The Future of Education: Mark Bramwell, CDIO at Oxford Said Business School

0:00I try to treat AI the same way as any other application or solution in my technology portfolio. It's one set of tools in a portfolio of nearly 250 applications that I have. We treat them all the same. We want to make sure they're all accessible, inclusive, equitable, provide value for money, cost effective, that our staff are skilled and trained on them, and that they're private, secure, and scalable. Why would I treat AI any differently to anything else in my tech stack?

0:31Welcome to Data and AI Mastery, the podcast where we bring you cutting-edge insights, practical advice, and inspiring stories from the leaders shaping the future of data and AI across the globe. I'm your host, Raul Gabriel-Urma, founder of Cambridge Spark, the leader in transformational data and AI upskilling, career development, and progression. In each episode, I will be diving into real-world case studies of companies harnessing the power AI to drive innovation, reduce costs, and create new business opportunities. So whether you are an aspiring data scientist, AI engineer, or seasoned executive, this show is designed to give you the tools and knowledge to stay ahead in a world where data is transforming every aspect of business.

1:16Stay ahead, stay inspired, stay masterful. Welcome to Data and AI Mastery.

1:25Hi Mark, how are you? Hi, good morning, Raoul. How are you doing? I'm doing amazing. Really excited to see you today, Mark. It's going to be a really cool conversation.

1:39So you're the Chief Digital and Information Officer at Oxfordside Business School, but also the Director of Strategic Digital Partnerships at the university. So I have to say, Mark, that's a really exciting remit. So to kick yourself, maybe to go into your background a little bit, Mark, right? So you've had quite a fascinating journey. I'd love to hear a little bit of the story. You know, what were the key milestones to where you are today? It's been a sort of a long, really exciting journey. And what I should say, I've been really fortunate and really blessed to work for some wonderful organizations and some wonderful teams.

2:14So my background has been very varied in terms of since graduating in business finance and law. Too many years ago that I would care to care to remember. but spending 16 years in high street retail and then 10 years in medical research not-for-profit and now 11 in education and and through that journey around I'd say I've loved all of those industries and sectors but education really is the one that I've fallen in love with and have a deep passion and values for it's all it's also the craziest sector I've ever worked in that intersection of academia, research, students, professional services, alumni, and the devolved, siloised, complicated nature of all those interdisciplinary relationships, whilst also having the privilege of working with some of the most prominent, renowned professors and academics and researchers in the world.

3:11And if I give you an example, Oxford being the seat of where one of the COVID vaccines was researched and developed and launched is just fascinating, incredible, and hugely honoring. That resonates a lot, Mark, and the passion for education as well, obviously. So I think I'd love to hear your perspective. You know, how do you balance change and innovation and heritage? You know, there's a joke we say in Cambridge, which I'm sure is the same in Oxford, you know, how many professors does it take to make a change? And the answer is always change. Why change? why would we change right so i guess uh i'd love your perspective as a chief distrall information officer how do you think about you know driving innovation in such a prestigious and large institute like oxford but also you know a culture of you know if it if it works why change it right absolutely and that's possibly a sort of unique position and challenge for for both oxford and cambridge you know oxford is one of the world's oldest higher education academic institutions It's over 800 years old.

4:16And there is definitely an element of, you know, it's been successful over 800 years. Why does it need to change? And the balance to that is there are a few things in life which are certain. Death, taxes and change. so you know and we have to acknowledge and we have to accommodate that and i think we're very fortunate that in that space oxford deliberately positions itself as want to be seen to be a digitally innovative creative experimental institution increasingly our students and our learners are looking for institutions that are at the forefront of that technical digital innovative curve and they're making conscious decisions to do that you know undoubtedly Oxford and Cambridge have that brand reputation that are always going to attract students but but we shouldn't be complacent and as I'm sure we'll come on to later we also have a moral obligation to ensure our students are being prepared for the future of work when they leave us

5:24if we talk about like innovation and let's focus on on ai as the main topic air in action so ox has been obviously leading in terms of ai deployment internally and you know and also offering you know things like chat gpt and so on to students so i want to get your perspective as a you know chief digital information officer how do you manage this landscape because you know it took three years to go from CHP 3.5 to, you know, five plus now. It keeps improving, new feature, new stuff. So how do you make strategic choices in that sort of environment? I think the approach that Oxford and the business school has taken has been a very conscious, deliberate one.

