The House of Commons Education and Skills inquiry into UKeU continues with John Beaumont the former Chief Executive and Sir Anthony Cleaver, the former UKeU Chairman before the Commitee (21 July 2004). Today, I do a bit of transcript analysis, focusing particularly on the UKeU platform. Unlike my previous article there is no streaming video to analyse. Instead Parliament provides us with an audio stream which I had started to work my way through but stopped when the uncorrected transcript was released today.
If you still want to hear the non-verbals (annoyance, sarcasm etc) a transcript can't provide then link to http://www.parliamentlive.tv/ and select the Archive item from the menu on the left followed by 'Committees' from the drop-down menu in the search tool and then set time range to 21 July 2004. Select the HOC Education and Skills Committee 'Listen' menu item (on the right) and you should be able to listen to the proceedings.
Now the UK press has waxed lyrical about the bonuses paid to the former Chairman and Chief Executive so I'm not going to focus on that topic apart from this one quote:
” Yes but, John (Beaumont), you are on a substantial salary that is higher than for for any Vice-Chancellor I know. For most people in this country it is a very serious salary in a non-risk business and you took nearly 50,000 in a bonus and, as I have said, in marketing, product, and platform you have serious problems …” (Barry Sheerman, Chair of the HOC Education and Skills Committee)
With that out of the way my main focus of interest for today will be the UKeU platform (aka the UKeU Learning Environment).
In my reading/listening of the proceedings I sense an obvious resentment by John Beaumont and Sir Anthony Cleaver's of HEFCE's action in closing UKeU … and had they just been allowed to continue for a bit longer …
“From what little I saw of the HEFCE Board I would not anticipate any great understanding of commercial affairs or risk, an I think from the Chairman's action and his comments in his letter, it is quite clear he did not understand the operation of a commercial company.” (Sir Anthony Cleaver)
” … one should have given this the chance to succeed or you should not have started it. I think, having started it, they owed it to us to give us long enough to show that we could be successful …” (Sir Anthony Cleaver)
“We did not fail; we were not given the time to succeed.” (Sir Anthony Cleaver)
“I do not think that HEFCE had any understanding (about marketing); nobody from HEFCE ever asked me about the marketing in that sense, who was doing it, what structure we had, how they were approaching it and so on.” (Sir Anthony Cleaver)
” … we were just starting to get what were market-driven courses and we had only one series of intakes.” (John Beaumont)
But despite this both Sir Howard Newby of HEFCE and now the former UKeU Chairman and Chief Executive asserting that the UKeU platform is a wonderful asset which the former UKeU leaders assert is now going to 'rack and ruin'.
“We were advised, and we are advised now, that the technology platform is an advance on previous platforms but, as we know, in the end, only 900 rather than 5,000-6,000 students registered to use it, and I would say that this is a failure of marketing and selling.” (Sir Howard Newby, HOC Education and Skills Committee 23 June 2004.
“By far the most valuable element was the specification for the software platform.” (Sir Anthony Cleaver).
“… one part of our inheritance that was very good was the specification of the product (the UKeU platform) … I very rapidly formed the view, and it is one that I still hold, that there was nothing available anywhere which was comparable to this. In particular, the underlying philosophy, importantly was 'learner-centric' ” (Sir Anthony Cleaver)
” … what we were producing met the need in terms of the capability for the student to do what they need to do, to ask questions of the tutor, to submit material, to have chat-rooms available to talk to other students, to cooperate on projects and so on.” (Sir Anthony Cleaver)
“It also, incidentally, had to cover areas that the existing systems simply did not cover. We needed, for example, to be able to enrol students remotely online, we needed to be able to take payment by credit card internationally etc. So there are whole elements of the system that are totally different from what you would require in (an) individual university dealing with your own students …” (Sir Anthony Cleaver)
The specification of the UKeU platform was no realizable at one sitting; instead there was a roadmap which it was asserted by Sir Anthony that each release would come progressively coming closer to the vision.
