 social media platforms, there's the library presence, all these different platforms, and when we're talking about the VLE, the VLE's actually got quite a big, I'm going to say, battle to try and get itself higher than sometimes in the way that people perceive the VLE. So when I'm talking about these gaps and talking about the VLE, again please try and remember, mind the gaps, think about what we're trying to talk about, the gap that we might fall through. But when it comes to, sorry, I do have to keep on walking back and forth because I don't have a clicker, but it does, I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of saying to people which platform is best. I've done this session quite recently and I probably could have spent three times the amount of time I have now, trying to break people up about the platforms they use. People were literally rolling up their sleeves because they wanted to discuss, they wanted to tell everyone else in the room the platform they use is the best and this is why. I'm not going to go down that route. There's a big space outside, we can all have a bit of a thing later on. There are lots of platforms, people use them in different ways and I think that's the key. It's not about how good your platform is, it's about how you as an organisation and I mean as an organisation and how the people that are using it to teach and how maybe your students are using it is more important. So the gap that I really want to talk about is thinking about defining the role and identity of platforms. Now I'm sure that the organisations you come from, as I was just saying, you've probably got quite a few different platforms going on there. Would you say if you take a moment just to think, would you say that it's really, really clear for your staff and your students to understand which platform they're going to use and when? Just have a little think about that, especially as we go through the next slide. So it is, you know, sometimes it can look like a beach, can't it? And all of these different pebbles on there and there's that one pebble with the question mark on it. Sometimes it can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sometimes it can feel like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. There's very little to define them sometimes. And I think it's really important that as an organisation, an organisation starts to think about how they're going to define a role and identity for say the VLE. It sounds like, it sounds pretty obvious. Oh yeah, we've got a VLE, it does this, does this. I would say 90% of the organisations I speak to when I say to them about the VLE and VLE reviews, they're not completely clear. They possibly haven't defined it properly to the rest of the users. So the question that I asked them first is what does success look like? And I think, again, the majority of the organisations I speak to, someone would go, oh, it does this, it does this, it needs to do this. And someone else in the room would go, yes, absolutely, but it needs to do this and this. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. And someone else said, oh, here we go. No, no, no, but we use it this way. Can anyone relate to those sort of conversations, those sort of thinking it in their organisations right now? Have you sat down and said the VLE is for this, content capture is for this, teams is for this. And I think it's really, really, it becomes a big problem when that doesn't happen. That's why I like to talk about roles and identity. We want our users to know what the role is. We want them to identify what the role is. We want them to relate to that, have a relationship with that platform. It seems a bit strange, but it probably is quite an important conversation to think about. And the other thing at the bottom is, the other question there is, does everyone agree? Because say this side of the room, we'll work in the same university, we're all teaching a course underwater basketball making something like that. And this side of the room, they think the VLE direction should be this. This side of the room think the VLE direction should be this. Quite a lot of organisations, that happens. You start to find yourself in quite difficult water when students say, well, hang on, when I'm working with this side, I have to do this, when I'm working with this side, I have to do that. Some really interesting comments in the student voice session just earlier on talking about how they use the different platforms. And one of them said about how different people use different platforms in different ways. So I think it's really important for the organisation to know exactly where they're going. Sorry about the picture, it's the only picture I could find that had roles in it. What is your VLE there to do? What is its role? Again, think about that if you can, while I'm talking. And this is actually a quote from a recent VLE review that I did, senior leader, CIO I believe. And Eiteran said, well, I'd said to them, what does success look like? And we had the exactly the same kind of conversation that there wasn't a statement. They didn't have a statement or something that the university was working towards. And Eiteran said, well, I just need to know what the value we're getting from our VLEs. Do we actually need one? And there's other people in the room going, well, it's quite difficult. We don't know why we have one. This is senior leadership talking about this. If there are educators in the room, if there are students in the room, they tend to say, well, it's this, it's