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Christopher Douce

Adventures of a staff tutor

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Over the Christmas break I managed to acquire a new affliction: ‘Netflix back’. It’s a short-term physiological condition that is caused by lolling about on the sofa watching too much telly.

I really needed a break from everything over Christmas, and thankfully I was able to get a bit of downtime, which involved watching loads of Scandinavian crime dramas.

In my last column I wrote about feeling on the edge of burnout. The feeling of “just about getting everything done” returned within a couple of weeks.

It has now been over a year since I have last physically seen my staff tutor colleagues. The last time was at an event about the new AL contract which took place in Leeds. In normal times, we would be regularly meeting in the Computing and Communications staff tutor room at Walton Hall. In that room (a real one) we would regularly chat about what is going on, find out about what has been said in various meetings, and collectively solve all kinds of little problems and glitches.

Those friendly but essential informal meetings over a cup of coffee that we used to have (or ‘hub chats’ as some of us call them) have become a whole lot more formal. A chance encounter and a quick catch up has morphed into a complex multistage process, which begins with an email, moves on to a diary check, moves on to another email, and then finally on to a virtual meeting. This partly reflects the significant increase in emails I have been receiving over the last year.

We’ve discovered some new phrases.

The most obvious one is: “you’re on mute”, followed by the slightly more esoteric “is that a legacy hand?”, which refers to a spurious virtual hand that had been raised in either MS Teams or Adobe Connect meetings.

In the last few weeks, some staff tutor colleagues have been sent some very sensible queries by tutors that we ought to be able to answer, but are not equipped to answer, such as “what does my projected FTE contain?” and “what are my additional duties?”

All this confusion led to one thing: anxiety.

At the heart of this was a fundamental issue: I had no understanding of how I might be able to support tutors under the terms of the tutor contract, and everyone was telling me that the new tutor contract was to begin in October.

At the beginning of March, the new tutor contract project team appeared to have finally woken up to the fact that they need to understand what staff tutors and student experience managers actually do. To help to unpack this puzzle, they asked staff tutors from each of the faculties to sign up to an impressive number of workshops. From my perspective, it was almost impossible to participate since I’ve been busy preparing for an April presentation.

Amidst all my day to day activities, the emails to tutors, the online conferences, the induction events, and grade appeals, the new tutor contract occupied my thoughts and worries.

I was anxious since there were questions that I couldn’t answer. I was anxious because I didn’t know what tools and systems I might be using to make things work. I was anxious because I want to do the best possible job I can to help all my tutor and staff tutor colleagues but I didn’t know how to do this.

I started to have trouble sleeping, and I know this wasn’t down to all those Scandinavian crime dramas I’ve been watching on Netflix.

On 22 March, I received an email from the university secretary, Dave Hall, saying that the implementation of the new tutor contract had been paused.

The challenge for us now is to encourage the project team to take stock, and begin to consider how we can all practically realise the contract in a way that is pragmatic, sensible and realistic. Any future implementation plan must also be incremental and inclusive.

The university will be a better place when ALs are on permanent contracts. We need to continue to make the case for sensible tools and processes. From a staff tutor’s perspective, we’ve got a lot of work to do to make that happen.

This article first appeared in Snowball Issue 99, March 2021. Snowball is the newsletter for Open University associate newsletters and is published quarterly.

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Christopher Douce

AL development online conference: March 2021

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Monday, 12 Apr 2021, 13:10

In more usual times, I would probably be attending a face-to-face AL development conference. Since everyone in the university is working at home, the university ran an online cross-faculty AL development conference on Thursday 4 March 2021. 

What follows is a set of edited notes I made during the event. It’s intended as a rough record of the event, so I can remember what happened. Wherever possible, I tried to directly quote some of the speaker, but I won’t promise I’ve got all their words spot on. This said, I do hope I have honestly reflected points that were shared during the sessions.

Keynote: Marcia Wilson

The event kicked off with an opening keynote from Professor Marcia Wilson, Dean of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Here are some notes that were sent around in advance of Marcia’s presentation (which have been edited down for brevity): “Prior to the OU, Marcia worked at the University of East London for 12 years where she established the UK’s first Office for Institutional Equity (OIE) … . Her work includes equality projects with Universities UK to tackle racism in higher education institutes. … Marcia has spent 30 years teaching and conducting research in higher education and is a multiple award winner for her leadership and equalities work.”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it to this very first session due to work commitments, but I must refer to an earlier presentation that was given by Marcia at an event called Dismantling Racial Inequalities in Higher Education which I found to be really through provoking. 

AL Contract Change Programme Update

Bruce Heil and Carey Stephens, from UCU and the AL contract programme management team, presented updates about the contract implementation. This was a popular session, attracting 108 delegates.

UCU summary

Bruce highlighted a period of accelerated negotiations that were on going at the time of the conference. He emphasised that there was an aim to build a stable tuition workforce, to enable better future planning and emphasised that a step-by-step approach was taken “to make sure we get the changes right”. 

Bruce emphasised that this will be a permanent contract, rather than a piece work contract, and one would encompass module tuition appointments, annual leave, and tuition related activities, such as TMA monitoring, EMA marking, and time that relates to academic currency (which means: keeping up to date with your subject). Benefits for ALs include security and certainty. Benefits for the faculties includes “simpler processes for allocating work now to maintain AL FTE” and longer term planning and development. The benefits for university include opportunities to enhance student experience. 

Regarding the implementation, the plan is to migrate to new contract in October 21, and phase in the ways of working over a period of 2 years. I noted down that there would be 4 phases of change: prep to migration, development of processes and procedures (up until 22J), and in 23D the deployment of a workload management system.

A key difference between the old and the new contract is that tutors will no longer need to apply for contracts. Instead, there will be a discussion between a tutor and their line manager (staff tutor or student experience manager), and this will give security and certainty. Spare or unused capacity can be allocated to extra students or modular work, and tutors will be working to a defined FTE figure that relates to an annualised salary which will be paid over 12 months rather than just for the period of the contract. There is also a longer term idea, which is that tutors will have one line manager.

Other updates include that the FTE for practice tuition has been agreed, and the provisional FTE (which is currently calculated from October 20) will be updated with any further appointments that have been made.

Management summary

Cary stated that the new contract will bring ALs in line with other staff, and the FTE score represents the workload rather than the tasks. Tutors can expect an agreed FTE value to be maintained.

From this session, I noted down some questions and answers, such as: how can I increase my FTE before the official start of the new contract? The answer was: you will need to apply to modules as you did before.  Also, how can I decrease my FTE before the start? There will be a query and appeals process which can be used before the start of the contract.

An important question was: what is meant by historic tuition related activities? These are additional duty contracts, which are all gathered together, and averaged out over a 3 year period between August 17 through to July 20.

Key workload areas (in terms of making the contract work) includes a new capability procedure, a skills audit process, and prioritising conversations with ALs whose modules are coming towards the end of their presentation. There is also the need for guidance to help faculties to maintain a tutor’s FTE and developing workload allocation processes to manage workload fluctuations

A good question was: will I have the same flexibility to decide what work I will take on? “There may be occasions where you have capacity and are reasonably requested to take on a piece of work that you can do but would not normally consider.” There will be a conversation where you may be asked to take on a piece of work.

Also, rather than taking a personal leave of absence, tutors will be able to submit an “agile working request”. Another important point is that if student numbers fall, tutors may be asked to carry out additional duties to make up their time that is expressed within the FTE score.

I made a note of the important question: how will these TRAs be managed? The answer I’ve noted down was: “we’re at the ‘how do we do this’ phase?”

Q&A session

Q: I have over 0.3 of historical duties. I haven’t seen any statement of what are covered and what are not. Can we have one? A: you would have to go through your payslips over the last 3 years.

Q: I want to reduce my FTE. Is there a minimum FTE? What will be the notice period of a contract? A: There is no minimum. A reduction should be a sensible one. Term of notice is not known. 

Q: Will we be recompensed for IT use? A: Currently under negotiation.

