The process of confirming scope budgets and schedules is an area where sufficient resources and reasonable timelines are needed to navigate any of the structural and/or administrative processes that might be in place within the different actors involved. Each organisation has their own processes and work culture and our basic advice is to make sure that you understand those, and understand what the peculiarities of your institution might be vis-à-vis partner institutions.

We found that five areas in particular were important in the case of FFA:

Official and real timelines: check the ‘real’ timelines of all processes before starting any of them. Some institutions, among which many universities, tend to be slow moving and checks and approval always take longer than expected. For instance, some of the processes, such as accreditation, may have a political dimension, meaning that it is not only about pressing ahead with paperwork but also about advocating and networking.

Authorisations, budgets, procurements: although seemingly an administrative example, it is important to note that universities have specific processes that need to be adhered to, particularly in terms of the checks involved in procurement, and the authorisations needed to fully realise the vision of the programme. A large amount of time is needed to fully explain why this activity is necessary as it is not usual university practice. 

Generating contextually relevant content: making contextually relevant content takes time. In FFA, we found through our follow-up workshop in February 2020 [see previous section] that the students would be best-served by bespoke content where possible. This finding likely applies to any bridging programme and means that developing course materials and an appropriate learning platform takes long (repurposing material, as we will cover it later, is often re-writing content).

Workload challenges: bridging programmes tend to generate a lot of excitement and our experience with FFA and PADILEIA is that attracting collaborators is not a key issue. Rather the key issue is for them to deliver on an agreed timeline –academia is notorious for heavy workloads and overcommitments. Minor and more substantial disruptions, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, worsen the situation. Having substantial commitments pro bono (a clear weakness in the case of FFA) makes the enforcement of deadlines harder. Two advices are, therefore, (1) to make sure that the core of the programme, including the design and production of new teaching content, is mostly done “in-house” and (2) to limit the use of pro bono work to more peripheral activities (in order words, to make sure that people’s work is fully accounted for in their job description). 

Offline and online: offline and online have different temporalities that most people have started to understand with the Covid pandemic. These need to be accounted for in any bridging programme. In FFA, for instance, we were unable to conduct in-person development with colleagues in Kampala from March 2020, resulting in having to reconfigure programme design processes for online workshops, which delayed the process as we had to redesign several workshops, and conduct them over a longer timescale virtually. 

Accrediting the programme, or not? FFA As originally conceived, FFA was to be accredited at the University of Edinburgh. Yet, administrative challenges at the university resulted in a lack of internal clarity over which department would accredit the programme, or whether accreditation was even possible. Accreditation, we learned, takes significant time, human resources, as well as a compelling case for why the university should accredit what was essentially a non-traditional course design. Delays, and the eventual discarding, of the programme goal of accreditation had significant knock-on effects in other areas. PADILEIA In Lebanon there are other initiatives that provide students with ‘credits’, which can later be used to assist with their transferral into HEIs. KARION is one example of this, offering students an ability to acquire credits through online courses, which can then help with their admission to universities in Lebanon. As they stress though, it is critical to establish the local value of accreditation: “We had the tendencies especially when we come from Europe or may be the west, as we call it, to tend to think that if we are accredited from whatever university in Europe the countries around are going to love it or take it and everything. Obviously that is a prestige thing but at the end of the day, if it is not accredited to satisfy local organisations, then it has almost no value for the students. So the local accreditation part is important, not only relying on whatever that university can offer from Europe”.