Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
21 JULY 2004
SIR ANTHONY
CLEAVER AND
MR JOHN
BEAUMONT
Q180 Valerie Davey: We have talked essentially
up to now about the process and the business plan. What about
the product that you were being asked to sell? Do you think enough
work, Sir Anthony, had been done or did you recognise the nature
of the product that you were actually being asked to sell?
Sir Anthony Cleaver: I think the
one part of our inheritance, if I can put it that way, that was
very good was the specification of the product. I came to this,
and I made no pretence at the time and I make none now, not as
an expert in e-learning. I did not know what the characteristics
were that were required, and so on. I obviously expected to acquire
people, and I did, who had that understanding. But I very rapidly,
of course, as I talked to people both internationally and in this
country, tried to find out what was available already commercially,
why are we developing a new platform and what are the key characteristics
of this platform. I very rapidly formed the view, and it is one
that I still hold, that there was nothing available anywhere which
was comparable to this. In particular, the underlying philosophy,
importantly, was "learner centric"—I am sorry
if that sounds like jargon, but it was aimed at what is the experience
for the student and how can we make that as effective as possible?
Most e-Learning historically has been a cottage industry; it has
been an enthusiast in an individual department who has developed
some stuff because he wants to get his notes and his course out
there, and that is perfectly valid and useful. This presented
an opportunity which was taken by the team that HEFCE assembled
in the period before we arrived to stand back, take the best expertise
in the UK from people like the Open University and so on, and
say, "If you were starting from scratch, how would you design
it? How would you put it together and what features would it have?"
What we set out to build was that. It also, incidentally, had
to cover areas that the existing system simply did not cover.
We needed, for example, to be able to enrol students remotely
on-line, we needed to be able to take payment by credit card internationally,
etcetera. So there are whole elements of the system that are totally
different from what you would require in an individual university
dealing with your own students, and so on. In terms of our success
in achieving that, this was a very complex piece of software.
Again, I have to say my many years, too many years perhaps, have
been spent on large complex IT projects, so we had no real illusions
on that, and what we eventually did was to say what do we have
to have as a minimum in order for this to function, which is what
we got by 2003 for the first courses. We then had subsequent releases
which added facilities, enhanced the performance, and so on, and
that was still an on-going process. I would not pretend for a
moment that what existed on the day we resigned was a satisfactory
ultimate product, it still required more work doing on it, and
I really cannot comment on what has happened since.
Q181 Valerie Davey: But student distance
learning is, as you are intimating, complex, and you have just
said it needed that research with students, but you are now telling
us, as I understand it, that the research had not been done in
career or anywhere else to find out what students actually did
want if we are going to do it immediately, not developing pilots
in this country and beyond, but straight into Korea. Where is
the link up between what is a product which we do know something
about via the Open University and individual universities and
this completely new platform doing something rather different?
Sir Anthony Cleaver: I am sorry,
I obviously created a misunderstanding by something I said earlier.
I think there are two different elements that we are talking about
here. In terms of the product and the facilities, we were confident
from all the discussions we had, everybody we talked to, that
what we were producing met the need in terms of the capability
for the student to do what they need to do, to ask questions of
the tutor, to submit material, to have chat-rooms available to
talk other students, to cooperate on projects, and so on. All
those facilities we understood; everybody we talked to said, "Yes,
that is good; that is what we need." What I said we did not
have was the understanding of the market in terms of the course
content. The three courses that we inherited, none of them would
have been in the top 10 or 15 courses that we needed in terms
of the market. I think they were there because the universities
concerned had material and were willing to experiment with it,
and all credit to them for doing that, but, for example, the York
course is a course in public administration and management. While
there are elements of UK experience and process that are relevant
to other countries, obviously a lot of it needs to be tailored
to local experience. What we found, therefore, was that to take
the course as standard we got 20 or 30 students per enrolment.
Over time what we have discovered was that there was a clear need
for many courses for what is called `blended learning'; in other
words personal support as well as the course. At exactly the time,
I think in the week before the HEFCE decision, we persuaded York
that it would be sensible to commit to providing some on-site
tuition in some places in order to get more students, and Singapore
immediately signed up for 15 places because they had that. So
we were learning the whole time what does the offering have to
be in each country on each course in order to be successful.
Q182 Valerie Davey: But could the Open
University and the British Council not have told you that from
day one, and should not the report on which you were basing your
business plan have understood that from day one?