Q: I’ve only had the one appraisal over 15 years. Will the time be made for this? A: We envisage an annual workload and CDSA meeting; an annual conversation; this will be a right and an expectation.

Q: Would it be possible to remain FTE and move onto a different module before October? A: speak with your line manager.

Q: Will assistant staff tutor roles and activities be counted? A: No; it isn’t in the contract.

Q: I want to get my workload spaced out better. Is this possible? A: Make sure your line manager is aware of your needs; have a chat with your staff tutor.

Q: I have a LLM that I have never met; it would be nice to meet them face to face. A: Ideally, yes.

A staff tutor’s reflection

I chose to go to this session for two reasons: the first was to add my understanding of what is going on, and secondly, to try to understand what the official UCU and management line on the contract was. The session confirmed some key fears that I have long held: that some very important aspects of the detail hasn’t yet been worked out. I have, for example, no idea how the historical tuition related activities will be managed, and nor do I know how to get an overview of which tutors are doing what, or how to get a quick summary of a tutor’s FTE score.

Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)

The session provided an opportunity for STEM ALs to meet each other. It was said to be: “informal, giving ALs the chance to converse, raise questions, and discuss the priorities within the STEM Faculty”. Approximately 40 tutors were able to attend, which was great to see. 

Michael Bowkis from the School of Computing and Communications and Fiona Aiken from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences gave a summary of updates to the curriculum.

For the School of Computing and Communications, Michael summarised the key qualifications that were run from the school. These are: Q62 BSc (Honours) Computing and IT, Q67 BSc Computing and IT & second subject, R62 BSc (Hons) Computing with electronic engineering (which starts this year, and has four compulsory modules: T193. T194. T212 and T312), R38 BSc (Hons) Data Science (which is technically managed by Maths and Statistics), and R60 BSc (Hons) Cyber security.

The BSc (Hons) Cyber security (R60) started in 2020, and is a specialist qualification that is aligned with industry certification (CompTIA  Security+, CeH (Certified Ethical Hacking) and is accredited by the British Computer Society (BCS). It comprises of 3 new modules: TM256 Computer Security and Digital Forensics, which starts in February 2022, which addresses aspects of systems security and introductory concepts of digital forensics. There is also, TM311 Information security, which is linked to InfoSec standards for cyber security analysts. TM311 starts in October 2021. There is also TM359, System penetration testing, which is concerned with building secure systems, testing, ethical hacking methodology including certification as ethical hackers. This final module begins in February 2023.

On the postgraduate front, there is a new qualification: F87 MSc Cyber security. GCHQ certification and BCS accreditation will be applied for. An important module will be: M817 Cyber Security Fundamentals, which will complement M811 Information Security, and M812 Digital Forensics. Also, advanced networking qualifications are being withdrawn, but networking will remain as a pathway option in the main MSc programme.

Finally, the school offers four undergraduate degree apprenticeship qualifications, and one postgraduate. These are: R24 BSc (Honours) Digital and Technology Solutions (England), R32 BSc (Honours) IT: Software Development (Scotland), R33 BSc (Honours) IT: Cyber Security (Scotland), and R40 BSc (Honours) Applied Software Engineering (Wales). The postgraduate programme has the title of: F83 MSc Cyber Security (Scotland).

What hasn’t been mentioned is also new machine learning and artificial intelligence module, TM358. The School of Computing and Communications is a busy place!

Refreshing your practice: working across disciplines to enhance the student experience

We were given a choice of what session we would like to attend, and I opted for this session, which was facilitated by Heather Richardson and Clare Taylor. I was attracted by the abstract. Here’s a section: “In this practical workshop you’ll explore how experimenting with the teaching approaches of a different discipline can help you look at your own subject in a new light. Drawing on the findings of the FASS scholarship project ‘Creative Interactions’, which brought together the disciplines of Art History and Creative Writing, you’ll first take part in some hands-on activity, and then move on to consider potential ‘interactions’ between your own and other disciplines.”

I was drawn to this session, partly because I’ve been studying an arts module, A111, and have also recently completed a creative writing assignment. I was curious about what these activities might be, and how the activities might relate to my own discipline of Computing. The abstract also went on to say: “In the first part of the workshop you will analyse and respond to a piece of visual art from the Open University’s art collection, firstly conducting an Art-Historical visual analysis of the artwork, and then being guided through producing your own Creative Writing response to the piece.” The session was related to a Faculty of Art and Social Sciences project called ‘Creative Interactions’. 

There was a reference to the university art collection, which is mostly hung in corridors and shared spaces. During this session, we were show a number of works, and introduced to some terms that could be used to create (or write) a formal analysis of a piece. Key terms that we were introduced to included: scale, space and composition, viewpoint, subject matter, material/medium, line, colour and light, display and function.

There was then a shift towards creative writing. With an artwork used as a prompt, we were asked: “imagine you’re in the space that is depicted in a picture; what do you feel through your senses, and what is your emotional state?” We were asked to comment on three questions and respond through text chat: how did you respond to the image? Which approach was more helpful? What did you gain by trying two approaches?

What I got out of this session was how our online teaching tool, Adobe connect could be used, to create an interesting, and thoughtful tutorial experience. In our breakout rooms we were asked to discuss the question: what other disciplines could your own discipline interact with? In the breakout room that I attended, we discussed the connections between our own disciplines, and others.

To summarise, this was a popular session, with over 50 delegates attending. It made me reflect on how I use the online teaching tools, and consider how I might be able to draw on other subjects to (potentially) make my online tutorials more interesting and engaging.

Reflections

 I always get something from AL development conferences. It was useful to hear the official line about the new AL contract, and I did really enjoy the final session, which certainly got me thinking. I can’t help but feel that whilst online conferences useful and helpful, nothing quite beats being able to share tips and experiences over a cup of coffee at a face-to-face AL development conference. I look forward to a time when these can happen again. 

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Christopher Douce

Considering the new tutor contract

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Wednesday, 8 Sept 2021, 16:53

Over the last few years, there has been a lot of talk about something called the new tutor contract. On 22 March 21, I received an email that contained the following words: “we have concluded that we will not be ready to implement the contract changes this October. Migration of ALs to the new Terms & Conditions will therefore be rescheduled”. 

The aim of this long blog is to present a staff tutor’s perspective. It is a perspective that is very nuanced, since we’re in the middle of everything. It has been written with the intention of sharing some important background to a number of different groups of staff: senior leaders, tutors, members of the project, central academics, union members, and anyone else who would like to learn more about what has happened. 

I’ve written a number of blogs about it, I’ve participated in some of the negotiation groups from the inside, and I’ve been to a whole host of briefings and updates. I’ve taken a keen interest in it because I think it is important and right that the university employs its associate lecturer staff on permanent contracts. I’m also interested in how it is going to be implemented, so I can do my best to support tutors and staff tutors.

At the time of writing, the “word on the street” is that the new date for the introduction of the contract might be August 2022. To get there, there is a lot that needs to be done, but there isn’t (yet) a clear vision of how we will get everything achieved by that date.

This blog isn’t a reflection of any negotiated position, and isn’t a reflection of any university policy or plan. Instead, it is intended to share some thoughts and personal opinions about what the next steps might be and highlights some of the clear and obvious challenges that remain. It is also a small chapter of a much longer story.

To make any progress, there needs to be a substantial reset of the project. It needs to be recognised that we’re not just talking about change; we’re talking about institutional reform. It is going to be really important to thoroughly understand the work and role of staff tutors and AL services. Also, the solution is not as “simple” as implementing an IT system since we’re talking creating new human activity systems. A sobering point is that the suggested date of August 22 is already optimistic; we need to get a move on if we stand any chance of making anything work.