6:09And it's almost been our strategy comes with a starting point of being equitable, inclusive, and providing access. because our students, our learners, our professional services staff, our academics, our faculty, and our researchers need access to these tools. And part of that strategy is acknowledging that if we don't embrace and provide them in a supported, maintained, secure way, people are going to use them anyway. They're out there. So you can either take a head in the sand approach and pretend it's not going to happen, or you can get on the pitch and adopt and embrace it and work with those personas to work together, acknowledging with the fast-paced change of technology, we are all going on a journey together.

6:56So that's a strategic starting point. How do we choose? I think the honest answer to that, Raoul, is we've made a conscious decision almost not to choose. We've adopted a portfolio approach because how quickly things are changing. I can't sit here today with my hand on my heart going, this is the right tool for the right job. And I can't. with my hand on my heart say this is where this tool is going to go versus where this tool is going to go so we have deliberately consciously made you know a portfolio decision to give all of our personas access to a range of tools and knowing that we've architected it privately securely within our own domains and tenancies try to promote an approach of please feel free to experiment innovate and play yeah that's really refreshing our perspective and i'd love to to deep dive a little bit because you know i speak to i speak to many organizations and you know more on the um on the enterprise side and they they're struggling with this idea that you know if i put all my money into uh charge the open ai and my risk of losing out on clode and gemina that looks like they're also making good progress but if you wait six months later the picture might be different so i'd love to hear from you what do you think other organizations can learn from what you're doing at Oxford, but also balancing the capital investment, right?

8:20To give so much choice to so many stakeholders like you are, surely it comes with, you know, a big investment, right? And that's a real consideration and balance of that decision and that approach, and you're absolutely right. But I think that's where the shift for us at Oxford, and let's be honest, if you're Oxford or Cambridge, there is a certain brand association and value with those names that is very attractive to partners. So I think we should be honest and upfront and then acknowledging that. That said, we are not immune to the financial pressures and cost pressures the same as everybody else.

8:57And value for money is a really important aspect. Financial sustainability is a really important aspect. And even as Oxford, we would not be able to enter in and support the more traditional models of individual licenses per user per month. that's just not financially vulnerable or feasible. So we've attempted to be slightly more creative in terms of moving more towards access by consumption models as opposed to licensed models. So basically you can have access and if you don't use it, it doesn't cost us. And then we know that we are only paying for what is being leveraged, used, exploited, adopted, which is hopefully driving benefit.

9:39And that has allowed us to approach this portfolio approach to our AI offer. And so far, even though we're still continuing to learn every day, every week, every month, that has proved successful. Great, I love it. So it sounds really positive, but to balance it out a little bit, what are the downsides or risks of this approach in your own eyes that would be helpful for other organizations to consider? It's a really great question, and it's one that we are still learning and analyzing and assessing ourselves, Raoul. I mean, we're still relatively young in our journey in this space, less than a year.

10:17Everyone is. Exactly. Everyone is. You know, some of the lessons learned around it, although we've moved from a per user per month license model to a consumption model, which financially is a lot more sustainable. in some of those tools we have seen that that consumption in terms of credits tokens and cost has been a lot greater uh than we had anticipated or the week forecast you could look at that two ways on a challenging way it's a financial exposure and risk to our financial sustainability in terms of that cost on the other way you could look at it from a positive perspective and go wow the adoption has been great look at look at the benefit of we've introduced a tool or tools that people are really using and leveraging you know how cool is that the other thing that we're looking at as we progress that journey is is there going to become a pinch point in the future where we need to back some of those horses more than others you know at what point do we come out of experimentation and pilot and start to firm up our thinking in terms of actually you know we don't necessarily need to provide a portfolio of eight nine ten eleven tools you know perhaps we ought to consolidate on two or three but we're not at that stage yet and we don't want to we don't want to oversee or over govern that to stifle that innovation at this stage i hope you're enjoying today's conversation if you're finding the insights useful please do take a moment to subscribe to the data and air mastery podcast and leave us a review on apple podcast spotify or youtube every new follow helps us reach more people and shed incredible work being done by today's data and AI leader.

