Category Archives: change management

Supporting change through the CLL programme

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?

Support isn’t just “noise on a spreadsheet”!

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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.

Maybe 42 is no longer the answer

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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.

Introducing the Building Capacity Programme

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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