This last weekend, Yunus was at the University of Salford to talk about his work and to promote the concept of social business in our part of the world. (pictured with Chancellor, Irene Khan)

Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus is known for pioneering microcredit in Bangladesh and for showing how small but significant changes can transform the lives of  poor communities.  More recently, and in his 2010 book Building Social Business, he has outlined an approach to enterprise that meets human needs rather than rewarding shareholders.

This last weekend, Yunus was at our University to talk about his work and to promote the concept of social business in our part of the world.  Writing ahead of his visit, he set out the opportunities for addressing economic inequality across the north west: “I am looking forward to my visit to the Greater Manchester area and in particular to the University of Salford, which has such a strong connection to its local community and does important work in helping to address the needs of the people of the area. My visit will allow me to meet with many people who are already involved in important work to address the needs of society and their local communities”.

Our Business School has taken this opportunity to announce the launch of a Centre for Social Business.

Our Business School has taken this opportunity to announce the launch of a Centre for Social Business.  Led by Dr Morven McEachern, the Centre will pull together existing academics from across the University who are already working in this area:  Morven’s own expertise is in the ways that smaller businesses incorporate social objectives into their activities.  Others who will come together to launch this programme are working in areas such as social objectives in transitional societies, social justice and consumer rights, and responsible retailing and enterprise.

Amanda Broderick, Dean of the Salford Business School, has set the vision of the new Centre as leading thinking on social business, with a view to developing business practices that go beyond regulatory compliance and which create value for their stakeholders:  “there is a need for more and improved data collection to inform policy in this area, as well as to provide evidence of the impact of social business in both developing and more developed economies, countries and environments. One of the potentially fascinating aspects of this global movement is the extent to which experience gathered in developing countries can inform activity in the developed world”.

Professor Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner receives his Honorary Degree from Chancellor Irene Khan and Vice-Chancellor Professor Martin Hall

Muhammad Yunus is clear about what a social business should be, and what it is not: “the investment decision made by a social business is not based on the potential profit.  It is based on the social cause”.  As such, a social business should be self-sustaining, with investors never taking any dividend  beyond the return on the original amount that they put in.  A social business can be a non-loss, non-dividend company devoted to solving a social problem, or it can be profit making to the benefit of low income communities.

In Yunus’s definition, a social business is a “non-loss, non-dividend company with a social objective”.  He sees his time spent with us in Salford as an opportunity to kick-start such initiatives: “this summit will allow us to explore how social business can be utilised as a tool by the people of the area to make a real and lasting difference by addressing some of the major challenges faced by the poorest people in the North West of England. As I travel the world, I am continually struck by how people, particularly young people, are responding to this message, seeking new ways to build business solutions to tackle poverty and other challenges”.

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Muhammad Yunus, “Building Social Business:  the new kind of capitalism that serves humanity’s most pressing needs”.  New York, 2010.

Back in March, I wrote a post about my experience in registering for, and completing, one of the University of Edinburgh’s inaugural MOOCs on the Coursera platform:  E-Learning and Digital Cultures. A good many people have commented on this, as part of  wide-ranging discussion and debate about what MOOCs might mean for the university of the future (or whether, indeed, there will be universities in the future…..).  Since then, Chris Parr has published a good story on “my” Edinburgh MOOC, with reflections by the course team.

Numbers dropped off each week, with only about 2,000, or 5 per cent of the initial sign-up, completing the assignment. This makes me especially pleased that I have my certificate.

I signed up for E-Learning and Digital Cultures with about 40,000 others.  But it turns out that only about 17,000 of us, or about 40 per cent, ever logged onto the Coursera site.  Numbers dropped off each week, with only about 2,000, or 5 per cent of the initial sign-up, completing the assignment.  This makes me especially pleased that I have my certificate, giving me the opportunity to show it off here.

It would be spurious, though, to make any comparison with retention and completion rates for a conventional university course, or for an on-line course such as those offered by the Open University.  As the Edinburgh team note in the Times Higher Education article, enrollers probably gain what they want from partial participation, dipping in, or from getting access to the suite of digital resources that are brought together as a portal on the course platform.  Indeed, until a good deal more analysis is carried out into participant behaviour across a range of MOOCs, we will not know the diversity of benefits that are delivered.

I felt that E-Learning and Digital Cultures was quite conventional in its structure and pedagogy, with a familiar “101” feel to the two-week module blocks and posted readings and video clips.  However, the Edinburgh team picked up critical comments from their participants that, in some respects, they had not been conventional enough – some people registered for the course wanted “talking heads” delivering on-line lectures and regretted that the professors were “absent”.  This seems to suggest a yearning for tradition that those of us working in universities may found reassuring, since some have predicted that the onslaught of MOOCs will sweep us all away.

