
late teens. Her current work, as well as a large archive, is already
online. She engaged online with some people at CSM and Chelsea
while she was curating an event on migration and identity. After
checking out their online profiles and portfolios Michel invited some
of the UAL group to join in with a couple of her encontros via their
web cams, and share their own work on the theme. Michel talked about it on Orkut and
UAL’s CRM system picked up the reference. When a vacancy came up at CSM it
automatically sent her an invitation to connect. The reference to an entity called UAL
confused her but she was sufficiently interested in the post to explore further. The job
information links to a bright, modern looking, multi-lingual UAL sub-site that gives her
information about the college and UAL, links to video interviews with staff and students
about life in London and the University as well as recruitment and other relevant
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policies. She has been able to connect online with some of the staff in the programme
and is looking forward to the first formal video interview.
2007: this story contrasts with the real experience
of a current UAL course tutor from the US who
had heard of CSM and applied for a job from
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/. She had never heard of
UAL, and indeed didn’t hear of UAL until a month
after she started. She is proudly a geek but, in
preparing for the interview, she couldn’t find any
information on what the process was all about –
which of course differs in significant ways from the
process in the US; she wasn’t even told whether
the plane ticket from the US would be reimbursed.
She couldn’t prepare for the interview properly, in
the way that she would have expected: she didn’t
know who her colleagues were going to be, find a list of staff nor the kind of open,
friendly profile she expects, like the one above from MIT. She couldn’t find examples of
student work or get a sense of the culture of the institution. She knew the work and
reputation of some her future colleagues but couldn’t see if she would be working with
them (she was) or indeed that she would be interviewed by someone she knew of and
whose work she respected. She could see the course handbook but, as an outsider,
she found the language opaque (what is a learning outcome?) and couldn’t get a sense
of what teaching is like in the UK and UAL. Although she only received the invitation to
the interview three days in advance CSM weren’t willing to do even a preliminary
interview on video. She persevered because she really needed a job in London but
would have been put off otherwise.
4.3.2 How UAL scores
2010: in reality, and typically of UAL
across the whole digital domain, there is
progress towards the 2012 scenario but
unevenly. For example, there are
examples of CSM student work on
YouTube24
and
research
profiles
25
available from the main site - though not
as immediately accessible as the MIT
example. Had our tutor applied for a postgraduate programme in LCF, she could
have seen the excellently produced
videos from the course tutors.
There are two narratives about how close UAL is to enabling such scenarios fully. On
the one hand, as Kevin Garner of IS put it, “the University hasn’t had a good
experience of robust Business Case and project management”. The historically poor
delivery of IS systems has generated intense frustration which, at best, results in a
deep scepticism about the likely success of the current, large, portfolio of system
developments. At worst it leads to continued unofficial or semi-official software
developments as colleges attempt to give themselves systems which are fit-forpurpose as well as strong pressure from colleges to own and manage systems, such
as student recruitment, that are business critical.
On the other hand, I have found convincing the presentations from IS, well documented
and supported by other colleagues in central services, notably CLTAD, which suggest
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that the major process bottlenecks have been identified - in particular multiple student
identities and non-integrated core business systems. These are being addressed
through a tightly managed, interconnected series of projects, key parts of which will be
in place by mid 2011. EB’s significant resource commitment to a raft of IS projects,
reversing historically inadequate, low levels of IT investment, suggests a similar level of
confidence in the improved management systems since reorganisation. (It is for that
reason that the student personas have come forward from 2013 to 2012)
Of course this is one of the most crucial areas for progress in the digital dimension:
1. Generally speaking, while digital is far wider than the traditional remits of IS or
IT, which has implications discussed below, effective, efficient, robust, secure
software systems are a necessary pre-condition for UAL to become digital in
any real sense.
2. More specifically relevant to UAL is the damage caused by the frustration
referred to above. There is always a strong case that software systems can
deliver core business processes more efficiently and cheaply if developed and
managed from one point in an organisation. There is also a lot of experience
and history which suggests that entities such as individual colleges, whose core
business is teaching, research and learning, have insufficient resources and
experience to be able to develop professional IS and IT resources of sufficient
depth to deliver or manage scalable, robust, secure, management systems.
However, until there is clear evidence that IS systems projects will be delivered
on time and in budget, pressures for independent systems will continue,
diverting resources and attention from college’s own core business and
competencies, as has been the case in the recent past.26
4.3.3 Recommendations
I hesitate to comment on an area that has been analysed and planned in enormous
detail by professional specialists and about an IS programme about which I have only a
general outline. However, success in this area is crucially important to UAL’s digital
aspirations. Therefore I suggest the following short set of recommendations
1. I strongly believe that UAL needs a central IS infrastructure and would argue
against decentralised system development – or procurement – of management
systems supporting students and staff as they progress through UAL.
2. In consultation with IS it became clear that to help clarify boundaries and
accountabilities UAL needs to define and agree an information architecture that
identifies:
 Core systems that will be provided centrally for efficiency and security
reasons
 Systems from which colleges can choose to opt in or out
3. There is a substantial amount of current software system and ICT infrastructure
activity, with complex dependencies, that also competes for attention and
resources in the critical non-IS areas. Yet in this area, as in others, I was
surprised that I was the person bringing news to UAL staff about developments,
plans and progress. IS programme management practice suggests that
 Progress towards milestones in a programme of this size should be
reported quarterly to senior and middle management.
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 There should be a well-resourced communications strategy that raises the
profile of the programme, explains its implications and prepares staff for
implementation.
4. Complex internal programmes depend on effective coordination at middle
manager level, managing dependencies and prioritisation within the context of
current organisational structure and processes.
 Many organisations achieve this by establishing a dedicated, cross
functional, central project team, reporting to Director or high level Project
Board.
 An alternative might be to identify and mandate a small group of
operational managers to meet regularly and report directly to an EB
member, or a high level Project Board.
