Openness: The Digital Landscape, Executive Education and reflections on Prometheus

I’m writing this blog at the end of March 2018, the week after the Cambridge Analytica / Facebook story broke. For me this story has highlighted how far behind most of us are in understanding openness and the digital landscape.

It was when I was undertaking the reading and looking at the preparation tool for the first session of Open Knowledge in Higher Education that I realised I had absolutely no professional experience of openness and that in my area of the university, Executive Education in the Business School, apart from very brief discussions about ‘Moocs’ a number of years ago, open knowledge is just never discussed. It was eye-opening and a little worrying that I had not even heard a debate over openness in education, pirate websites such as sci-hub or the profitable business of academic publishing. I discussed this with colleagues and I was not alone.

Whilst undertaking the OKHE module I have become much more aware of the digital landscape of our everyday lives and how this has both positive and negative elements we must all learn to navigate. The capacity to share has created an extremely complex world which is both personal and professional, and we need to decide what we are prepared to share online, if anything at all. I remember listening to Catherine Cronin discussing openness in Higher Education and how we need to understand how and what we share in this age of knowledge abundance. During the discussion it became apparent that many of us are very reluctant to put our thoughts and views out there.

With open education and the much more freely accessible academic papers available online, I found the discussions around what part Universities have to play really interesting. I have always believed that students come to us as we are the gatekeepers of knowledge. I see my academic colleagues in Universities as the experts who unlock the most important pieces of research. I think openness adds another layer by allowing content to be accessible and discoverable to those who, perhaps, already have an interest and know what they are looking for.

As I mentioned, professionally I have not come across the “openness” debate. I have worked in Executive Education in Alliance Manchester Business School for the past 20 years. We are a commercial department running highly tailored, confidential, management and leadership development programmes for large corporate clients and public-sector organisations. We also run open programmes, and these are also seen as being premium level. This means that the business model in Executive Education does not suit openness as it may do elsewhere.

For some of our programme our audience are delegates, not students, which means they are on non-award bearing programmes. As a result we have had to battle hard to ensure they are given access to the same University library resources that a student on an accredited course has. However, our audience are looking less at academic papers and more at practical ways to use academic knowledge to approach business issues. As the strap line of the Business school states, they are looking for Original Thinking Applied. Our Executive Education audience tend to be time-poor with full time jobs and are looking to us to filter the knowledge in the best way for them and the needs of their business.

As a commercial department we have had to weigh up what else we are able to do that gives back, or “opens” our knowledge to a wider community and, having considered the question posed, your understanding of Open Knowledge as it relates to one aspect of your local, professional practice, I decided to look at the Prometheus programme.

Since 2014, we have run the Prometheus programme which is an Executive Leadership programme for 3rd sector organisations. It is a no-charge event with its aim of combining the best of modern business and the charity sector to focus on the challenges that face society.

Prometheus is strategically important in terms of the University of Manchester Goal 3, social responsibility and engaging our communities and allows us to connect and share our knowledge with this sector in a way which we would not otherwise do. Since 2014, there have been delegates from 177 different organisations that have benefited from the programme and feedback has been really positive:

“It’s the kind of key event you get people to come together and talk about issues they don’t get to talk about on a day to day basis. So I think the more of these the merrier.”

“To be given the opportunity to be educated in leadership by leaders in the field is really important.”

The Programme Director, Dr Nick Clifford explained that the original idea behind Prometheus was to give the 3rd Sector access to the latest business school thinking that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to benefit from; “Our vision is to see the third-sector recognised as a crucial part of any healthy economy, identifying and serving the needs of the community” The regard the programme is held in at the University is highlighted by the fact that Chancellor Lemn Sissay spoke on programme last year.

I have come across a number of tweets that highlight the importance and learning for those attending #mbsprometheus and #ambsprometheus and I discovered this blog from @Amy_Lyth discussing her learning from the event in 2015. What the OKHE course has reaffirmed is that the Prometheus programme really matters to those who attend as many delegates from very small charities really have limited resources which would ordinarily prohibit them from accessing learning and knowledge from the business school.

Whilst Prometheus is not about big data or free on-line access to academic papers, I do believe that it fits with the open knowledge in higher education philosophy. Working through the OKHE course, I have realised that whilst Prometheus could go further (for example, there are obvious advantages in recording the programme, sharing slides, creating open access blog posts) this programme tries to break down cost barriers and openly provide relevant and practical management development to an audience, free of charge. And I now realise that rather than being the gatekeepers of knowledge, Universities are the gate openers and that there is knowledge on either side of the gate.