Sir Anthony Cleaver: The first
two calls that I made before any of my colleagues were appointed
were first on Helena Kennedy at the British Council and, secondly,
on the Open University. So I took all the advice that I could
get initially and we retained contact with both those organisations
all the way through. Neither of them had the answers. The British
Council had not been concerned in detail with e-learning in that
way. Their job, they felt, quite properly I believe, was to facilitate
individual universities and other British organisations to gain
access to the market, not actually to drive the market themselves.
So we did take their reports, we took as much input as we could
get from them, but there was not the detailed information on specifics
that you actually need to make courses successful.
Q183 Valerie Davey: Last question. How
many people that were directly responsible to you had experience
of e-learning, distance learning in this way. This is an educational
project you are selling. This is not the norm of a business set
up to deal with a boxed product?
Sir Anthony Cleaver: Absolutely.
Q184 Valerie Davey: This is a relationship
between students and teachers. This is something which is markedly,
we hope, British in the way in which we are doing it. We think
we are the experts at this kind of thing, that we have an incredible
lead in it which we had hoped clearly, all of us, in a visionary
way, this particular e-University was going to develop, and I
think one of the reasons it failed was that we did not have this
expertise, but did we, on board?
Sir Anthony Cleaver: I think we
had as much expertise aboard as was available nationally. As I
said, John here had wide Internet experience and had previously
been an academic, which I thought was an almost unique situation
in the UK; we had on board David Unwin, who was our learning programmes
director; he came straight from being Pro Vice Chancellor at Birkbeck,
my old establishment, and there he already had an e-learning course
underway for which he had been responsible and where he had been
involved in the development. The marketing man who looked after
the Far East had been working for an organisation that sold educational
on-line products from Singapore. We had at the next level down
a Chief Architect who had extensive experience, had been involved
with the TALL project at Oxford and again had as much e-learning
expertise, I think, as anybody I knew in terms of the architecture
of the system, and so on.
Q185 Mr Gibb: I am not quite clear about
whether you were happy with the software platform by the time
you left. You made a comment and said, "It was not a satisfactory
ultimate product". Would you clarify where you were on the
software platform by the time you left?
Sir Anthony Cleaver: I will defer
to John, if I may, who is closer to that.
Mr Beaumont: We launched with
the original version in March 2003 and we had a number of updates
that were planned, adding additional functionality. We were also
taking feedback back from students and academics about changing
the existing functionality. The April time slot 2004 is when we
had the next big upload, which was going to be a significant re-write
and therefore the HEFCE decision in February did affect how we
did that. Already though, from late 2003 in turn, as part of our
risk management, we had plans to look at, if we were not happy
with the new major upload, what we would do to continue the development
to satisfy the students and the academics needs.
Q186 Mr Gibb: So it still was not right?
Mr Beaumont: No, and I think though
looking forward, e-learning is evolving and the needs of students
and academics creating the content continue to evolve. I think
for the next two to three years one would expect to continue to
have to develop a platform to satisfy those needs. I think it
would be wrong to assume that you had a finished product any time
in 2003 to 2004.
Q187 Mr Gibb: What contribution do you
think this made to HEFCE's decision to pull the plug, the fact
that (a) you had adopted a new platform instead of an existing
platform, and (b) that it still was not ready?
Mr Beaumont: I do not know the
basis of the HEFCE decision, but I think we had a fit for purpose
platform in operation from March 2003 and therefore it was not
affecting student numbers in a sense; so I do not think there
was that aspect. The original reasons for going the platform route
ourselves, which HEFCE supported, still stood. We had to be able
to capture the different approaches of the different UK universities,
particularly high inter-activity between students, and I think,
secondly, it had to be scaleable and in both a technical sense
but also in a commercial sense. A number of the universities that
had experience of e-learning (Robert Gordon's Ulster) came to
us to say they would like to come to our platform. I think they
were concerned about an exposure as they scaled up e-learning
commercially as the software cost to them would have increased
in that way.
Q188 Mr Gibb: Is that a factor, the cost,
that HEFCE would have worried that these costs were exacerbating?
Mr Beaumont: If we had been allowed
to continue, the benefit to UK HEIs would have been a first-class
platform at a very good commercial rate because they would have
shared the cost.
Sir Anthony Cleaver: Let me just
add a rider, if you do not mind, which is simply that towards
the end of 2003 HEFCE put out a consultation on an e-learning
strategy for the sector going forward. We felt that the best way
to respond was for us to respond in partnership with JISC (Joint
Informations Systems Committee) of the universities and the learning
and training, the LTSN, which is also in the sector. We submitted
a joint entry to that and understood that it was probably the
most suitable response that they had. What is going to happen
now, I do not know.