5. Programmes such as this, which aim to increase integration between systems,
clearing bottlenecks and breaking down barriers, raise issues of ownership and
management processes. When Finance and Payroll, for example, are separate
systems, with a manual link, then management lines are clear. When data
starts to travel automatically through multiple systems it is imperative that
ownership is clarified. Is there consensus, for example where responsibility lies
for quality control of the ‘student ID’ entity, which is to be the key to integrating
student support systems? The governance and ownership of organisational
information affected by current and planned IS developments needs urgently to
be reviewed and clarified, as suggested in discussions with IS.
4.4 ICT infrastructure
ICT infrastructure and support systems that enable staff and students to travel
seamlessly between their home and work environments, using the most common
personal digital communicators or computers.
4.4.1 What it would look like
In 2013, Michel and Jay, as they traverse the college, are constantly able to connect to
internal UAL resources and the external Internet, using wifi or cable connections. All
college resources, including printers and library search and materials, are available
once they have logged in. They and their peers use a miscellany of devices: traditional
laptops, tablet computers (the Indian manufactured, cheap, iPad clone seems the most
popular); and smart phones – though the boundary between what is a phone and a
tablet continues to blur. When Jay had her tablet stolen she was able to borrow one of
the college loan machines, although the long term loan machines had been taken up by
‘widening participation’ students27.
There is one restriction, though, that Michel in particular finds a little annoying. When
she wants to experiment with new software, which often entails downloading software
clients, she has to sign out of the University resource systems. She is still able to
access the web from within UAL, and download clients to her own machine, but has to
log in again to continue working with UAL resources. Michel is also active in
downloading material and programmes from the open web and has found the other
main restriction, which is that on a couple of occasions her UAL account was locked
when the system detected a potential security risk. Michel had to have her machine
checked, and on one occasion cleaned of a virus, but as there are IT staff in all the
main college sites, this wasn’t a problem.
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4.4.2 How UAL scores
While the Matisse system and UAL LAN provide access throughout UAL, one of the
two most common complaints I have heard is to do with limited access to the Internet.
This doesn’t affect staff who only want to surf, access public material or connect to
social media: it constrains staff who want to experiment and innovate. As such it is a
major barrier to UAL becoming digital. There are other concerns, such as non
availability of printers and some resources; speed of machines and access in certain
situations and circumstances; difficulties in streaming video, as at LCC; and access to
some internal resources from outside the University. These I would classify as
business-as-usual for an IT department and I believe are likely to be resolved in due
course, as resources become available.
As with 4.2 above, there is a strategy and ongoing programme in place to address the
issue of controlled access, as illustrated below. From a limited exposure I judge the
strategy and accompanying project management framework has the potential to
resolve most of the issues identified in relation to access, and there has long been
agreement that UAL needs a ‘sandpit’ for experiment and innovation, although this has
yet to be delivered. This latter will ease the problem in the short term but it may not
create an open enough environment to fully energise digital innovation and creation.
That is why I constructed a hypothetical solution in the scenario above, for Michel,
which would constrain her only to a limited extent.
The issue of access to new tools, with the ability to experiment and offer pilot
environments, is one of the most important to resolve. The record is discouraging: that
it has taken three years to get an approved internal blog platform in place is appalling.
In 2007, we achieved that in a morning at Oxfam GB, contracting an external hosting
supplier and setting up a test environment, on which we then prototyped a production
environment, on which we went live after three months. Evidently it involved time – not
much –from a technical specialist, but in UAL there is sufficient expertise outside IS, in
the college web teams and teaching staff. This issue is the second major cause of
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guerrilla platforms, which in themselves are not necessarily a bad thing – a slightly
underground, below the radar feel is often associated with creativity and innovation n
organisations.28 It is the wasted time and energy, the frustration and resultant
unproductive tension as well as the stifling of the creative impulse that are damaging.
It must be stressed immediately that senior IS staff are aware of this issue and working
to change it (and I haven’t talked to other IS staff so it may also be true across the
teams). But this is one of the most sensitive areas to be addressed because it is to do
with the culture of a specialist profession, relating to identity as well as perceptions of
responsibility and accountability. Although most of the tools I have discussed rest on
digital technology they are not any more IT tools, and thus the responsibility of an IT
Department, than a car is the responsibility of a tarmac specialist or road engineer. It is
imperative that the culture changes to one where IT staff pride themselves in being
able to deliver the most recondite research or test environment, secure in the
knowledge that they will not be held accountable for what it is used. This accountability
is also a management issue, since responsibility has to be located somewhere in the
University, and processes such as disclaimer forms put in place.
An interesting case study is
provided by the UK Foreign &
Commonwealth office, which
has been experimenting and
developing an active social
media presence. This, by
definition, requires more or less
unfettered access. The FCO
addressed this in two ways:
 Having
two
network
segments: to engage in
eDiplomacy FCO staff must
log into a separate network
to the secure FCO one
 Basing procedures on the principle of ‘assumed competence’, meaning that staff at
all levels are encouraged to experiment, join networks and publish without
restrictions. There are guidelines, and sites are monitored regularly so that material
can be removed if necessary, but by trusting in their staff FCO has become an
acknowledged leader in Public eDiplomacy
4.4.3 Recommendations
The ICT access projects must deliver. My judgement is that if there are significant
delays pressure will increase and resources will be found so I make a working
assumption that they will resolve most of the issues over the next two years. Therefore
I have only three linked recommendations:
1. Implement as soon as possible the ‘sandpit’ for uncontrolled experimentation
by staff – and students – licensed by their colleges. Other organisations have
found it useful to put in place light and simple procedures to provide those
licences, ensuring there is management visibility and accountability should
there be any serious problems.
2. Invest in a more detailed examination of how to manage the security risks
posed by the Michel scenario above. The circled area in the infrastructure
outline diagram above depicts the core of the current proposed solution. The
unassumingly named ‘load balancer’ is potentially both a bottleneck and a
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security weak point and so it needs to be examined and tested. However, in
the longer term, UAL needs to be able to segment in some way infrastructure
zones into areas which must be kept secure and others that enable unfettered
access and experimentation.
