You take the high road: National Programmes for the Development of e-Learning in Higher Education

by Terry Mayes, and Derek Morrison in Reflecting Education, Vol 4, No 1 (2008), 6-16

Abstract

The central question addressed by this paper is the effect of national initiatives in e-learning within the Higher Education sector. Two national programmes for the promotion of e-learning in UK higher education are described, and some tentative lessons are drawn from their comparison. One is the English Benchmarking and Pathfinder programme, still ongoing, in which £8M has been distributed widely across over 70 HE institutions, and the other is the £6M Scottish e-learning transformation programme, involving six large-scale collaborative projects. The scale of these two programmes is comparable to the Pew Grant programme in course redesign in USA higher education, which claimed both improved learning and reduced costs through the introduction of technology enhancements. This paper considers how these claims influenced the UK initiatives, and how divergent strategic considerations led the national programmes to be defined differently. A conclusion is that the way the initiatives were framed has influenced their outcomes. However, both programmes have succeeded in building a cross-institutional level of capacity development that offers a policy direction for the future.

Reflecting Education, Vol 4, No 1 (2008), 6-16; You take the high road ... (PDF)

Reflecting Education, Vol 4, No 1 (2008),  Table of Contents 

Commentary by Jane Plenderleith and Veronica Adamson of Glenaffric Ltd

Available as a pdf for download for those who cannot bear to read this much on screen ...

We were commissioned in 2005 to undertake the formative evaluation of the Scottish Funding Council’s e-Learning Transformation (ELT) Programme and have recently submitted our final report to the Council. Since 2006 we have also been working with the HE Academy as members of the Evaluation and Dissemination Support Team (EDSuT) for the  Benchmarking and Pathfinder Programme.

One of the key points raised in this paper relates to the extent to which externally funded initiatives can actually effect significant changes in the ways in which institutions design, plan, implement, manage and monitor their core activities. The Scottish Funding Council has a strategic principle to ‘intervene only where it can add value’ to core-funded institutional activity. The ELT Programme was a large-scale intervention with a bold vision for addressing major challenges and developing comprehensive and scalable solutions. It was specifically intended to demonstrate the value of investing in e-learning, and establish processes for institutional transition from reliance on external subsidy to a sustainable culture of mainstreaming innovation through internal momentum. The scale of the projects and the level of investment they represent at sectoral level has been an important element in securing strategic support and the alignment of some of the key project processes, outputs and outcomes with institutional strategy and policy.

Another key point is the extent to which the messages from the Pew Grant Program are transferable to the UK context. It is worth noting here that the five Pew Grant course redesign models were not actually ‘tested’ in the program – they emerged and crystallised as ‘models’ from the experiences of around 30 course redesign projects in the first phase of the program.

In our ELT evaluation report (not yet published) we outline a number of key differences between Pew Grant and the ELT Programme. Pew Grant works towards the achievement of a set of specific business goals with clear metrics for change; ELT started from the premise that technology is the catalyst for transformational change. Pew Grant worked with mainstream academic teams responsible for large classes; ELT largely supported early adopters in the project institutions. The unit of change is radically different in the two approaches: Pew Grant focuses on redesigning a specific course or programme of learning, while ELT had a broader vision of tackling major challenges through institutional transformation. Pew Grant participants start with a clear definition of the problem they are trying to solve; ELT projects set themselves complex objectives relating to a wide range of institutional processes. Pew Grant is effectively a taught programme of course redesign involving a multiple-stage application and selection process, training for teams, individualised feedback and planning, ongoing support and monitoring of progress against objectives; ELT negotiated the premises for change, and established programme management and evaluation support structures. Pew Grant explicitly links improving the quality of provision with efficiency savings; ELT has been more circumspect in its claims for demonstrable cost savings through the transformational activity.

The paper groups the Scottish transformation projects into two main clusters – a ‘pedagogy’ group and a ‘resources’ group. This is an interesting abstraction – in reality, the ELT projects did not ‘cluster’ into groups for practical collaboration. In our evaluation report we discuss two overarching models of transformation that emerged from the Programme:

•    Transforming academic practice

•    Transforming the curriculum offer

o    through content development and course redesign

o    through assessment redesign

o    through personal development planning

In broad terms, REAP, TESEP and ISLE focused more on changing practice through providing opportunities for staff to review their teaching and assessment practice, and encouraging active engagement and reflection on learning for students. CeLLS, eCTP and BlendEd focused more on developing learning resources, assessment design and curriculum planning. In practice, however, the two overarching models overlap.

The context for transformation poses two fundamental elements: people (staff and students) and the curriculum (that which is planned, developed, delivered, learned, assessed, researched, accredited). What is transformed through technology is the interaction between the two elements, focusing on the enhancement of the learning and teaching experience. This is in some ways a more subtle and complex outcome than any of the Pew Grant course redesign models, taking account of institutional differences (and a concern to maintain, enhance and proclaim those differences in a collaboration/ competition tension), and the value of human interaction between staff and students, among staff members, and among learners. The key message is that transformation is a complex business involving many factors and areas of organisational activity, and that institutions will accomplish similar goals by different paths.

This in turn begs questions about the extent to which the ELT Programme has been able to produce transferable models of transformation for others in the sector to adopt and adapt. The Pew Grant models are described in metaphorical terms (‘emporium’, ‘buffet’, ‘supplemental’ etc) which facilitates their interpretation and application in a variety of contexts. The ‘models of transformation’ which have been discussed in the context of the ELT programme (‘transforming academic practice’, ‘transforming the curriculum offer’) are general processes, not transferable models. Each of the projects has its own set of experiences from which models could be abstracted, but the Programme as a whole is too large and diffuse for sense-making in terms of models that can be transferred directly from one context to another. What has been developed by the projects, however, are approaches (or ‘ways in’) to transformational change by changing institutional culture and practice through the adoption and adaptation of sets of ideas and principles. These approaches are illustrated by practical case studies, underpinned by resources, and confirmed by evidence of benefit.

The paper also raises some interesting points about support models for large-scale innovation programmes in the further and higher education sectors. A relatively sophisticated support model was developed by the EDSuT for the Academy’s Pathfinder Programme, involving clusters of projects operating a ‘CAMEL-type’ model of institutional visits for peer support and sharing, supported and facilitated by an expert ‘critical friend’. Seven clusters of four institutions were formed, based on a number of criteria including institutional type, shared focus of activity, geographical location, previous history of collaboration and expressed desire to work together. In practice it was not possible to apply all matching criteria at all times and some institutions were initially puzzled by – and some even hostile to – their cluster allocation and critical friend. However, in time the response from institutions to this support model has been almost entirely positive. The clusters have developed collaborative relationships for innovation development and research that will be sustained beyond the funded phase of Pathfinder. The Programme has presented opportunities for an enhanced understanding of the many-faceted role of the critical friend in a variety of contexts, and refining and developing the model to offer transferable and scalable institutional and programme-level support for strategic change.