For the time pressured, here are a list of ten things that need to be done. Each of these points are expanded in the article below:

  1. Let’s go bottom up, not top down
  2. Separate negotiation from implementation 
  3. Uncover those requirements
  4. Embed change agents within schools
  5. Be practical, be incremental
  6. Make things meaningful
  7. Look at planning, piloting and risk
  8. Structural simplicity and transparency
  9. Don’t be afraid to build
  10. Honest communication

Previous articles

In my first blog on this subject, New AL contract: Requirements workshop and C&C discussion, I summarised a very early attempt to “try to figure everything out”. A group of Computing and Communications staff tutors got in a room together in Manchester in January 2019 and asked ourselves: “so, how on earth can we make this thing work?” The truth of the matter is that we didn’t get out of the starting blocks, but we identified some of the key questions that needed answers.

After this first workshop, C&C staff tutors set up some working groups to try to answer some of the questions we had identified. No one told us to do this. We set up the groups because we wanted to be as prepared as we could be when the new tutor contract was introduced, and almost all the staff tutors in the school participated. The groups considered different aspects of the contract and what we thought we needed. It is summarised in the blog Understanding the new tutor contract: C&C working groups, and we presented what we had done to our associate dean.

We’ve always been told that although the terms and conditions for associate lecturers are going to change, the terms and conditions of staff tutors (the line managers of associate lecturers) are not going to change. I’ve always appreciated that some aspects of our job are likely to change. Being a firm believer in the benefit of scenarios, I wrote another blog to try to figure out how the staff tutor might look under the terms of the new tutor contract: A day in the life of a future STEM staff tutor

Amidst all this activity, I’ve also found the time to study a couple of modules. One of the modules I studied was a dissertation module, which was about educational leadership and management. In this module, there were some really interesting sections about institutional change. I didn’t have to think too deeply before I could see the link between an academic discussion of change and the ongoing institutional updates from the new tutor contract team. I felt compelled to write a short blog about the theories of institutional change, emphasising the importance of middle leaders in facilitating change: Studying educational leadership and management. I found the papers about institutional change and middle leaders fascinating; almost as fascinating as Computing.

Understanding complexity

It’s important to take a moment to recognise the amount of complexity that exists within the university.

The university employs around 4k part time tutors. Each tutor will have a different work portfolio. Some tutors will teach on a single module. Other tutors, on the other hand, will have a rich portfolio of modules, and will also do a whole range of other activities, such as marking exams through to helping to write assessment materials. There are also practice tutors who work on the degree apprenticeship schemes. This complexity means that there will be as many variations of the new contract as there are tutors.

Since tutors can do many different things, they may also report to different line managers (who are called staff tutors). To make sense of all this, there are two different key roles that staff tutors carry out as part of the management element of their duties. There is the role of a tuition task managers (or TTMs). TTMs look after a tutor who may be teaching on a module (a tuition task). Secondly, there are lead line managers (or LLMs). LLMs oversee everything that a tutor does, carry out their appraisal, and provide references. There is another role, which is called a cluster manager, but I’m not going to go into that here, since that really would be confusing.

On top of all this, there’s another dimension of complexity, which is: staff tutors can do different things. In my school, they work on module teams, do research and outreach, write module materials, they get involved with employability schemes and educational technology infrastructure development, are postgraduate programme managers, and work closely with the student support teams. Also, the number of tutors that a staff tutor looks after can and does vary. In my school, we are expected to look after 54 tutors as a TTM, and we should line manage around 20 as a LLM. At the time of writing, I’m currently supporting around 60 tutor contracts across all levels of the undergraduate curriculum. 

I have the impression that things are different in different schools. In STEM, some of the Science schools are a lot smaller than the Computing school. In the Faculty of Business and Law, staff tutors are not called staff tutors at all. Instead, they have the title of student experience manager.

There’s also complexity within the curriculum. Just because I don’t have enough to do, I’m currently a student in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The introductory level 1 module A111 is very different (in terms of points, and structure) than TM111 in Computing. When you look up the levels, things are also very different too. Some schools have only undergraduate programmes, whereas others have postgraduate programmes and may also run degree apprenticeship schemes. 

It’s is also very clear that different modules apply different assessment strategies. Some use end of module assessments, some require written exams, and others use something called single component assessments and have an end of module tutor marked assessment. For some modules, the assessment marking fee is all bundled in with the salary, but this isn’t the same for other modules.

If you look a little bit further, there’s even more complexities that we need to be mindful of. Some modules may make extensive use of online discussion forums which require proactive and sensitive moderating, whereas other modules might not use very many discussion forums at all. There are also differences in teaching strategies. In non-pandemic times some engineering programmes need tutors to participate in face-to-face summer schools. Similarly, Computing networking modules had a series of compulsory face-to-face day schools that ran at university centres.

An important concept of the new tutor contract is to have a single line manager who has an oversight of all tutor’s work. To begin to move towards this ideal, it is essential to recognise that the reality is complex, messy and very interconnected. It is also important to recognise that everything is currently facilitated by people and personal relationships. To make the change to the new tutor contract, all the stakeholders that are linked to all aspects of a tutor’s workload need to be involved.

In a very early project meeting, I tried to make the point that the introduction of the new tutor contract isn’t just change; it is bigger than that. It is institutional reform. 

Reform takes time since there is a cultural dimension to it.

Recognising the inversion

Given all this complexity, it is useful to ask the simple question of: “how do things work at the moment?”

The answer to this is pretty straightforward: a tutor manages their own time and workload. 

If a tutor has capacity, and they see an interesting module, they might apply. They then might be shortlisted, interviewed, and then potentially be considered to be appointable, and then later offered a contract. Also, if they want to get involved in forum moderation, for example, they may respond to an expression of interest.

With the new tutor contract, everything is inverted. Rather than the tutor managing their own time and workload, the staff tutor becomes responsible for ensuring that the tutor’s time is used as effectively as possible by allocating them bits of work. This means that all the complexity that was previously described needs to be somehow understood and taken account of. That complexity also needs to be shared between fellow staff tutors within a school since they need to work together to solve common problems, such as tutor illness, marking appeals and student support issues. To make thing work, we need to create some form of “system” to collaborate and work with each other to make sense of all that complexity.

When I use the term “system”, I don’t mean a computer system. Instead, I mean a human activity system, of which there would be an information technology component. The humans we would interact with would include curriculum managers, colleagues from AL services, people services, and anyone else within the complex picture that was described above. What we have is a difficult problem to solve because it involves a lot of people, and a lot of information.

When considering the new tutor contract, it’s important to recognise an important inversion. Time management will shift from the tutor to the staff tutor, and this represents a fundamental cultural shift.

Imagining the next steps

At the time of writing, the work on the implementation of the new contract had paused since there was a recognition that the university would not be ready to make things work in October.

Another question I have been asking myself is: “if someone in the VCE asked me for my view about what they should do, how might I respond?”

As a starting point, and to facilitate further discussions, here are my suggestions:

1. Let’s go bottom up, not top down

One thing that I’ve realised is that top down change doesn’t really work when there are two factors at play: loads of complexity, and working with a rich community of colleagues who are free thinkers who really want to be involved. 

Staff tutors are smart people. They have a wealth of experience and knowledge. That experience and knowledge exists “on the ground” within the schools. They will be doing the work at the end of the day, so it is important to reach down to those grass roots.

2. Separate negotiation from implementation

The project team tried to negotiate their way to an implementation. It is right and proper that unions are involved in the negotiation of contract terms and condition, but the implementation of operational processes and system is substantially different. There isn’t any reason why the union need to be substantially involved (and I choose my words carefully here) in the gathering of detailed requirements. 

I’ve heard the argument “we couldn’t start the implementation because we were still negotiating” a number of times. This view doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The broad aims and principles of the contract are understood and published. All the time on the project has been used up for negotiation, and not implementation.  There is no reason why everything needs to be completely defined before the work that is needed to implement the contract could begin.

3. Uncover those requirements

In the January 2019 workshop which I referenced earlier, I spoke about using tools such as personas, scenarios and use cases as potential ways to start to uncover user requirements. Before even considering system requirements, it’s important to ask a simpler question: “what, exactly, is the work that staff tutors do?” It’s important to capture scenarios, to evaluate them, to write new ones, and to test them thoroughly because different staff tutor communities might understand similar things in slightly different ways.