3. Reflect as a Department on how digital is changing boundaries and consider
whether there is a need to review and change processes and styles of
response and, if so, how to achieve it.
4.5 Learning and teaching
An easy to use, flexible, open toolset to support learning and teaching that is
universally used because it saves staff time, provides accountability, enables
knowledge sharing as well as distance learning and teaching.
4.5.1 What it would look like
In 2013 UAL staff have a wide choice of tools and environments for collaborative work
with students. There is a default toolset, with supporting documentation, online tutorials
and videos as well as support from staff in CLTAD. The set includes wikis, Blogs, social
bookmarking, mapping tools, video and audio recording and editing platforms, semiautomated feed management systems – the whole web 2.0 suite. This default
environment interconnects with the assessment system and POPS (for promotion of
student work), which streamlines administration.
The UAL open courseware repository is building a global reputation. Staff are keen to
engage, especially with the growing partnership and job opportunities internationally,
notably across East and South Asia, for which global profile is important. This, along
with the growth of online and blended learning programmes, explains the enthusiastic
uptake of the automated systems that, with permission, record staff lectures and makes
them available digitally for later editing.
Michel uses a mix of the UAL set and her own preferred assembly of Internet based
tools, many of which are Open Source. Michel and her students in fact are not really
aware of which systems they are using, collaborating freely within and outside the
University on their projects. The recently installed alerts system, which links to external
email systems as well as SMS, has greatly eased communication between staff and
students since UAL's liability is no longer met simply by the internal email of the new
“Whiteboard” system. This Chinese platform is fast becoming the market leader, partly
because of its inbuilt multilingual support, but also because it embraced the modular,
open architectures of Open Source pioneers such as Moodle29.
4.5.2 How UAL scores
This is one of the areas in which, with a forward looking vision, UAL has advanced the
furthest. As with the website, there is a marked degree of consensus across UAL that
the current environment needs to be improved, with projects underway that are
exploring options. Blackboard, is being updated to a newer version, which may
increase the number of staff who use it actively – estimated at around or under 50% beyond its administrative functions. As already mentioned, Blogs and wikis are
commonly used. The online learning environment, WIMBA, is fully featured and
innovators such as Paul Lowe (LCC) are active users. However, implementing UALwide systems is constrained by the lack of consistency across courses and
programmes, although this is being addressed by SICOM. There is also support,
certainly within CLTAD, for a mixed environment, combining some centrally provided,
default solutions with open systems. For example, in courses managed by Paul Lowe
(LCC) the approved university collaborative learning environment, Wimba, is used in
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becoming digital
conjunction with the Ning communities
illustrated above (4.2.2.1). Further,
there is a view that entirely separate
developments, such as David Sims’
Doing
Graphics
site30
depicted
opposite, are valuable additions to the
mix, as long as staff are aware and
capable of managing the consequent
risks (CLTAD are preparing guidelines
on risks of using open tools). It has to
be noted that such systems are not
integrated with UAL systems, which
has implications for staff and students
in terms of standard processes such as
student registration and assessment.
There are a range of ongoing major developments, including:
 The study into common assessment system needs, involving Registry, IS,
CLTAD & academic affairs (QA), although the lack of uniformity in assessment
points, course structure and organisation is a major complication
 Student E-portfolio
 Open Educational Repository, linking to the research repository
 Survey into VLE
All of these projects relate to and depend on the development of a student portal by IS.
4.5.3 Recommendations
Once more, the staff most closely involved are aware of the strengths and weaknesses
of the current systems and are working at a detailed level to address the issues. There
is recognition that systems need to bridge the span between the digitally unaware and,
via plug-in options, cater to a wider group that want to do more challenging things.
Given my positive findings I only have two comments to make:
1. Process and System: Technical problems are resolvable, given adequate
resources and effective project management. However, it is generally true that
aligning underlying business processes is more complex than developing new
IS systems intended to support and make them more efficient. This appears, for
example, to be the case with course structures and organisation. There is
demand for systems but it is difficult to see how standard IS solutions will work
unless there is absolute commitment to standardising underlying processes.
2. Managing innovation and change: I believe that there are valuable lessons to
be learnt from the relationship between CLTAD and other sections of the
University. If there is anything standard about Web 2.0, it is the principle that
innovation and good practice is emergent, built from small scale, often personal,
sometimes oppositional experiments, generally collaborative and frequently reusing tools available on the internet. This happens in the open Internet but it is
also an excellent model for organisations where, as in this case, a central body
is monitoring, testing, learning from and collaborating with individuals and
teams who are heading in new directions. The new/proposed CCW Media Lab
also embeds this approach at its core, along with a determination to seek the
kind of external support and partnership that has been so important in the
development of Jotta. The same pattern appears to be strongly supported in
CMS, centring on the Innovation and Digital Teams.
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4.5.4 A visualisation of digitalUAL
Rebecca Ross of CSM drew this summary of our discussions over several meetings:
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4.6 Digital capacity in the staff body
4.6.1 What it would look like
In 2013 a critical mass of staff use modern digital technologies confidently and capably
in their professional and personal lives. They are active in online communities; used to
communicating with each other and students across a range of channels, including
phone, SMS, Skype or similar and video-conferencing; they are comfortable working
and mixing together different digital media, including text, photo, audio and video; able
to engage critically with a range of online and other digital information resources.
They have a good understanding of what being digital means to their students and their
consequent expectations of digital resources and approaches from UAL. They are
aware of major trends in the digital realm, able to engage students and their peers in
discussions about its risks and opportunities. Many of these staff belong to the active
UAL Knowledge Sharing communities, which often also include students. These
communities meet face to face and online, using a range of collaborative tools, sharing
new ideas and experiments, asking questions and developing proposals for new
projects.
