Incremental or Radical Change
I’ve been working with some of the new JISC Transformations Projects and looking back at the previous Building Capacity Projects, both of these programmes are based around deploying JISC resources to bring about organisational change. Following a conversation with a someone from Gartner late in 2011 it got me thinking about some of the peripheral things that I’ve been working on and engaging with, such as social media and new approaches in education, for example MOOCs.
By and large with the Organisational Change funded projects early success has been driven by need, opportunity and leadership. For example, where institutions have identified that they have needed to enhance or improve their student assessment processes as result of feedback; opportunities are identified to innovate and improve at whatever level and brought forward (in an ideal world) to senior managers who can provide leadership and drive change forward. In the case of the Transformations Projects (and Building Capacity projects before them) a small amount of funding being made available increased the ‘value’ (or impact?) of the opportunity.
Early indicators from the Building Capacity Projects, some of which completed over a year ago, is that the change has stuck, the innovation as become embedded in process. The programme evaluation identified that leadership, need and opportunity were key to project success. A cursory look at the opportunities (JISC Resources) applied to institutional needs revealed that whilst there were various characteristics that were problem specific, the main common four were:
- They had been used elsewhere and shown to work
- In many cases they were small innovations, or ‘tweaks’ to existing processes
- Technology being deployed was proven in at least a similar context
- There was a small learning curve for any staff that had to engage with the change
Additionally, and comparing the projects with the social media and emerging technology projects and initiatives I had been involved with in the past, it was also obvious that a key success factor was that they fitted to existing intuitional structures and practices.
The conversation I had late in 2011 identified that approaches to an expanding education ecosystem, such as the application of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and others would probably gain more traction in 2012, depending on other the availability of a range of other processes and technologies (such as micro payments and ‘open’). But, whilst we discussed this there were very examples that we could point to where their application had been applied and brought within the mainstream of institutional practice. However, the characteristics of approaches such as MOOCs could be aligned to the four characteristics identified above – there are a few examples of them working; it may only need a tweaks to practice; the technology works; and in many cases staff already know how to use the tools and for example, how to teach.
Using Dave Whites research that describes individual’s activity online in terms of them being visitors or residents it occurred to me that much of the emerging practice required online ‘residency’ in order to make it happen. Whereas the incremental innovation could (and is often) achieved through a visitors approach. Some may consider that the small changes are not innovation, but they are on the innovation continuum, it may take several miles to move a supertanker, but in the end the effect is the same.
I think of the MOOCs and the people who are now engaging with them and running them as more radical (in a very positive sense of the word) in their innovation. But they are, in terms of the visitor-residency principle, resident in their context. This is especially true of people involved educational technology, where a community has developed that crosses international boundaries. Conversations with colleagues on other continents requires out of hours working. Even when an initiative is driven by people in the same time zone a lot of online out of hours interaction is occurring. Dave White recently described the work that had gone on in Building Capacity Projects, and the upcoming Transformations Projects as “Making stuff better”, it can occur with the bounds of institutional operations, and it as potential to gain traction very quickly. But I am and have been involved in the other innovation, the radical and rapid that requires residency. In 2012 I think the challenge for that kind of work, and the people who are designing and developing it is to attempt to transfer it for use by the majority of people in our education system, those who are visitors online? Furthermore, can it be shown to be developed and run within the current institutional practices?
Overwhelmed
“the Internet, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts…” with apologies to Douglas Adams.
The addition of Google plus to my seemingly ever increasing arsenal of social media (sic) tools has left me feeling a little overwhelmed. In a recent discussion with Dave White we came to the conclusion that there is less and less cycling of social media tools. Looking back down the 2.0 road travelled we see that it is littered at the start with a host of abandoned vehicles, but unsurprisingly, as we have continued on our journey the ones that are still travelling are a mixture of reliable, popular, usable, widely applicable, niche and so on. New vehicles are being launched that build on their designs and learning and as broadband and devices get faster and cheaper more and more people start driving these vehicles, and test driving lots of new ones. That’s where we switch from the road metaphor, which would lead us to a traffic jam and no one going anywhere, to Douglas Adams’ entry about space in the Hitchhikers guide. The Internet is big, there are no road blocks, or bottlenecks as we approach busy intersections. We spread out with the tools and go in any direction we want. And that can be scary, especially if you are trying to keep abreast of ‘everything’.