A whole host of issues were uncovered during the February 2020 staff tutor new tutor contract, but these issues were not clearly shared, understood and resolved in a way that was clear or understandable. All this gives the sense “the project team” don’t really understand what staff tutors need to be doing to make the new tutor contract a reality. 

4. Embed change agents within schools

I hate the term “change agents” but at the moment I can’t come up with anything better. 

The existing project had a role that was called a “faculty rep”. The faculty rep had the unenviable job of being an interface between the faculty and the project team.  Our STEM faculty rep has done a very good job in helping a lot of staff tutors understand some of the fundamental challenges that need to be resolved. Structurally, however, four faculty reps isn’t enough people to facilitate complex strategic change when there are at least four hundred centrally employed university staff who are directly affected by those changes (I include AL services colleagues as well as staff tutors within this rough estimate of staffing numbers).

A proposal is to have someone within every school (or a part of a person within smaller schools) who help with activities such as gathering requirements, testing requirements, and sharing updates about how systems and tools will work. 

In response to queries about the lack of engagement by the project team, I’ve heard members of the project and colleagues from the union say: “we have had staff tutors in all the negotiating groups”. That certainly is the case, but there is a fundamental difference between participating in a collective bargaining and negotiating structure, and having the need to actively uncover requirements, enact culture changes and help colleagues to understand new ways of working. 

The only way to effectively make bottom up change work, is to find a way to empower those communities that will be affected by those changes. A school rep (rather than a faculty rep), along with other stakeholder reps, may be the only way to do this.

5. Be practical, be incremental

Tutors and staff tutors will be making decisions, in partnership with each other, about what bits of work need to be done. These ‘bits’ might be module tutoring, exam marking, or a broad range of additional Tuition Related Activities (TRAs), as they are called. Effective decision making can only be facilitated by the provision of effective and accurate information. 

The idea is that every tutor will have a full time equivalent percentage, which relates to their salary. A bit of a tutor's FTE relates to TRA activities. The thing is, we currently have no way of knowing what that bit of time relates to. Subsequently, we have no idea about how to manage it.

The TRA bit of the FTE has been calculated by calculating an average of salary data over a period of three years. An average presents a summary; it doesn’t present the detail. What we need to make everything work is the detail of who has been doing what and when.

A practical suggestion is to separate out module FTE from TRA FTE, and find a mechanism to increase a tutor’s FTE over a period of time when substantial pieces of work are needed to be carried out. Rather than guessing what work people do (which is never a good thing to do), we should rely on real data. In the transition period, which could take a few years, tutors should be paid roughly the same for the same amount of work.

This approach gives us something else that is important: equity (in terms of making sure that work is fairly allocated between tutors), and transparency. 

6. Make things meaningful

One of my grumbles was about the first skills audit pilot. Tutors were essentially asked whether they would like to carry on doing the work that they were doing. The skills audit pilot that we were presented with wasn’t the systematic discussion about the skills, capabilities, and aspirations that I had expected. In January 2019, a question was posed that still seems to be unanswered: “will tutors be able to see their skills audit summary through TutorHome?” I still don’t know whether this is the intention of the project team. 

During the course of last 18 months, a project group was set up to develop training procedures to help staff tutors to understand how to make the new tutor contract work. This is an important piece of work, and this is something that certainly needs to be looked at. The problem was that the project group were trying to define training for procedures which hadn’t yet been defined, since staff tutor work practices had not yet been defined, since requirements had not been uncovered and analysed. We couldn’t be trained in systems that had not been defined.

Some parts of the project have been baffling. The workload planning group wasn’t really about workload. Instead, it was about FTE. There was a “support solutions group” that was, actually, a group about tools and systems. 

Substantial bits of work should always have meaning, and should make sense. It is important that any overseeing board takes the time to question the activities that have been set up and are taking place. 

7. Look at planning, piloting and risk

Towards the end of the first staff tutor conference about the new tutor contract that took place in Leeds, I asked a really simple question: “what are the next steps?”

There needs to be a clear project plan that has a set of interim deliverables, and that plan needs to be published widely. That plan isn’t expected to be perfect, since change is difficult, but it needs to offer more detail than has been offered by the previous plans that have been published by the project team. 

Piloting is important, and I think this is partly recognised. I have heard rumours of a second “skills audit pilot” that had been taking place in the Faculty of Business and Law, but I have no idea what it is all about. One thing I am certain about is that the curriculum in FBL is likely to be very different from the curriculum in other schools and faculties. Piloting ideas and concepts is obviously important, since they smoke out issues, and develop understanding within the community of staff that are involved within a pilot. Pilots should be embedded within a complex change programme to ensure that stakeholders are involved.

One of the obvious criticisms that can be levelled at the current project team is the lack of clear risk planning. With every risk, there should be a mitigation. Although it seems like it, August 22 isn’t a long way away when we’re dealing with complex change. 

An important question that needs to be asked early on should be: “how are we going to run everything if we don’t have access to the information systems that we need?” This “plan B”, whatever it might be, should be understood, designed and then piloted.

8. Structural simplicity and transparency

When I was on the union side of a negotiating group, I wasn’t quite sure about what I could say to whom about what. There was a high level group called AL NT, another group called ST NT, another group about FTE calculation, and another couple of groups which I don’t really know anything about. There were also two sides, a union side, and a management side. Meetings took place every two weeks, and there were always no less than ten people per group. 

Within those groups, I found myself repeating the words “engagement” and “requirements” many times. There is a fundamental issue at play here: the more complicated a structure, the more difficult it can be to actually get things done, and to get your voice heard. 

Communications between parts of the project need to be better for anything to work, and the whole project structure need to be simpler. When requirements are gathered, these should be made available for scrutiny. Transparency should be a principle that is adopted for the whole of the project. 

9. Don’t be afraid to build

The OU is a unique institution amongst higher education institutions. The new tutor contract is also likely to be unique amongst contracts that are used in the higher education sector. In one of the groups I was involved with, there was a general trend towards looking at “off the shelf” solutions to keep track of who does what and when.

Given the uniqueness and the complexity of everything, it is entirely plausible that an ideal off the shelf solution might not exist. Subsequently, it’s really important that the decision makers don’t rule out the need to develop a bespoke set of tools to help AL services and staff tutors if that is needed. The university has a bespoke version of a VLE and a bespoke student management system.

As suggested earlier, when considering systems, the project leaders should always remember that when the term “system” is used, it isn’t only used to refer to “information system” or “computer system”. The system needed to make the new tutor contract work is what is called a human activity system, of which IT will play an important part.

It’s also not only true that an IT system needs to be built, the project team need to take time to build understandings amongst all the different stakeholders, and build ways of working too. Drawing on my experience of tutoring on a third level Interaction Design module, it may also be a good idea to build prototypes too. 

10. Honest communication

Finally, a call for honest communication. 

A lot of the updates coming from the project team can be described as unrelentingly positive. Some of the messages that were being conveyed were substantially at odds with my own understanding of how everything was going. Some of the communications summarised work done rather than achievements gained and conveyed a false impression of success. Also, some of the email updates appeared to suggest (in my eyes) a lack of understanding of many of the complexities that were sketched out at the start of this blog. 

If there is going to be progress, communications from everyone who has a vested interest in the new tutor contract needs to be considered and measured. There also needs to be a degree of honest directness. It is also important to listen to those who may have something to contribute, and to thoroughly consider the perspectives of others.

Final thoughts

Given how important tutors are to the success of the university, there is something very wrong if the institution isn’t able to give tutor colleagues permanent ongoing contracts which recognises their commitment and dedication. 

I have been concerned about the state of the project for some time. I think I have been concerned by some of the very important misunderstandings, or differences of opinion, that appear to exist. The first of these is the concept of: “we can’t implement whilst we’re still negotiating”, which doesn’t make sense given the extent of the change that is necessary. The second is a misunderstanding of the conception of “engagement”. Engagement within a negotiation structure isn’t the same as engaging with those who are at the sharp end of any change. Engagement and involvement must be substantial and continuous. Staff tutors sit within a confluence of complex relationships: with tutors, AL services, module teams, people services, and other stakeholders. All these groups need to be involved.