4.6.2 How UAL scores
The 2005 survey of IT skills suggested that
the majority of staff were ‘behind the curve
in terms of comfort in technology’31. In
terms of the digital, there was a general
consensus among staff interviewed that,
while the profile of UAL staff probably
conforms to a standard technology
adoption curve illustrated opposite, the
overall level of understanding of the digital tools and platforms is low and, importantly,
there is little in-depth understanding of the genuine opportunities and risks presented
by new environments nor an awareness of standard practice in responding to them.
Nonetheless there are many examples of outstanding work, from across UAL, which
reflects the depth of skills and experience that could be used as a basis for increasing
awareness and skills within the overall staff body, and not only in the specialist web
teams already cited. There has also been a lot of innovation within colleges as part of
teaching and learning activities. As shown above, this includes experimenting with
complete Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), the integration of social media into
learning programmes and experimentation with continually evolving open source
software tools in project work, as in the ground-breaking ‘speedo pavilion’ from this
years Chelsea programme, illustrated below.
Colleges and courses which
inhabit the digital dimension for
their core learning activities,
such as large parts of LCC and
CSM
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Chelsea: Swimsuit
pavilion + integrated
digital treatment
courses and programmes –
stage lighting, for example –
for which digital access is of
minor importance
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However, while many of these innovators meet and exchange information, there is
limited, systematic transfer of knowledge and skills between these islands of
excellence, especially between academic and service teams. Nor are there
mechanisms in place to recognise and promote digital excellence more formally so
innovators are recognised by their peers and a small group of connections but the
University as a whole doesn’t review or learn from their work nor are lessons
systematically imported into the mainstream.
4.6.3 Recommendations
I believe that the overall base level of
awareness and skill needs to be raised across
UAL, as depicted opposite, while recognising
that there will, of course, always be enormous
variation in how people use and engage with
digital tools. Even those who are not interested
or confident to be active digitally will need,
minimally, to be aware
 of how their students use digital and online tools;
 that that using these tools will become increasingly central to teaching, learning
and administration;
 of the opportunities and risks presented by digital tools and environments.
I suggest four strands of activity
4.6.3.1 Digital Literacy Competency Framework
Develop a UAL specific framework of Digital Literacy competencies, to be used as a
standard for new staff recruitment and as a point of reference for staff and their
managers in relation to personal development.
Core Competencies
From a number of sources, Paul Lowe (LCC), supported by Lindsay Jordan
(CLTAD) has synthesised a set of core competencies which, he suggests, would
equip people to deal in the digital world. They are a very useful basis for
discussion.
Curate
 Find – Internet search, Wikipedia, Google scholar, e resources, image
textbook, etc
 Filter – RSS feeds and Readers, iGoogle homepages
 Collate/collect – social and personal bookmarking, mind-mapping, online
storage
Critique
 Assess the validity/authenticity of sites/information
 Reflect on ones own practice and that of one’s peers – blogs, forums etc
Create
 Create – make digital content, including audio, image, text, website, blog,
video, wikis
 Protect – copyright, privacy, digital footprint
Collaborate
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 Collaborate – e.g. wikis, Blogs, Project Management (e.g. Basecamp)
Communicate
 Share /disseminate/ distribute – wiki, blog, discussion forum, email, Twitter,
Facebook/social networks
 Promote – Twitter, blog, Facebook/social networks, and email
4.6.3.2 Digital Competency Survey
Survey the staff to assess levels of interest, engagement and capacity in digital tools
and platforms.32
4.6.3.3 Staff Development
In conjunction with CLTAD and other staff development programmes, and building on
existing initiatives such as the IT up-skilling programme, design and develop a two year
programme of activities, addressing two specific target groups 33
1. A large general audience who could benefit from an increased awareness of the
opportunities and risks presented by new digital tools and platforms. The aim
would primarily be to bridge the gap between the digital profile of students and
staff, looking, for example at:
 social networking and other online social and collaborative tools
 how students navigate and collect information, personalise their online
spaces and use media
 tools and techniques used more specifically in art and design
 techniques and platforms typical of particular demographics, including
tagging, feeds and mash-ups
 the potential benefits and risks from this range of activity, as well as good
practice in responding to issues and uncertainties presented by students
 the pedagogic implications
It would be interesting to explore how students could be involved in such training.
2. A smaller, less homogenous audience who are interested in learning how to
exploit these tools, platforms or approaches. There are already activities going
on in UAL which can be extended to include digital literacy training
 Informal courses and peer mentoring
 During existing community building, learning and teaching days
 Work with the developing online community of e-learning users, to
collaborate and share practice
 Contribute material to the open materials repository
 Embed the use of new tools (blogs, wikis, collaborative research tools such
as Delicious, online communities such as academia.edu) into professional
development activities
4.6.3.4 Learning, Sharing and Knowledge Management
SICOM
and
other
change
projects
acknowledge and promote the importance of
social learning in sharing and developing
good practice. This should be extended to
include a stream of activity on developing
digital across UAL, developing and activating
communities of practice and communicating
internally about digital. At the same time,
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organisational learning of this kind is best supported by some kind of online repository
of information, case studies, contacts, proposals, presentations (on and offline) of
innovations etc. Shown above is Diplopedia, a very successful, wiki-based internal
resource developed by the US State Department. It has set a new standard but there
are 1000s of examples of simpler systems using wikis or blogs, or some other set of
collaboration tools.
4.6.4 Leading by example
This mix of staff awareness and engagement is a necessary pre-condition for the kind
of whole-institution flexibility and responsiveness to digital innovation that I believe can
transform UAL’s position into a leading player in digital arts and design. However, it
needs senior management leadership: starting perhaps, for example, with awareness
sessions for the Executive Board, and reporting them – using video interviews and
quotes on an internal blog – to promote the activity. It also requires the usual mixture of
carrot (good software, recognition) and stick (mandatory for new staff, providing all
information and administrative processes online).
Many of these recommendations fall into the ‘Business as Usual’ category and while
they will require a commitment of resources these need not be new resources.
Software resources such as wikis are either free – either hosted by the supplier or
downloadable to managed servers – or available for low licence fees. However, there is
undoubtedly a need to commit and ring-fence resources – for coordination,
communication and promotion, training, activating communities, and documenting good
practice in shared online spaces.
