Julienne scheduled a meeting tomorrow where I will present the findings of my report to Edward and Marike.The main message is that there is no need to panic.
1. THE WEBSITE: The school's website is in comparison with other faculties in a good position. This has to do with the novelty of the web, the work beeing done before the 9.august 2010 and the general somnambulism it invites. By comparison with the school's main competitors it does a good job. The integration of social media channels is for the most part accomplished (with the exception of twitter) and the remaining themes (Post graduate education, Press section) are under development. As an electronic equivalent to printed brochures it serves its function well. Albeit some technical problems seem far from beeing even acknowledged. The future goal is to enhance the existing website in accordance with the regulations to become more product and client focused.
From the organisational setup it becomes apparent that this is a cumbersome process. In 2011, SBE payed 30.000 Euro for the Content Management System and 65.000 Euro Consultancy costs via DVO. Although this numbers are veryfied by the MUO controller, nothing in the DVOs at SBE verifies them. From 2012 on the school does not pay anything for the website according to the MUO controller. Over the course of one year approximately 30 persons have been trained (for half a day) in the CMS and gained access rights to it. Together with the costs I (0.8ft) and my assistant(declaration basis)"produce", these make up the total costs for the "webproject" for SBE.
The performance of the CMS is by any standard poor. It is no improvement to the previous one, introduced 2007, in terms of usability or flexibility. For more information and arguments please consult the report or search this weblog for GX. Overall there is no documentation of preexisting online activities and no in-house knowledge on web development in general. External parties are hired to implement online activites for amounts that bear little resemblance to the actual work going into them. Other online activities are outsourced to former students that become future contractors knowing too well about the expecations and knowledge of their clients. All this factors contribute to the dissatisfaction and realities of the schools online activities. Todays job and yesterdays tool are incompatible and cause more stress and anxiety than the situation demands. The idea of equipping persons who are foreigners to the online world with stone age tools is successfully implemented across the UM. After working one year in this environment I came to the conclusion that the real dissatisfaction steams not from the inadequacy of the tools but the failure to address the demands of the job they are supposed to do. For more information please consult the extended report.
2. THE REPORT As an electronic brochure the school's website is the number one source of information for students from all over the world. However, having said this there is a major obstacle. Despite the rather frustrating experience with its online activities over the last four years the number of students is skyrocketing. Even in the market of prospective students interested in the school's programme there is no shortcoming; thus no supply problems. This indicates that the school's main business takes place in a demand driven market. It is apparent that students don't decide to study in Maastricht because of the layout, structure or information provided by us. The good reputation of the school, its proximity to their homes, PBL and the prospect of a good job attract prospective students to Maastricht.
Future strategies focus on Data mining tools and a wide array of instruments to master the art of behavioral targeting to tailor information relevant to the individual. With the exception of International Business the school's programs attract eight to twenty nine youngsters per year. Using these instruments it becomes possible to increase the efficiency of current marketing efforts by focusing rather than diffusing its energies. By centering on programs, increasing their visibility on facebook in combination with an institutionalized proactive and personalized approach the report argues for more awareness and a pragmatic point of view on social media to realize the schools marketing goals.
3. BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER: With a shift from government to privately funded operations formal education institutes increasingly tap into markets where informal educational institutes have their stronghold. Companies like Evaluserve provides global market research, Crossknowledge provides distance learning solutions, InterActive provides professional qualifications and postgraduate degrees. InterActives' description of one package also offered by SBE (CIMA) reads:
High Quality Tuition Videos** of 30 hours HD lectures
Expert Lecture Notes to accompany the videos
A flexible study solution which is available to you anywhere, anytime. (Ipad/Iphone ready)
Electronic study notes to support your study
Marked mock exam
Tutor support
Pass First Time Guarantee
Ultimate Confidence Booster
for 1500 Pound and you get a iPad2 for free!
In addition to the packages that resemble the schools executive master programs with the same title tutorial videos, study material in PDF or ebook format can be purchased separately online.
The second shift of importance in the educational landscape is caused by the proliferation of online communication and the internet as a great teaching machine. As a service environment that includes players like IBM and Google (which by the way offer there own business education programs) it envelops all existing ones in a single uniform web of ondemand knowledge. The response of universities to their diminishing role as "the guardience of knowledge" was to focus on skills rather than facts. Since facts are available everywhere and every time almost for free what gained importance in the curricula from the 70s on wards was the development of skills as a coproduction process. At the school it is problem-based learning that is institutionalized as the main metaphor of this development. However, this enveloped service environment that young people find today outside the university teaches them far more eloquently and potent than everything the university has to offer. Everybody who has a gmail account looks with anguish eyes to the university web mail portal. Likewise does the smartphone of roughly 80% of SBE's students outperform the personal computer they find in the hallway. A look into the amount of online learning material available for any subject currently taught at the school of business and economics sends shock waves to everybody believing that the business model of the past is continuing to support a state funded bureaucratic behemoth ad midst the competition it faces in the new market.
These two shifts, the one driven by political-economic factors and the second triggered by advances in technology causing subsequent changes in attitudes, sentiments and psychic outlook of individuals, are trends that need to be addressed in any approach of business development and knowledge transfer situations. The main question here is how a valorisation of the school's core business can be achieved so as to match the demands of the market? The above example is just one of many of the kind of competition that the school faces. Here, existing knowledge is repackaged so as to meet the demands and realities of mobile and flexible knowledge workers. Such a platform is not conceivable within the setup provided by UM's "webproject" but already environmental fact of the market it is forced to enter. The main idea behind any valorisation is thus to make the transition from a provider of knowledge to a facilitator of conversation. This goes hand in hand with the transition from ICT as infrastructure to an empowering environment. Developing a platform, which is not an island solution but supports open APIs, that takes these shifts into account and allows for valorization of existing knowledge by repackaging it for new customers, devices and markets is recommended. A logical place to start this is the Service Science Factory in close cooperation initiatives inhouse.
4. SAVING COSTS
In terms of ICT services, ICTS competes with every other service provider on this planet. As a monopolist at Maastricht University it provides the school with a variety of services. However, little is known about the actual costs and a comparison with other service providers is difficult. The ICT sector is a fast changing, dynamic environment where the level of inflationary energy is very high. The costs of memory and performance are easier quantifiable than usability and compatibility. But both are under constant price pressure due to technical advance, development of new production methods and UI paradigms.
The web related service the school offers its students is an email address, access to software and the intranet but also the hardware in forms of personal computers, projectors, whiteboards etc. Not all these services are provided by ICTS, some are provided by ACO.
Outside these setups the majority (83%) of the school clients have a device in their pocket that outperform the PC's in the hallway. In the same vain, providers of social networking platforms empower an equally large part of them to share and exchange information more conveniently than the web mail service the university offers them. When it comes to personal webpages, a hot item on the list of academics, a similar observation can be made. ICTS offers something called "Webfolder" that allow students, staff and faculty members to host their own personal website. But since some years ICTS is not supporting it any more and no new system is even conceived. Since the costs are as hidden as this service unsupported the suggestion is to look at another another solution outside the usual UM setting.
Attached you find the documents about the Google App for Education and their offer for the Google Chromebook for Universities.
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