this, this. One of the first questions we ask when we sit down with students on VLE reviews, we tend to say, what's the role of the VLE? And they'll say, oh, it does this, it does this, it does this, it does this. When you're at an organisation, when the staff say the role is this and the students say the role is this and it's very, very different. That's when the line bells start to ring because there's a real mismatch. Again, it does happen and it does happen quite often. The importance of that agreement. How do you think you get that agreement? How would you, anyone in the room, think, how would they do it? I'll repeat what anyone says for the sake of the microphone. How do you get people to agree? Talk about it, yeah. Do lots of, we all say what you're talking about. We all say we go to meetings. In fact, we have meetings about meetings that we're going to have. But how do we get people to agree? Especially when it comes to something like the VLE? Sorry, second? Sell with the benefits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything else? Sorry. Sometimes you can't agree. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's listening to the users and listening. The amount of organisations, I will keep saying that. I'm sorry. But the amount of organisations I speak to who say, we want the VLE review. We think our VLE is the not fit for purpose. It's crap. We need to change our review. Right, okay, let's understand the problem. Have you spoken to staff? Yeah, yeah. Have you spoken to students? One senior leader, not this one. Another senior leader has said to me in another VLE review. We don't really need to speak to students. They don't know what they want. Exactly. And you say, right, okay. Right, we're going to take a few steps back here. And it can be quite awkward conversations, to be honest. But it really is important that people, that organisations understand what the problems are. I've worked in numerous universities that have had this. And I've spoken to quite a few universities that have. And ethic colleges that have done this. They've said, right, okay. We have this problem. We're going to get a new VLE. And what they don't understand is that just changing the VLE isn't going to change the practices. And I have worked in universities where a huge amount of effort had gone into migrating everything across. A huge amount of effort went into training everybody, training that's another conversation. And to see six months, eight months down the line, exactly the same problems that exist in the new platform. If you take a car, it's got loads of dents on it. You put that driver in a new car, the same dents are going to appear because you're not. It's the way they drive. And it's the way that we use digital could be quite interesting to think about when you're approaching something like looking at VLEs. And again, it's come back to the Rose identity and relationships. But what happens when you have more and one platform that does the same sort of thing? Again, we've had this conversation. You've had a conversation. You've agreed, hopefully maybe not agreed, about what the VLE is there to do. But what happens when you have more than one platform that does the same thing? I'm guessing people are guessing where I'm going with this. I asked AI to produce an image of hammers, some of them a bit, but it is quite a good analogy. OK, I've got a brilliant hammer. What am I going to hit with it? But what if I've got two hammers? No, there may be people in the room that understand that you use particular hammers for particular jobs. I tried learning wood turning not that long ago and the amount of chisels that you get. And if you use the wrong chisels in the wrong way, you have wood flying everywhere, which I did. But it's really important to understand that if I were to give Becky a saw, it doesn't make her a carpenter, she would need to learn how to use that saw. And again, we need to think about that with digital platforms as well. So when we do have more than one platform that does the same sort of role, we need to think about again how our students, how our use is going to relate. And I use the word relate quite strongly because we do want them to have a relationship with that platform. Think about how they're going to relate with that platform. If they think, okay, I'm going to a live session, I know which platform to go to. If I want to go and get my results, some feedback or if I want to do some informative assessment or something like that, I know which platform I need to go to. Sometimes when the problems are happening where there's a bit of a crossover, what you get is these blurred lines. And you start to realise that I have spoken quite recently to organisations that have found themselves in real problems because their users are so confused, their staff are so confused about which platform to use, and they start using the one they like without any real direction. And so that puts a huge amount of extra problems and workload on to organisations that are trying to manage these platforms or courses that are trying to manage content, that are trying to manage engagement and interaction. I was having a conversation just for this session about what does engagement mean. And if you really want engagement, if you really want platforms to really turn into this tool that students can relate to, you need to make sure that it's doing the job that you want it to. I've got a sound clip from a student talking from a recent VLE review. I will say the sound that I used to block out when she mentioned the