4.7 Management Structure
A coherent, future-focused, adequately resourced management structure that ensures
continued focus on becoming digital, coordinates programmes, prioritises resources
and schedules and enables shared learning between the different elements of digital
UAL
4.7.1 What it would look like
February 2013: EB Agenda
4. Quarterly report, EB DigitalUAL Project Board
a. IS Programme Milestones
i. Access and Security, Phase Four, completion and evaluation
b. Teaching and Learning
i. Integrated Student Portal and e-Portfolio , Phase Two,
integration and mobile access demonstration
c. UAL online – biannual statistics and trends report
d. Capacity: project closure report
e. Celebrating success:
i. CCW Media Lab34 awarded 3m Yen grant for new collaborative
project
ii. LCC/Belo Horizontale Open Source, Open Space moving media
collaboration: video and conference call
iii. LCF website Digital Fashion award for the third year running.
4.7.2 How UAL scores
The scenario above implies four things which I believe are not yet in place:
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



An EB and senior management team that, comfortable in its grasp and
engagement with key digital terms, themes and trends, articulates and updates
a clear vision of the way forward for digitalUAL
A commitment to a concerted, medium - term programme of activities in the
digital realm, led from the top
Comfort within the EB and senior management team about the division of digital
responsibilities between colleges and central services along with consensus on
ICT and online standards and controls
Effective organisational learning and knowledge sharing about digital
developments
4.7.3 Recommendations
There are three main issues to be resolved
1. Does EB agree that there needs to be a concerted, medium - term programme
of activities in the digital realm? If so,
2. Where should such a programme be located on the spectrum of tight and loose
management?
 A Digital Dean leads a programme which is resourced directly from the
centre, supported from contributions top-sliced from college and
departmental budgets. It has a team, with a Programme Manager,
monitoring and coordinating a timetable of cross-University activities.
OR
 A Digital Board, representative of all University stakeholders, and reporting
quarterly to the EB, seeks to energise, align, share learning within and
communicate about separate strands of digital activity which are taking place
within colleges and central teams as part of their normal business. It has a
secretariat, some staff seconded to work on the team along with short term
specialists drafted in or contracted from outside to advise on or facilitate
particular elements of the programme. If it has a Programme Lead her job is
more a resource person, communicator and animator than a manager. It has
a small budget to support its own activities and a small innovation fund but
digital project budgets stay in the line.
3. Whether one of these configurations, or something in between, is chosen, an
early priority for a digital project team, or leader, would be to develop
collaboratively a Digital Strategy which articulates
 how the digital realm affects every aspect of UAL
 how UAL is to advance to a higher level of organisational capability
 a timescale
 resource implications.
Given the complexity of UAL and the density of overlapping, clashing or
synergising interests, developing such a strategy collaboratively is likely to take
four to six months from start to finish.
4.7.3.1 What organisational culture supports and encourages digital
success?
While management can no more determine an organisational culture than it can the
degree of happiness among staff it can influence its development and evolution. An
enabling but responsible, collaborative and trusting work culture is a necessary
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condition for a UAL which excels digitally. There would be value in engaging people
across the university, perhaps as part of a strategy building exercise, in defining
attributes of an enabling culture, which might include:
 Fail better: to engage with a dynamic and fluid digital space, organisational and
management culture has to encourage risk-taking and manage failure in the
same way as UAL teaching and learning culture does.
 Enabling: there are good examples from colleges and central services of
managers supporting and encouraging innovation, which needs to become the
default position across the University. It is invidious to make comparisons without
detailed evidence, but the Oxford University IS Department are a good model in
this context: IS staff there boast about the latest request for obscure or freshly
developed applications or development environments and take pride in being
able to deliver support them. The new CCW media lab is an excellent UAL
equivalent, an environment which can encourage and liberate invention.
 Collaborative: one of the success stories in digital UAL is the development of
digital projects in LCF, in close collaboration with the central web team and IT.
We know what makes collaboration work – developing trust between the teams
and individuals concerned, clear communication of the business needs being
addressed and a mutual respect for competence allied to a willingness to learn.
 Economical: Free and Open Software, allied with the re-use and mash-up culture
at the centre of Web2.0, opens up enormous opportunities for an institution such
as UAL, chock-full of brain and energy
 Rigorous about ROI: there is no sky as blue as those in virtual worlds and clearly
pure experimentation is at the heart of the University. However, traditional IS
procurement and management principles need to be applied when moving from
prototype or pilot to scale.
 Bottom-up: most of the best known modern web success stories started as smallscale, personal or small group experiments. A new student is as likely to be
skilled in the use of modern tools and development environments as highly
qualified staff; to already belong to the always-connected and comfortable with
open collaboration and crowd sourcing. The next YouTube is as likely to emerge
from a group of students or staff, or both, as an expensively resourced software
company.
 Communicative: it was striking how many people across UAL knew little or
nothing about the examples of innovative practice and experiments in the digital
dimension that I was identifying and recording. While functional cluster such as
the web managers talk to each other and groups of academics swop ideas and
collaborate on projects, this sharing is limited to such already connected small
communities. There is a lot going on that can be celebrated and promoted.
“We need to be less precious, fearful: be bold, this is Arts and Design Education”35
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5 Appendices
5.1 LCC on Twitter (www.twitter.com/lcclondon)36
Why you did it?
There was a lot of talk about Twitter and its benefits as a marketing tool so we decided
to pilot it.
We use Twitter to raise awareness of the LCC brand among our target audiences –
potential students, students, staff, graduates, alumni, creative industries and the press.
Day-to-day we use it to promote news, events, competitions, etc. We’re also beginning
to use it for student recruitment enquiries.
What problems did you face?
One problem we encountered was what we should call our profile. Should it be LCC?
Should we incorporate the name of the University? Eventually we were advised by the
University to name our Twitter account ‘lcclondon’. Knowing how to respond to
negative comments is another problem we have encountered.
How much time did it take?
