Learning to be Entrepreneurial in Cambridge

King's College Chapel at Dusk, 
by Tom Worthington 1996

Inger Mewburn, the Thesis Whisperer & ANU Director of Researcher Development, will be speaking on Learning to be Entrepreneurial, Monday 10 July at King's College, University of Cambridge. Professor Mewburn has been researching the  the UK job market, looking at who needs research graduates. There will be a more in depth event the next day, "After Academia? : Connecting with Industries Outside Academia", 11 July. I wish her luck, as I found Cambridge students a very tough audience at my first talk there.

My first visits to Cambridge was to investigate how they interacted with industry. On my return I recommended Canberra adopt a similar approach. That seems to have worked reasonably well, with initiatives such as the Canberra Innovation Network, just next to the Australian National University.

Research Should Be Driven by Both Curiosity, and Commerce

In an opinion piece, astrophysicist and ANU VC, Brian Schmidt urged that "Research in Australia’s universities should be driven by curiosity, not commerce" (The Guardian, 25 October 2022). He pointed out that technology such as WiFi was a spinoff from pure research. However, most of the useful, and profitable innovations from universities are not happy accidents, they are applied research to a practical outcome, funded by government, the military, and companies, with specific goals. The Internet was no accident, it was directed research, funded by the US Government, with the intent to build a reliable computer network.

There are skills and techniques which academics need to undertake applied research. There are also specialist roles for those who take the basic work and build usable products and services from it. These are very difficult fields with their own bodies of research. 

As a computer professional who wrote policy for government I had the honour of occasionally dipping into this field. As someone who helps out at a university I regularly get asked by academics how to get funding from government and industry. My answer is invariably is that they have to offer a useful outcome for those they are seeking funding from. Governments want ways to improve the lives of citizens, and companies want ways to make money. Ensuring that these things happen are very challenging tasks.

Several decades ago I visited Cambridge University (UK) to see how they commercialised research. What surprised me was that just about everyone, from the students to the VC, were hustling for money for commercial development. This was not treated as an accidental spinoff from pure research, but central to academia. Academics were comfortable going from the lab to the board room. On my return I proposed Australia, and Canberra in particular, adopt this approach. It is reflected in the establishment of the Canberra Innovation Network. 

Cambridge University Cancels Lectures Until 2021

The University of Cambridge (UK) has suspended mass face to face lectures until the northern summer in 2021. Small group teaching will continue in person. I suggest this is a prudent move, as mass lectures are likely to be the highest risk educational activity for COVID-19, as well as the least useful form of education. Lectures are easy to replace with video, and research shows the videos are just as useful in terms of student learning.

In 2015 I was asked by the Office of Scholarly Communication at University of Cambridge to talk to staff about how to teach students online. Dr Danny Kingsley, then Head of the Office of Scholarly Communication took some notes. At the time, the University of Cambridge was using the same Australian developed Moodle learning management system, as I used at the ANU. So Cambridge had the technology to provide online learning, if not the training or motivation to use it. 

There were some technical deficiencies: I has assumed that Cambridge lecture theaters would be equipped for video recording, as is common in Australia. But one bemused local pointed out that some of the buildings did not have indoor plumbing, let alone video. However, that is a problem easily solved. I assume that with the COVID-19 lock-down, staff now have been equipped with laptops and web cameras, adequate for recording lectures in a theater, as well as at home. 

A bigger problem than technology is teacher training, and the motivation for teaching staff to undertake it. As I was explaining at how to support students online at Cambridge , I noticed part of the audience nodding. These were teachers from a nearby polytechnic. To them e-learning was routine, as it was essential to an institution which had to provide education as cost-effectively as possible. In contrast, a research university such as Cambridge, has a business model built on research output. Teaching is important, but just part of what they do. 

For the last few years I have been considering how to the problem of improving the quality of teaching at research universities. I suggest it requires making teaching part of the syllabus for students who wish to tutor, and go on to a career in academia. This needs to be done before the student graduates, and becomes too important to be told to do teacher training. ;-)

Cambridge University does not appear to be alone with students asking for a refund, when they found themselves studying online, rather than in the hallowed halls. However, it is the small group teaching, which will continue, where the magic of Oxbridge is supposed to happen. Australian universities are also likely to first return to small group teaching first, with large lectures much later, if ever.

Even with large classes, there are ways, face to face or online, for students to get to know each other. One commonly used icebreaker is to have students form small groups to find out about each other. They then introduce each other to the whole class. This is one of the techniques which university teachers are routinely trained to use.

For those with good social skills, this can seem a very trivial and artificial. However, I was once enrolled in a course, face to face, where I never met anyone. I went to the lectures, listened to the lecturer, and went home. There was no get-to-know-you: the lecturer lectured and we were supposed to just listen, no questions, no discussion.

Icebreakers can be done online, where video conference system puts participants into small groups for a set period. Online text forums can also be used. This was done last weekend for the ANZDF logistics hackerthon, where teams were formed using Slack.

