Staffordshire University: Automation should be a human-first technology

The University is preparing students for an automated future, and it’s not limiting teaching to technical courses

2020 dealt the education sector a massive blow. Not in the same way as retail or hospitality - schools and universities have continued teaching remotely, for the most part - but in operational complexity. Moving from face-to-face to remote instruction, especially for courses that need to teach practical skills, has taxed every department, resulting in a scramble to bring in new technologies.

Some institutions were ahead of the game on that front. Staffordshire University has been hailed as one of the UK's most digital-friendly universities, facing the crisis with less ‘mad panic' and more ‘careful consideration'.

Automation has been a significant part of the University's recent technology investment, and so-called intelligent automation (IA) - a variant of robotic process automation, which SU is working on in partnership with Blue Prism - enables a business- and human-focused approach.

"The use of intelligent automation is part of our broader 2030 university strategy," says Pro Vice-Chancellor of Digital, Andrew Proctor. "One of the aspects of it is what we call our human-centric approach to the use of things like AI and automation… We believe that, by leveraging this technology, what we can actually do is free up more time for people - but free up time for people such that they can spend more time together socially, and so that they can spend more time on meaningful work, as well.

Andrew Proctor

"Rather than this idea that robots and AI are replacing people and introducing more siloes, etc., it's really the exact opposite. We believe that our staff and our students can get to spend more time together through the use of technology."

Core competency

A major difference between IA and more traditional RPA is the business focus. It is no-code automation with, Blue Prism claims, ‘expanded cognitive and AI capabilities'. Rather than simply automating existing software, Proctor says IA is "much more about having that seamless connectivity and solution."

He adds, "[IA] complements things like bot technology," which the University already uses heavily - and more is on the cards, especially in areas of student self-service.

"By way of example, students often need to get council tax letters before they can claim their student loans or open bank accounts. We're going to be automating that for them. If they lose their student card, a new one can be issued 24/7 and be available for them to pick up, rather than queuing at a desk at a certain time in the morning… It's really about this sophisticated student experience that's much more about value-add, than students having to wrestle with booking things, remembering things and having to deal with day-to-day admin and transactional activity."

Back-office functions are not forgotten. Staffordshire uses IA to assist with the student withdrawal and intermissions process, which was previously "very, very manual, particularly for the finance team." The process consumed a lot of time, and finance staff tended to "put it to the back of their to-do list."

"What that actually meant was that sometimes our finance data would have a bit of lag about it - so, if you think of students withdrawing or intermitting, that has a direct impact on our budget sheet. As it turns out, robots don't procrastinate, unlike human beings, so it was done almost instantaneously. That meant we saw increased data velocity, so some of our reporting was much more accurate and up-to-date, rather than waiting for some of these results to be processed and come through. That was a good example of something we hadn't actually anticipated."

In the finance case, automation was retro-fitted into an existing process, but Proctor says it works best when it becomes "a core capability… built into the design of new things." The University has a team called the Automation Centre of Excellence, formed of people from across the organisation, which is devoted to using user research and an understanding of service design to determine where it can best apply automation - without introducing bureaucracy, and to remain focused on the human aspects, "so that people can interact with each other in meaningful ways."

A teaching moment

A big draw of Blue Prism as a partner was its ability to support this type of rollout. The University was looking for a vendor that would not only help on the automation journey, but could transfer skills, knowledge and experience to the internal team at the same time. "We really wanted this type of capability to be self-sufficient internally, and then just reaching back out to the market when we had a specialist need or if we needed to ramp up capacity," says Proctor.

"[Blue Prism has] helped us construct a roadmap of automations for the first 12 months. They built our first automation while we sat alongside them and watched, and now we're in the process of building our own automations - with them still assisting, providing advice and guidance, and that's probably where we're up to right now… We've set quite a high ambition for the use of Intelligent Automation over the next few years, so we didn't want to be limited by a vendor that had quite a traditional or slow-moving roadmap."

And is that approach paying off? Proctor certainly thinks so, pointing out that developing those skills internally is helping Staffordshire launch its own courses in automation, which will only become more important in the coming years. The University already has form here, using its experience with Cisco to teach practical courses in networking.

Staffordshire University's Science Centre

An important point, often forgotten, is that automation doesn't only apply to technical courses. Many industries will use AI in the future, and Proctor says raising awareness of the technology now is important so students are prepared for the impact of technology on their chosen industries.

"We want to ensure that all of our graduates are ready for the world of Industry 4.0, and that they're not graduating with skills that may become obsolete; they're graduating with skills and confidence in the use of technology, and an understanding of how it applies to their specific sectors or industries, and the ability to keep reskilling themselves, as well."

He continues, "For example, this idea of a fashion student, who puts some really interesting designs together, being able to stand up a website, to market some of their interesting ideas or start some blogs, etc. People that are really confident in the digital world, as well… It's not just about us using the technology, it's about understanding that we're preparing students for a world in which this technology is already heavily used."

The Fitbit approach

As well as being more heavily and obviously adopted in non-technical industries, Proctor says Staffordshire University expects "AI to become our new UI" in the near future - that is, over the next 10 years, people will begin to interact more with AI on a daily basis than any single human being.

"That's not to say that human contact will reduce," Proctor adds, "it's just saying that the vast amount of transactional activity - getting really easy, simple support - will be done via intelligent automation."

Staffordshire's future plans for automation are a clear example of Proctor's point: what he calls "[the] Fitbit approach to education."

"Before people started wearing [Fitbits], people knew that getting a certain number of hours of sleep every evening was important, but didn't spend that much time thinking about it. With things like Fitbit, by presenting data to people, they start to see how much sleep they're getting every evening: whether it's going up or down, what the average is, and they start to manage it much more closely.

"We're starting to look at doing similar things with education as well, so almost this Fitbit approach to education. How can we equip students with information about how they're doing, what they're doing, and give them advice and guidance on techniques they can use to improve things? A great deal of that needs more time from things like lecturing staff, to be there to provide the advice and deliver the coaching aspects of education. In order to do that, they need more time, and that's where we're using things like intelligent automation, to equip them with that.

"We also need students to have more time to spend on themselves, to spend on social pursuits, academic pursuits, things that will improve their wellbeing and mental health. And again, the roadmap we have of intelligent automation really starts to strip away all of the simple and not-so-simple tasks that get in the way and sap time from people."

Staffordshire University is "very ambitious" in terms of its digital agenda, and Proctor is positive about the future:

"We're very fortunate that our Vice Chancellor [Liz Barnes] believes in the power of digital, she doesn't see it as an afterthought or something we just need to pay lip service to - it's at the heart of our organisational strategy, which is where I firmly believe digital should be."