“I would not pretend for a moment that what existed on the day we resigned was a satisfactory ultimate product, it still required more work doing on it …” (Sir Anthony Cleaver)
But all was obviously not well with the platform on the initial round of releases:
“The April time slot 2004 is when the next big upload, what was going to be a significant re-write … Already though, from late 2003 in turn, as part of our risk managment, we had plans to look at, if we were not happy with the new major upload, what we do to continue the development to satisfy the students and the academics needs … I think it would be wrong to assume that you had a finished product any time in 2003, 2004.” (John Beaumont)
But this was then followed by:
“… I think we had a fit for purpose platform in operation from March 2003 and therefore it was not affecting students numbers in a sense … We had to be able to capture the different approaches of the different UK universities, particularly high interactivity between students, and I think, secondly, it had to be scaleable and scaleable both in a technical but also in a commercial sense.” (John Beaumont)
“If we had been allowed to continue, the benefit to UK HEIs would have been a first-class platform at a very good commercial rate because they would have shared the cost.” (John Beaumont).
But how much was spent on the UKeU platform?
“By the end of April 2004 … we spent 9.2 million on the platform, we also had 2.4 million of operating cost … we had a fixed price contract with Sun Microsystems for the full version of 9.5 million. We had at that time paid 5.5 million for it … the fact that we were able to get a fixed price contract for specified functionality I think was a fair result … to have a central core platform, whatever it was, was a sensible approach” (John Beaumont)
So did UKeU view Sun Microsystems as a partner or a contractor?
“I think the reality was that we were employing Sun Microsystems.” (Sir Anthony Cleaver)
It would perhaps be interesting to compare the above assertion with documentation from an earlier stage in UKeU's short history. Also, let's compare this with Sir Howard Newby's statement (HEFCE) in the transcript of the 23 June 2004 session of the same committee:
“Sun were a partner in developing the platform but they were not an investor in the operating company.” (Sir Howard Newby)
But why another platform? Wouldn't a WebCT or a Blackboad have done the job? Not with the diverse range of courses and institutional platforms it wouldn't according to John Beaumont:
“… to have a central core platform, whatever it was, was a sensible approach”
So what's going to happen to the apparently valuable asset?
Not much according to John Beaumont:
“I would be suprised if it was able to be widely used … it's not a simple application, people would need to be trained on it, people would need to know how to support it … ”
“You are probably talking somewhere between 2 million a year for pure operation, that is not doing any enhancement (to the platform), but it is making sure it is there working 24/7.”
And Sir Anthony Cleaver asserted that there was yet more opportunities for exploiting the platform:
“We also talked to DfID (Department for International Development) in this area … they had spent time discussing with us, and working out how to put it on our platform.”
John Beaumont suggested that the home market had expressed interest in using the UKeU platform:
“What we did find was there was an interest in the platform from a number of UK universities to support their campus activities rather than distance education, because you cannot have an e-learning campus-based offering that perhaps closes in an evening or at the weekend, and we had to be 24/7 globally so could they piggyback on that. We were in quite advanced discussions with a number of universities on that front.”
Sorry Auricle readers, I've tried to avoid the bonus issue like I promised and focus on the platform but sometimes the two are just too mixed:
“Twenty-five percent (of the bonus paid to John Beaumont) was related to the platform … to ensure an effective e-learning platform is delivered on time and fit for purpose.” (John Beaumont)
In the transcript Sir Anthony Cleaver appears to declare that a UKeU objective had been to establish a UK wide 24/7 capability for say 4 million per year which would have reduced costs considerably for the HE sector. Do we take this to mean that the goal was to establish the UKeU platform as the de facto (or was this de jure) UK MLE?
Having now listened or viewed both Education and Skills Committee session and read the transcripts there is obviously some divergence of views. Yet on the question of the platform there appears to be some belief at the senior levels of both HEFCE and the now defunct UKeU that something different and potentially 'valuable' was being created. Indeed UKeU's early materials used terms like 'world-class' in its descriptions of its nascent platform. But what if the Committee continues to peel the layers of the onion? Will it find that this belief in the potency of the platform is justified? What will we find if the peeling of layers reaches former HEI platform users and UKeU staff?
Of course it may be safest to leave the UKeU platform on the shelf so that all sides can claim it never really got a chance to fly … but there is one obvious alternative to such to such a fate.
Let's have published any current internal and external reviews of the UkeU platform. Alternatively, to resolve this once and for all, why doesn't HEFCE (or JISC) commission and publish an evaluation of the UKeU platform? It's been asserted that the platform is valuable so let's have the evidence.