It’ll put it another way: there needs to be a substantial “reset” in the way that the project is run for it to have any chance of success in August 2022. As suggested earlier, in the complex world of IT system procurement or development, this isn’t much time at all. Also, we need more than an IT system to make everything work. Meanwhile, systemic institutional reform that needs to take place. We have, after all, a profound inversion of working practices to figure out.

A significant concern is that staff tutors don’t yet have an understanding of how they will be able to practically manage module teaching under the terms of the new contract. Given that we don’t have a thorough or detailed understanding of how to make things work for modules, the idea of managing tuition related activities with incomplete information, having no real understanding about how to deal with that incomplete information, fills me with fear. There needs to be systematic uncovering of requirements, and the topic of the TRAs need to be thought through very carefully.

I want to support tutors (and students) by allocating work in a way that is traceable, transparent and fair. By working with AL services, I also want to ensure institutional and organisation efficiency by ensuring that that public money and student fees are used and spent in a way that is appropriate and justifiable. 

I don’t want to be in a situation in 2022, where I again receive the words “we have concluded that we will not be ready to implement the contract changes”. There’s a lot of work to be done, and a lot of hard decisions to be made before we get anywhere close to a workable solution. 

As an institution, we need to get a move on.

Acknowledgements

Many of the concepts that have been expressed in this blog are not my own, but have emerged through a process of extensive collective discussion of these issues of a period of many months. I would like to personally thank staff tutor colleagues within two groups, the cross faculty M-21 group, and the C&C staff tutor community. A personal thank you to colleagues who took time out of their busy day to proofread this very long article.

Updates

This blog was updated on 27 July 21, to simply some of the wording used to express the management of TRAs (or HTRAs, as they are sometimes known). Also updated 8 September 21, where the point about an alternative way of working and the importance of piloting was clarified.

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Christopher Douce

Studying educational leadership and management

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Saturday, 30 Oct 2021, 13:02

Over the last two years, I’ve been working towards an MA in Education. I’ve studied two modules, EE812 Educational leadership: exploring strategy and EE813 MA Ed dissertation: leadership and management. I’ve blogged about some of my experiences of studying EE812 and studying EE813 before.

This blog post presents a vigorously edited fragment (or summary) of some of the ideas that have found their way into my EE813 dissertation.

I’m blogging this for the following reasons: (1) it has been a useful exercise to clarify my own thinking about bits of my dissertation, (2) to highlight authors and researchers that I found interesting to fellow students (with the thought that perhaps some might find them interesting too), and (3) to highlight bits of research that might be potentially useful when thinking about middle leadership and institutional change (which are the key themes of my dissertation).

Leadership and Middle leadership 

One of the things I asked myself was: what is the difference between leadership and management? I like the definition provided by Morrison (2013) who writes that leadership is about setting the direction of travel whilst management can be described as “ways of ensuring the vision happens in practice”.

One really interesting paper that I’ve found is by Alan Bryman. Bryman (2007) looks at research published about effective leadership in higher education and identifies thirteen behaviours. When considered as a whole, these behaviours could be seen as a simple framework. I’ve summarised them below:

  1. set a clear sense of direction/vision
  2. prepare to facilitate the direction that has been set
  3. being considerate of those who are led
  4. ensuring fairness and integrity
  5. trustworthy and personal integrity
  6. allowing open discussion
  7. communicating well
  8. acting as credible role models
  9. creating a collegial work environment
  10. advancing cause of department/school
  11. providing feedback on performance
  12. providing resources and facilitating scholarship
  13. making academic appointments that enhances reputation

Another paper that I’ve found (and one that I’ve drawn on for a lot) is by someone called John De Nobile.

De Nobile (2018) presents a model of middle leadership in his paper “towards a theoretical model of middle leadership in schools”. Schools, in his context, represents high schools, but there isn’t any reason why can’t use the same model to think about other contexts.

Reading this paper helped me in a couple of ways. It enabled me to see that ‘middle leadership’ or the study of ‘middle leaders’ was a subject in its own right. It has also enabled me to understand what a ‘theory’ looks like in the area of leadership or management studies. 

De Nobile’s model presents a ‘management-leadership continuum’. It suggests a number of inputs and outputs, and provides some suggestions about how different middle leader (or management) roles may be 'enacted'. He suggests that his MILS model could be “operationalised to guide further research into the way middle leaders operate, the influences that support or constrain them” (p.410). One thing that I would like to do is to ask some fellow staff tutor colleagues whether they also recognise aspects of De Nobile’s model, and whether it might be a useful tool to think about their role (but all that is for another day).

Change in higher education

When writing my dissertation for EE813, I drew on some ideas that were introduced during my study of EE812 (which, I guess, was the idea). One topic that I kept returning to time and again was the different ways in which change could be understand or conceptualised. 

In EE812, I was introduced to two theorists: Fullan and Kotter. 

Drawing on the EE812 module resources, Kotter presents an 8 stage change model: (1) establish a sense of urgency, (2) develop a guiding coalition, (3) create a vision of the future situation, (4) communicate the vision in different ways, (5) empower others by removing obstacles, (6) plan for and celebrate short term wins, (7) consolidate improvement and encourage the generation of further ideas, and (8) institutionalise new approaches.

Again, referencing the EE812 module materials (and my dissertation) Fullan, by contrast, presents a 10 stage model. The stages are: (1) do no assume that your vision is the one that could or should be implemented, (2) change requires those involved with implementation to work out their own meaning; a process of clarification, (3) assume that conflict and disagreement are inevitable and fundamental, (4) assume that people need pressure to change, (5) change takes time (specific innovations may take 2-3 years; institutional reform may take 5-10 years), (6) do not assume lack of implementation is outright rejection; other reasons may include time, resources or other significant concerns, (7) take steps to increase the number of people affected, (8) evolutionary planning is essential, (9) it is not possible to know everything before decisions need to be taken, (10) assume changing institutional culture is the real agenda. 

Simply put, Kotter's model can be thought of a top down (or rational) approach, whereas Fullan's broadly represent a bottom up approach. With Fullan's model, there’s an acknowledgement that change is complex. This is, of course, because people are involved, which makes change (and, specifically, education change) a socially complex process.

Bringing everything together

Another paper I discovered was by Balogun and Johnson (2004) who studied how middle managers responded to institutional restructuring. An important quote that I noted was “when senior managers redesign their organisations, they need to consider the social factors alongside the other aspects of the work settings” (p.544). Also, sense checking was also considered to be necessary “during organisational change it is essential to tap into, monitor and understand the multiple interpretations that are developing among recipients” (p.545) to track the process of change. The point being that different people or groups of people can understand things in different ways.

I discovered that some authors connected together the themes of change and middle leaders. A good example of this is where Edwards-Groves et al. (2019) wrote “middle leaders are able to reframe abstract initiatives and policies and articulate them in relation to locally realised practices in real terms” (p.331). There’s an implication here that middle leaders are important since they can act as important buffers and bridges between institutional change initiatives and the situations in which they are implemented. To become buffers and bridges middle leaders need to have the time and opportunity to understand and make sense of policy changes so they can begin to constructively interpret ways in which they may be realised.

Although they were writing about secondary schools, this is something that is explored by Bennett et al. (2007) who wrote: “there needs to be scope for discovery and creation of new ways of working from the bottom-up …  simply to demand a new role for middle leaders is not going to bring it into existence” (p.467) The role of middle leaders, it is argued, need to be discovered and interpreted. This takes us back to the work of Fullan, who suggests that “change requires those involved with implementation to work out their own meaning”. 

One thing that has struck me from all this study is that middle leadership is (using a term from EE812) relational. In other words, it’s all about relationships and interactions between people. The power of middle leaders (and thus the ability to enact change) comes from collaboration and discussion.

