What are the challenges of organisational transformation in large organisations like universities and public administration systems?

Deborah Arnold: Within the eLene group, which involves universities from eight EU countries, we have been investigating the transformation of higher education since our first strategic meeting in February 2004. As project manager for two of the group's Virtual Campus projects supported by the European commission eLearning programme - eLene-TT (2005-2006) and eLene-TLC (2007-2008) - I propose to answer this question from a teaching and learning perspective, in keeping with the bottom-up approach we have developed throughout our collaboration.

Personally, I believe the main challenge is for higher-education institutions to develop a coherent strategy with a medium-to-long-term vision. All too often, universities simply seem to react to trends, and even then take-up can be painfully slow. Innovation in particular with respect to teaching and learning is happening but often suffers from a lack of recognition. University management thus needs to be more aware of what is happening at the grassroots level and to build this into a coherent strategy, taking into account the ever-evolving world in which we live.

Obviously, the transformations required in order for universities to meet the needs and expectations of the net-generation of students are far reaching. As we've seen in the eLene projects, as soon as you address the question of how ICT can contribute to making teaching and learning more effective, you are faced with issues such as the recognition of teaching itself in an academic's career, the implications of such evolutions on administration and human resources management, and even the need to rethink the physical environment provided by our universities.

How did you promote the use of ICT to support the change?

Deborah Arnold: Taking the need to prepare universities for the net generation of students as our starting point, we identified a number of stakeholders. In eLene-TT we concentrated on HE teachers and those responsible for training them, developing a programme of teacher-training actions and identifying, collecting, and referencing a range of tools, guidelines, and other resources developed across Europe.

With eLene-TLC, we extended the initial target groups to include students themselves as well as instructional designers and educational technologists. Finally, we set about bridging the gap between bottom-up and top-down approaches, targeting decision makers within our institutions and policy makers at the national and EU levels.
In concrete terms, we developed a common ICT-in-education competency framework for teachers, students, and instructional designers.

The overall framework, which was validated by a transnational group of nearly eighty experts, classifies pedagogical competencies for each of the target groups in terms of the role or combination of roles each stakeholder plays when using ICT for teaching and learning. These roles are classified as design/planning, pedagogical and social.


Technology itself is considered to be part of the environment, to support the different roles, as is the management domain.

The application of this framework comes in the form of Professional Development Activities for teachers, the development of a self-assessment instrument on digital literacy competencies for students, and a virtual guide for instructional designers. All the resources created or selected for these activities are referenced in the eLene Teaching and Learning Centre, to which outside users can contribute through rating and commenting on existing resources or adding their own.

Again, all this would remain very much at the local or project level if we hadn't devoted a specific part of the project to the challenge of involving decision makers. We took two approaches here: first, by setting up a board of directors to give the eLene group more permanence beyond collaboration on projects, and second, by providing mechanisms for the board members to reflect and exchange views on the challenges currently facing European HEI's.

The discussion, which took place at the first board meeting in April 2008, identified the question of incentives for HE teachers as a priority to be addressed. We then followed this up with a series of guided interviews with decision makers (vice-rectors and directors of ICT in education departments) in each of our universities.

Are coffee and cakes enough incentives for mainstreaming technology-supported teaching and learning in Higher Education?

Deborah Arnold: The reference to coffee and cakes comes from a conference presentation I attended back in 2005 that addressed the problem of how to encourage HE teachers to make better pedagogical use of ICT. When asked what incentives had been employed, the conference presenter replied 'coffee and cakes' as a way of getting teachers to attend training and coaching sessions.

However, in a context where the very act of teaching is undervalued with respect to research in higher education in many European countries, the majority of the eLene partners believe that in order to reach a critical mass of HE teachers and to bring about a major change in the way that students learn in our institutions, there needs to be some kind of policy on incentives. By this we mean the recognition and reward of teaching itself in HE, whether this is academic, financial, or a combination of the two. And ICT, or technology-enhanced teaching and learning, is part of this equation.

As one of the decision makers we interviewed said, "I think to promote good teaching and ICT usage innovations go hand in hand; [it's] not just using ICT [that is] is innovative." The incentives we explored included qualification systems that integrate pedagogical requirements in ICT-supported teaching and learning linked to salary scales; peer review and quality systems for producing online teaching and learning materials linked to academic recognition; scholarship and the integration of teaching with research processes; and the introduction of prizes and awards for the innovative use of ICT.

Which obstacles will universities have to overcome in order to achieve sustained success in establishing a culture of change in the future?

Deborah Arnold: You may be familiar with the expression 'Changing a university is like moving a graveyard' - it's very difficult, and you don't get much internal support! And in fact, the one point that met with the strongest positive reaction among the group was the need for universities to invest in change management.

Over and above the purely financial question of available funds for such incentives, specific obstacles raised by the interviewees were, for example, that it requires a great amount of training to be able to accept criticism of our teaching in the same way that we do with research and the need for a commonly accepted system of criteria for evaluating teaching. Even with a concerted policy on incentives, such evolutions still imply a significant shift in values, attitudes, norms, and behaviours on the part of all stakeholders: politicians, decision makers in HE, academic staff, and students.

This change thus needs to be managed in a global and structured way through activities aimed at defining and instilling these new values and behaviours to support new ways of doing work and overcome resistance to change, building consensus among stakeholders on specific changes designed to better meet their needs, and planning, testing, and implementing all aspects of the transition from one organisational structure to another.

Finally, as we experience a move towards more autonomy for higher education institutions, I would like once again to stress the importance of a combined top-down / bottom-up approach, with a few strong, clear messages coming from the top, while enabling universities to encourage and tap into some of the very exciting changes in pedagogical practice already happening at grassroots level. In short, it's a question of finding the right balance between mainstreaming and innovation.


Session TRO80

Deborah Arnold "Finding ways to make the change"

Friday December 5th, 16:30 - 18:00, Köpenick I