It will be interesting to see to what extent such icebreaker exercises can be held face to face, while maintaining social distancing. The Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) had very successful First Wednesday Connect events with hundreds of people crammed in. These events have moved online. But when they can again be held in person will it work, if everyone has to keep their distance in a mostly empty room?

On my last visit to Cambridge I also dropped in to the business faculty (where the MBAs are) and talked to the equivalent of CBRIN. One insight was that most students do not participate in these activities if they are not required to. They tend to turn up shortly before they graduate, when they realize they might need to network to get a job.
 

Open Access, Funding and International Student Numbers at Australian Universities

Dr Danny Kingsley,
Scholarly Communication Consultant

Kingsley and Vandegrift (2019) suggest that open access scholarly publishing has has been held back in Australia, in part because of universities reliance on revenue from international students.

Micah Vandegrift,
Open Knowledge Librarian
at NC State University Libraries.

Kingsley and Vandegrift  point out that, unlike their UK equivalents, Australian universities are reliant on government funding for research. The two main government funding bodies, the National Health and Medical Council (NHMRC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC), have been less than enthusiastic on open access. These bodies have polices which encourage open access, but does not require it. Even that relatively weak policy took a lot of prodding.

But what does any of this have to do with international students?
Kingsley and Vandegrift  point out that Australia has a much higher proportion of international students than other countries. The revenue from these enrollments is much greater than that from government for  research. The authors then make the link between international enrollments and university rankings: students enroll at universities which rank well. The quality of research, as measured by publications, makes up a significant part of the international rankings of universities. Australian academics are therefore under pressure to publish often, and in high ranking journals, which tend to not be open access ones.

Kingsley and Vandegrift conclude by asking "Is it possible to uncouple decisions about research practice from financial or political/ideological considerations?". I suggest it is not, but it is possible to adjust the financial incentives to give more socially desirable outcomes.

International university rankings are heavily weighted towards the quality of research, as measured by publishing in commercial for-profit journals. Students are attracted to universities with high research rankings, even though this has nothing to do with the quality of the teaching. One way to fix this problem is to create ranking systems which value education, and open access, more highly. One example is the Webometrics Ranking of Wold Universities, which includes "openness". This produces a slightly different ranking of Australian universities. Also Webometrics includes many small vocational institutions, excluded from other ranking schemes. Many of these vocational institutions provide quality education.

From a national policy point of view, how many international students should Australia have? International students make up about 23% of the total for Australian universities (Ferguson & Sherrell, 2019). There have been concerns in Australia that the number of international students lowers the quality of education. Perhaps Australia should aim for a similar figure to Canada, at 14% (Usher, p. 21, 2019). Canada may have hit the sweet-spot for international students. Usher suggests the international students in Canada "burnish" (increase) institutions perceived quality, rather than diminish it (Usher, p. 21, 2019).

References

Ferguson, H., and Sherrell, H., (2019). Overseas students in Australian higher education: a quick guide, Parlimentary Library, Parliment of Australia, URL https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1819/Quick_Guides/OverseasStudents


Kingsley, D. & Vandegrift, M. (2019). Chasing cash cows in a swamp? Perspectives on Plan S from Australia and the USA, in Unlocking Research, Office of Scholarly Communication, University of Cambridge. URL https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=2698

Usher, A., (2019). The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada,
2019. Toronto: Higher Education Strategy Associates. URL http://higheredstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/HESA-Spec-2019-Final_v2.pdf 

Failure of UK Research Open Access Policy

Dr Danny Kingsley, Head of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University Library has concluded that the UK's policy for free and open access to publicly-funded research has failed: "Manipulation of embargo periods, confusing information, and a graduated charging system for different licenses all work towards ensuring a second income stream. Far from moving to an open access future we seem to be trapped in a worse situation than we started." (Kingsley, 2017).

I was intrigued by Danny's inclusion of "scheduled tweets" to accompany the presentation. 

To answer the question at the end of the presentation "How do we get out of this mess?", I suggest a modestly funded initiative to encourage new Open Access publishers. This could use the start-up infrastructure already established around universities, such as Cambridge. 

Academic staff and students could be trained and funded to set up new companies to provide OA publishing in competition with existing closed-access ones. These new companies would aim to be profitable, in the long term, while providing publications without a fee to the subscriber. The main question to be answered by any such start-up would not be publishing infrastructure (which there is plenty of free-open-access software for), or revenue streams (which are feasible), but what incentives could be provided to induce academics to choose a new, unproven publisher.

Reference

Kingsley, D. (2017). So did it work? Considering the impact of Finch 5 years on [Presentation file]. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/269913

University-level innovation policy

In a working paper for the  University of Cambridge Engineering Department, Livesey, O’Sullivan, Hughes, Valli and Minshall (2008) look at strategies, leadership and metrics for innovation at UK universities.

I thought the report a little harsh writing:

'The Australian government, among others, has been accused of believing that “if a high technology/ science park is created, with suitably high-tech buildings, then high technology firms will be attracted to move in from somewhere."'. (p. 16)

However, I then realized the authors were quoting me (Worthington, 1997). ;-)

The report does not draw any clear conclusions, and it does not address the issue of explicitly teaching innovation and entrepreneurship to students or staff. The assumption seems to be that this is something which happens naturally, alongside research.

