What influenced your decision to be a part of this project the most?
Over the past few years, we have witnessed a significant transformation in the university campus environment, particularly since the Covid era, when virtual classes were the norm. Upon our return to an on-campus teaching environment, the Business School has seen many staff move towards establishing a more active blended learning environment. For the school itself, this has caused challenges with obtaining the right type of venue to support this learning approach. Over the past 2 years, the transformation team has made significant inroads in improving the housing of teaching and being part of this team will allow me to share my knowledge and experience more widely with other like-minded individuals. I am looking forward to contributing to this initiative and helping to shape a more effective and responsive approach to timetabling in the years to come.
What are you most looking forward to tackling during this project?
My first instinct was to say, “break the system so it can be rebuilt”, but in truth, I am looking forward to tackling the different methodologies used to gather timetabling requirements being used by the different schools and colleges. If the project can introduce a standardized timetabling requirement process it will create more efficiency and reduce workloads that inevitably are associated with Edit and Prep.
What do you think will be the biggest challenges in this project?
With any changes that are introduced in the university, the biggest challenge administrators face is academic buy-in. Whilst many academics do engage with the yearly process, others take an inconsistent approach and only respond once the original process has been completed which can result in complications later. By trying to change this cultural viewpoint, the university will hopefully benefit from improved collaboration with staff: academics, and Professional Services staff alike. The other challenge I foresee is that our own Business Systems such as MyCampus and PIP are not aligned with our timetabling software thereby we need to rely on the University’s IT team to support the changes that may come out of the project and whether this will be sustainable.