But is it a problem?
Well, maybe. It depends on what you do, what you want to do and what you have to do. Recently I was given an organisations social media strategy and its policy to read. They were very good, they covered major issues; IPR, Copyright, Terms and Conditions, online safety etc. The strategy also demonstrated an emerging framework for using social media to align with what the organisation wanted to do. But it had one major flaw, it assumed that an employee’s social media experience, and driver was based solely on the organisations approach to social media and didn’t account for an individual’s role or aspirations.
Good examples of staff development for social media
As more tools become available to us in both our personal or professional role in both the public and private space we need a integrate our personal and professional development planning in these online spaces in such a way that is servicing the needs we have now, where we aspire to get to and be flexible enough to change when needed. That means, for example, in University staff development programmes, PGCerts, researcher development initiatives we must have some kind of tools available for staff to access the potential of the media, and skills to understand what their peers and leaders in their field are already doing. Once they have got to the foot of this ladder then we need to be able to support them in their aspirations, in the same way as we would in their publishing or teaching roles.
Dave White et al have started by putting together a framework based on visitor – resident principles but this binary approach may not support all of the roles that individuals have within an organisation. A multi axes matrix approach based on professional and personal aspirations and public and private spaces may have more relevance, and be more accessible to individuals trying to understand where they should put their efforts. Once they have become more sophisticated users and have clear ideas about what they want to achieve with the media, they could place a third axis based on whether they are visitor or resident as a way of evaluating their impact.
The internet is really, really big, and whichever tools staff end up using, it is clear now that social media is not a fringe activity, and as such it needs to be properly supported. That means flexible policies and processes that will accommodate the media that is already well known and used in the myriad personal and professional contexts, and the emerging tools.
Support isn’t just “noise on a spreadsheet”!
Recently I was chatting with a colleague working in the sector who reflected:
“When I worked in IT support in a Computer Science Department (nearly 20 years ago now), the department was up for a re-organisation. My role, and those of the rest of the IT admin people, were described by the then Head of Dept as ‘noise on the spreadsheet’ during a presentation to all staff.”
The current UK climate is focused on austerity and efficiency and where government spending seems to be channelled to the preservation of frontline staff across a number of public services the value of support roles is coming under increasing scrutiny . This is especially true in academia, where students will want to see value for money, and where research funding is increasingly focused on outcomes and impact. Preservation of frontline staff in these areas will be seen as key to an institution’s success.
Across public sector bodies we see an emphasis on cutting staff that are grouped under labels such as back office, managers or support. On paper, or more realistically spreadsheets, cutting out these staff frees up funding to keep police officers on the beat, nurses at the bedside or teachers at the chalkface. But the reality is of course that each time a function of administration is taken away from support staff, those at the frontline need to do it themselves. Before making broad based economic assumptions academic institutions need to scratch below the surface and reflect what is needed to ensure that frontline academics can keep doing the roles they are good at, innovative teaching, cutting-edge research, and engaging with students.
The Building Capacity Programme sought to work with senior managers in HEIs to address key areas of concern across either research, teaching and learning or enterprise by deploying available resources from the JISC catalogue. Examples include enhancements to research supervision, small business engagement and assessment of students. The majority of projects within the programme have made a significant impact in their host institutions, creating enhancements and efficiencies to practice. But what are some of the key characteristics of these successful projects?