Q189 Chairman: Can I push you a bit more
on the platform, looking at the platform, not quite understanding
what that was, but also why such a considerable amount of money
was spent. I think your deal with Sun Microsystems was £20
million.
Sir Anthony Cleaver: Slightly
less than that.
Mr Beaumont: Slightly less than
that. I can get you the exact figures, Chairman. By the end of
April 2004, which clearly has two years of audited accounts and
one year of unaudited accounts, we spent £9.2 million on
the platform, we had also had £2.4 million of operating costs.
We mentioned that we had a fixed price contract with Sun Microsystems
for the full version of £9.5 million. We had at that time
paid £5.5 million for it.
Q190 Chairman: So it is not £20
million?
Mr Beaumont: I do not know where
the £20 million figure comes from.
Q191 Chairman: There was some suggestion
that seemed to come out of the last oral evidence that we took
that Sun Microsystems was getting a pretty good deal, that it
was rather generously in their favour, this contract. Is that
right?
Mr Beaumont: I think when we arrived
the idea that Sun Microsystems was a strategic partner was very
important, but to have had an open-ended contract would have been
very much in their favour. The fact that we were able to get a
fixed price contract for specified functionality I think was a
fair result, and I think it was fair to both UKeU and the education
sector but also to Sun Microsystems.
Q192 Chairman: But people do say, and
have said, that you got fixated about having this super-duper,
all-singing, all-dancing platform when it was not necessary. You
could have got on with the job, as Sir Anthony said, as a Start-up.
You wanted to get onto that market quickly; you could have done
it much more quickly if you had not had this ambition, first of
all, to have this fantastic platform?
Mr Beaumont: I do not think we
were fixated with the platform. I think the way we approached
it was to try and understand the local market needs and then to
see which courses in the UK universities would be able to satisfy
those needs. You needed a platform as a means to an end. I think
if you looked at our organisation only a relatively small number
of people were concerned with the platform per se, and
an important aspect, whatever the platform was chosen, was a twenty-four
by seven service to students anywhere in the world; and if one
had been providing a service across, let's say, our 15 platforms
for 20 universities, that would have been incredibly difficult
if not impossible to do. So to have a central core platform, whichever
it was, was a sensible approach.
Q193 Chairman: Is this investment salvageable?
Can it be used by UK universities still? Is all this investment
just going to go to waste?
Mr Beaumont: I think the way that
the HEFCE decision was made and implemented, it is probably unlikely,
sadly, that the platform will be widely used. This sort of software—
Q194 Chairman: Could you repeat that?
Mr Beaumont: I would be surprised
if it was able to be widely used.
Q195 Chairman: Why is that?
Mr Beaumont: It is not a simple
application, people would need to be trained on it, people would
need to know how to support it, and to really just wind down UKeU
in the way it has been, it is highly likely, in my opinion, that
sadly that asset will be lost.
Q196 Chairman: So HEFCE is making no
attempt to maintain the platform or a core group of employees
to maintain it?
Mr Beaumont: No.
Q197 Chairman: Not at all?
Mr Beaumont: No.
Q198 Chairman: One thing that comes over
from the evidence, and we ought to move on now to marketing, is
that when you started this whole operation you had total enthusiasm
for the UK e-University sector; everybody wanted to be on board?
Mr Beaumont: I am not sure that
is the case. They were asked to put a pound in and I think all
but four did, and I am not sure that shows real commitment of
an institution. What we did find, as Sir Anthony has said, was
in many institutions there were a lot of very enthusiastic academics,
but to get e-learning of quality and scale you need the whole
institution to support it; it cannot be just a side-line taking
20 to 30 students per intake. So in the summer 2002 we wrote to
all Vice Chancellors to find out and determine what the real interest
was. I think by the time the HEFCE decision was made we had a
large interest from enough universities to definitely provide
a rich portfolio that would have been successful.
Q199 Chairman: It was portrayed to us,
perhaps not head-on, but we got the feeling under questioning
that there was a suggestion you had started off with a lot of
enthusiasm and that had waned. You lost support and there was
talk on the streets about—
Mr Beaumont: No, I felt that we
had got more support from people who recognised that this was
a serious part of a strategic option for their university. Going
into the quality distance e-learning, on scale, is not something
that you add on to a small department.
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