Setting it up was fairly simple, it’s maintaining it that takes time!
How much time does it take per day or week?
We normally spend around 30 minutes each day on Twitter. This involves monitoring
tweets, responding to ‘Mentions’, ‘Direct Messages’ (DMs), ‘Retweeting’, looking for
new followers and of course tweeting. We also monitor our Twitter stats weekly using
Twitalyzer. We record levels of engagement, followers, mentions, references and hits
to our website as a result of Twitter.
What is the result?
Since being set-up in March 2009, LCC now has nearly 1500 followers. It has helped
us to up the number of visits to the LCC website, enabled us to respond to enquiries
quickly and has been brilliant for spreading the word about our events and exhibitions.
Also a great tool for getting quick feedback!
Tips to others on running a twitter account, how to build followers and, more
importantly, engagement









Follow to be followed
Tweet daily – add value and give followers somewhere to go
Have a conversation – be honest and open
Develop your own voice/personality
Use TweetDeck, TwitPic and link shortening software such as bit.ly
Build your brand by customising your Twitter page
Where appropriate use #hashtags and jump on trending subjects such as
#followfriday or #ff or #fm (follow Monday!)
Get listed on various Twitter directories, such as Twellow, WeFollow, etc
Make sure your twitter profile is on your website, blog, etc
What would you do differently next time?
Review our audiences and objectives – who we want to communicate with via Twitter?
What messages do we want to send them?
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5.2 CCW Media Lab– a hybrid project space
The CCW media Lab deploys digital media tools and methods as a catalyst
forinterdisciplinary practice across all subject areas on a project-by-project basis. The
Media Lab draws together projects, resources and people both from across CCW along
with external partnerships. The CCW Media lab aims to create a more dynamic
relationship between research and enterprise. The primaryaim of the CCW Media Lab
is to develop the College as a leading centre in the use of information technology and
digital media for learning, research, and practice in art and design.
Basics
1. Location-The CCW Media Lab is based at Millbank from where it willsupport
the development projects from all CCWcolleges and subject areas.
2. Simple Technical Base- The Media Lab is scalable with a modest framework
constructed around simplebut powerful infrastructure and base-line media tools.
3. Flexible-Rather than create fixedhigh-end technical resource the lab will seek
to utilise existing tools, space and expertise from across CCW in line with
different project requirements on a negotiated basis. Being project lead will
prevent the Media Lab from becoming quickly outdated as technologies evolve.
4. Scalable- Projects can (with the endorsement of the Grad School forum) be
scaled up and resourced from across CCW colleges, as the need arises, and
finance is found.
5. Inputs will be- Collaborative research activity from all subject areas- Industry,
3rd sector and clients.- Students, graduates and courses.
6. Output will be- New course development and curriculum innovation, Innovative
research attracting industry and 3rd sector partners and clients. High profile
interdisciplinary projects that generate kudos for CCW and favourable publicity.
7. Potential Outputs will be- Contract Research, employment, spin-outs and
start ups, Training, Licensing of IPR, Consultancy.
Criteria
8. Criteria-The criteria for media lab projects would be one or a combination of the
following:a)a strong technological biasb) actual cross disciplinary or cross
disciplinary potential c) REF potential d) Revenue earning potential e) High
profile industry, academic or 3rd sector partnerships F) International partnership
potential.
9. Examples-Cyril Shing’sPavillion’sproject with the company Speedo. Pete
Maloney’s e-learning research. GdCom design research projects with Dutch
company Standby + Kyoto University Design Research Labareall benchmarks
for fulfilling criteria for CCW Media Lab support.
Reporting, governance and Resourcing
10. Vetting-All Media Lab projects wouldbe vetted by Grad School Forum.
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11. Resource Allocation-A successful Media Lab bid would entail the Grad School
allocating appropriate and realistic resources.
12. Proactive-Using our criteria all members of Grad School Forum would actively
seek out Media Lab projects.
13. Sustainable-A high premium will be placed on seeking external funding
particularly through the Technology Strategy Board.
Medium Term Goals
14. Quality not Quanity-From 2010/11 we will establish the basic facility at
Millbank and identify three projects for development in year one.
15. Academic Consultancy-Link Media Labto the growing area of academic
consultancy through greater proximity of research and enterprise.
16. Tech Review-Use Media Lab projects to take the lead in innovation through
Sally Tiffin’s work done in reviewing the role of technicians and the technical
domain
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5.3 Informants
This list includes people I interviewed formally, those who attended the workshops I
organised along with those who I conversed with in person, by email or through the
blog (http://digitalual.wordpress.com). There was a lot of enthusiasm from staff and,
while I have tried to reflect the range of ideas and suggestions, I haven’t been able to
include all the contributions.
