Why we have made certain decisions

Those reading this blog will more than likely identify with the notion that regardless of how well you think you have anticipated risk or how well you think that you may have put together a project plan, things will not always run the way you had thought. This however is not necessarily a bad thing; it can help to shape the way that you make certain decisions. What may not have been a priority at first can quickly become so and it will probably not be to the detriment of your project. In fact, it can help push it forward a little.

This is something that we have learned with our project (and there will be a follow up post to discuss this further). In this blog post, I'd like to focus on why we have structured our Alumni Profile form in the way that we have.

A quick bit of background; We are in the process of going out to our alumni to ask them to complete our profile form. Alumni are asked a range of questions relating to;

• The city of Glasgow
  
• Their course
• University life
• Career experiences/path after Glasgow
  

Submitted profiles will form part of our Ask our Alumni service, where students can search a bank of profiles based on search criteria of;

• Profession
• Industry
• Country

We are encouraging all of our alumni to become eMentors, so that by providing their LinkedIn url, students are able to contact them to ask for informal careers advice.

As you can see from the profile form, we decided as a project team to ask a lot of questions. We did so because we hope to use the information provided not only for the benefit of students, but also to use in university publications and promotional materials both printed and online. It's hoped that the positive messages and experiences of our alumni can assist the university in its domestic and international recruitment efforts. Alumni do not have to answer all of the questions but they are encouraged to do so.

We have deliberately structured the questions to map the journey from undergraduate, to graduation and then life beyond that to ensure that students, regardless of what year group they belong to can take away the information and guidance that is relevant or important to them at that time. What a student determines to be useful infomation when studying in year two can be very much different to a final year student.

As mentioned previously, we are in the process of identifying both domestic and international alumni to complete our profile form to build up a bank of profiles. We will pilot our student mini-site and search functionality with a small group of students and also follow the progress that they make contacting alumni for informal careers advice before full launch of the service.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions, please do comment!

Pete

Service Design in Action at Glasgow Uni

Last week we started testing our new Alumni Volunteer Network prototype web pages and on-line sign up process using the Persona and Customer Journey Map tools supplied by Snook.


We are just getting started with Customer Journey Mapping , but even already we have been able to identify ways in which we can make the web experience  more user friendly and simple for all of our alumni to sign up for our volunteering activities.


Updates will follow once we have taken all of the Personas we created  through the process.

Persona: Moira Jayne wants to become an E- Mentor 

JISC Service Design event with We Are Snook

Hello.

The project team (Laura, James and Pete) have made it back to Glasgow after encountering the most crowded train ever. I think I could write an entire blog post about the journey, but I'll concentrate on talking about the Service Design event instead.

Firstly, thanks to JISC and Aston University for organising and hosting the event. We had been keen to meet with Snook to discuss our project, so when the opportunity arose to attend we were most keen.

I took two things away from the event that I believe will be most useful for our project.

1. I'm looking forward to using the 'personas' tool when planning and testing our programme content. The event placed an even greater importance on understanding that whilst we think (and our research is indicating) that we have engaged alumni and students, we should not lose sight that not all will fit into this category. It's never going to be possible for us to speak with every different type of person who may or may not be involved in our project, so using personas can help us at least try to deliver a programme that can be all-inclusive.

2. The 'stakeholder map' will be a useful tool further into our project, so that we can take stock of how we started, what we've achieved and where we envisage we might develop. So I must remember to actually draw one out right now.

Additionally, the event was also a good opportunity to catch up with Leo and Loretta from our Cluster group and hear of the progress of their projects.

Thanks for reading!

Oh and if anyone wants to comment (and be the first from outside our Project Team to do so!), then please do!

University 'consumer culture' warning

Thanks to our Critical Friend, Peter Kawalek for sending on this article.

Maybe the most important statement is, "We need to talk about the student experience less in terms of transactions and more in terms of relationships..."

As an aside, the article touches on a criticism of focusing too much on undergraduates and ignoring postgraduates. This is something that the University of Glasgow is proactively working on through its external facing departments, setting itself an ambitious target of doubling it PGT numbers.

Visual Understanding Environment

This is maybe a tool that is used widely (or not) but has proved invaluable for myself and our project team.

Visual Understanding Environment

It's a free resource and very easy to use. Looking back at some of the original maps that we used for project planning, they are absolutely huge, difficult to read and not as focused as they could be.

The tool has enabled us to focus on the elements of our programme that are important to its success eg. resources/tasks.

Enjoy!

Project update

It's quite worrying when you take a look at your own blog and realise that it's been so long since you posted anything to it however, it does mean that the team has been busy and focused.

After meeting with our Cluster group members in London at the start of September, the project team have been kicking on with defining the key aspects of our programme. Whether this be process flows, definitions of roles or the actual structure of the programme, it has really made us very aware of the level of detail and planning that is involved in a project like this.

There have been a number of factors that have assisted us in getting to this point.

Firstly, attending the CASE Europe 2011 conference in Manchester showed that volunteering within the HE sector is a 'hot topic'. It also showed that whilst a lot of HEI's are very keen to start or develop their programmes, no two are exactly that same. However, having said that, most if not all have the key aim of furthering and developing engagement with alumni.

Secondly, we should also acknowledge the help and advice of other institutions around the country. We're very lucky within HE that people are happy to share information, both good and bad practice. Come the completion of our project, the input from Development & Alumni, Careers and Recruitment offices around the country will not be underestimated.

Thirdly and finally, our Cluster group. It was really interesting to meet and see what the other projects were doing (and how far along they were). It allowed us to reflect a little and take a look at the amount of planning and research that we were doing and how appropriate it has been. Meeting also allowed us to share common problems and discuss potential solutions but it also raised a couple of questions for us. One response to the content of our programme was so strong from the rest of the group, that it showed that no matter how much you try and plan to offer something to everyone, you'll still potentially miss something.

We're also pleased to say that we will be informally launching one aspect of our programme in India this month, with a small group of our international alumni in attendance. We hope to update you with a little more information in one of our next posts.

Finally project members James Coleman, Laura Henaghan and Pete Speak will all be attending the Service Design event in Birmingham this month. We're very much looking forward to this and hope to see some familiar faces there.

Alumni networking events attracting recent graduates

http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/sep/15/alumni-graduate-employability