The Middle LoopEssay Preview: The Middle LoopReport this essayThe middle loop is, in general, the home for the set of “strategic” processes which lead to decisions over resource allocation and portfolio management. It attempts to make explicit the sense that has been gained about the appropriate medium-term direction for the organisation to follow.
The outer loop is, in many ways, the most difficult and the most complex to install. It does not, for the most part, follow rigorous or numerical procedures, and it is seldom clear what an answer will look like: indeed, the nature of the questions to ask is often obscure. It feeds on what has gone before, and it is common experience that an organisation has to go around the loop several times before it sees the full benefits of the investment of effort. People need to learn to use the tools that are available, but also need to learn to interpret what they produce. They need to learn to trust the outcome, and to trust what their colleagues will do with it. Policy is potent medicine, and most organisations feel themselves starved for direction. Small signals from the top can be vastly over-amplified as they flow down the hierarchy. Managing these processes so that premature closure, run-away systems or a gathering mist of ambiguity does not cause damaging consequences is a part of the art.
The Open University
The following section is an open invitation to all of us who have studied in Oxford to join us. We have already had a lot of input (and good feedback) from both Oxford and the faculty, including from a number of senior researchers and students, and our proposals have been greatly welcomed. While we are here to make this work, we are working with other universities to build community relationships and build shared knowledge, as well as to offer funding for the project and develop links. Many people have expressed their interest in becoming involved with the project through different channels (e.g., through grants to the University, as well as financial assistance from the Open University). Please contact us for more information about any particular project or event you are currently involved in, such as if you need an immediate project at a particular time when the Open University is already in place, or if you wish to get involved yourself.
The first, and most significant, step may simply be to look at the full project specification as a whole. The Open University is also designed to be a community building community of community members; people who have been involved with the project through various stages of the process, including through the various groups of Open University staff who assist in development, and by others engaged by it. Our approach is often to apply a collection of individual proposals and policies to the project to give feedback to, and then build a public and informal community around the project. In our view, this helps to make the organisation more resilient, and to encourage members to take the initiative more effectively and in a more effective position.
The second step is to open up a new kind of community to you through the Open University itself. In the same way that our open source roots allow us to connect more with people and organisations that are willing to take on the challenge, we will also be actively promoting our Open University through our events, mailing lists and other networks we create.
The Third Step
As we work towards the final stages of the work in the Open University, we need to reflect on all of the possible paths to funding that are offered by funding organisations in countries interested in funding the project. These include:
The costs of initial and post-launch research and research facilities
Publication of data, results and other information
Assessment and review of existing results and evidence
Facilities in key locations and areas
Research funding
The projects in the Open University may be the last, most promising in the sense that they come in many different capacities for different reasons, depending on the degree of engagement and knowledge gained, and how you engage to facilitate that engagement. The Open University also needs to build on existing funding infrastructure to ensure that it is viable. We therefore may not have sufficient resources to support everything we propose, nor will we expect any significant extra funding to be available for projects that we think are significant outside of the scope of what we will propose. If we do intend to increase funding to more areas of the project, we need to ensure we meet more ambitious priorities.
What are our criteria for determining whether to start a project and offer it on Open Universities (or other, open software and open source projects) in the first place?
Open University’s criteria for determining whether to start a project are not set out in section 3 of the “Principles of Open Universities”. Our criteria relate to a project’s specific purpose (e.g., project management, technical development, research, etc., etc.), the time period and cost of undertaking the project, and the number of funding sources available.
The Open University definition for a project is often similar to what we normally see in open source programmes within universities from a technical point of view. As such, project organisers may be charged a fee if they offer a project, which they should be willing to pay when they can, or otherwise pay based on various factors (e.g