- Structure, each of the projects all had common elements that had been developed before the programme was funded in discussions with pro and deputy vice chancellors. At its most abstracted these were:
identification of issue > validation of issue > literature review of existing cases and available solutions > piloting of solution > review > wider deployment of the resource within the institution.
- Senior sponsorship, the most successful projects were actively led, or engaged with, senior institutional managers (mostly at pro vice chancellor, and occasionally deputy vice chancellor level).
- Linked to strategy, where projects allowed institutions to deliver their key strategic aims in efficient and effective ways. As these were owned by the senior manger the projects were embedded, supported and kept within scope at all stages.
- Delivered by support staff, these projects were mostly taken on by the back office, or support staff. Arguably the most important of the tasks was the literature review, this provided two key success elements. Firstly it identified a catalogue of solutions for institutions to choose and contextualise from, secondly, a literature review demonstrated to frontline staff that the support staff used as much rigour in their practice as themselves.
This last characteristic is the point of the post. Popular politics and media would have us believe that public bodies are pyramid shaped, with the apex being the frontline staff, a nurse, a policeman, a teacher, a researcher. Subsequent ever enlarging layers are made up of administration, support, management and so on. But the reality of higher education, as we all know, is an inverse pyramid.
Most often with very limited support layers to keep the frontline at the top. These support roles across both research and teaching are essential in supporting academics, ensuring that they are able to make best use of learning from the wider sector. The reality of their absence from institutions would be a large increase in an academics overhead in keeping up to date and learning new developments, professional practices and a host of other services. Keeping frontline staff but cutting their support may be exponentially more expensive in the long term than other measures.
Douglas Adams observed in the Restaurant At The End of the Universe, a planet that exiled its entire population of telephone sanitisers off-world as they supposedly weren’t contributing meaningfully to society ended up being wiped out by a particularly virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
The success of the projects in the Building Capacity programme is largely due to engagement of frontline staff, but this would not have happened unless support staff facilitated the change and ensured the successful enhancement or efficiency. As the programme draws to a close many staff from these support roles have contacted me letting me know that they are being redeployed or made redundant from their current support roles. Sadly, in the current economic climate, it is often support functions that are hit first and hardest. But we need to think through the role of these staff and the part they can play in delivering institutional strategy, efficiencies, enhancements and freeing up time for frontline staff.
7 top tips for giving 10 top tips about social media in education
I gave a presentation around Dave White’s resident and visitor principle this week and over coffee I got to talking to several academics who raised some of the issues below, so this with thanks to them and to other colleagues like Dave Cormier and Neil Witt.
1. Make sure you’ve used the tool
Don’t just see the latest thing and write 10 top tips on how to use it without actually trying it in your own practice. And using the tool doesn’t mean signing up for it and ‘having a play’ or as Seth Godin puts it ‘Idea Tourism’. Using it in your practice means using it in your practice, not just practice in using it!
2. Research the tool
You’re writing for an audience who might go away and do what you’ve suggested. So do the research and check your facts, for example, what if they are major IPR issues, or even worse if you’re dealing with school age students, safety issues.
3. Do a literature review
Sounds a bit too academic? bit too research? get over it. The audience is academic, if you write 10 top tips for using twitter in teaching, there will have been someone else who’s written something very similar, have the dignity to acknowledge their work, build on it, expand on it, but don’t ignore it.
4. Make it evidence based
If you’re saying “hey look at this tool it’s great for assessing students in these ways” then you better have evidence that either you or colleagues have used this in their practice to do exactly what your suggesting. And make the evidence stack up, it’s no good saying I have 5 students who I used reflective blogs with and their grades went up. This is academia, you stand a chance of being listened to if you can say “I have used this tool with four different cohorts of 20 students, the grades of students before I used the tool were this now they are this. From this I infer that there may have been a positive impact in these ways”.
