Last week I visited Aston University to join around 50 staff from HE and FE in launching a new free resource Embedding Business and Community Engagement. Essentially it’s an online toolkit from JISC InfoNet, and it’s designed to help Higher and Further Education institutions work more effectively on all aspects of partnership management. It aims to do this by enabling staff to focus on the internal communications needed to embed ‘BCE’, in order that such activity is supported by core institutional systems rather than being a peripheral activity.
The term “BCE” is not one that naturally rolls off the tongue in FE and HE: a quick scan of the delegate list showed almost as many different job titles as people: Knowledge Transfer, Knowledge Exchange, Business Development, Enterprise and more. However, as John Burke said in mitigation during his opening address, given the lack of a ‘catch all’ term they had to call the programme something! Plus, there is an advantage in having a label that can act as a common reference point for cross-sectoral and cross-role discussion. Simon Whittemore, JISC Programme Manager for BCE, invited us to focus on the idea of ‘Strategic partnerships’ and reminded us of the many strategic and policy drivers which are now forcing institutions to pay attention to workforce development, e.g.
- Higher Ambitions (to which we in Wales can add For Our Future)
- need for a more flexible workforce
- social cohesion
- increasing attention to public impact in Research Excellence Framework (25% of outcome is set to be derived from public engagement activity)
- more agility, efficiency and sustainability in a difficult economic climate
Technology, we learned, has a lot to contribute to the embedding of BCE including:
- better Partner Relationship Management systems to record and plan activity (this can involve major culture change)
- more interoperable systems (even institutions that are traditionally strong on business engagement still find that systems proliferate across the organisation, sometimes even in the same office!)
- making the most of information flowing into the organisation, as well as out
- technology to enhance collaboration and c0-creation
- better reporting to funders
Of course many institutions have been doing ‘Business and Community Engagement’ in various guises – from graduate work placements to public lectures to SME courses - for many years, but one lesson reported by the institutions involved in creating the Infokit was that it is always possible to improve, particularly in the area of internal communications and recognition for activity that previously might have been carried out in isolation (maybe even voluntarily).
JISC InfoNet developed their InfoKit with five institutions and learned many lessons in the process. For example:
- partner engagement is often fragmented
- much activity goes unrecorded
- institutions need to take better steps to manage their IPR (intellectual property rights)
- strategies can be compromised by conflicting systems and perceptions between (or even within) departments
One of the most interesting elements of the day was hearing from the five organisations (four HE and one FE) which had piloted the materials and the methodology enshrined in the InfoKit. All were interesting, but I particulary enjoyed those from Newcastle University, Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology and University of Glamorgan. (Representing Glamorgan, Alun Cox caused some nervous laughter among the English audience by launching into his opening remarks in Welsh, but he followed it with an entertaining talk – in English – about his experience of running a JISC project, highlighted the benefits both planned and unplanned. For example it has served to improve the involvement of support services and also data sharing across departments, but it also drew in staff who never thought they would be interested in business engagement. The JISC project has dovetailed well with other Glamorgan BCE projects such as Academic Expertise for Business and the Strategic Insight Programme. Congratulations to Glamorgan on their part in the InfoKit project and we look forward to sharing the lessons learned with other organisations using the InfoKit as a framework.
Another good aspect of the day for me was to hear staff talk about the benefits that can be gained from JISC project funding particularly when:
- there is an enthusiastic senior manager driving the agenda forward
- the project fits well with institutional priorities (eg projects had coincided with the launch of a new department, strategy or senior management post)
- a good range of stakeholders can be involved (the project staff had clearly worked especially hard both to allow the maximum number of staff to engage, and to enable them to speak freely and confidentially about their perceptions of their BCE role)
Video case studies are being developed to complement the InfoKit and raise the profile of the BCE agenda. It is hoped that JISC InfoNet will be able to develop a touring staff development event based on the project, to be delivered around the country via Regional Support Centres from Spring 2010. Who knows, by then the acronym ‘BCE’ may have got into the HE and FE lexicon – or maybe we will come up with something catchier!
In the meantime there are a number of good sites where you can find out more about BCE activities relevant to Wales:
JISC InfoNet BCE page
JISC BCE programme page and blog
HEFCW Business and Communities page
And JISC have this week issued a new call for proposals for projects around Developing Community Content – details here.
HE Assistive Technology update