name of the platform, sounded fine at home. It sounds absolutely awful here. I do apologise. It happens twice. So when you go, oh, I hate that. It happens twice. But just have a listen to what the student says. And please, God, let us work. And we'll talk about it afterwards. I think there are ways that the use of it could be improved that might encourage more people. And that for me comes down to consistency between different lecturers and different modules because where you think yourself, right, it's Monday, I've got this module. Is this the one where everything's on the broken down week by week? Or is this the one where there's that great big long sway document and I need to scroll through. And when you're doing several modules in one go, trying to keep up with how the individual lecturers have chosen to present the resources is too much of a headache and I've got too much to think about. Can anyone relate to that? Can anyone think that their students or that organisation might be saying exactly the same thing? Most VA reviews that I do have a similar sort of thing. And I think it is, again, from an organisational point of view, mind the gap. If you are trying to think about how you're going to move forward with digital platforms and think about that learning experience, thinking about the role. Is a VA there to enhance learning? Is it there to support learning? Is it there to see all these other things? Is there another platform that's there to enhance learning? And as an organisation, it comes down to the guidance and it comes down to thinking about how you're going to move it forward. I think, again, where I mentioned that the way that staff starts is starting to use the platforms that they like rather than the platforms and you do start to find yourself in these different kinds of situations. Again, it's really important to think how you overcome that. How do you change that practice? How do you turn around and say to someone, you're using platform X, the university or the college would really like you to be doing that in platform Y? Why do you want to use X? And basically, again, it comes down to the relationship that staff might have. A lot of it stems from, to be honest, with how, when we add that card and the game changed. For lots and lots and lots of organisations, for lots and lots of people, because it's people that's behind all this, the game definitely changed. In a very admirable way, education went quite crikey. We need to change what we're doing at the moment. Okay, let's do this. My wife is a lecturer in textile design. She was talking about print and everything like that and she was changing from our kitchen table. She was having to use lots and lots of different, just think on a feat about how she was going to deliver and not be in the studio at the same time. I'm sure there's stories like that all across education. What happens? We can be changed. We have a different relationship with one of these platforms. Maybe I'm not going to say which one you all use, but there are platforms that were used very, very quickly without any kind of thinking about what we want the role to be. The role at that time was that lifeboat, wasn't it? Now that we've come out of lockdown, thank God, and now that we're moving into these different spaces, and again, thinking about what the students were saying in the session before with regard to hybrid learning, with regard to how much should there be and things like that, we need, again, as educators, as students, as managers, as organisations, need to really think about what those organisations are and start to be aware of what those blurred lines could be, but also about what those preferences that those staff have made. Why are they making those decisions? Now, I'm saying versus here in a very tongue-in-cheek provocative way. I'm certainly not saying one is better than the other. I'm not saying that you should use one or the other. I just thought that it was an interesting take because this is, again, this is one of the biggest barriers that I think I see in VLE reviews is that lots of organisations jump to teams because they still have a VLE, and then all of a sudden we're at this point now where lots of people at an organisation may be saying, why do we need a VLE? We've got teams. Teams does everything. Or there are staff saying, yeah, but all my work is on VLE. I like using VLE. I don't like using teams. And there is a very, very interesting conversation that's happening at the moment. And I use this example because, again, there are real problems with organisations trying to manage how, trying to manage content, trying to manage communication, trying to manage relationship roles, identity of digital platforms when there are people, like the students said in that clip about how they're using and what platform do I need to go to. And it's real. There is a lot of focus. And again, you may be able to relate to this in your organisation today. Can you think of students that will have to think about which platform do I need to go and use? Do I need to use teams? Do I need to use the VLE? Again, a recent VLE review. The students just called the VLE as the assessment place. It's where they go to submit and things like that. I said, OK, fine. Right. So everything's on teams. Everything's on teams. All sessions are on teams. All of our hand-dates are on teams. OK, what about formative assessment? We don't have any formative assessment. OK, what about the library? You know, the library is on the VLE. OK. And this kind of disconnect that the students