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9192 OU12 - Writing B885
After a year of earnest consideration, we decided on a structure for the new OBS MBA course with -- as I've already said -- four blocks covering the STEP factors (Sociology, Technology, Economic, Politics). Overlaid on this was our view of the future, especially that delivered through scenarios.
I was fortunate in as much as I was able to delegate each of the four sections to one of the individual members of team; and with one exception they did remarkably good job. It was an excellent way of writing, since the 'block-heads' themselves wrote much of the plot but also pulled in and supervised other experts in the field. I strengthened that on technology, which was led by a lecturer from technology, Rod, by pairing him with one of our most experienced regional managers, Norman, who had just retired. They did a superb job, though unfortunately Norman died soon after the writing had reached the draft stage.
The economics block was something of a problem, since the professor of economics from social sciences was then pushed out of university. Fortunately another of our regional managers, who was an excellent economist, was able to come in and bring together three other specialists to write the various parts of. Thus, we were able to get a quite sophisticated look at the future of economics -- which then saw transaction cost economics as its leading edge. Politics was handled by a half-time lecturer, who was one of my friends. He was, at the time, the political adviser to David Owen - one of the founders of the SDP. He was also quite wealthy in his own right. I well remember him saying, when asked how he managed to visit the OU when his home was in Cornwall, saying that of course they had a house at Oxford as well as, I later found out, a barge moored on Chelsea Reach.
Sociology was supposed to be run by someone from social sciences. Regrettably, I had terrible trouble with him, since he was renowned for always being late on delivery. Eventually I replaced him with an academic from Lancaster University who did an excellent job. The social sciences lecturer was shattered that anyone had the courage to sack him from a course team!
I did the linking elements, which revolved around long-range planning. We worked very well as a team, and were able to handle the fact that - as was usual with large teams - two-thirds of the members disappeared as soon as they were asked to write anything. We were still left with plenty of support. In any case, in a rather underhand way, I set all the deadlines for delivery of the written material a year earlier than actually needed. This meant we had everything ready well within time. Even sociology, where we had to switch authors, came in with sufficient time for it to be fully edited.
This also meant that I had just one editor. Nancy was one of the best editors, and she and I worked very well as a team. Indeed the whole team worked very much as a pretty close family, and we never had any arguments; unlike the later maintenance team where Tony Stapleton's politicking fomented a number of arguments. The worst thing I had to do was to discreetly get rid of one of the members who actually insisted on writing, but really wasn't very good. Fortunately he went off to Peking for a year and I was able to block him out of the course when he returned after that.
Because we had so much time, everything went like clockwork. The only thing that went wrong was the residential school. I had decided on a very ambitious project, where students negotiated with each other in teams to get through a project against local politicians' wishes. One side played the politicians and the other the commercial interests. In order to make sure that even this worked very well, I spent something like £30,000 on running a dummy residential school, which I ran in myself, and everything worked perfectly.
Unfortunately, what I learned from the experience was that you must take note of intrinsic knowledge. For I knew exactly what was needed, and controlled everything very tightly. When we had to rely on tutors, who hadn't had anywhere near as much experience of the case study as I had, the whole thing fell apart. Ultimately, over the next year or so, we had to replace the case study completely. As I say, the lesson is that if you going to test something you must test it in exactly the right conditions. Eventually we even abandoned the residential school, though that was more a case of the economics involved; cutting the unnecessary residential school reduced our running costs by something like 25%.
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