Robert Green
Dee Searle
Peter Doonican
Ben James
Pat Christie
Rebecca Ross
Chris Toppon
David Garcia
Lee Widdows
Bex Singleton
Lindsay Jordan
Hannah Clayton
Alastair Mucklow
David Revagliette
Geoff Makstutis
Matt Tillet
Hannah Fitzgerald
Colin Buttimer
David Sims
Tony Pritchard
Michelle Lukins
a vision of digitalUAL
International Liaison
Manger, International
Centre
Interim Director of
Communications and
Development
Head of Information
Systems, Communication
and Development
Jotta.com
Director, Information
Services
Interactive Design Tutor |
Senior Lecturer, CSM
Head of Web Team,
Communication and
Development
Dean of College, Chelsea
College of Art and Design
Head of Communications,
CSM
Head of Alumni Relations
Educational Developer,
CLTAD
Head of Internal and
External Relations, LCF
Web Manager, LCF
Communication Team,
LCF
Course Director
BA (Honours)
Architecture, CSM
Web Manager,
Camberwell
Student Recruitment
Manager, Camberwell
College
Web co-ordinator, CSM
Senior Lecturer
FdA & BA(Hons) Design
for Graphic
Communication, LCC
Quality Manager, LCC
New Media and Marketing
Officer, LCC
r.green@arts.ac.uk
d.searle@arts.ac.uk
p.doonican@arts.ac.uk
ben@jotta.com
p.christie@arts.ac.uk
r.ross@csm.arts.ac.uk
c.toppon@arts.ac.uk
d.garcia@chelsea.arts.ac.uk
l.widdows@csm.arts.ac.uk
b.singleton@arts.ac.uk
Lindsay.jordan@arts.ac.uk
h.clayton@fashion.arts.ac.uk
a.mucklow@fashion.arts.ac.uk
d.revagliatte@fashion.arts.ac.uk
g.makstutis@csm.arts.ac.uk
m.tillett@camberwell.arts.ac.uk
c.buttimer@csm.arts.ac.uk
d.sims@lcc.arts.ac.uk
t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
m.lukins@lcc.arts.ac.uk
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Hayley Ward
Laura Lancely
Sandra Kemp
Andrew Scheiner
Kevin Garner
Cyril Shing
Robert Green
Clare Gossage
Emma Luckie
Clare Kennedy
Howard Panton
Nancy Turner
Les Claridge
Sarah Mahurer
Lauren Skogstad
Simon Goode
a vision of digitalUAL
Web Co-ordinator
Student Recruitment
Manager, Chelsea
College
Head of College, LCC
Associate Director
(Business Systems),
Information Services
Associate Director
(Infrastructure),
Information Services
Course Tutor, Chelsea
College
Institutional Liaison
Manager, International
Centre
Head of International
Marketing
Web Team,
Communication and
Development
Web Team,
Communication and
Development
Web Team,
Communication and
Development
Deputy Director, CLTAD
Teaching and Learning
Resources Manager, LCC
Manager, University
Archives and Special
Collection Centre
Wed Designer,
Communication and
Development
Publications Assistant,
Communication and
Development
h.ward@lcc.arts.ac.uk
l.lanceley@chelsea.arts.ac.uk
s.kemp@lcc.arts.ac.uk
a.scheiner@arts.ac.uk
k.garner@arts.ac.uk
c.shing@chelsea.arts.ac.uk
r.green@arts.ac.uk
c.gossage@arts.ac.uk
e.luckie@arts.ac.uk
c.l.kennedy@arts.ac.uk
h.panton@fashion.arts.ac.uk
nancy.turner@arts.ac.uk
l.claridge@lcc.arts.ac.uk
s.mahurer@arts.ac.uk
l.skogstad@arts.ac.uk
s.goode@arts.ac.uk
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5.4 Terms of Reference
1 Background
The University of the Arts, London (UAL http://www.arts.ac.uk/) like many other HE
institutions, is facing challenges from the changing situation in UK HE. The
environment is becoming even more competitive, with increasing numbers of global
players, while budget cuts and funding pressures are increasing the importance of
attracting and retaining foreign students, especially from the North American and Asian
markets.
As a selecting not a recruiting university UAL is well placed in the UK market. However,
while it has been successful in Asian markets internationally it is a recruiting university.
At the same time it faces significant internal challenges, including:
 IT systems which need updating and new investment, particularly back-end systems
 Lack of organisation-wide driving vision for online/digital; UAL leadership want to do
more but may not be sure how because it’s not their core competency
 Web systems that are based on but lagging behind HE norms while the team is now
busy adapting its work processes to a new CMS system - Terminal Four
 The existing website does not work well visually or functionally (eg lack of
transparency)
 Limited experience of international communications trends amongst many senior
and middle managers
 The amalgamation of strong, long established institutions has resulted in a
management and governance structure that has strong collegiate overtones. This
causes problems for central decision making and support and has led to several
colleges striking out, relatively independently, as well as a low level of knowledge
sharing or learning across the UAL.
 There has been a history, or at least a perception of a history, of heavy handed
management from the centre which has generated a level of resentment. This
tension is exacerbated by the fact that staff at the centre and in the colleges face
different pressures and priorities.
 UAL communications are not well positioned to connect with newer generations of
potential students – the constantly connected – who have high expectations in terms
of digital communications
Dee Searle is working as interim Director of Communications and Development,
reporting to the Rector. The goal is to develop a Digital Strategy that is more wideranging and more holistic than simple e-marketing. It is crucially important that there is
senior level buy-in and active engagement because previous agreed strategies ran in
to the sand. Dee has gained acceptance from the Executive Board for a position that
communication of all kinds and affecting all areas, including publications along with
entry and recruitment processes, will be “Digital by default”.
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2 Assignment
The assignment is to support the development of a Digital Vision, by July 31st, 2010.
Tasks
1. Research, digital strategy (incorporates sense of collaborative tools,
as well as online – including social media – and web)
 Who are the people to engage?
2. Workshops
 Clarify vision, timeframe, what would online activities presence
look like, what would Better look like
 Also inform people about constantly changing nature of digital
 Possibly select participants for survey1
3. And get people buy in – as much to do with follow up as during the
workshop
 Start/continue survey and/or other online engagement (NB, could
be done by a somebody/people internal identified in the process
above
4. Strategy on how to get there
 Tools
 Impact on different elements of the university
5. Plan on how to achieve the strategy
Total
2.1
Days
5
6
2
4
3
20
Timescales
1. Below is an outline of how these days could be allocated over the period.
2. This outline suggests:
a. Start up meetings 21st – 23rd April
b. Workshop(s) will happen during the weeks beginning 3rd, 24th or 31st
May
Wb
Days
19-04 26-04 03-05 10-05 17-05 24-05 31-05 07-06 14-06 21-06 28-06 05-07 12-07 19-07
2.0
1.0
2.0
1.0
3.0
3.0
3.0
2.0
2.0
1.0
3 Next Steps
1. Share and gain agreement on this summary
2. Arrange Visits and briefings with key people
1
Survey would benefit from being distinctive and different, more inventive and using visuals, for
example.)
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6 End notes
1
From a paper approved by EB which that set a target for UAL that communication of all kinds
and affecting all areas, including publications along with entry and recruitment processes, will
be “Digital by default”.