Reference 

Livesey, F., O’Sullivan, E., Hughes, J., Valli, R., & Minshall, T. (2008). A pilot study on the emergence of university-level innovation policy in the UK. Centre for Economics and Policy Working Papers. URL http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/uploads/Research/CIG/UniversityInnovationStrategy_FinalReport_RELEASE_140308.pdf

Worthington, T. (1997), Canberra: Cambridge or Thebes?, Australian Computer Society. URL http://web.archive.org/web/20090211041322/http://www.acs.org.au:80/president/1996/drsit/cmbrdg.htm

e-Learning at Cambridge University

On Wednesday I talked on "Quickly developing online versions of learning materials for graduate students" at the Office of Scholarly Communication, University of Cambridge (UK). Danny Kingsley has some notes of the discussion in her blog "Unlocking Research: Tips for preparing and presenting online learning".

Quickly developing online versions of learning materials for graduate students at Cambridge University

I will be discussing "Quickly developing online versions of learning materials for graduate students" at Cambridge University, 2pm, 22 July 2015. The talk was arranged by Dr Danny Kingsley, Head of the University of Cambridge Office of Scholarly Communication, is free and open to all, but you need to reserve a seat.

The University of Cambridge has been using the same Australian developed "Moodle" Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) as ANU since 2014. Tom will provide some lessons learned from teaching graduate students using Moodle at the ANU since 2009. He suggests shortcuts for moving learning materials on-line using e-books. Tom will also outline new work at ANU to integrate the "synchronous" features of products such as Adobe Connect, with the "asynchronous" features of Moodle.

Event link: 

Roundtable discussion: Quickly developing online versions of learning materials for graduate students

ps: Happy to give a version of the talk in Australia (or Hong Kong, if there is interest. I will be at  Fitzwilliam College Cambridge (UK) 21 to 25 July for the 10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE 2015). On the way I am stopping off in Hong Kong 16 to 18 July for the Second International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015) at Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK).

What to see in Hong Kong and Cambridge in July

I will be in Hong Kong 16 to 18 July for the Second International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015) at Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK), then via Guangzhou (China) to Fitzwilliam College Cambridge (UK) 21 to 28 July for the 10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE 2015). Anyone I should visit along the way?

Computer Science Education Conference in Cambridge

The Call for Papers for the 10th International Conference on Computer Science and Education (ICCSE 2015) closes on 1 April 2015. The conference will be at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK, 22 to 24 July 2015. I hope to be there, having attended ICCSE 2014 in Vancouver, ICCSE 2013 in Colombo and ICCSE 2012 in Melbourne.

Call for Papers: ICCSE 2015, July 22-24, 2015. Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK.

The 10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE 2015) 

July 22-24, 2015. Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK. (IEEE Conf.# 35092; Catalog # CFP1589F; ISBN 978-1-4799-6600-4) http://ieee-iccse.org

Keynote Speakers

• Prof. Clarence W. de Silva, The University of British Columbia, Canada 

• Prof. Ben M. Chen, National University of Singapore, Singapore 

• Prof. Houman Owhadi, California Institute of Technology, USA

General Chairmen

• Dr. Farbod Khoshnoud, Brunel University London, UK 

• Dr. Tal Li, Florida International University, USA

Important Dates

1. Submission Deadline: April 1, 2015
2. Decision Notification: May 15, 2015
3. Final Versions and Author Registration: June 1, 2015
4. Conference Dates: July 22-24, 2015

Higher Education and Economic Development

Eugene P. Traniand  Robert D. Holsworth's book "The Indispensable University: Higher Education, Economic Development, and the Knowledge Economy" (, American Council on Education Series on Higher Education, 2010), argues that universities can bring about economic development in the region they are located through policies to link with industry. This hardly a new idea and the authors cite numerous sources, including in their first chapter, my summary of "The Cambridge Phenomenon". As discussed in "Building Arcadia: Emulating Cambridge's High Technology Success", building a technology park beside a university, or attracting a major company R&D facility to a campus will not necessarily result in innovation.  The authors look in depth at how to bring about such innovation.

Hongyun Meng's 2001 thesis "Fostering the Digital Economy: Perspectives for Internet Clustering" looks at the sharing of resources, infrastructures and social capital around universities. Meng points out that while “The Cambridge Phenomenon” produced considerable research spin-offs, the companies around Cambridge University were less successful with transition from research to development, perhaps because the university academics were not so interested or experienced in this.

Meng summarises important factors for innovation (in this case for internet clusters) as:

Presence of Resources

• Initial shortage of key resources in most clusters
• Two major ways for overcoming the shortage:

1. Local generation and accumulation
2. Getting in from outside

Potential components of networks

• Local presence of universities
• Varieties of companies, especially co-existence of large and small companies
• Intermediary organizations

 Structure of Networks

•  Active involvement of universities in local business networks
• Local horizontal ties of companies
• Focal points of resources

Labor Movement

• High labor mobility