Reflections

All of my reading for my EE813 dissertation has been directed by the EE813 module and its predecessor, EE812. I’ve even found the time to delve into a set text for EE811 Educational leadership: agency, professional learning and change even though I haven’t studied that particular module (I was able to use 60 points of study from another institution towards my MA).

Another area that is relevant is the subject of systems thinking, which used to be featured within OU Technology postgraduate modules. Although systems thinking (as a topic) is often allied and connected with computing and information technology, it isn’t really about computers; it’s about understanding socio-technical systems. This means that it’s about understanding of human activity systems, and how different people might use and share information that might be provided by an information system. Aspects of this are touched on in the Computing undergraduate module TM353 IT systems: planning for success.

The point I’m trying to make by mentioning all this is simple: if you wish to enact change, you also need to understand that systems need to change too. This, of course, means that systems need to be understood, and that everyone who is affected by any systems change need to be involved with that change. An important starting point to look to the subject of Soft Systems Methdology (do forgive my use of a Wikipedia article in this blog)

This blog was written a week after my dissertation was submitted. I have no idea what mark I’m going to get, since I’ve never formally studied educational leadership and management before. I’ve got my fingers crossed that I’ll get a pass. 

This said, whilst a good mark would be nice, it’s always the learning that really matters, and I really do feel I’ve learnt a few things from EE812 and EE813. 

References

Balogun, J. and Johnson, G. (2004) ‘Organizational restructuring and middle manager sensemaking’. The Academy of Management Journal, vol. 47, no. 4, pp.523-549.

Bennett, N., Woods, P., Wise, C. and Newton, W (2007). ‘Understanding of middle leadership in secondary schools: a review of empirical research’. Leadership and Management, vol. 27, no. 5, pp.453-470.

Branston, C. M., Franken, M. and Penney, D. (2015) ‘Middle leadership in higher education: a relational analysis’. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, vol. 41, no. 1, pp.128-145.

Bryman, A. (2007) ‘Effective leadership in higher education: a literature review’. Studies in Higher Education, vol. 32, no. 6, pp.693-710.

De Nobile, J. (2018) ‘Towards a theoretical model of middle leadership in schools’. School Leadership & Management, vol. 38, no. 4, pp.395-416.

Fullan, M., Cuttress, C. and Kilcher, A. (2013) ‘Educational change: implementation and continuation’, in Wise, C., Bradshaw, P. and Cartwright, M. (eds) Leading Professional Practice in Education, Sage Publications Ltd, pp.111-123.

Kotter, J. P. (1996) Leading change, Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press.

Morrison, A. R. (2013) ‘Educational leadership and change: structural challenges in the implementation of a shifting paradigm’, School Leadership & Management, vol. 33, no. 4, pp.412-424


Update, 30/10/21: I got a merit for my dissertation which I was over the moon about. Had I used mixed methods, which the dissertation module was hinting at, I might have even got a distinction, but I'm really happy with what I have learnt, and what I did.

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Christopher Douce

Understanding the new tutor contract: C&C working groups

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Sunday, 18 Apr 2021, 15:06

The way in which associate lecturers are employed by the university is changing.

Tutors will be moving from a situation where they are employed on a ‘per module’ basis to a new type of contract where they are employed on a permanent basis.

The ‘per module’ contract currently lasts for the length of a module, which might be anything between 6 and 10 years (depending on the subject, and whether a module presentation is extended). When a module presentation comes to an end (and it is replaced by a new module) tutors have to reapply and be re-interviewed. All this takes a lot of time. 

A central tenet of the new contract is the idea of what tutors may be qualified to teach rather than a currently narrow definition of what they have specifically applied to teach. The new contract offers tutors increased security whilst also potentially providing greater flexibility for both the university and the university’s associate lecturers.

A really important question that needs to answered is: how might all this work? 

Unfortunately, such a simple question doesn’t have a simple answer. 

To help answer this question, a group of staff tutors in the School of Computing and Communications decided to create a set of small working groups to try to unpick the challenges of working with the new tutor contract. 

By way of further context, the role of ‘staff tutor’ refers to someone who will be looking after or line managing an associate lecturer. They will also be responsible for carrying out essential tasks, such as allocating workload (deciding which tutor carry out which tutoring task), running appraisals, planning tutorials and so on.

The informal working groups that were set up had the titles: organisation (how staff tutors should organise themselves to solve the problem), data and information (what staff tutors need to make decisions), managing supply and demand (what kind of reports about tutors or students are needed to help with planning), and culture (broader questions about who may have to be involved, and what needs to be done to make everything work). 

This document summarises some of the discussions that have emerged from all these groups. An important point is: we don’t have any answers, but the groups have helped us to understand more about some of the things that need to be understood, and some of the issues that need to be resolved.

Organisation

This working group was charged with understanding how staff tutors might practically organise themselves to make things work. 

At its most basic level, each tutor will have a percentage FTE (full time equivalent) which relates to the number of hours they are expected to work in a year. Staff tutor will have the task of ensuring that tutors are allocated work (and the work be different types of task) and they must also ensure that they are allocated the right amount of work.

Staff tutors have to manage dynamic situations: student numbers fluctuate between different years; sometimes they will be higher, sometimes they will be lower. Sometimes tutors resign, or retire, and sometimes they have to take time off due to illness.

An important question that staff tutors need to ask themselves are: how many people do you (generally) have to speak with to solve these kinds of problems, if you are dealing with a curriculum area? There needs to be a way to keep a track of available capacity (in terms of teaching resources or hours that can be allocated): how will staff tutors be able to do this?

To make everything work, the relationships between the staff tutors and the tutors will be really important. Also, continuity and consistency between years and presentations is also going to be important. There needs to be a way to keep records of who has been doing what, and over what period.

There’s an important question of how staff tutors might organise themselves to ensure that the communications that they have to be involved with is manageable. Should they organise themselves in terms of curriculum, or perhaps in terms of geography? One thought is to try to solve the general problem and then deal with exception cases. In the School of Computing and Communications, this might be the staff tutors who look after postgrad modules, or those who manage project modules. 

Data and Information

This group asked four key questions: (1) What information/data will we need to support the tasks we’ve identified? (2) What format do we need the data in? (3) When do we need the data?, and (4) What data is likely to be available?

In terms of the first question, what information and data is needed, this was split into three further groups: information about associate lecturers (qualifications, their full time equivalent, current workload tasks, desired FTE, areas of expertise, interest in additional duties, and recording of CPD), information about modules (who the current tutors are, what the predictions for the next presentation are) and finally, which tutors are available to complete certain tasks (and whether there was information that could help with the decision making about who to select, and in what order.

Regarding the question of ‘what format do we need the data in?’ a useful suggestion was the idea of a ‘school dashboard’ that could provide an overview of whether there are any recruitment, capacity or allocation issues. A school dashboard might also offer a summary of the CPD status of tutors. Perhaps there might also be a ‘cluster dashboard’ for staff tutors too.

As for when we need the data and information, there were a number of suggestions: a year in advance of the tutor student allocation, and in anticipation of any strategic changes to a programme, such as: when a module comes to an end, a new module starts, a new programme starts, or any other planned changes to a programme.

There is one specific example that is worth sharing.  The School of Computing and Communications has recently introduced a new cyber security programme. To plan for its introduction, it would be necessary to find out whether there are sufficient tutors with sufficient skills to tutor those modules. The accuracy of information is fundamental to long term strategic decisions about tutor capacity, as well as the per-presentation decision making and work allocation that staff tutors need to perform.

Managing Supply and Demand

The supply and demand group picks up from where the data and information group finishes. This group was asked to explore the management of available AL capacity to meet changing student demand and needs.  

Staff tutors emphasised the needs for a more robust and reliable student registration forecasting processes. An interesting suggestion was that any system could closely monitor the numbers of students who start level 1 modules, with a view to tracking how they move onto levels 2 and 3. There should ideally be a theoretical capacity buffer which could mitigate against potentially changing and challenging situations.

The problem could be understood in terms of pools: a supply pool (the available ALs), and the demand pool (students).

