Learning from the UKeU experience

Organisational cultures

and processes

Gráinne Conole and Annamaria Carusi, University of Southampton

ICE2 Conference, Highham Hall, 25th February 2005

The e-Learning Research Centre

• HEFCE-funded– Manchester – end to end e-learning lifecycle– Southampton – pedagogical aspects– HE Academy – student experience and

dissemination

• Areas of work– E-learning road map – 12 substantive research

questions– Lessons learnt from the UKeU experience

Context

• Desire to remain a global player in HE

• Perceived need to create one front presenting UK HE

e-Learning – perceived benefits

• Constructivist principles and collaborative learning

• Activity-based learning

• Student-centred learning

• Pedagogical flexibility

UKeU aspirations

• Would be different from, as well as ‘better’ than the other current offerings: ‘better’, not only in terms of its offerings, but also in terms of being proactive for tomorrow’s needs

• Capitalise on the UK’s strengths, knowledge, reputation and experience and exploit the opportunities provided by the ‘new economy’ technology and by the rapidly expanding markets

• Respond to demands and adapt in advance of others and so stay ahead

• To take a global lead by grasping new ideas in imaginative ways – even though some of them were recognised as being risky

UKeU aims

• Flagship provision of UK higher education excellence using digital channels, primarily abroad but also at home

• Support and promote the expansion of lifelong learning at higher education levels, particularly in the form of continuing professional development

• Courage and facilitate new thinking within UK universities and help them develop and made imaginative use of the emerging e-learning technologies

UKeU aims

• Flagship provision of UK higher education excellence using digital channels, primarily abroad but also at home

• Support and promote the expansion of lifelong learning at higher education levels, particularly in the form of continuing professional development

• Courage and facilitate new thinking within UK universities and help them develop and made imaginative use of the emerging e-learning technologies

UKeU aims

• Flagship provision of UK higher education excellence using digital channels, primarily abroad but also at home

• Support and promote the expansion of lifelong learning at higher education levels, particularly in the form of continuing professional development

• Courage and facilitate new thinking within UK universities and help them develop and made imaginative use of the emerging e-learning technologies

Methodology

• Data sources– UKeU documentation – aspirational

aspects– Interviews with key stakeholders – what

actually happened

• Data analysis– Transcripts coded– Themes Identified

Contrasts

• Documents: forward-looking, aspirations

• Interviews: with hindsight, what became of those aspirations?

Themes

• Background and context– International context– National context– Institutional context

• Pedagogical approach– Underlying pedagogical model– Nature and types of activities– Subject differences

Themes continued

• Development of the platform– Architecture and specification– Learning objects– Comparison with other VLEs

• Nature of the organisation– International processes– Relationships to HEIs and SUN

• Organisational culture

Focus for today

• Organisational processes– Helps understand way in which it

operated and developed– Comparison of documented aspirations

and the reality of organisational processes

– Impact of different cultural views

Findings

• Emergent findings– Corporate/academic partnership– Need for processes to ensure smooth

running of the business– No processes that addressed the

differences between different sectors– Accentuation of corporate nature at

expense of academic aspects

Aspirations

• Effective processes

• Right teams of expertise

• Forging new models of learning

• Production, development, administration of materials on a larger scale than before

Findings from the interviews

• Frustration over the last of processes and organisation

• Confusion over relationship to HEIs• Contract process lengthy and complex• HEI choice politically driven and from a business

case• Tension between corporate and academic

cultures• Difficulty with organisational processes• Role of learning technologists unclear• Not taking account of different nature of the HEIs

“But again I think what is important is your understanding of the context that we are working within was that the Vice Chancellors, or some of the Vice Chancellors, had bought into the vision of UKU. They in turn went along to their people within the Universities and said that we want a…our institution to be involved in this which then de-stabilised fairly mature systems and infrastructures.”

“And, therefore, what you had was an element of resistance and I wouldn’t go so far as to say subversion but it wasn’t far off it that basically there was a belief at that time that if they just held down long enough we would no longer become a problem as indeed proved to be the case.”

“An ideal model was that we would get involved as early as possible, from the day it won that potential partner-University […] we should be involved, even at the point of expressing an interest come to that […] one of the most valuable things that we could do, we could go along and scope them out really early…”

“You know, this was an example of the tension between commercial and academic values always going in favour of the commercial side […]paramount for the organisation was doing the deals, getting the people signed up and there was little time for anything else besides that…the drive it was […] getting the contracts signed and [when we] pushed and pushed and […] sometimes we […] got somewhere but […] even when [we] apparently won and got a chance to evaluate a proposal prior to contract, in practice, though, okay we did the evaluation but there wasn’t really an interest in taking any notice of that, particularly if what the evaluation said [was] “hold on, we need to slow up here”.”

“I think one of the difficulties possibly was that UKeU did not have a staff development remit in terms of the pedagogical remit. The staff development and staff framing side tended to focus on the use of platforms, which is obviously important for how the technology was used, so there wasn't a structure as such, although there were people working towards it, there wasn't a structure as such to concentrate on the pedagogical approach so you did tend to, learning technologies to work very much on a one to one basis, one to small group basis with this project.”

“perceptions of what our role as learning technologists was, and that perception within UKeU itself. The technology was of overriding importance in UKeU for a lot of people and the learning technologists […] felt we were on the back pedal. Most people saw us as telling people how to press the buttons. How to put learning objects in and how to do the technical side. For quite a while there was no real understanding of what a learning technologist should be doing.”

“a lot of it was misunderstanding what we did, or what we were able to do. A number of us had come from an academic environment, this is much more for people who come from a commercial background. … The predominant culture was commercial and could have done with being more educational. I think HEIs would have understood that better…”

“I’ve read all the reports in the press of what went wrong, what people believed to have gone wrong, but nobody actually brought that up. There was a cultural misunderstanding between the academic and corporate world.”

“The actual complexities…it’s difficult enough working in one HEI and you’ve got an equivalent of a learning systems team within an HEI. That is challenging enough, changing that culture [from] within. And we were coming along taking on a multiplicity of cultures and the problem was that some of the people I was dealing with within UKEU had no conception of what we were talking about. As far as they were concerned these were clients. This was just another client and this was washing machines that were being sold. I have had people banging my table saying “I want you to do this” and I’d say “No, and don’t talk to me like that. I ain’t doing that because it is wrong”.”

“An interesting thing was, what the product was. What it became to me, they weren’t selling education, they were selling the environment. Whether they liked it or not, what they invariably ended up to…it seemed to be…we ended up in the awful situation that for a while until it was too late almost, well it was too late, but what was the UKeU was a UKeU learning environment and what, therefore, from a marketing sales perspective, that’s much easier to deal with…but sell washing machines….”

Conclusions

• Clash between corporate and academic cultures

• Profit driven• Marketing problems • Unrealistic timeframe / deadlines• Contracts before LT involvement• Course portfolio too wide from the

beginning• No attempt to smooth way for cross-sector

and cross-cultural relationships• Absence of end-to-end process models

Next steps

• Analysis of interviews with HEIs

• Evaluation of the platform and its use

• Categorisation of the types of learning activities

• Evaluation of the student experience

Learning from the UKeU experience

Organisational cultures

and processes

Gráinne Conole and Annamaria Carusi, University of Southampton

ICE2 Conference, Highham Hall, 25th February 2005