As I wrote in my review, I thought that the content for E-Learning and Digital Cultures had been carefully put together and I valued this, getting more out of participating than thought that I would.  But I couldn’t see the value of the online noise, sometimes at the digital version of decibels – in the use of Twitter, and the course leaders’ interview with the THE reinforced by suspicions in this regard.  Tweets averaged 700 to 1500 a day and the participants who stayed with the course started about 1000 blogs between them.

Some participants regretted the course structure had not been conventional enough – they wanted “talking heads” delivering on-line lectures and regretted that the professors were “absent”.

Apart from celebrating the sheer density and volume of all this online information, I’m not clear how it added any learning value.  The course team seems to feel the same.  As  Sian Bayne has commented,  “as a team, we were putting a lot of work into forums, the Twitter stream and so on.  But when the teacher-to-student ratio is 1:8000, any interventions you make are going to be tiny, tiny contributions to the whole, however hard you work.  I think we might need to come up with some alternative strategies for making our presence felt next time”.

MOOCs such as E-Learning and Digital Cultures are clearly a rich experimental environment, for the course team, for the participants and for the university as sponsor and paymaster.  But what seems clear is that MOOCs are going to evolve rapidly and that the next generation of courses will not look or feel very much like these early pioneers.  This is because parts of the concept are evidently pulling in different directions that, in some cases, cannot remain compatible.  For example, how will Coursera monetise its platform, given that it is funded by venture capital? How will universities such as Edinburgh realise the value of their investment in a sustainable way, given that E-Learning and Digital Cultures cost about £30,000 from development to delivery?

Will the continuing value of MOOCs be that they are free taster courses for conventional enrolments?  One fellow participant on my Edinburgh course told the THE that participating convinced her that she didn’t want to pay for a course like this. I felt differently:  as I wrote in my review, I found E-Learning and Digital Cultures a convincing way of promoting Edinburgh’s Masters course in the same field.  In either event, the cost of future MOOCs could be posted to a university’s marketing budget.

As the famous Punch cartoon had it in the early years of the digital revolution, “on the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog…..”

Alternatively, will future MOOCs be for credit, with those who complete, and want a certificate like mine, having to pay a fee?  As I wrote earlier, it will take a lot of bite-sized MOOCs to make up a full year of university study, and then there is the problem of authentication.  As the famous Punch cartoon had it in the early years of the digital revolution, “on the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog…..”

There’s also the clash of cultures between any for-credit payment system and the ethos and practicalities of open content and open access.  All the course materials used for E-Learning and Digital Cultures is openly available on Youtube or similar platforms, under open access licences on the Internet, or simply because someone else has put it up without constraints.  But open content and open access is underpinned by the principles of open licencing which, quite deliberately, places considered constraints on for-profit use of materials made available in this way.  If the team that put together E-Learning and Digital Cultures had had to develop their own content, their development costs would have been several multiples of £30 000.

What is still clear is that the future is still all in the mix; this will make coming developments very interesting, indeed.

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My MOOC,  18 March 2013:  http://www.corporate.salford.ac.uk/leadership-management/martin-hall/blog/2013/03/my-mooc/

Chris Parr, “Wisdom and Crowds”, Times Higher Education, 18 March 2013.

The diversity of provision, research and innovation and student mix epitomises the qualities that the International Association of Universities espouses

The International Association of Universities, which we hosted for a recent conference at our MediaCity campus, is focusing on the implications of diversity for universities across the world, whether in terms of an individual institution’s students and staff, or in the range of different kinds of university in a national system or across a wider region.  The value of diversity was very evident in the participants at the IAU meeting we hosted, with delegates from 32 countries and six continents  – see http://iau-aiu.net/content/global-meetings-associations.  A good many of the participants are themselves leaders of university organisations, bringing an impressive array of networks into the room.  This served to make the point – made so often in so many ways – that individual institutions are nodes in complex, rich and intersecting networks that span every aspect of scholarship and enquiry, and every part of the world.

Some of the most substantial threats to the inherent value of all this interconnectivity are tendencies towards the binary, whether in the way that students are conceptualised (“national” versus “international”) or mission is expressed (“teaching” versus “research”).  In cosmopolitan centres such as Manchester, nationality is irrelevant to the experience of higher education and diversity is an inherent quality than benefits everyone.  Everywhere, leading researchers often make great teachers, and learning invariably benefits from curricula that are immersed in the excitement of the latest research breakthroughs.

In cosmopolitan centres such as Manchester, nationality is irrelevant to the experience of higher education

How sad then, and dangerous, that one of the consequences of current higher education policies in Britain is the reassertion of the binary principles that were characteristic of further and higher education prior to 1992.  The constant, lazy, shorthand is now the distinction between “top” and “leading” universities that should cater for “bright” students with “good” A-levels.  Others should attend institutions that are implied to be the opposite of these descriptors.  This must include most of the 50% or so of current university students who have vocational qualifications, or A-levels with grades less that ABB.