The allocation of work could be carried out in a number of steps, beginning with looking for the number of tutors needed and checking of skills that the tutors currently have (and facilitating staff development if necessary). This would be followed with allocation of long-term work, such as asking a tutor to teach on a a module (and allocating a number of students that matches with their FTE preference). If there was any spare FTE capacity, then additional duties (such as monitoring) could be allocated.

Another subject the supply and demand group explored was the issue of tutor recruitment. Under the new contract, a knowledge-based approach, based on groupings of modules or subject areas would be needed. A more detailed person specification would need to be created that goes above and beyond what is described in the person specifications for individual modules. All this would have to be negotiated by the union, include colleagues in AL services (who currently help to run the AL recruitment processes) and colleagues in people services.

Staff tutors can only do their job successfully if they are provided with accurate information. Colleagues from this group emphasised the need to identify trends. This means that staff tutors need to have accurate forecasting to ensure that their pool of associate lecturers (the supply side) is developed and supported as effectively as possible.

One of the conclusions from this group takes us directly to the discussions of the final group, the culture and change group: “for the long term it will also be essential to implement structural changes to our appointment, induction, training, support and staff development processes “

Culture and Change

This final group were asked to explore the extent to changes (particularly in terms of institutional culture and practices) that would need to be adopted (or adapted) to facilitate the implementation of the new tutor contract.

Put simply, the new tutor contract represents an inversion of how things are currently managed. At the moment, tutors are responsible for managing their own workload and their own continuing professional development. 

Under the terms of the new contract, it will be the staff tutors who will be responsible for the management of the workload of the tutors, and the staff tutors will be responsible for identify gaps in skills and capabilities and working with tutors to provide professional development to ensure that school (and university) objectives are met.

The relationship between the tutor and the staff tutors is going to change. Colleagues from this group explain the challenge quite succinctly: “we are moving from a volunteering for jobs situation to one in which we tell people what to do. So, the issue is what are the consequences when an AL says no! In this scenario, there is both a task issue, and a people-management issue.” The point here is that the role of the staff tutor will be changing. To facilitate that change it is also going to be important to consider what training and professional development needs to be carried out to enable staff tutors to comfortably complete their new job.

Like the previous group, this group discussed the subject of recruitment. It began to consider some scenarios which staff tutors may have to deal with, such as local issues such as last minute closure of tutorial venues, or surge in registration for certain modules.

Although staff tutors currently work in a collegiate and collaborative way, to make things work under the terms of the new contract, the extent of this collegiality may have to increase. Information about tutor capacity and tutor intentions will need to be shared between different staff tutors. Staff tutors may need to be organised in groups to make sure this information sharing is carried out efficiently.

It is also important to recognised that the change to the new terms of the contract will also impact on other key groups of staff; most significantly AL services (who have a key role in ensuring that groups are continued to be created), central academics, and the examinations teams.

Conclusions

The following points can be concluded from these discussions:

  1. Information is going to be fundamental to the implementation of the new tutor contract; information systems are needed.
  2. The information requirements of a system that will support the storage and discovery of information need to be established.
  3. Even if an information system is provided and developed, staff tutor communities across the university need to be empowered to make their own decisions about how to best organise themselves to facilitate collaboration with each other to ensure that workload is allocated and tutors are supported.
  4. The introduction of the new tutor contract will affect the roles of many staff groups in addition to staff tutors, such as: AL services, central academics, examinations, IT, and people services.
  5. All these stakeholder groups need to be engaged with the change, to gather requirements, and to facilitate understanding of those changes for the new tutor contract to be implemented.
  6. There needs to be a way to recruit new associate lecturers.
  7. There needs to be the definition of robust procedures that staff tutors can apply to resolve problems when they arise. 

Disclaimers

This summary doesn’t represent an officially negotiated or agreed position; it presents views that are entirely separate from any views held by university management or the union. This document emerged from discussions by staff tutor colleagues within the school of Computing and Communications who were asking the fundamental question: what do we have to do to make the new tutor contract work?

It is really important to recognise that different parts of the university may be very different to each other, particularly in terms of curriculum. In Computing and Communications the curriculum aligns neatly with the school, whereas in other parts of the university, some tutors might tutor on modules in different schools and in different faculties. This means that colleagues from different parts of the university may well have different requirements.

Acknowledgements

A significant number of staff tutors in C&C have played a role in these different working groups.  The organisation group was led by Matt Walkley and the contributors were Matthew Nelson and Mark Slaymaker. The data and information group was jointly led by David McDade and Anthony Johnston, with contributions from Sharon Dawes and Chris Douce. The supply and demand group was led and facilitated by Ray Corrigan with important contributions from Christine Gardner, Chris Thomson and Marina Carter. Finally, the culture change group was led by Steve Walker, with contributions from Alexis Lansbury, Andy Reed and Andy Hollyhead. This summary was compiled by Chris Douce from notes made during a presentation by all group leaders at regular C&C staff tutor meeting. 

Further information

This summary is related to an earlier event: New AL contract: Requirements workshop and C&C discussion, which took place in January 2019. Another meeting took place in early 2020.

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New AL contract: Requirements workshop and C&C discussion

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Edited by Christopher Douce, Sunday, 18 Apr 2021, 15:07

This post is a quick summary of a requirements workshop that took place at the Manchester student support and resource centre (SRSC) towards the end of January 2019. Also, at the end of his blog post is a short summary of a discussion and presentation that took place at the School of Computing and Communications away day, that took place in February.

The January event was originally called a ‘participatory design workshop’, but if the truth is told, we didn’t actually get as far as doing any significant design; we had way too much to talk about. The aim of this workshop was to figure out a couple of things: 

  1. to learn more about how we might gather requirements about an AL workload management system, and 
  2. to try to gather some of those requirements.  

Since this was the first requirements gathering event (that I know of), arguably the first point was the more important of the two objectives.

One of the things that I’ve learnt from teaching interaction design for ten years is that it’s really important to involve people (especially if those people you’re speaking to are going to be affected by a system that you’re going to be introducing). It’s also important to identify which groups of people are going to be affected by the introduction of a system through a process that is broadly known as stakeholder analysis.

The stakeholders who were involved at this workshop was a group of staff tutors from the school of Computing and Communications. It’s important to say something about this group of awesome people: they work within a number of different organisational cultures. They work within a particular school and within a particular faculty (the STEM faculty), and (of course) within this particular university. 

My point is that different staff tutors (and stakeholders) may well have different needs and requirements. The needs and requirements gathered from this one group of staff might be different to those gathered from another group. I’ll put it another way: to get a real understanding of what you need from a system means that you’ve got to go and ask different groups of people. What the tutors will need (and tutors are, arguably, the most important stakeholder in this system) will be very different from what the staff tutors need.

Another point to remember is that you can’t just buy a ‘work management system’ for tutors off the shelf. The reason for this is pretty simple and obvious: the OU tutor contract is specific to the OU, and that the OU is pretty unique amongst institutions, which means that an off the shelf ‘talent management system’ (or whatever they might be called) is unlikely to suit our needs. This said, this important reflection shouldn’t stop us looking at other products to gain inspiration and insights.

The question is: how do actually go about specifying a new system? Actually, there are a couple of subjects in computing that can help us: interaction design (which I’ve mentioned earlier), and requirements engineering (I know more about the former than the latter).

What follows is a summary of the plan for the day, a brief summary of some of the points that were gathered, followed with a quick summary (and a suggestion about next steps). A more detailed document (complete with more pictures and text) will be prepared from all the resources that has been captured.

The workshop plan

The workshop was (roughly) split into thirds. 

Part 1

The first third was all about context. Steve Walker (who was involved in the contract negotiations) began by introducing the contract. Steve said that he was being asking two types of questions: type A questions were questions about the detail about the contract; type B questions were questions about how the new system would work. The aim of this workshop was, he said, to answer some of those type B questions that everyone was asking. These questions were, in essence, about the detail (and when it comes to system design, details matter).

