Transcript

NICK BARRATT:

The OU has changed its ways of working thanks to the pandemic in so many different ways because we've had to adapt our entire operating model. Now, we are a distance learning organisation. And we support our students who never really set foot on site, apart from our post grads. And our associate lecturers who tutor them and support them, again, don't really come on site at all.

But a lot of our other activities were all based on one of our sites, either at Walton Hall for Milton Keynes or in the regions in England, Nottingham and Manchester, and of course, our four nations. So literally overnight, everyone had to up sticks and find new ways of engaging with each other.

So there's a sustainability benefit. But we have lost some of that face-to-face spark, that excitement of going into a room to do some workshopping. So we're almost trying to get the best of both worlds with a hybrid model. So the bits that work from the pandemic, we've held those. The bits we've missed, we're trying to bring them back, but in a very deliberate way.

The experience of trying to switch to a new way of working has been challenging. I think that's a very diplomatic way of saying it. It was quite stressful because as someone fairly new to the OU, but with a large unit to look after, there's 580 people in learner discovery services, you do feel the weight of responsibility, of decision making.

I was really lucky to have a great senior team around me and some brilliant colleagues in all the teams to manage that really rapid change of an overnight switch. But also trying to make it as supportive an experience, so we spent a lot of time looking at the wellbeing of our colleagues, assessing our workloads, trying to do some fun stuff. So we can connect with each other. So it's not a disengaged and remote experience.

And you have to experiment. You have to try new things. You stretch yourself as a person. So I guess I've learned a lot about myself, about my ways of working, about the strengths of my colleagues, and I guess the robustness of the institution. It really is extraordinary how something like the OU has weathered the storm, and I think really grown into its potential to a certain extent. So yeah, very exciting experience.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But in doing so, our ways of working are much more aligned with the experiences of our students. And I think that's helped teach me the value of why we do what we do.

There were so many challenges and potential legal landmines that we had to avoid and navigate as we started to switch our experience. Now, as the OU, I think we were slightly protected compared to some higher educational institutions. Now, we are distance by design. But we had a lot of face-to-face encounters, summer schools, for example, tutorial groups.

And we had to, again, as an organisation, switch those quite rapidly, making sure that we weren't falling foul of regulations, office for Students, of course, monitoring the situation. So we spun up some really rapid reaction groups to look at this. It was a very agile period of decision making. We were talking in a different way with different folk in the room.

It cut across normal governance, which obviously carries risk. But it brought a freshness to the way we make decisions around circumstance, rather than protocol if that makes sense. We were reacting to situations and really thinking through what we were trying to do. So I think there were some benefits there.

The challenge, I guess, was trying to keep people informed and engaged and see that this wasn't just something we were doing because of the short-term pandemic, the crisis management element. But some of these things would actually have a long-lasting benefit. So unintended benefits, some challenges that we're still working through. But surely that's an example of a very agile, forward-thinking organisation. We were set up for the pandemic because we have been distance learning by design for so many years.

This hasn't just been a suck it and see approach. We have tried to balance the needs of the organisation. And by that, I mean, our students and our associate lecturers, as well as some of our staff who have been used to working on one of our sites. And this has been done quite deliberately.

We have tried to take an evidence-based approach. So just thinking about the unit that I look after, learner discovery services, we've run a series of pulse surveys, just checking in with our folk on a regular basis. As each particular phase of the pandemic has either started or we look like we're coming out of it, we just wanted to see how people felt. Are we doing enough to support their well-being, for example?

So we were trying to take an evidence-based approach. And that's now pulled through into some of our forward planning. So we are looking to retain some of the benefits of offsite working, but bring back the benefits of onsite and just test and evaluate what works, whether that's the use of different space, evaluating how people engage with it, not just in terms of whether people feel more productive, but also how they feel about themselves and whether that then pulls through into some of the well-being statistics that we monitor.

So we've created a really robust people plan which will change over time as we go through different phases. We are looking at how we check in each year with our teams, just to make sure that they are linking their activities with a very deliberate what's our why, what's our purpose. And so they can then start to think of the right environment, the right support they need. And that'll be different for different teams across my unit, and of course, across the university.

So everything we do, I mean, you'd expect, this as a university, is based around research, data led insights. But also, let's not forget, there is a little bit of intuitive experience that we're bringing to bear. We have been through an unprecedented pandemic. Some of the work we've done has not been evidence-based because we've just had to get on and do it.

And I think it has given confidence to the balance between trying to go to place everything and get the absolute perfect data sets and just seeing that it's probably working, experimenting, test and learn methodology, and just suck it and see, good, old-fashioned intuitive management as well.

One of the challenges that we faced was trying to balance the operational needs of keeping a university running with some of the challenges that we knew already existed around whether we were inclusive, whether we were particularly diverse, making sure people had an equal and equitable experience at work. And that can play across a wide range of areas.