11:59All right, let's go back to the episode. So I'd love to take you to a different question now, which is about, you know, the purpose of a university, you know, if we get a bit philosophical here, and, you know, how do you make that happen, right? So in the world of AI, clearly, there's a duty to set up students for success in this new world. We both agree that there'll be more AI, not less in our in our lives um but at the same time as a chief digital information officer there's a duty to adopt ai internally to drive you know efficiency and improvements right so how do you balance those two those two missions i guess mark that that's a that's a great question around the honest answer to that is you can't really prioritize it you know you you can't really balance it you just have to acknowledge it and accept it as as you say as a as a world-leading higher education institution we have a moral ethical social responsibility to make sure every student or learner that is interacting with us either physically or on campus or online through our online programs is being prepared and equipped for the future of work and the challenges they're going to face when they leave us and our learning experience.

13:26And then clearly, you know, the other side of that sort of conundrum is we have to make sure we're leveraging and exploiting these tools ourselves to organizationally, institutionally, make us a better organization, whether that be through growth, whether that be through scale, whether that be through efficiency, or perhaps another angle that we are looking at more in terms of science and business school, how we are using these tools to restore what I would call human-centric software to regain a better quality of life, to allow people to regain work-life balance and do more of the quality-enhancing, life-enriching things that people want to do away from the workplace.

14:06What I find fascinating with, you know, Oxford University and, you know, and other higher education institutes is you've got color personas to work with. You've got the faculty, you've got the researchers, the PhDs, the postdocs, and so on. You've got the students, but you also have the professional service, right, that actually made everything sort of work. And that's quite a complex environment compared to maybe more straightforward enterprise business, one customer, and then, you know, the team to do it. How do you think about value of AI for each of these personas? and and you're you're right they are all very unique distinct diverse groups of personas and and within those personas the individuals within them as well as one very simple you know quick tangible illustration of that you know our our student MBA cohort this year is 97 % international from 67 different countries you know you can't get more geographically diverse which is fantastic in terms of the diversity of our student-based programs and quality of thinking that comes with that.

15:15But you're quite right, the application of AI in all of those persona is subtly different, but still with a common denominator of benefit value and how is it enhancing each individual. So if I briefly take what each one in terms, from a student perspective in terms of AI, we've spoken about access in terms of foundational skills for the future of work. But we are also experimenting with AI in terms of supporting the student learner journey and the student experience. We have just launched an AI assistant that allows our students to interact with their content in a more efficient way. And through that assistant, look for supplementary, augmented content that might be of interest to them as a learner in a specialist interest field.

15:59and then that also gives us feedback in terms of the content that students are interacting with or perhaps more importantly not interacting with because they might not find it of interest or relevance so we can feed that into our instructional designers to enhance and make the course even better if we talk about our faculty it's around how are they using these tools and introducing them into their teaching how are they using generative ai to perhaps generate their content faster, quicker, more efficiently, or summarize their notes, their teaching notes in a better way. If we look at our researchers, how are we using the power of AI to analyze large volumes of data and through machine learning, look for patterns of data in a much more fast or efficient way than we could before?