5. Acknowledge that academics sometimes have to use ‘institutional’ tools
We all love a bit of subversion, being a bit edgy, if they’re honest, most of the technorati get involved in the web 2.0 arena for that reason, appending themselves with monikers like ‘edupunk’ to display they are not mainstream. But most academics are working long hours and within strict requirements – they have to use the VLE, they have to use the plagiarism detection system. Don’t start writing your top tips with a “the VLE is dead” mindset, it won’t work. Add value to their practice, suggest enhancements, resepct and be supportive of the practice they must do.
6. Be honest about the overhead
Academics teach, most also do research, on top of that most have to do their own admin. You then start telling them to use different tools in their practice, and most often tips are written as an ‘extra’ to what they already ‘have’ to do. Be honest about this, tell them it takes time to learn to use the tool, tell them how much time they might need to invest per cohort of students, and remember number 5, they still have to use the existing tools.
7. Know your limitations
If you’re an aspiring technorati you need to keep in your mind that credibility is like virginity, you lose it once and you don’t get it back. If you’re unsure of what you’re putting out there then think twice, get it peer validated by colleagues. If you’re talking about teaching be authentic, if you are not a teacher then don’t tell people this is what you do in your practice. Cite your references properly and also acknowledge where your ideas are from and who’s influenced you.
Responding to “Student perspectives on technology – demand, perceptions and training needs”
Responding to “Student perspectives on technology – demand, perceptions and training needs”
This report to the Higher Education Funding Council for England by the National Union of Students had the remit to “gain a broad overview of the level of demand from students – new and potential – for online learning provision in UK higher education institutions (HEIs), and students’ perceptions of that learning.” The report undertook a literature review, surveys and focus groups and the recommendations reflected some good practice ideas and raised some serious issues. However, in their conclusions there are also several issues at play that could, whilst superficially giving online learning and the ‘technology experience’ a boost, also hark back to technology enhanced learning as it was several years or even a decade ago. In the context of the Building Capacity programme, which embeds the outputs from JISC innovation projects, it is clear that some of the report’s assertions have been closed off from the reality of the immense amount of work undertaken by institutions. This could be for several reasons
- The community responsible for moving the technology enhanced learning agenda forward have not been fully engaged in communicating with those (students and staff) on the outside of that community or fully transparent in their discussions.
- Universities have already moved beyond the remit of the report, almost to a post-digital state, where ICT is becoming ‘transparent’ and moving toward the ubiquity the reports calls for.
- The report did not engage with the full activities within universities, such as the ‘e-learning’ teams, staff development programmes etc.
This short blog post looks at some of the recommendations of the report, and responds with my experiences and examples from work within the Building Capacity programme.
All institutions should have an ICT strategy that is revised every three years and students should be actively engaged in the process of developing that strategy.
The report does not differentiate between ICT and e-learning strategies. In the case of the former almost all institutions have a well established ICT strategy that is examined on a regular basis by the senior management team, it is also under constant review by the ICT teams who are responding to both changes in technological terms and financial reality. In the case of the report it is more likely that ICT Strategy refers to an e-learning or technology enhanced learning strategy. Again many universities have these strategies, but as they mature in their thinking some universities have integrated the technology elements within their generic learning and teaching strategies. These strategies are then matched to the ICT strategies to ensure there is no disconnect and that the ICT strategy can support the learning and teaching needs of the institution. The risk in adopting the recommendation as it stands is that the sector goes back to thinking about, and equating, learning with, for example, computers. The learning and teaching strategy should be distinct from the ICT strategy, where the ICT strategy is influenced and driven by the learning and teaching strategy (and other strategies such as research) and not the other way around.
University faculties should appoint Senior Fellows responsible for new technologies and integrating them into teaching and learning.
This approach was tried, and to a large extent succeeded, in FE colleges with the BECTA programme of Information and Learning Technology (ILT) Champions. In many universities similar approaches have been implemented, however, they often do not focus on sole teaching methods such as use of ICT but take a much broader view. Teaching fellows (either locally in their own universities, or through the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme) strive to ensure that appropriate methods are delivered. It is also arguable that the provision of an e-learning teaching fellow may have a negative impact, where the ‘technology’ elements always reside with one or two individuals within a department. The emphasis for teaching fellows does, and should, remain on encouraging appropriate teaching methods rather than a push for a specific product or format.