So we saw the Black Lives Matter movement during the first phase of the pandemic. But we'd already identified a problem in our unit and across the university that we were trying to tackle. So even during lockdown, we made sure that the group that we put together were empowered and given a wide range of opportunities, some funded, some-- because we freed them up from their day-to-day activities-- to really explore what we can do to help people during the pandemic.

And that allowed us to experiment. Because we were in this sort of unprecedented phase, we didn't have our traditional working patterns, we just tried a few different things. We introduced reverse mentoring. Because we were now doing online recruitments, we tried a range of anonymised recruitment techniques. We made sure that there was training in place that you could do online, rather than trying to gather people together.

So we really stepped into some of the potential solutions. And it's still not right. There's a long way to go with some of this work. But it's allowed us to rethink and reset how we need to move forward as an organisation. Our ways of working aren't just operational, they're cultural. They're values led. If we can't get this right, how will people trust us with their learning experiences?

We talk a lot, as the Open University, about the skills you need to study with us. And we have all sorts of foundation level courses. And we do have a preparedness to study at the OU open course on our OpenLearn platform. There are some digital literacy skills. And there are some digital capability skills which are out there.

But we never thought to apply that to ourselves. So some of this is organisational. Some of it is using new software packages. Some of it is just simply working out the new etiquette. And that's really sharpened our focus, not just on the skills we need to bring new people into the OU, but how important those skills are when we encourage our students to study with us.

And in many ways, these skills are life skills. These aren't just skills that help you study. These are skills that employers will be looking for. So building more tools to help people and sharing those skills, of course, to help people with their daily digital lives as more and more of society remains digital, this could be, I think, the greatest or most lasting legacy of the pandemic for the OU. We're upskilling ourselves, but we're sharing that experience with others.

Communications and engagements, it sounds easy. You tell people stuff, you engage them. Actually, it's really tricky to get the messaging right. And we're still learning about what works and what doesn't. I think the greatest lesson is just be transparent.

We are doing something for the first time. We don't know how it's going to go. We don't have the answers. Let's be upfront about that as well. But also seek help from people. What is it that you need from us? So that we can be more responsive to your needs, make it a very open-ended conversation, rather than broadcast communication.

This is what we're doing to you. Actually, we've got a very good student support network. The OU Students Association has been instrumental in helping us adapt and making sure that we are keeping the things that work, but also quickly addressing things that haven't worked. And we've tried to build them in to as many of our decision-making bodies as possible.

The suppliers, again, have also had to adapt. And that's been a bit of a learning curve. We haven't been able to do certain things the way we would have liked. Changes to contractual terms and conditions, making sure that we are far more robust around cybersecurity. I mean, that's a huge risk in the digital age.

And so just tightening a few of those loopholes, making sure that we're protecting our data, making sure there aren't any potential cybersecurity breaches. That's been something that's really risen up the agenda as the organization has understood what digital means in a post-pandemic world. So lots of change, lots of challenge.

But again, we have to communicate two ways. It's not just about telling people what we're doing. It is listening to what they need us to do as well.

I think for higher education, we need to think about the experience of the pandemic on some of our younger learners. And it's disrupted education all the way through, from people starting in primary education to those transitioning into secondary, taking exams, and learning remotely for a couple of years. We have to think about the mental impact on that, the impact on mental health and wellbeing, but also the skills that they've had to learn.

And higher education just needs to be more aware to the possibility of doing things differently. Now, there's a big push to get back to face-to-face learning environments for a lot of the traditional higher education institutions. And there's real value in that because, for many people, particularly a younger learner coming straight from A-levels, surely that's what uni is about. It's about meeting friends, socializing, finding yourself, learning with colleagues.

But I think what we've shown, certainly as in OU, is that you can blend that. There is an element of distance learning that point of demand in an age group where their digital ecosystem is hardwired into what they do. Their social media networks, their point of demand, instant access to content.

So I think we need to think, as a sector, about how we blend and bring the best of both worlds together. I think that the OU is in the best place to do that, to lead that conversation. We've been doing this for 53 plus years. And that's made us a little bit shock absorbent when it's come to the pandemic. But we've learned an awful lot.

And I think the key thing is that you can't do this overnight. If you want to get a really good and effective learning environment, you need to spent a couple of years designing what it is you want to teach, what those experiences will look like. We've been certainly doing that for 20 plus years in an online environment.

So we'd be very happy to share this with the sector. But I think the sector needs to step into that space as well. Let's look at what the government is encouraging. And again, that means we're going to have to rethink, as a sector, how, when, and where we provide education to a much broader range of people throughout their lives.

It's not just about getting your qualification and of you go into the world of work. You learn constantly through your life. And we should all be there, providing different learning experiences to help people. So some really fundamental thinking has to go into the way higher education adapts to the modern world. It's going to be tough out there for many years, if not decades, with the economic shock of the war in Ukraine post-pandemic, cost of living, these are problems that are going away, let alone the other societal challenges, such as the environment.

So we need to be ready for that. We need to find more sustainable ways of educating and probably more engaging and relevant ways of educating throughout someone's journey through life. That's why the OU, I think, is in the right place at the right time.