After Steve had completed his introduction, he described the connection between the new tutor contract and the replacement of some university systems. The timing of the negotiations were such that they are not connected or linked to each another. The point is that the new tutor contract represents a set of additional system requirements that need to be taken into account (somehow).

Next up was yours truly. I described some tools and principles from the subject of interaction design (which is all about the designing of interactive systems). I spoke about personas, scenarios and use cases. 

Importantly, user personas have already been used by the contract team to understand different tutors who might move onto the new tutor contract, but personas didn’t exist for other stakeholders (such as staff tutors, academic services staff, HR people, and central academics). 

Some further points were: there is the need to explore the problem space, and the importance of iteration and prototyping. An important point was: the later you make changes in an IT system, the more things cost. The obvious solution for risk mitigation is that it is really important to understand what you’re building before you go ahead and build a system.

Part 2

This was the part where staff tutor colleagues got themselves into small groups. The brief was kept simple: think about the challenges that you face in your day to day work as a staff tutor, and use the different interaction design tools to try to create something. That something might be: personas, narrative descriptions of tasks, or rough sketches that illustrates how the tutor management system needs to work (and what the different stakeholders need to do). 

Part 3

This final part was where all the different groups shared something about their discussions with each other. This bit was very informal, and led to a group discussion about some of the various issues and challenges that were exposed. After the discussions, all notes (and scribbled on flip charts) were gathered up in anticipation of the next step: analysis. 

Outcomes

Two related questions that interaction design students can ask is: (1) how much requirements gathering should you do? And, (2) how do you analyse and make sense of all the data that you’ve gathered?

The answer to the first question is: “you should keep gathering requirements until you spend your budget and/or find that you’re no longer gathering any more new requirements”. Regarding the analysis question, I feel that it’s very much an inductive process: you look at everything and try to figure out what it all means. As you do this, you can begin to write everything down and start to use some of the design tools that I’ve mentioned earlier.

By way of a start, what follows are some broad themes (and questions) that have emerged from our workshop discussions. One thing that I should be clear about is that that the identification of the themes is influenced by my own experiences as both an AL and a staff tutor. Different colleagues could easily identify different issues.

Stakeholders

There are loads of stakeholder (more, perhaps, than we had realised): there are ALs, AL exec and assembly members, staff tutors, lead staff tutors, cluster managers, Academic services (AL services), module team members, module chairs, curriculum managers, people services (HR), IT, Associate Deans and Executive Deans, and finance people. I'm sure there are others too.

In addition to there being loads of stakeholders, another really important point is that different stakeholders will have different perspectives. 

The perspectives of (and experiences) ALs from the STEM faculty will be different to the perspectives of WELS ALs, and these will be different to the perspective of business school ALs. There are important differences between other stakeholder groups: STEM has staff tutors, FASS has staff tutors and faculty managers, and FBL has student experience managers. Different modules, programmes and disciplines may point to differences that need to be thoroughly understood and appreciated.

Implications for stakeholders

An important question to ask is: how will the stakeholders feed into decisions about any system that supports the operation of the new contract? There are other important considerations and implications that need to be taken into account:

  • How will or should different stakeholders understand the system? Will they see it in terms of managing people, or about managing work or workload? (Or, in interaction design terms, what is the overall conceptual model?) 
  • Does the new contract mean that there is a change from managing tutors to leading tutors?
  • Which perspective is the most important: national, regional, cluster or module? Again, to what extent does this differ between different stakeholders?
  • Will different stakeholder see a different dashboard or representation of the system that makes the tutor contract possible? If so, what might this dashboard look like?

Questions

During our workshop, we unearthed a whole bunch of important questions that we couldn't answer by ourselves:

  • Who will be able to make decisions about the skills audit?
  • Will the ALs be able to see their skills audit results through their TutorHome pages?
  • How do staff tutors handle an increase in the student numbers? (And how does this link to HR procedures?)
  • What happens when a tutor requests a leave of absence? 
  • How can tutors and staff tutors manage holidays?
  • What happens if a staff tutor can’t fill or top up a percentage of FTE? Does the system tell a staff tutor what percentage this is, and offer helpful recommendations?
  • What are the recruitment procedures to use if everyone is maxed out on their FTE (or, what buttons might you press)? 
  • If a stakeholder finds a need for a new work component, how do they get it added to the system?

Workshop Reflections

The aim of this workshop was to ‘bootstrap’ or to start the gathering of requirements for a tutor workload management system.

A key reflection was that the plan for the workshop was hopelessly ambitious. 

I had imagined that we would create some new personas and start writing a few scenarios, and then prepare a bunch of ‘straw men’ (or ‘straw person’) sketches that could form the basis of further discussions. In some ways, some groups did start to do this by sketching what bits of information staff tutors would like to see on a screen or 'data portal' or dashboard. Such a step represents the first steps towards a beginning of a design; one that could (and should) be criticized, reinvented and then redesigned.

The truth of the matter was that we were not at the requirements gathering phase: we still didn’t have a good understanding of the problem space.

I’ll share a pretty direct opinion: for a system to be a success you need buy in from its users and stakeholders. 

People like (and need) to be involved. A suggestion is, therefore, to roll out a version of this workshop to different groups of staff across the university: different groups of tutors, different groups of staff tutors, different groups of academics, and different groups of academic services administrators.

Requirements need to be gathered, and potential users need to be listened to. To get it right all this requirements and engagement activity will, necessarily, take time.

A change to the tutor contact represents a significant change to how the university operates. The systems that support that change needs to be right.

An important point to remember is that we’re not talking about a computer system, or a bunch of web pages: we’re talking about the need to figure out how a complex socio-technical system works. 

A concluding opinion is that: we shouldn’t rush the implementation and roll out of a workload management system for tutors. It is way too important.

Workshop Acknowledgements

A big thank you to Steve Walker who introduced the tutor contract during the first part of the workshop, and to all participants. Acknowledgements are also extended to Georgina Harris and Mark Slaymaker and other colleagues who reviewed earlier drafts of this post.

C&C Away Day Discussion

On 13 February I gave a short presentation about the new tutor contract during the School of Computing and Communications away day. The aim of the presentation was to introduce the ideas behind the new tutor contract to colleagues in the school. I based the presentation on a set of slides that had been presented during the Staff Tutor workshop event (thanks Steve!)

After the presentation, there was a short Q&A session, where I tried to answer questions (with help from fellow staff tutors helped). During that session I tried to be as clear as I could in terms of sharing what we knew, and what we didn't. Or, put another way, what the 'know unknowns' were. The most significant of these 'known unknowns' are: what system we use to record everything, how we practically go about carrying out a skills audit and what the HR processes might be for recruiting new tutors to the university.

Here are some key questions that were raised by colleagues in the school:

  • Will we have a loss of control over who we give particular bits of work to? (My personal answer to this one is: I don't think so)
  • Do we (module teams) need to specify what "additional duties" mean, and how does this relate to FTE points? (A related question is: how do bits of work translate to FTE units that we can fit into the work plan for an associate lecturer?)
  • Will central academics be able to see an AL profile to get an understanding of what skills resources are available within a school, so we can try to plan for when we might need more capacity in particular areas? (Or, put another way: what information will module team members be able to see?)
  • What process will there be for the fair selection of associate lecturers? This might apply to either recruiting associate lecturers into the university, or choosing bits of work. (An accompanying question is: what processes do we follow if our decision making is challenged?)
  • Also, we may need to recruit some associate lecturers with specialist skills. Will the new contract enable us to do this?
  • Finally, to what degree will central academic staff need to be (and should be) involved with the academic professional development (or upskilling) of associate lecturers?

After the discussion, I agreed to pass these points on to the project team.

A point I made at the start of the presentation was that the new tutor contract has the potential to change the character of some aspects of the university and affect the way that we all do things. With this in mind, I do feel that it's important that we engage with discussions that relate to its development and implementation.

Additional information

Messages about the new tutor contract regularly appear in my inbox. Here's a quick summary of some of the most important links I've found:

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