Institutional Presentation to e-Learning Benchmarking Meeting - 21 June 200

Our summary information sheet for the meeting of 21 June follows

Original rationale for your participation in the e-benchmarking exercise?

We believed that we could contribute positively to shaping the benchmarking exercise and wished to be included in the pilot phase. We asserted that both a top-down and a bottom-up approach is essential to the successful management of change and to the building of bridges across institutional hierarchies and cultures. In such an environment, complex organisational relationships evolve that cannot be reduced to, nor be mapped onto simple organisational diagrams. Yet it is these complex relationships that stimulate, facilitate and enable positive and productive change.

Through participating in the Benchmarking Pilot we aimed to:

• help develop and formalise the quantitative metrics and qualitative descriptors of e-learning achievement for the sector based on exposing and reflectively evaluating our own assumptions through a critical ethnomethodological approach;
• expose ways that we have been “doing e-learning” as situated reasoning, and how and why everyday social/institutional structures and communities emerge and achieve their organisation and order.

We also had an aim of raising awareness of e-learning developments at Brookes and wanted to use benchmarking as a means of driving forward pedagogical change.

Modifications to the rationale in the light of experience?

Can there be post-hoc modification to what we intended to do? If we had to do it differently next time, we would try to get direct access to end-user learners and would focus more sharply on defining and validating proxy measures of value for money.

Anticipated scope of the e-benchmarking activity, e.g. institution, faculty, department?

The whole institution.

Actual scope of the e-benchmarking activity and why?

With the support of the Deputy VC (Academic) and SMT we were successful in getting responses from

• the Deans of all the Academic Schools
• the Directors or other Senior Managers of all the support Directorates
• A wide selection of lecturers, course team leaders, managers, and administrators (see below: who was involved)

Who was involved and what was their role?

The Benchmarking Project was managed by:

• John Lidgey, Professor, Assistant Dean, School of Technology
• Rhona Sharpe, Senior Staff and Educational Developer
• George Roberts, Development Director, Off-campus e-Learning.

Other members of the functional team included:

• Stuart Brown, Head of Corporate Information Systems
• Richard Francis, Head of Media Workshop
• Jan Haines, Head of Academic Library Services
• Greg Benfield, Educational Developer (Learning Technologies)
• Alan Betteridge, Head of QA
• Keith Cooper, Head of Student Services
• Tim Bolton, Head of Finance
• Simon Carr, Principal Lecturer, School of Social Sciences and Law
• Irmgard Huppe, Learning Technologist, School of Health and Social Care
• Angie Phillip, Head of Open and Continuing Education
• Clive Robertson, Head of Student Learning Experience

As at 21 April there were 41 responses from SMT, Deans, Managers and Senior Managers, Academic Staff at all levels, Learning Technologists.

Affordances from taking part in the e-benchmarking exercise?

• Awareness raising
• Institutional profile building
• Comparisons with other HEIs
• Inter-departmental and functional dialogue
• Renewed enthusiasm and interest in e-learning
• Continued discussion about meanings of learning and e-learning
• Recognition of need to better understand relationship between physical and virtual space

Constraints, institutional reactions, unexpected issues?

• Continuing challenge in identifying meaningful cost benefit analysis figures
• What are direct e-learning costs and what are technological externalities
• Recognition that costing is political

Would you do anything differently if you were to start again?

• We might ask that HEA through UUK make contact at VC level. An even stronger push from the top could help.
• OBHE Benchmarking instrument could be improved for easier disaggregation (e.g. absolute numbering of questions)

On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being best) rate your experience of e-benchmarking? – why?

8: very good process for internal reflection, but:

• time intensive
• scheduling of related activities not well co-ordinated (Pathfinder bids due before meeting of 21st and JISC Capital Programme due on 22nd. This should have been taken into account when planning Benchmarking pilot activities)

On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being best) rate the e-benchmarking tools you used – why?

7: the OBHE tool was somewhat overlong. We disaggregated it for distribution to individuals across the university taking into account their capacity to answer different kinds of questions. We also felt that the tool made assumptions about the nature of organisational management that did not map as well as it might onto practices at this University.

What next?

• Internal dissemination
• Inter-departmental benchmarking
• Benchmarking within disciplines across institutions
• Repeat exercise bi-annually?

Lessons for e-benchmarking phase 1 institutions and the wider sector?

• Embedding e-learning is best achieved through a consensual approach and agreed strategy. This requires careful co-ordination. The process of change is significant and this change must be given adequate time to be implemented.

• Policies and practices must ensure that vision, strategy and action plan are aligned. Strategy is not merely forward planning. Strategies must have some longevity. Institutions must have a clear sense of the benefits they want to achieve and how those benefits are measured.

• Having the buy-in of the central management group is vital. It is important to demonstrate how the SMT regards e-learning as important. The form of this demonstration may differ according to local/institutional-cultural variables.

• Universities’ units of academic resource which drive finance and administrative systems are based on traditional face-to-face models: hours expressed as ratios of classroom to preparation time, courses described in terms of “contact hours”, space-use predicated on twice or thrice-weekly “lectures”. The same models underlie the HEI funding and QA regimes. These “units” serve to enforce conservative practices. There needs to be a review of learning and teaching practices (e- and non-e- ) in HE today and a subsequent adjustment of funding and QA models to reflect and value current (and future) good practice.

• To a certain extent e-learning has been driven by many social and cultural factors. Many different models exist. We might have worked harder to understand the true cost of doing what we did. We might have resourced central support services more lavishly, but this would have been at the expense of other equally worthy pursuits.

• Although eyes continue to roll, it must be emphasised that definitions are important and that there still is not a clear understanding of what e-learning means. If we take a broad definition, “use of IT in learning and teaching”, then almost all university teaching practice is “e-learning”. There is some sympathy for this position. Is it time to lose the “e” and just speak of “learning”? In contrast, there is concern that if the “e” is lost then so too might the pedagogical developments which are emblematised by e-learning. Nevertheless it is important that e-learning not be defined as transmissive, CBT without face-to-face contact. The preferred definition appears to be “blended learning in a technology-rich environment”, with an awareness that the e- affords:
o time shifting
o location shifting
o flexible scheduling
o distributed collaboration and new partnerships
o access to resources on previously unimaginable scale
o greatly accelerated feedback.

• The results of the pilot may be as much statements of current practice as of good practice. While clearly good-practice statements can be derived from the exercise we are concerned that results might be used normatively rather than as a reflective tool for institutional improvement.

• Ways of talking about success and good practice must include the understanding that good teaching sets ground rules, provides alternatives, exemplifies models and gives access to experience, reciprocity, authenticity and credibility while:
o increasing student-tutor, student-student contact and cooperation
o promoting active learning
o giving prompt feedback
o maximising time on task
o communicating of high expectations
o accommodating multiple learning styles and cultural diversity

Comments

[bacsich]

An excellent read! And super to see a public posting like this before the June 21 meeting.

Your mention of costing raises the point that some issues go beyond the individual benchmarking teams/clubs - e.g. some of the Pick & Mix HEIs might share these views - and I hope that there is time on Wednesday to discuss these cross-team issues.

Paul