ICT usage and learning should be embedded into the design of new programmes through the validation process.
Like the previous recommendation, this seems to generalise, and I would ask is this appropriate for all programmes? We run the risk of shoehorning technology practices that do little or nothing, or even worse, damage the learning experience when we insist on embedding some practices over others. A linked recommendation is “The course evaluation form should question the extent to which tutors have integrated ICT into the courses” – again, the evaluation needs to assess ICT only if its use is considered appropriate.
Periodic reviews should assess the extent to which VLE and ICT is used to enhance learning.
This is one of the recommendations that stands out as something that should be delivered if it is not already. In fairness this is possibly already in place in institutions, and certainly in the Building Capacity projects’ institutions that I’ve spoken to they have been doing it for several years as part of their quality processes.
Institutions should consider ways of making university administration more accessible through technology, including e-submission of assessments, registration and course choices.
This is an area that can not only help deliver higher student satisfaction, but can also improve the experience, effectiveness and efficiency of staff. Many JISC programmes are working in this space and there are high gains to be made. Where universities are doing this well, the researchers on this study may not even have been aware of these invisible efficiencies. Improved administration has passed beyond innovation into common usage in many universities I’ve visited. It is also possible that where this is already done ‘right’ students don’t know, or don’t articulate it as being present.
ICT skills should be integrated into Professional Standards Framework, in institutional promotional criteria and also selection for teaching awards.
In the Building Capacity projects where the focus is technology and learning, the use of the technologies being deployed in the institution are also making their way in to the ‘new lecturer’ workshops, PGCerts and accreditation programmes such as those through the HE Academy and SEDA. The staff going through these programmes have access to a vast array of options for using technology in teaching. However, the report seems to focus on training staff rather than placing precedence on enhancing the digital literacy of all staff in institutions. The bigger issue is what programmes are compulsory for other staff; it is currently only new lecturers that are required to go through the programmes and there is no requirement for continuing professional development once they have been accredited. This large debate was not addressed by the recommendations.
The report is important, reads well and raises many issues that the sector should look at, especially with regard to students’ perceptions. But, as the recommendations stand they are pushing us back to when technology was, in places, driving learning and teaching. In visiting institutions where we have projects, I see in most cases that senior management teams are building strategies that put learning and teaching (and research) at the forefront and then create the ICT strategy to service them. In some cases the technology may not be visible, as it moves into common usage, a post-digital environment potentially. The challenge arising from this report is not how to use more technology, nor how to integrate it into practice. The challenge is articulating our existing practice in ways that act as both an exemplar to students (and Support their own digital literacy), and enhance our practice by sharing the exemplary work that is already there.
Six ways to ensure sustainability for technology based interventions
Over the last two years I’ve been very lucky in working with some excellent projects in three JISC programmes; Users and Innovation, Institutional Innovation and Building Capacity. This community of projects hold a vast core of information and knowledge about the use of technology in institutions and how to get the most of it. In discussions with various people across the 80 plus projects we put together a small list of things that might help sustain technology based interventions. Read more
Maybe 42 is no longer the answer
The seeds of many initiatives present in institutions today were sown in 1998 when Dearing published his report into higher education, which was to have wide ranging ramifications across the higher education sector for the following decade. It included reference to ‘systems for teaching and administration’, the ability to ‘teach across continents’ and we also saw the emergence of ideas that lead to the Open Educational Resources programme. Chapter 13 of the report deals solely with C&IT (Communication and Information Technology). In many ways, with regard to C&IT, Dearing showed great foresight and vision for the affordances that technology could bring to the sector.
