Hi team, I had a great exploratory conversation with Hannelie Minnaar, the Assistant Registrar at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) this morning. I invited her to interact with us on this opportunity via our blogger so that these ideas can get a life of their own…as they usually do as soon as we start working through them.
The opportunity is this: To transform higher education in South Africa. The TUT understand the fact that we are entering a new world where relationships are critical and they want to totally transform themselves into a client-centered learning institution. Top management already bought into this although the new university Principle will only be appointed in the next two weeks or so. The opportunity is open for TomorrowToday to partner with the TUT throughout this process. They want to develop individuals that will be relevant and successful in the workplace of the future and they want us to help them on this journey.
Graeme, when she gave me her presentation it almost felt as if I was back at Spellbound again. It is the same dream, just much bigger, much more practical and much more focused on the South African student – not only the richest of the rich.
Let’s ask some questions:
Is it possible to develop people for the future? I believe it is. This is what I spent the last five years on.
What does it mean, in practice? It means that lecturers should become facilitators. It means that we really need to make the student’s agenda our agenda.
Yes, we know all the pure theories about relational approaches to people development, but is it feasible? Can one take this relational approach and still make money? Of course it’s possible – I think we can help them with strategies and ideas to start imagining this new reality – a reality that strives towards the ultimate student development while still making business sense.
Where do we fit in? This sounds huge, won’t it totally suck us in? I think we need to grow into this as we do with any long-standing relationship. We can certainly add a lot of value from a strategic point of view. We can also facilitate WOW-workshops throughout the departments to create further buy-in and generate ideas from the lower levels. We can help lecturers to develop their facilitation ability. We can coach coaches. But for a start, we can just engage with them and see how the relationship takes on form.
I invited them to our Showcase of next week. Please throw a few ideas around through commenting to this blog. Hannelie will also comment from her side as she reads our ideas and inputs. Go go go!!
So here’s a parrellel of sorts. The family I’m a part of is relocating to Jozi. My wife has been school hunting. She eventually picked out 6 schools to go and visit. Some nursery, some primary (pre-primary).
Some interesting lessons learned about customer focus from an educational perspective.
We excluded one very well known and established school based purely on e-mail conversation, and the attitude that came through. Their business so aparently solid, that they stuck to their process, not willing in any way to waver from it slightly to accomadate a parent with limited time contraints. Off the list in a flash.
Saving you the gory details, we eventually decided on Grayston Prep (and I’m sure there are all kinds of good and bad reviews out there) but almost based purely on how they treated the parent who was investigating.
We did our work. We preped a document 12 pages long, at least, outlining who we were as a family, who our child was, and who the business was that was causing the move. So it’s not like we weren’t willing to work within the system.
In fact, to cut the long story right down, we’ve been left with an almost wierd feeling that in light of the fact that our experience with most of the schools was so mediocre, we’re wondering what’s ‘wrong’ with the one we’ve settled on? Why were they so exceptional? Why did they go the extra mile? Why were they so professional in dealing with us? Is there something so obvious we can’t see?
No rubbish – they just gave us some great customer service, and we’re so unacustomed to getting that sort of treatment from a school, that we’re left a little in a twilight zone of sorts. Well here’s to the twilight zone they’ve put us in, and here’s to them, and here’s to a gut feel that if an education institution can treat the parents this well, that they’ve got it right in other parts of the school.
Nuf sed.
This blog should bring some interesting debate. From my side of TomorrowToday I have intracted with 2 Business Schools looking at our material, have inside knowledge on a University/ Technicon in third year of a new trial between business and students to bring real experience. Contact with a company invoved on all 22 Universty and Technicon campuses with students and brands. This tells us that change is happening and on the radar but not too many people know what to do with it. Our OUT OF THE BOX thinking and conncetions could bring us some answers.
On the school space – Barrie – I wish more parents would care enough to take the time to do what you have done. Education of your children is after all your responsibilty. More need to realise this and not blame a poor system.
Wow, I had an extremely positive meeting with Jean yesterday. He just totally gets the picture – can’t wait to meet all of you guys. This is exciting times. I feel a huge responsibilty but also a sense of privilege to be involved in what I regard as an opportunity to revolutionise higher education in our country. The fact that I’m at this point in my career (or life) involved with TUT is to a large extent irrelevant. Though I feel a sense of loyalty towards the institution, it’s not MY (or any other TUT employee’s) institution, it’s the STUDENT’s and it’s the country’s. Creating a big picture perspective of where we want to go TOMORROW, should start TODAY – no time to waste, let’s get going.
Higher Education is hardly immune from the sweeping changes impacting all other sectors of our information economy. Robert Reich, President’s Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, once contrasted higher education with the for-profit sector this way: “In the corporate world, it’s dog eat dog; in academia, it’s just the opposite.” – and this is universally true. Competion is tough, not only for funding and other resources, but also to attract the “bright young things” to your institution!
