Third keynote - Michael Chasen unveils Bb NG

In shock that no-one else has blogged the main event yet. Here is my shaky camera phone picture of Michael Chasen at BbWorld Europe (oh yeah, and some guy on stage, boom! boom!)

Seriously though, the classic Bb set piece aka product roadmap actually had a lot of meat in it this year. The new user interface for Bb9.0 looks great, it will be much easier for people to use, have a more modern look and feel, and, I think, set us in good stead for the next few years at least. There will be a LOT of decisions to make - institutionally and by staff designing sites and we will need to think a LOT about how to manage that effectively, but overall it will be worth it. We just need to help staff get past the *gulp* "this looks really different" moment and it will make a big difference. Of course, Michael's enthusiasm is infectious, of course, you feel concerned that he will run out of breath before the runs out of sentence (and at one point possibly also run out of stage) but it was a good keynote, it had substance and the way the audience were lapping up the screenshots and and drag and drop demos was fascinating. Not gonna comment too much here on some of the "coming soon" oddities: multiple vles, opt back to CE4 etc but overall with focus on the UI stuff we are reasonably confident to see before the year is out - things are looking good. Others attending the keynote might add more.

Oh and here's an extra picture...really just as a....sorry, no words, just picture

Second keynote - Blackboard Inc "discover" education

This is a very odd keynote too. A member of Bb staff is telling a room full of very experienced educators that "in the old days the things everyone did in the room was about technology but now education has become important". Making me think of one of my favourite WW lines "let's set aside the fact you've come late to the party and just celebrate that you showed up at all".

Also a little odd - telling people in the room what senior managers in "our institutions" think, hmm interesting premise but I'm pretty sure I know what ours think. Obviously very proud of the bigwigs he's met.

Another "hey look" - apparently the OU senior managers are now prioritising and highlighting the importance of widening participation to HE (please note the use of the word "now" - remind me of the early 70s founding principle of the OU again)

I really wanted to like this whistlestop tour around the globe but really just getting crosser and crosser - we do this for real, you know, we are academic scholars, we're well read, we horizon scan, we research student experience, we predict trends and we have recognised the importance of education within the higher education context for way longer than the past couple of years.

OK, but seriously?? Bb are telling us how they have decided categorise HEIs, what they predict to be the challenges facing different sorts of institutions and what "our" (aka 30 old universities) senior staff think - do they really think we don't know? do they really think we need our eyes opening to the future of HE? - and setting aside the "are you the right people to do this?" aspect the content of this keynote is very simplistic not the "big thinking" that was being promoed

Posters, post-mix and post-keynote analysis

Straight after keynote came welcome reception and posters. I actually like the idea of the evening keynote leading straight into social/posters/exhibition, I just think you need the keynote to be something that really energises the event. Sure this one sparked a lot of post-keynote analysis but about the thing itself rather than the content. My patented keynote quality assessment measure - "if the only person talking to the keynote speaker at the social event is the person who introduced them....."

Anyway the posters and the exhibition were pretty good, the layout of the room required people to walk past the posters in order to get to exhibition and so they were really busy. All the posters were good, I found them useful, Peninsula College poster is one of the best ones I've seen in years. I took a pretty shaky picture of it with my phone, hope it is still there today and I'll try to get a better one. A little bit of time in the exhibition which is of course tiny but chatted to a few people. This is my first post merger european conference and it is still a little odd to be bumping into people from Sheffield, Oxford Brookes etc - but in a good way.

After the social, we went to dinner at the midland hotel with Demetra, Andy McGinn, Paul Grist, Louise (PR person), a really nice woman from Salford (feel bad though cos I can't remember her name) and a freelance guardian journalist. Great food, great conversation - though, of course, Paul wasn't going to let me get a meal without earning it - viva on the SHU AQR.

btw for those of you who like to play the "Bb staff conference memo" game - my prediction for the three "all Bb staff must weave the following into conversations with clients" bullet points are:

• reference the keynote, as in "you're right, it was just as Colin discussed...."
• the "o" word - Outcomes (post-yaskin the Bb Outcomes System remains as incomprehensible as ever but you've got to admire their stamina)
• Gordon Freedman...usually followed by "he's very clever, you know"

ok so here is an emerging idea for a game - if we were to have a "SHU staff conference memo" what three things should we be weaving in??

also (sorry, back to keynote for a minute) - the keynote title in the programme was "Employability and Skills: The Economic Imperative of Life-long Learning", on the day it had morphed into "HE in UK: Time for Change", my suggestion for a title would be:

"From Frankenstein to Einstein: how the Industrial Revolution is driving our voyage into the 21st century" (available with US subtitles)

emerging idea for game #2 - from the blog posts we make, how about we all have a crack at alternative titles. All are fair game - so far up for grabs are conference overall title (currently "Engaging Students, Engaging Communities"), keynote, poster sessions, even dinner

emerging idea for game#3 - no, out of ideas for now but still open to suggestions from you guys.

First keynote - HE in UK - time for change

Professor Colin Sterling - Vice President (Teaching & Learning), U of Manchester

History of UK HE - hmm we seem to be meandering through the 60s (with the odd Leitch reference along the way) - pondering this, everyone in the room from UK probably knows this already, anyone from anywhere else probably doesn't care.

OK 25 minutes in and we're up to - students are changing and we need to change to meet their needs - students getting older, more local, more diverse, more vocationally motivated - now wondering whether this is really just intended to be a briefing session for Bb Inc staff.

Half way through - we're now at Dearing - no, my mistake, we're back in 1960 again, no sorry, back in the industrial revolution - spinning jenny, luddites. OK gonna stop blogging now cos I'm starting to lose the will to type....


OK had to come back for a moment just to share the fact that we are now exploring Byron, Shelley, Frankenstein (aka the lesson we should all learn about the dangers of the manmade machine...pondering the "as opposed to.." question), Lovelace, Babbage - not sure now whether the keynote is really a brain download - "look at the wide range of stuff I know"

Last 5 minute summary finally says the interesting stuff - UoManchester currently undertaking a root and branch review of its undergraduate teaching activity based on three key elements:
Curriculum design, personalised learning, learning technology

...and taking account of the future needs of employers, varying student needs and the opportunities to transform not simply transplant old teaching styles into new technologies - more visionary exploitation of new and emerging technologies to drive innovation and change