have with the VLE because there are arrogance on teams. Again, when you sit and speak to the senior leaders at the organisation, is that the experience that they're happy with? Is that the experience that they didn't know? Again, so these conversations about role, identity, relationship with digital platforms needs to go from the top to the bottom, whatever the bottom may be. And start to thinking about how, as an organisation, you can really cement about the roles and think about where they need to be. The danger is that you have a forest growing of digital confidence, all these sort of things. You have this wreck just sitting in the middle of the forest. That can cause real, real problems. If you are managing multiple platforms, if the organisation is, without any kind of decision being made, is starting to move in a particular direction, but without the guidance and without that sitting there and thinking, defining what those roles could be, you can quite easily find yourself in this situation where you do have something that is just being overtaken, but is still there. No matter how much that forest grows, it's still going to be there rotting way, rusting way, contaminating the space, things like that. So it definitely is something to bear in mind. And legacy practices as well. There will be people that will be doing new things with new, thank you, doing new things with new platforms. Again, but this is still there, those legacy practices. Again, thinking about how the organisation manages multiple platforms. But I think this bottom thing here is confusing for staff and students. I think when people are confused, people start to not know where to go, they don't have an identity, they don't have a relationship with that platform, and they find themselves going off in whatever direction they want. Again, how do you manage that from an accessibility point of view? How do you manage that from a GDPR point of view? It's a lot of work to think about. Again, am I making sense? Are people able to relate to that? That's fantastic. And the last couple slides really is to think about however you are using digital platforms, it needs to be a good fit for what you're doing. Again, don't jump to a platform saying, it does this, it does this, it's fantastic, it does all these weird things. Again, I've seen organisations do this, and your terrain says to them, do you teach like that? No, well then it needs to be a good fit for how you're going to teach, how you want to move forward with the organisation. Because as my niece is a little toy here, it could be a square peg trying to fit into that round hill. And again, it's that word again, you get gaps, and things will fall through those gaps. So I think it's very, very important again to define exactly what success looks like, and what that platform is there to do. And I kind of said this point really at the start, is that it is just a vehicle. It is just going to, if it was a car, and no one did anything with it, it will just sit there. Digital platforms will do exactly the same, and they will just sit there and not do anything. The difference, again it won't be, it's not about buying a brand new platform and making that real commitment to a new platform without understanding what the problem is. The way it's driven is the way that defines its success, not about the pretty colours or anything like that, but the colours do make a good difference. Again, is that, does that make any sense? I'm hoping that you can relate to that. But the last most important thing I think really is about users. And again, like I said, about being confident, about being safe and feeling relaxed with the platform. Users need to identify and relate to the platform to know what the functionality is. It's really important, so when they go to a particular platform, they go in there because they want to get a specific experience, a specific piece of information, and if it's not there and they go, oh no, I need to go back to the other place, I think that can be quite often a huge blow to that user experience and then the way that they interact with it and the way that they feel comfortable about using it forward. I think that is certainly something to really bear in mind. OK, that is my last slide, and I think if you do have any questions or anything that you want to pick up on any other time, my email address is there, and the slides will be available afterwards as well, if anyone doesn't have any comments or anything like that. But thank you very much. I guess if there are any questions, nice to time. Yeah. Thank you for that. My question is regarding the management of the platforms that you made with that. Sometimes we, institutions, we need to have the platform so that we have different needs across the future. What would be your suggestion for bringing a conversation about either coming together with the same platform and trying to see what are the things that we need to have in there or whether allowing that diversity for departments to have their own platform. So what is the, what is a conducive conversation to have that is actually going to be productive rather than anybody trying to... Yeah. Again, it's probably not something that's going to be done in that one-hour meeting, but it needs to be, if you're absolutely right, the need for multiple platforms is a must. I think there is a real conversation to have arranged. Right. So you've got three platforms, right? Why have you got this platform? Why have you got this one? Why have we got this one? And actually to define a vision for