Following his comments in the report and a discussion around the fundamental importance of technology in institutions Dearing made recommendation 42:
We recommend that all higher education institutions should develop managers who combine a deep understanding of Communications and Information Technology with senior management experience.
However, at the time publishing the report C&IT was seen as complex and difficult to comprehend on an institutional scale by some, and as the preserve of the specialist by others. Dearing wanted C&IT to be high on the institutional agenda and recommended the central strategies which are now ubiquitous in the sector. The emergence of e-learning and e-research strategies followed a few years later.
At the time of publication the technology that Dearing was mostly referring to included large complex networking systems, the emergent virtual learning environments (VLEs) and hardware that was bulky, expensive and required a lot of support. Now, the network is well supported and has arguably disappeared into the background; not unlike the road network, we don’t need to know how to build and maintain a road to be able to drive from A to B. VLEs and other learning and teaching packages are maintainable at a distance, allowing academics to produce and edit their own content, whilst hardware is smaller, cheaper and (depending on your green credentials) can be swapped for new if it becomes faulty.
In addition to the growth in institutional technology (such as VLEs) and the changing hardware, the last five years have also seen the influences of ‘web 2.0’ applications. These applications have raised the game in terms of the usability of products, and had an impact on how and where we access resources. It is no longer the preserve of the few to instantly publish material to the web, communicate by voice and video across networks, or build systems for collaboration in teaching and research. Now almost anyone in an institution can do this and using a variety of devices, not just a PC.
At a recent JISC conference showcasing new products emerging from technology projects, Gwen Van Der Veldon gave a keynote about what she expects as a senior manager in an institution. This included the following two quotes which demonstrate a widely held attitude:
“Don’t come to me with new cool technologies; come to me with solutions to institutional problems.”
“If whatever you’re building needs a manual then it’s of no use to me. I need solutions that can be picked up and used with as little learning as possible.”
Visiting institutions for the Building Capacity Programme discussions with members of senior management may not have demonstrated ‘deep understanding of Communications and Information Technology’; they have however demonstrated a profound understanding of institutional issues, the context of higher education in wider socio-economic realities and creativity in addressing these issues. Mostly senior managers have not talked about technology, they have talked about the advantages of technology and how they can meet needs. Reflecting on Dearing’s vision for the ‘Type 42 manager’ it is clear that in the context of the times Dearing was right in his recommendation, but somewhere between then and now we either lost the need for them, or we developed a different kind of senior manager who understands that technology in and of itself is essential not central in an institution.
This post-digital senior manager recognises that with technology we can enhance a wide range of practices across teaching, research and administration, and they understand that it is underpinning almost every process in an institution; but they also understand that the focus needs to be on solving problems and facilitating positive change rather than on finding uses for the latest tech to roll off the conveyor belt.
Engaging staff in technology enhanced learning: Workshop write-up
This is the write-up of a workshop I ran for the HEA’s Gwella programme in November 2009. The programme is a change programme supporting e-learning units to embed technology enhanced learning (TEL) at their institutions. As with all workshops I run, I got the delegates to do most of the work, so a big thank you to them.
There is a predilection for educational and staff developers to take a positivist approach to this kind of workshop, which for delegates can often seem at odds with, what may seem to some people, a deterministic institutional culture resistant to change. After having spent some time on the previous evening and earlier in the day with the delegates it was apparent that there was a huge amount of experience in the room, both in e-learning and wider institutional change processes. To try and explore discussions we don’t normally have I decided that a novel (for me) approach would be to identify those things that are less successful, starting with:
What’s not working?
Immediately eliciting a few comedic responses, or at least in part comedic:
“Making them bring their own sandwiches” Lunchtime sessions are a staple for staff developers, a poor lunch for people who are giving up their lunch hour will normally be met with negative feedback, which may seep into the rest of the session.
“Too much PowerPoint” we’ve all been there, we all know what that means, and yet, it is so easy for us to fall into the habit.
