Supporting further and higher education

Technology infrastructureand new technology: a review

Sarah Porter

JISC

Caveat

• Apologies of comments are not correctly attributed to speakers or contributors

• Layers of interpretation and re-interpretation!

• Feel free to claim ownership or correct points during the discussion session

Questions

• Complex relationship between people and technology– Is technology changing practice?– Is it improving learning experiences for

students?– Do we have the balance right – is

technology driving practice or is practice limiting technology?

Is technology changing practice?

• Practice has been changed: systemic use of technologies

• Large scale use of ‘accepted’ technologies e.g. commercial VLEs

• Approaches to encouraging use, staff development, sharing practice

• Using one system in systemic way has implications for lots of other systems and processes– E.g. SMS server needs to interoperate with library

system

• Questioning current technologies and underlying models– some theoretical and ‘big vision’ –

M.O.D.E.L.S– Others practical, focused on adapting and

developing current systems– Service-oriented approach to systems

• Too soon or too late? (Derek Morrison)

Innovation

• ‘Technology doesn’t just allow students to answers questions more quickly, but to ask new questions’ (Vijay Kumar)

• Mobile technologies allow ‘populist and personal approach’ (Terry Keefe)

Influencing practice?

• Technologies being implemented by practitioners who are interested in helping their students

• Technology encourages teachers and students to be more reflective– ‘technology can make you a better teacher

and a more reflective learner’ (David Rowsell)

Technology philosophy

• Few technologies were designed explicitly for educational use– E.g. phones, PDAs, computers– Software e.g. content management systems

• Educational use is bolted on

– Technologies have a business focus not educational focus

– Is this a problem?– Sessions demonstrate that people are adapting

technology to do what they want to• Ann Jones: ‘technology appropriation’• Interactive classroom technologies

People and technology

• Technology used to enhance communication between people

• Used to engage learners– Interactive classrooms

• Used to change learner’s practice– E.g. support reflection (moblogs - Rowsell)

• Act as ‘intermediary between student and tutor’ (Michael McCabe)

• Want ‘water cooler encounters’ (Heins)• Way we use communication tools hasn’t evolved

enough– ‘connecting not communicating’ (Mark Flanagan)

Learning through practice

• However many examples of good practice there are, people need to learn from their own process of trial and error (Cathy Gunn)

Missing question: how do we get organisations to innovate?

Cycle of adoption

• Innovation occurs at many points in the cycle– Tends to be driven by a specific problem– People try something new to address the problem

(or find a problem because they want to try something new)

• If successful, innovation may then becomes embedded or systemic– Need to prove the concept (Terry Keefe)– Introducing a new technology can be v difficult,

involve many stakeholders e.g. IT support

– Change processes needed to move towards a new approach, new technology, new process

– We don’t yet understand this complex process or how to make it happen

– ‘Business case’ isn’t always clear – why change? What is the cost? What will we lose?

– Scalability• Things that work in small groups may not work in large

groups

• Innovation to normalisation– May lose something when technology becomes

systemic: ‘dullifying’; sense of ownership and personalisation may go (Peter Sloep).

Institution may stifle innovation

• E.g. support departments have strict targets for service support– Do not want to innovateInnovation stops as soon as administrators

get involved (Richard Elliott)

• Not generally good at making business cases and thinking through the implications of making a change– Have to do this in a business environment

or delivery focused organisation e.g. LearnDirect

– Universities becoming more corporate? (Cornford, 2002 – referenced by Morrison)

Standards and specifications

– Some are needed to increase the potential to link up systems e.g. standards to link a SMS server to a Student Record System, library system or VLE

– Do standards help innovation or restrict it?

Do we have the balance right?

• What is the problem that we are using … technology to solve?

Issues raised during discussion session

• Shouldn’t be embarrassed about discussing business cases– Have to demonstrate why innovation is needed; what the

benefits are

• Who can help innovation to become standard practice?– Innovators don’t always want to engage with senior

managers or know how to do this– Innovators may not be the best people to try to achieve

systemic change– Time scales are not easy – will take a long time to

convince senior management to authorise change across the whole organisations

– Support services are risk-adverse – do not like innovation

• Need to refer to the literature on organisational change– (refs ??)

• In a privileged position in HE / FE to be allowed to experiment with technology– Must demonstrate value for money and business case in

order for this to continue

• How do we influence senior managers and decision makers?– Student / learner preferences can be used to provide

evidence – ‘Bi-directional’ use of survey data as they also influence

teachers

• JISC or other organisations (Academy?) may have a role in helping to spread innovation– E.g. encourage sharing between organisations

through secondment scheme?

• Need to learn from large-scale, ‘business like’ approaches to learning technology

• Learn from the UKeU experience– Lessons about public / private partnerships and the

need to be open about goals– UfI was allowed to change its model during

development and was allowed to succeed– Plug may have been pulled on UKeU too early?