it. Where do we want to take it? It sounds like we've talked quite a lot just about vision for change. And I think that is really important to get people together to say, why have we got this platform? Define, what's it there to do? And then this platform B, what is it there to do? Because that just doesn't happen often enough when I speak to organisations about, okay, so you've got the VLE fantastic, you've got teams, and you've got various different platforms. Why have you got it? Why have you got it? Because sometimes when we speak to organisations, we say, why have you got this platform? Well, we've got it because someone wanted it in the arts department. Okay, how are they using it? Well, actually they left. Again, it does happen. And there's other things we talk about, like innovation pipeline and things like that. Again, we don't have time to talk about today. But there is real benefit in having a plan for digital platforms. Why have we got it? When do we not need it? How are we using it? Why aren't we using it? And I think that's a big question about rather than saying if we aren't using something in the right way, the question is how do we change people in that way? The question is, why aren't we using it that way? And what are the barriers? And then there's more work to be done there by understanding where those barriers are. So answer your question. Okay, okay. Are there any other questions? Yeah. Pretty interesting stuff. I'm glad to be talking a lot about how to roll and the different sort of relationship that happens with things. A lot of that is quite institutional or product there. You also look at things and so you usually then spend the money trying to work out of the past and then saying like a short period of time. Yes. There is not a student. There's many different things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that another way we take to it as well? I think that's probably the most important angle that we take. Well, with every VA review we do, we will sit down and have focus group sessions with students. We will sit down and have focus group sessions with the teaching staff, senior leaders sometimes as well. And we'll take that back to them and say, this is what your users are saying. One of them I remember, I sat down and senior leaders said, our students have a great experience. We give them the most innovative, they have a really innovative experience. We give them everything they possibly need. We sat down with the students, they went, we hate it. There's just too much. We don't know what to do. Of course, taking that back to senior leader who has spent a lot of money and a lot of time and very proud of their organisation has done quite a difficult conversation. And I think that is also really important is that the difficult questions and the difficult comments organisations need to hear because the people sitting around a table don't know all the answers. And I think that they do need to get down there. They do need to get down at the chalk face and understand because if they're making decisions about, we're going to change the VA leads this way. They need to speak to educators and say who may have very, who will have very good reasons for doing things in particular ways. Does that answer your question? Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I was going to the point that we were talking about where students probably had a different job because some of it was a high play out, because some of it was a high play out and obviously we're going to clean the system of play out. It's something that I think should come on that. I mean, you're dealing with the template. Yep, yep, yep. However, the templates in the nations will have any kind of units to actually scrap the template results and you create it in their own way. It would be all good if all the templates started with their current leadership. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Templates, people do say oh, this template is local to my creativity. And what we have to turn around and say is the content is your creativity. Templates, you have what I always try and say is it's really good to have things laid out in the same way where you have your space for your content. You can be as creative as you want and I've said that to quite a few universities because when we do sit then in a room like this and someone says exactly that it's not about students always want that consistent approach to they want to know where to go to get their library resources. They want to know where to go to get their feedback or something like that. When you've got a say on one program one page is everything in this layout, the next page everything is done by week by week and the next page it's a repository. It's really difficult for people to see it. If you want to be creative I always use Instagram as a really good example of this. It's a white page with not much else on it. What makes it really creative and engaging is the content within and that's where your creativity comes from. I think that yes someone could have a template change where they could make it and I have seen this where every single word was a different colour. Someone was really creative and wonderful but it looked atrocious and it looked so different to everything else. But the problem was it was still a repository so I would say we don't want to be creative with the layout, be creative with the content. I'm really aware of time and I don't want to go too much time to answer your question. Thank you very much everybody, I'll hand over now.