16:44And is that providing, is that turning data into true insight in a way that wasn't possible before that's faster than before that's perhaps identifying as we say patterns and insights which previously may have taken months or years which can now take you know minutes and hours and then the final thing from our professional services staff which we've touched on is how are we using these tools to make us smarter more efficient more effective so there are lots and lots of applications and different uses by persona so great great examples and sounds really impactful how do you deal with this complexity and and the scale right like how do you get people on the journey to actually adopt ai in the individual roles and teams when you have such a breath how do you ensure that it's governed and secure do you police it is it let's see what happens how do you grapple with you know with all of that it's a daily challenge opportunity privilege realm it's uh and and the honest answer is you you can't you can't get your arms around all of it because of the pace it's changing and because of the breadth of use cases scenarios personas customers stakeholders that exist it's not physically possible and you shouldn't beat yourself up thinking that you have to and you can't uh you know i'm i'm quite honest with my the school's leadership team executive board my senior management team my team i don't know the answer to everything i can't tell you what the landscape of technology is going to look like next year you gave a fantastic example of chat gpt 3.5 to think i think it was 5.4 this week you that pace of change has happened over over 12 18 months so these are the lots of people will say it and you will have heard it many times these are truly unprecedented times it's a bit like a roller coaster white knuckle ride you've got to get in you've got to go with it and you've got to hang on how do i influence that part of that is just expressing a clear journey and and to all of those stakeholders setting out what that north star looks like what the art of the possible is giving people the confidence and the assurance that it's okay and it's safe and it's secure to use these tools and then as we touched on making sure we're following through by providing the the digital skills to leverage exploit and use them properly and and i think that i think that's the art of it you know it's almost adoption by influence creating a climate where people understand what the purpose is and where we want to get to why make these changes and then creating a culture of fomo fear of missing out i want to i want to use these tools because these other departments are doing great things with them and delivering great benefits so it's a combination of all of those that's great like to play back you know importance of having a north star to allowing everybody especially in environment where you know it's it's moving so fast there's some sort of common understanding how would you summarize that north star at oxford part part of it comes from our strategy and values in around consciously want to want to position ourselves both at the university and the business school as a digitally leading innovative institution and that comes from wanting to adopt these tools and promote them and showcase them that that's the starting point that's beautiful so once you've got that set up you know it cascades into the the culture values people can kind of like you know get get behind this north star and once you've got that what are you measuring to you know assess progress you know towards that north star and again this this isn't rocket science for our and it's not specific to ai it's specific to any of the projects programs initiatives that we have how we're measuring it is very simple sort of kpis measures success criteria you know uses and adoption of our people using the tools where we've got specific use cases and scenarios and solutions like our contracting agent our conferencing agent you know we've also developed a really really exciting first faculty-led ai digital avatar you know what what benefits are they realizing you know is it is it time efficiency in terms of you know minutes hours days saved is it increased revenue because you know we've been able to be more competitive in our conference pricing and therefore attract more bookings that we would have before or that we haven't missed conference inquiries you know are we generating more lead conversion in terms of our digital pipeline in terms of enrollment onto programs online programs and executive education so it's it's you know a very i guess not scientific standardized traditional way of looking at it and perhaps like ryan and i have a slightly different view to other cios in that i try to i try to treat ai at the same way as any other application or solution in my in my technology portfolio it's one set of tools in a portfolio of nearly 250 applications i have we treat them all the same you know we want to make sure they're all accessible inclusive equitable provide value for money cost effective that our staff are skilled and trained on them and that they're private, secure, and scalable.

22:13Why would I treat AI any differently to anything else in my tech stack? Love it, Mark. Love a controller in view. And, you know, I'm with you. There's established practice and some principles that, you know, we've learned over the years. Let's utilize them, right? So I'm with you. I guess when I was listening to you, another question came up, which is, you know, surely some people are going to struggle more than others, right? Like there's always people that are like enthusiasts. They'll pick up the technology, they're playing their role with no support. How do you get everyone on the journey?

22:47Like what's the support do you feel it's important in order to achieve, you know, those greater outcomes at a KPI level, but also to have everyone on the journey towards the North Star? And again, I think AI is no different in respect to this, Rao. If you look at the change adoption lifecycle, it's no different. there's there's always going to be pioneers early adopters followers and naysayers and with that we have to acknowledge there are always going to be a population who will never engage with this don't want to engage with it happy doing what they're doing and you know sad sadly in the way that this is going they are going to be the people that get left behind you know it's a conscious decision of opting in opting out part part of my role in trying to encourage and influence that is to provide access to education to these tools to provide it so that it's available and inclusive and i say try and stimulate and encourage through sort of amplifying successes that fear of missing out to bring people on the journey but we have to be realistic and acknowledging that you will never get 100 of people on that journey yeah i'm with you and thanks quite beautiful for an education institute to you know again believe in the power of education internally as well right so that's kind of like a full circle absolutely we we are all equally educators and learners ourselves yeah i love that uh same here i came with spark you know so that's why it's so cool maybe more tactically for those leaders that are wondering how can they create that FOMO that sort of have other teams believe in the success like what are you seeing working to achieve that?

