Or: What’s on the mind of a University engaged in using Service Design to enhance the Student Experience through a JISC Programme

1. Student ‘withdrawal’ process
This project has examined in detail the business processes affecting what happened when a student begins on the path to drop out / con-completion / withdrawal. The processes have been analysed using Service Design methodology and a Blueprint has become available. Typical of a system that has grown perhaps without the benefit of close scrutiny, some quick wins were identified aligned with fail points and weaknesses.
Major repercussions included student retention but also considered what a positive withdrawal experience might achieve. Institutional reputation and repeat business were highlighted, a lesser award (rather than nothing) might be granted to reflect effort and achievement, a repeat student to the withdrawing institution or a repeat educational experience later in the students life were deemed to be the desired longer term outcomes.

2. The red and the green issue
Identification of students on a path to failure (the reds) and triage of support activities and interventions to move them off that path has been the traditional focus. The Blueprint had allowed wider discussions across this aspect of the student lifecycle and the team were considering putting effort on those amber students, to progress to greens, but also those greens and how they might excel to become …. Blues perhaps?
In essence the cultivation of high performance and excellence as well as addressing retention and non completion

3. Learning Analytics
The team had begun to look at analytics to support the identification of such students via traits and exhaust, based on data ‘already’ captured as well as postulating what data ‘should’ be captured in order to support the student journey from the student and institutional perspectives.
Major issues centered around ethics and policy

4. Moving to action
The project had achieved what it set out by providing artifacts to enhance business processes. To move to action will require input from the business change manager. In addition a reliance on a not yet prioritized Business Intelligence initiative based on a non-existent data warehouse had been aired.

I highlighted the Strategic ICT Toolkit (the tools are under the heading ‘Assessing your maturity‘) and suggested that running through the two tools to benchmark capacity to align investment in ICT resource with stated business goals and objectives would likely help out with this initiative and many others.

This Toolkit provides two questionnaires (identifying both individual and institutional capability and offering resources to enhance these) along with deployment strategies and outcomes from 13 other HEIs. These HEIs all found the exercise to be so worthwhile they intend to run the questionnaires on an annual basis.

I also outlined the JISC Road to Value and explained that through this JISC funded project the HEI was at a highly mature stage in Relationship Management and therefore on the cusp of achieving a Unique selling point in terms of student offer, if they are able to move to action.

The JISC Emerging Practices Initiative (JEPI) is likely to be of use with this and for Relationship Management (RM) I hope we’ll soon be able to make a JISC Wide Offer to the sector as a JEPI for RM in HE.

This would incorporate all appropriate assets from the 4 years of RM in HE work we’ve undertaken and offer it as a range of delivery methods. These would include briefing papers, webinars and face to face events for the full range of stakeholders required to address RM in HE. The approach would encourage capacity and capability in the sector moving the RM in HE ‘Unaware’ through the various stages of the Road to Value until they can ‘Learn by Doing Together’, effectively working at cross institutional level with peers to enhance the student experience.