Notes on the OG
After a day of tussling with the intricacies of the Opportunities Gateway, I am happy to report that it is finally beginning to take shape – a fact confirmed by a member of the Learning Directorate who was pleased with the progress. Now that we have created a solid foundation for the Gateway, we will be opening it up for discussion. Over the next few weeks we hope to get a better sense of both staff and students’ expectations. I am slightly nervous when I think this exercise may result in having to go back to the drawing board. This is because since its inception the Gateway has been a repository of various ideologies, which means it probably means different things to different people.
The focus of my work has been to see how the main underlying principals – to encourage reflection on the student experience and create a readiness for opportunity – can be achieved through the Gateway web-resource. What makes this process tricker is that it has to run in tandem with the services offered by the Learning Directorate, which in turn face the common constraints of time, manpower and resources. I find this mix of functional and ideological aspects very exciting. It has been a very interesting experience to create something tangible after the dozens of conversations that have taken place over the past few months. Just a few weeks ago I was sitting in on a steering group meeting furiously taking notes as people defined their expectations from the Gateway. The tone of the meeting was such that when I had a look at it a day later, some of my jottings took me by surprise. For instance, I have absolutely no idea what the phrase ‘ideological extrapolation’ means. I went through the list a couple of times and then let the ideas settle at the back of my head – hoping for some problem solving to take place in the subconscious.
This morning, sat in front of a blank A1 sheet of flip-chart paper, there was only a slight moment of confusion on how to proceed. After a few false starts, I tried to define the Gateway through the relationships it seeks to promote. That is between the staff, students and the wider world. Fortunately, this approach was spot-on and within a few hours I went through a number of iterations of the Gateway framework. Obviously there still are a fair few loose ends which need to be taken care of. But I think that what we have is sufficient to create the first public face – a wireframe for the Gateway. The challenge is to see if this survives the first round of feedback.
We have a student focus group scheduled in a couple of weeks which will be followed by another steering group meeting. I shall post more notes on the development of the Gateway over the coming weeks.