24:33I think there's a big thing that you've got to be accessible and visible you know you've got to be amplifying the message you've got to have a regular heartbeat drum roll of comms around showcasing successes but also equally and it might sound contradictory being very transparent with things that you've experimented and failed and creating that culture of innovation. So, you know, it's strive to succeed, not fear to fail and making sure that that's inclusive within the organization. You also, you know, there is nothing better than getting customer testimonials, customer case studies of successes to create that heartbeat, whether that be from our faculty our researchers or our professional services staff because that creates a genuine interest alignment it's more authentic it's much better than you know it's mark bramwell the cdio standing up telling about successes again it has so much more power coming from you know an end customer user uh it has that obesity so that's what we're working on and you know just trying to keep as you say that that regular drip feed of how we're using ai what we're doing with it and more importantly, what benefit is it bringing to the institution at any of those persona levels?

25:51Great, love that. Great guidance for others. And Mark, if I take you a little bit into the future, what gets you excited about, you know, higher education in the age of AI, you know, fast forward a few years? Before I come on to my view, Raoul, there are definitely two schools of thought on this what what one is ai is at a fear and a threat to higher education which is which is not the camp that i sit in and and the other is what a fantastic exciting opportunity it brings to education uh and that is definitely the camp that i sit in uh and and the reason i say that goes very much back to the the objectives the values and the missions of Oxford and Sci Business School, which are around how do we ensure fair, inclusive, equitable access to education to every learner on the planet.

26:45And AI has the potential to do that. It has the opportunity to create that level of access to content and learning and courses and programs and communities in ways not previously possible. And if I give a couple of examples around that, we have, through our experimentation and innovation, we have created our very first AI digital faculty avatar. One of our professors now has a digital avatar of himself teaching his course and program in any language. That course can now be available 24 by 7 anywhere in the world at any time. And that faculty member can be there, virtually present, anywhere, anytime.

27:32So, you know, the opportunities there are immense.

27:44Fantastic. So, Mark, on that note, I've got a couple of more personal questions to wrap up. Are you ready? Yes, let's go for it. All right. The first one, what was your favorite subject back at school? oh i i loved uh i loved business uh when i was at school and i actually went on to to do business finance and law at university i very much like the the challenges and the diversity and the multiple stakeholders that come with business and organizations and i love studying organizations and talking to other organizations to see how they run their businesses and how the corporate cultures exist and those that are successful and those that aren't.

28:28Great, great. And final question, picture this, right? You're working on some AI project using one of your favorite tools. What's your favorite music genre in the background? Oh, music genre. Well, I'm going to surprise you with another answer here. I'm actually a DJ as well. So my music genres are very broad and eclectic. If you were to push me to have a favorite, it would probably be the 80s because that's the generation that I grew up in. But I love everything from 60s, 70s, 80s, house, dance, club, garage, jazz, classical, musical, cinema, all of it. All right. A man of multi-talent. I love it.

29:16so for the audience where can they listen to uh to your dj gigs and creation yeah oh number number one is very much a social interest rather than a public interest although foolishly probably my my biggest gig as it was was the side business called christmas party so we played play to an audience of 500 i love it i'm going to invite you to our own christmas party uh that'll be an amazing gig i tell you my dj uh handle uh creatively entitled by the business school is uh slim boy fat amazing well mark on that note it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast today thank you it's been really great pleasure uh talking with you today

30:06really enjoyed my conversation with mark today what a charismatic person and so passionate about the power of education. There's so many really interesting takeaways. I think the first one is mark approach in providing a portfolio of solution and vendors and making that accessible to the wider university. I think that's a really strong message because it acknowledged that things are moving really fast. You don't want to back one horse. You want to provide choices and option to people so that they can best leverage it for themselves, for the team and for the organization. Acknowledging that comes with more complexity, but it is the right thing to do if you want to encourage adoption that is meaningful.

30:46Secondly, on the question of how do you encourage adoption of AI in the organization, there's a few ingredients that are needed. The importance of a North Star to get everyone behind, the importance of measuring KPIs and real business outcomes, but also creating a bit of FOMO internally and celebrating success so you get everyone on the journey together. Thank you for listening and see you on the next episode. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Data and AI Mastery. If you found value in today's discussion, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an insight from the leaders driving the future of data and AI.

31:25And if you're a data and AI leader looking to upscale your workforce with the fundamental data and AI skills to transform your business, Cambridge Spark is here to guide you every step of the way. Be sure to reach out to us on LinkedIn or on our website, cambridgespark.com. Until then, be sure to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible with data. And remember, mastery comes with continued learning and action. Until next time, stay ahead, stay inspired and stay masterful.