Olive Hopker

13^th February – Olive Hopker

Olive Hopker, the Head of planning and development at the University introduced collaboration. She started by saying that the Welsh Government is promoting the benefit of collaboration in education covering Higher Education, Local Education Authorities, Further Education/6^th Forms and Schools.

Olive gave examples of current collaboration such as validation panel membership where the course has been approved and also competition examples in terms of collaboration such as student recruitment.

There are many benefits of collaboration. There are shared expertise and knowledge so that you can talk to people maybe about courses or tasks. There is greater efficiency, cost saving and greater effectiveness in terms of additional products/services. It can also enhance reputation as well as giving you the value of an ‘external eye’ so that someone else can perhaps give you advice to do something better. The competition benefits include promoting efforts to do better and also provide choices of alternative products/services.

Olive Hopker compared the benefits and limitations of small Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and Large Higher Education Institutions. For small HEI the benefits would be direct management control, simple structures, small classes etc. The limitations however are the small resource base and limited choice. The benefits for large HEI are a large resource base, significant buying power, more opportunities for staff career moves and wide subject base and range of course. The limitations are the remote management, complex structures, large classes, rigid procedures etc. This highlights the fact that collaboration can lead to both positives as wellas weaknesses.