The road to transformation
How our tools and services helped kick start South Hampshire College Group’s journey to digital transformation.
When Fareham College, Eastleigh College, and City College Southampton merged in 2023 to become South Hampshire College Group (SHCG), each was at a different stage of its digital journey. Brought in a year later as digital and innovation lead, Nathan Orchard’s focus was to lead on digital skills development. With the aim of building a sense of shared direction across the college group, he set about bringing together the various platforms and solutions being used, to create a more cohesive, cross-campus model to best benefit staff and students.
The group collectively provides both in-person and online learning for around 12,000 students a year across the three vocational-based colleges. With courses ranging from foundation learning through to higher education, and for such a diverse range of students (in age, ethnicity, and digital skill level), putting a digital strategy in place that would work for everyone was no small task.
Building a sense of shared direction across the college group
In his previous role, Nathan had been a big advocate for our services, so he approached his relationship manager on the best place to start. The first step on the ladder was the digital elevation tool, something that proved invaluable not only for the data and subsequent guidance it provided, but also as a way to facilitate conversations with new colleagues.
Within the first few months, Nathan had gained the support of the whole senior leadership team. This valuable engagement made things easier further down the line, as there was already an understanding of what information could be gathered from our tools.
The next vital element in the college group’s transformation process was the vision for change workshop, a tool designed to achieve the buy-in of key staff. With staff approaching transformation from different perspectives, ensuring the continued involvement of senior leaders to support the overall strategy was important to Nathan.
The workshop, which is facilitated by Jisc subject experts and provides a key outside perspective on where institutions are currently positioned in their digital journey, allowed Nathan to bring staff together to assess priorities across departments. This, in turn, led to the creation of a project team who used those conversations to explore what the college might look like in 2035, and how education as a whole could evolve over the next 10 years. He said:
“We managed to bring together senior leaders and practitioners to the facilitated workshop. From there, we were able to take the feedback received and start building our key aims, our mission, and our vision. We built our strategy around four pillars; leadership, people, purpose, and sustainability. With those pillars in place from the start, they underpinned our aims and objectives.
We're now at the stage where we're pulling together our activities, our actions, and our key performance indicators (KPIs) to actually influence digital strategies. Without the efforts of the workshop facilitators helping to galvanise our staff, I don't think we'd be in as strong a position.
It’s not complete by any means, we’re still very much pulling the strategy together, so it’s an ongoing process. But I know that I can go to any one of the team that were involved in the development stages, sense check, get clarification and make sure that we're aligning to the goals of the college.”
The importance of digital skills for staff and students
As the deadline for finalising the project objectives approaches, the digital strategy group is already planning its next steps. He plans to keep the digital elevation tool as a constant measure, using it to inform and track the college group’s progress against its strategic goals.
Moving forward, Nathan said the discovery tool will also come into play:
“The digital elevation tool has given us a baseline with the new question sets and now the discovery tool is going to be the mainstay for the final part of the academic year.”
As a vocational college group, there are many areas where digital approaches can be applied with huge success, but not without upskilling and supporting the teaching staff. This is something the team has been able to focus on during their work with us.
Longer term, the discovery tool will also be rolled out to students, with the goal of enabling them to complete an initial self-assessment. This will empower them to take charge of their own digital development and skills. Nathan also recognised the importance of leading by example and shared his belief that regular training to keep up with the latest learning across the sector is essential.
“I’m planning to join the digital leaders programme later this year for the additional authority and confidence I think that will give me. I make sure I’m attending regular webinars, and I’m also a big advocate for Digifest. It’s my number one go-to CPD event each year.”
Making a start on your transformation journey
As more institutions look to refine their digital strategies, Nathan’s advice on how to get started was straightforward; start with a conversation. He had high praise for his relationship manager and the Jisc services he and his team have accessed:
“My doorway in was my relationship manager. They're always so good at illustrating the work going on across the sector, sharing stories and making connections with what other colleges are doing.
So, to put it simply, have a conversation with your relationship manager and you’ll get advice, support and critical questioning, all delivered with customer service and support in mind and with the aim of helping you realise your goals.”