In groups we then started to pick-up some of the more serious issues
“Talking about technology they haven’t got” this had a lot of resonance with the audience, some people expressing annoyance at the ‘Macarati’ who always seem to be sitting and looking smug at learning technology conferences with their powerbooks etc. This is easy to translate institutionally, when many staff we work with in institutions have low powered or out of date laptops. It also manifests when developers start talking about packages they don’t have, such as “well if we had moodle here we’d be able to….” or “if we were allowed to use Skype here…”
“Technology demonstrations where the technology fails” or “telling them that this technology is cutting edge”
Giving the wrong expectations, such as “doing a session where the title doesn’t reflect the session” or “using a clever title that obscures the meaning”
One of the problems that some sessions suffer from is “a lack of authenticity”, where learning technology is being discussed in the abstract, or the session convener is not using the technology themselves, it may also be that the delegates need a strong discipline focus, after all each of the disciplines [feel they] have unique needs. This latter issue can sometimes be overcome by co-presenting with someone from the discipline. Similar issues include “learning from the session not needing to be applied until a much later date” and “session is not pragmatic enough”.
What we say and what they hear
Following the ‘not positivist’ approach, we had a discussion around how we interact (as technology evangelists) with senior managers, we put some examples up of what we say, and what the SMT [might] hear.
Technologist: “We need to move to a more learner centric, open source VLE”
SMT: “They want and excuse to get rid of xxx and spend all their time playing with code”
Technologist: “We should be investing in mobile learning and augmented reality”
SMT: “They want an excuse to buy an iPhone”
Technologist: “We should be podcasting all our lectures”
SMT: “Maybe I can cut staff”
Though these are partly tongue in cheek, they serve to illustrate the point that if we want change in TEL to happen in institutions it needs to align not only with the needs of staff who are teaching, but also with the strategic needs of the Senior Managers.
Confessions of a Staff and Educational Developer
We picked up some of the things that we know don’t work in workshops at the outset of the session, but as developers we also have to work in many other ways, having many tools at our disposal for making learning and teaching interventions. Here we “fessed up” to our ‘worst’ intervention.
I started the confession session by owning up to giving some staff the ‘tools’ to assess the accessibility of their materials in one northern institution – this, firstly, led to a fixed approach to accessibility, closely followed by the ‘ratting out’ of co-workers who didn’t have accessible materials.
Other confessions included:
“Developing a 40 page L&T strategy that nobody read” – could have had a one page summary.
“Running a session called ‘Pedagogical Modelling’” not ideal for staff who just want to use technology in their teaching, no one turned up.
“Showing someone how to put a quick link into the VLE for a resource, ended up by having 75 resources for one module”
“Running a session based on a technology that we didn’t have, nor were we going to get it”
What does work?
It would have been cruel and unusual to have left a session based only on the negative aspects of what we do (although some delegates thought they might try that in their host institutions), so after reflecting on the fact that we had looked at issues around our weaknesses and some of the threats to what we do and we finished by focusing on our strengths and the opportunities that afforded. We also recognised that the answers to supporting change lay within the room. So, what does work?
These were some of the suggestions from delegates:
“Focus on the issues that people want addressing, not technology”
“Understand the pedagogical goal”
“Demonstrate that interventions on the PGCert influence student feedback”
“Work with the Senior Management Team – see them as allies”
“Accept that academics are tribal, work in the context of their discipline”
“When you can work one to one, and when you can’t, relate what you’ve learned working one to one”
“Make the process a dialogue”
Introducing the Building Capacity Programme
One of the key success criteria of any project is the degree to which people use it and its outputs. The new Building Capacity programme is focusing on recent and existing JISC projects and services and helping HEIs to implement the outputs and outcomes of relevant projects in their institution in response to their own strategic drivers
How will it work?
