Views & Opinion Top Down Efficiency Comment by Alister Esam, CEO, BoardPacks Love them or hate them, meetings underpin
every aspect of private and public sector operations. From departmental meetings to financial assessments, committee meetings to emergency reviews, individuals at every level of every organisation attend a variety of agenda led meetings – many of which, in theory, generate a huge number of immediate actions, and most of which still rely on paper based meeting papers and agendas. Indeed, within the education sector, there are
a number of diverse governing bodies, including the board, the senate and the university council as well as faculty departments, which can all add up to a lot of papers, and consequently a lot of inefficiency.
Cost, Efficiency & Governance The cost and inefficiency associated with
preparing every meeting agenda and associated documentation has always been a drain on administrative resources – not to mention the basic costs of paper, printing and couriers. Today, however, with the notable reduction in administrative staff in recent years, increased volume of documentation, and more meetings than ever, this is becoming a major issue for staff at every level.
The continued reliance on paper means that governance too can suffer as it becomes more difficult to keep on top of all of the information – resulting in the majority of valuable meeting time being spent on digesting and debating the facts, rather than actually reaching an essential decision. Replacing paper based meeting papers and
agendas with online information and meeting management at every level of the business can deliver clear cost savings, particularly in a higher education setting where they have so many departments that use agenda-led meetings. Whether the information is being prepared by admin staff or attendees, removing the need to print and collate hundreds of pages of meeting documents is an immediate benefit – and enables an organisation to move closer to realising the vision of paperless operation.
Cloud Model At the heart of this effective decision making
model is the ability to review up to date information and feel confident in the immediacy and relevance of documentation. Through the use of tablet technology, already widely adopted throughout many organisations, and building on tools such as the cloud based Microsoft Office
365, individuals have anytime, anywhere access to their meeting agenda and associated documentation, allowing far more flexible and time efficient information review. From a speed and ease of deployment
perspective, cloud-based technology also provides organisations with the resources they need, but without the requirements of expertise and hardware associated with traditional, on-premise infrastructure. It is also essential to ensure that access to this highly sensitive information is both easy and secure – and this can be achieved at a lower cost with a cloud solution.
Conclusion In an era of uncertainty – including student
numbers, funding and the viability of long-term private partnerships – ensuring consistent, well- informed decision making and facilitating better communication throughout the college or university is becoming essential. By extending an online meeting model of collaboration, co-operation, and decision making throughout the organisation, electronic agenda led meetings provide a chance to improve the visibility of decision-making and governance throughout the organisation.
Has the UK’s exam grading system had its day?
Comment by Karim Derrick, Chief Operating Officer, DigitalAssess Grades have always been a sensitive issue for
pupils, educators and the government. Last year, Ofqual reported that 45,000 A-Level and GCSE results had been changed following challenges. The Department for Education is aware that erratic marking is damaging the credibility of the exams system. Yet, no serious actions have been taken to make assessments more reliable.
Bias is at the heart of the problem The fundamental flaw with today’s
assessment system is its reliability; however well trained assessors are, or well moderated the system is, it is still prone to bias: the root of inaccurate marking. We’ve recently seen reductions in coursework in favour of more traditional exams, for example the decision to no longer count science practicals towards A- level grades. In education we are trying to address assessment reliability by simplifying it. But the world of business is lamenting a system churning out pupils who don’t have the right skills for the modern workplace.
Assessing the future New approaches and technologies developed
in the UK are already available to improve what and how we assess. Yet countries like Sweden, Singapore and the US are adopting them faster than we are. Some UK institutions are thinking outside of the box; Agored Cymru, an awarding body and provider of vocational courses, has adopted a web-based approach to assessment. This has helped them not just assess practical-skills with greater validity, but also allowed them to take the leg work out of assessment so that they can assess more frequently. The Education Research Unit at Goldsmiths
University is one institution focusing on improving assessment reliability. It started looking into this issue in 2002 and proposed to change the assessment methodology from using today’s complex marking schemes to using Adaptive Comparative Judgement (ACJ) instead. With this approach, assessors are given pairs of examinations and are then asked to compare them and choose which is better. By harnessing
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assessors’ abilities of judgement, and by deploying a collaborative online version of ACJ, a system is formed that allows groups of assessors to review a set of student work reliably, and at scale. This includes oral or video based work as well as project portfolios.
Providing a successful education This approach has been tested across varied
subject and discipline contexts to great effect. It has even been trialled in the UK by our regulators to standardise inter-exam board grading. So our Government and Ofqual could continue as they are by implementing stop-gap measures, which reduces the validity of what we are assessing. Or they can turn to technology for an answer to not only provide a reliable way to assess, but also a way to provide pupils with an education that is worthy enough to help them succeed in the modern workplace.
May 2015
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