2 The date is arbitrary: given the rate of change in the digital it is difficult to think ahead more
than two or three years.
3 Paul Lowe, LLC, with contributions from Lindsay Jordan, CLTAD
4 Dangerously, for a University audience, I use the term loosely. It is associated with
approaches that treat organisations holistically, as entities rather than collections of systems
(Elias Porter and beyond); learning theories that view organisational learning in terms of cocreation and communal constructivism; management theories building from Michael Porter’s
work on value chains and organisational core competencies; and the Knowledge Management
movement, bringing together approaches to organisational learning derived from Senge’s ‘The
Learning Organisation’ with ICT (and Internet) based collaboration and information
management tools. Influential in Defence planning and management, the concept continues to
be updated within Management theory, as this atypically thorough Wikipedia article illustrates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Management_in_Business
5 The title of Negroponte’s seminal 1995 book: in Being Digital he correctly predicted, among
other things, the "Daily Me" concept of a virtual daily newspaper customized for an individual's
tastes, realised now through web feeds and personal web portals; that a phone, “won’t ring
indiscriminately but will receive, sort, and perhaps respond to incoming calls like a well trained
English butler”; that “mass media will be redefined by systems for transmitting and receiving
personalised information and entertainment” ; that “we will socialise in digital neighbourhoods in
which physical space will be irrelevant and time will play a different role”.
6 www.wordle.com – a typical example of web 2.0 free applications for mixing and mashing
7 Since the seminal, 1980’s “In search of excellence” by Waterman and Peters (see Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Excellence ) the concept of tight vs. loose
management or leadership styles has been a central image in organisational change literature
and practice. It’s very applicable to organisations struggling with the impossibly rapid pace of
change in ICT and eMedia.
8 In John Naughten’s excellent primer on the Internet revolution, important idea two (of nine) is
“The web isn't the net: …. Think of the internet as the tracks and signalling, the infrastructure on
which everything runs. In a railway network, different kinds of traffic run on the infrastructure —
high-speed express trains, slow stopping trains, commuter trains, freight trains and (sometimes)
specialist maintenance and repair trains…..On the internet, web pages are only one of the many
kinds of traffic that run on its virtual tracks. Other types of traffic include music files being
exchanged via peer-to-peer networking, or from the iTunes store; movie files travelling via
BitTorrent; software updates; email; instant messages; phone conversations via Skype and
other VoIP (internet telephony) services; streaming video and audio; and other stuff too arcane
to mention….. And (here's the important bit) there will undoubtedly be other kinds of traffic, stuff
we can't possibly have dreamed of yet, running on the internet in 10 years' time.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know
9 From a web communications point of view, corporate presence in social network sites such as
MySpace or Facebook, provides an effective balance maintaining quality standards for
navigation and user interface – which are provided by the platform, in most cases arrived at
after extensive research and testing - and allowing users and partners space to express
distinctive identities
10 Ning is a Social Network generator, used extensively to set up niche Facebook clones
11 WAP enabled phone, July 2010
12 Facebook introduced pages in 2007, as spaces more appropriate for organisations than the
traditional Facebook profile, which is intended for individuals. Pages make easier
communicating with larger numbers of supporters. Groups are intended – and best used for –
short term campaigns or as a way to bring people together over time to discuss or laugh about
issues and topics.
13 The CMS will be deployed over the rest of 2010 and the first half of 2011
14 Chris Toppon, UAL central web team leader
15 Robert Green, International Centre
16 From NOTES OF A MEETING ON THE SHOWTIME/JOTTA INTERFACE – 3 JUNE 09
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Attendance:
Will Bridge - Deputy Rector, non academic
Katie Christie – Then head of Web team
Dani Salvadori – CSM, Head of Innovation
Yann Mathias – CCSM, Creative Director of Design Lab
17 Jeff Jarvis http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/02/22/new-rule-cover-what-you-do-best-link-tothe-rest/
18 Though English is a standard language in India, especially among the middle classes from
whom the majority of UAL students will be drawn
19 Based on profiles developed in a UAL staff workshop
20 Based on profiles developed in a UAL staff workshop
21 Some combination of Showtime, Jotta and CLTAD supplied e-portfolio framework
22 Persona drawn up by UAL staff in Digital workshop
23 Orkut is Google’s social network platform. Anyone who is online – a continually increasing
number, and approaching European levels – is on Orkut. It functions as an alternative to the
public Internet to a lot of people, who use it communicate and socialise with friends. Brazilians
make up nearly 75% of Orkut users.
24 http://www.youtube.com/artslondoncsm
25 http://www.csm.arts.ac.uk/csm-staff-research-profiles.htm
26Of the several examples I heard of during the research, I would cite the development of a tool
to support student assessment that was later rejected by IT; the development of a generally
applicable Teaching and Learning package, using the Drupal software platform; and the
development of a college-based online enrolment software application.
27 As in other areas, the particular needs and contexts of UAL students from ‘widening
participation’ programmes, or similar, need to be considered and included in a strategy. This
aspect of the scenario is based on a comment from Rebecca Ross about the cost of much of
the newer equipment.
28 Through it can also be productively mainstreamed, as in Google’s licence for all staff to use
10% of their time on personal projects
29 Whiteboard is an invention of mine, but it is not unrealistic to expect UAL to be using software
built in China or India by 2013. Moodle is an existing open-source educational learning and
teaching system, one of whose strengths is its open, modular architecture and its strong
developer community. It will be one of the candidates in the upcoming VLE review.
30 http://www.doinggraphics.co.uk/
31 Nancy Turner, CLTAD
32 We considered a staff survey as part of this research, but without a commonly agreed Digital
Literacy standard or Framework, we decided it would not deliver useful comparative information.
33 Thanks to Nancy Turner for a lot of detailed recommendations in this section
34 See Appendix Two, CCW Media Lab Project Document
35 Lee Widdows, CCSM
36 Thanks to Michelle Lukins, LCC
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