The programme is aimed at senior managers (Pro Vice Chancellor level) who will sponsor an institutional change programme by applying a combination of appropriate JISC outputs, outcomes and services (products) to the issue. The programme will provide a small amount of funding to seed the change process and enable local contextualisation of JISC products.
For example, if an institution wishes to address aspects of social mobility it may decide to use a combination of outputs from Innovation Projects, such as the TAG project at UCLAN (methods for providing online pastoral support), the CoGenT project, at the University of Gloucestershire for developing workforce development curricula, the Mining Course Management Systems at TVU for accessing student retention data and the JISC TechDis service for accessing advice on widening access. The funding can be used to deploy and contextualise the projects and outputs in the institution or it may also be used to bring in projects to act as consultants, where the required input is over and above the stated project remit.
What sort of issues will the programme look at addressing?
In providing this funding and mapping JISC products to issues we have identified the following high level issues as indicative of the areas we are interested in:
- Economic recovery and public funding
- Quality standards and reputation
- Research funding and governance
- International competitiveness
- Social mobility
What will the programme deliver?
The major output for the programme will be toolkits that will enable other institutions to enact similar change processes; these will be underpinned with roadmaps and case studies describing the process of how JISC projects were deployed away from the project host institution and how they are being used to address strategic issues.
For more information, get in touch with Lawrie Phipps
Rethinking Dissemination in Educational Technology Projects
What is the purpose of dissemination? For most of the projects that I have been involved with dissemination is about telling people about the project. But this idea of dissemination can be traced back to when the web was a unidirectional medium; most conferences in this field have been around, at least, since the birth of the internet. For most of the 90’s and the early part of this century to disseminate a project the most effective way was to go to a conference and hope that more than 4 people turned up to your presentation or workshop (I have been to several where that was the case, and in one particular case there were only the 5 presenters giving 3 papers in total and myself as the session chair).
In many of the bids that I’ve read there is an almost Pavlovian response to the question ‘how will you disseminate your project?’ Most bidders give you a list of conferences that they will present at (and assume that they will have their paper accepted – and of course some conferences will take as many papers as they can because they need delegates).
But how does this activity help? The best that can be hoped for is that someone asks you a question, and tells you that they may try your idea in their institution. And most of the time that is only way you’ll know if the project is having any kind of impact.
But what if… Instead of taking the team to XXX conference, which if there are 4 people could cost upwards of £3,000, you used that money to run 4 seminars/workshops in different institutions where you knew that people wanted to try your project? This approach is something that I trialled with my Users and Innovation Programme, and am trying with the Institutional Innovation. Instead of making dissemination a passive or serendipitous activity we are asking that the project identify partners and work closely with them to help them test their assumptions and trial the project.
Of course this relies on having people know about the project, and that was often done by mail list or at conferences. That need no longer be the case. I know the activities of almost all of the projects I manage through their blogs and tweets, and I’ve even been to a few webinars. Regular blogging and tweeting generates and maintains knowledge about the project in the cloud, and when it comes to finding willing partners it is easier than finding them in a bar at an event. Of course what I’m really talking about here is the idea of generating ad hoc communities around projects and clusters of projects which makes the embedding and sustainability of projects easier and more cost effective than turning up to a 3 day conference and hoping for someone who’s really interested showing up to your 20 minute presentation.
Go to conferences, for whatever reason, but not for the dissemination of your project. With the plethora of online tools and communities now available dissemination is most effectively achieved by careful management of the project’s online identity.
And what of conferences? At the JISC 2009 conference a delegate approached me and said “This event’s been great, a good keynote, not too many parallels and loads of space to network” and it was that last point that was the key. Conferences are still good for networking, as long as they aren’t too big, or even worse a clique; but generally a nice small (100 – 150 delegates) 24hr conference, with long lunch and coffee breaks is still a good way to meet like –minded people. And if you really want value for money, keep an eye on the institutional learning and teaching conferences, I’ve been to a dozen or so and found some real gems of ideas and practices.