But anyone who looks at what actually happens in a university outside the Russell Group finds a far more complex situation that is implied by this binary stereotype.  They will find the diversity of provision, research and innovation and student mix that epitomizes the qualities that the International Association of Universities was exploring at its Salford conference.  Of course, this will not always be good (no more than academic programmes at Russell Group universities will invariably be good).  But, in complementing the role of A-level oriented, elite universities, other kinds of provision make an essential contribution to learning and teaching, research and innovation and the public benefits that universities should contribute.

Learning invariably benefits from curricula that are immersed in the excitement of the latest research breakthroughs.

Our task at Salford – in common with the twenty-five or so similar universities in Britain – is to fight for this new middle ground by redefining our strategy and adjusting the suite of programmes we offer and the direction and focus of our work in research and innovation.  To do so is to go against the grain of both current higher education policy and general (and media) assumptions that there is no alternative to the binary – if you are not “top” then you must be “bottom”.  But it’s well worth the fight; to give in to binary stereotypes would be to go back twenty years.

Our MediaCityUK campus. Over the next couple of months, we’ll be consulting widely, as to what sort of institution we should be in the years ahead.

There have been so many changes in British Higher Education over the past three years that any plans written before 2010 are likely to be of relatively little use.  This is the case with our University’s current Strategic Plan; we need a fresh start, for new times.  Over the next couple of months, we’ll be consulting widely in the University and, in particular with our potential students, employers and partners as to what sort of institution we should be in the years ahead. At the same time of dealing with the very difficult issues of the present and immediate future, we need a refreshed vision and appropriate values for new opportunities.

In preparation for this, we’ve concluded an exhaustive analysis of all our current academic programmes, looking at demand for places, key indicators of quality and graduate employability.  While, across the country, trends in applications and enrolments are still settling down after the introduction of the new system of funding and student loans, it is already apparent that our future lies in business, science and engineering, arts and media and in the applied health and social science disciplines.  Our future strategy needs to be built around this core of strength.

We have a distinctive international reach. Many of our students are already in employment and need high quality, professionally-oriented postgraduate qualifications

It’s also striking that we recruit the majority of our undergraduate students from the North West and from across all ten boroughs that make up the Manchester city region.  Over half of these students come to us from Further Education colleges, with vocational qualifications and an increasing proportion live at home.  It is likely that, over the next few years, local and regional recruitment will increase further, making our college and employer partnerships critical for us.

At the same time, we have a distinctive international reach, drawing in students from West Africa, India, China and across the Middle East.  Needs here, too, are changing.  While some international students will always prefer the experience of a full period in residence in a university in Britain, others will not have this option.  In particular, those who are already in employment and who need high quality, professionally-oriented postgraduate qualifications are of growing significance for us, and our new strategy must address this changing world.

In areas such as the life sciences and the built environment we have long combined a rich student experience with leading edge research

Some assume that an emphasis on learning and teaching precludes our remaining a research-led university.  This is demonstrably wrong.  In areas such as the life sciences and the built environment we have long combined a rich student experience with leading edge research.  Looking forwards, there will be an increasing need for our undergraduate and postgraduate courses to be enlivened and directed by direct links with the latest ideas and breakthroughs in research and innovation.  The value of this connection was signaled earlier this month by the announcement of our partnership with the BBC in offering an advanced apprenticeship in broadcast technology, which will immerse students in the latest digital innovations.

This relationship between vocational qualifications, employability and the leading edge of research and innovation serves to emphasize the potential in the government’s recent announcement of the new Technical Baccalaureate – the TechBacc. This is intended as a benchmark equivalent to A-levels, combining a Level 3 vocational qualification with an appropriate standard of mathematics and the completion of an extended project.  Working with partner Colleges to make the TechBacc a milestone on integrated pathways for vocationally oriented education will help define our distinctive future contribution as a university.

This direction for the future is a dialogue with our origins in Manchester’s industrial revolution and as a College of Advanced Technology

Considered overall, this direction for the future is a dialogue with our origins in Manchester’s industrial revolution and as a College of Advanced Technology.  The consultations that will shape the details of our planning and implementation will be central in giving this broad outline rich and detailed meaning.

Click here to visit the website to find out more at www.kidscan.org.uk/

This year, I’ll be joining our staff and students who will be taking part in the Great Manchester Run on 26 May.  Along with many of them, I’ll be running for KidsCan, our University’s own charity.

KidsCan Children’s Cancer Research Centre was established in late 2002 to support research into new and improved treatments for children with cancer. Our colleagues in the Centre are looking for treatments which are less damaging to the bodies of children and young adults. They aim to reduce both short and long term side effects whilst retaining the effectiveness of many current treatments. The work carried out within the KidsCan laboratories on our campus covers a range of activities from basic research into new treatments, through to applied research focused on improving the outcome of therapies currently used in the treatment of children with cancer. You can find out more at www.kidscan.org.uk.

Here’s a video clip, which speaks for itself.

Click the video to hear more about our work in the KidsCan Children's Cancer Research Centre

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Sponsorship: http://www.justgiving.com/Martin-Hall-GMR.