Can I be open as an administrator?
I must admit I initially struggled to think of something to write about with regards to this topic. Being a PS member of staff I am open as much as I am able to be, I am confined to the guides, policies and practices of my line manager, her line manager, the School, the Faculty and so on. Surely openness in higher education relates more to Academics, if and how they share their work, their research, should it be free or should it be paid for and so on. Well that was my basic thoughts on it!
My Social Media ‘Openness’
So where do I start. I first took a look at my ‘openness’ with regards to my Social Media accounts. I have an Instagram and Facebook account which I unashamedly post to at least 3 to 4 times a week, so yes I must be quite open. I am aware I may be a little too open with regards to my political views, I mean who the hell thought Brexit was a good idea?! Boris Jonson as PM, sorry am I living in some kind of alternate universe?! However I am much less ‘open’ when it comes to posting about my children. I often ‘cringe’ when I see others posting photographs of their kids in the bath or checking them in at the hospital, park, soft play… don’t these people know that there are ‘baddies’ out there?! So no, sometimes I am not open. But that is because I have made the decision that it is safe and secure to not be, as Catherine Cronin (2018) states “You’re negotiating all the time” when it comes to balancing privacy and openness.
I then asked myself am I open in my administrative role at work
I’m not good at sharing!
At the beginning of this academic year our small Law School merged with the School of Social Sciences. Meaning amongst many other things that my office would need to share practices with our counterpart office in the ‘old’ School of Social Sciences to make sure we were all ‘singing off the same hymn sheet’ as it were. Now let’s just say, this has been a bumpy ride to say the least. We found that our practices were being changed to meet with the practices of the other office, practices that work for us, practices that have taken years to ‘get right’ and fit in with ever changing policies and procedures. Looking back on this time of change, I have personally discovered that I am open with my practices when it comes to my immediate colleagues who I have worked with for 8 plus years as I am happy to share my own personal guides and training that I have without even thinking about it but I was less happy to share with my new colleagues. My initial worries about sharing my work with my new colleagues were based on the fact that they themselves would have their own ways of working, what if they thought my practices were rubbish, what if they thought they were great and passed it off as if it was all their own work. A previous PG Cert in HE student referred to the Imposter Syndrome in reference to academics and how “most of academia is suffering from it” which was no more apparent than when academic’s where asked to podcast their lectures in 2013. However I feel this is very relatable when it comes to PS staff to. I was worried about what these colleagues would think of my work and could imagine them talking to each other and criticising anything I sent over and uncovering that I was a ‘fraud’ and ‘how did she get this job, look at her work’.
Other’s openness
Catherine Cronin’s slides which consider open education, depict the blurred lines between your own personal and professional content. I realise that my own personal work which include mind maps, my own guides to the 3 different areas my administrative role covers, are, my own work. Therefore should I have to share this with others?
Since the aforementioned merger I have been given new roles which include the coordination of the introduction of a new ‘Professional Experience Year’. These work placements years are completely new to the School therefore I needed to prepare completely new handbooks and guides for myself and colleagues. How did I do this? With a lot of help from colleague from other Schools who already run these programmes. They were happy to send me their handbooks, proforma, slides and basically answer any questions (which were many) I had. They have spent years getting their publications and practices right and they were completely open in sharing it all with me and advised me to ‘feel free to copy’. Carina Bossu (2017) describes an open practitioner as someone who is “willing to share their discoveries and initiatives”. I feel these colleagues are the essence of what it is to be an ‘open practitioner’.
Best Practice
We hear a lot about ‘sharing best practice’ in a PS context, and I have heard it none more so than during this academic year due to the merger. I do like the concept but how do we find out what that ‘best practice’ is. Most people will think their practices are ‘best’ however there are many times when, especially in my team we say ‘this could be done so much better’. And the only way this can be done is by being open practitioners.
Martin Weller refers to the many advantages of open practice such as ‘efficiency, altruism, and easy collaboration’. And I have come to realise that the only way we can be the best we can be at our job as administrators in HE is to share, be open, be honest and be transparent. Otherwise we will not see where we are going wrong or see how we can be the best at what we do