Jean and I was chuckling about the notion of academia viewing their own knowledge as the cup of wisdom from which students must drink. Jean’s article “Developing people for the future” especially defies this notion. Innovative ideas is now needed more than ever in Higher Education and we need to shift the focus of our student interactions from “transactions” to “customer experience” and building lifelong relationships.
And now I’m going to contradict myself: I would like TUT to benefit from this first. TUT’s vision states that it wants to become the LEADING higher education institution in SA! I’m therefore hoping (rather irrational!) that for now other universities do not follow this blog. But once we’ve established what is best practice in the South African context, the roll-out of this new approach to education can have a positive ripple effect for the SA and African economy beyond our imaginations. (As our relationship evolves we will also discuss with you what we have been busy with in Africa)
Looking forward to pick your brains!
Kewl…I love what’s happening here. Barrie’s comment made me realise that shouldn’t forget the parents in all of this. If you are talking about Strategic Enrollment, it may also help to partner with parent bodies before their youngsters even decide to study. Parents are of course also often the financial sponsors and very much part of the decision-making process. We have thus the following stakeholders in the pot already: 1) Current students 2) Prospective students 3) Alumni (those who are proofing the pudding already) 4) Parents 5) Academic staff 6) Admin staff 7) Government – as main contributor 8) The broader community 9) Other institutions (schools etc.) We need learn from all these sources and get buy-in on the various levels.
Except for getting buy-in from these stakeholders (which will be an educational process in itself as we need to lead people toward seeing the bigger picture) we also will need to capacitate some of them to actually make the transition.
Loose ideas:
We could perhaps also draw on the resources from the TUT’s education department?
Imagine a blog-site for each department where students and lecturers can interact with each other and the world out there?
How do we take Barrie’s 12-page “this-is-our-family” document and create an online version for each student according to which her learning is customised?
Imagine a university where people actually care about whether you pass or not?
Let the other university’s read this – some of them will laugh it off, some will think about it next year, some will start struggling to get management’s buy-in, some will nod their heads and think “it’s not possible”
Hannelie – great to work with you through this!
I came across this article today and was kind of surprised and maybe even a bit p*ssed that these guys are MOVING with what I regarded a new thing in HE for South Africa. What is worrying is that HE institutions are also operating in silos, not just internally as I experience everyday, but also in relation to each other! I was to a great extent oblivious to developments in this field, especially since I was the only South African that attended the annual Strategic Enrolment Management conference in Orlando last year. (OK, I’m waiting for the Everything’s- NOT-bigger-and-better-in-America reprimands, but hey, you should have been there to appreciate what they’ve achieved!)
Playing the devil’s advocate for a moment: It is very important that technology should be the enabler of the RELATIONSHIP quotient. First and foremost, we need to transform the way we connect with our students and this will cut across the total student life cycle (cradle to grave approach). No technology will teach us how to “survive our customers� to become forward thinking institutions of the future!
In any case, UWC should be applauded for their efforts to break down the silos and to let South Africa and Africa as a continent benefit by these initiatives. I am definitely following up the invitation to contact them and collaborate towards a better education system for all.
Here’s the article:
The University of the Western Cape (UWC) will commit R10 million over three years to the development of a student enrolment management system (SEMS) based on free software.
The university believes this model of development using open source software – which is software open to modification – will become the norm in future.
Work on the system is to begin immediately, and involves a strategic collaboration with industry and the African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR) project, a collaboration of nine African universities.
“We believe the free software approach is the one that is best for UWC,” says UWC rector Brian O’Connell. “It is our intention to produce a system that is usable by other African higher education institutions, some of which will eventually join with us in creating the generic components of the system. The collaborative free software approach is the most sustainable in the long-term.”
Derek Keats, executive director of information and communication services who is leading the project, says the days of secret, in-house developed management software are gone, and the open source approach is a viable alternative to implementing proprietary software for this purpose.
According to IT director Madiny Darries, the SEMS project will leverage work already done in the AVOIR project by building on the software application framework that has been developed as the basis for an e-learning system.
“We will use this framework for all our software development at UWC so that we create integrated tools instead of isolated islands of proprietary software,” Darries says.
The application framework and SEMS are developed in object-oriented PHP, using the model-view-controller design pattern and a front controller Web implementation. A proof of concept for the extensibility, scalability and stability of this approach has already been conducted using industrial-strength testing tools.
Institutions interested in collaborating with this project can contact Keats at [email protected] or (021) 959-2304. SEMS will use the AVOIR Web site for hosting and managing the collaborative development
From a systems development perspective I also think that open source is the way to go