Blogging From ASCILITE: Day 3 - Sessions
The conference closed with an excellent day of interesting sessions. Jeremy Williams from the fully online university, Universitas 21 Global. He gave a great overview of the past, present, and future environments that universities have and will be operating in. He pointed out that as a whole, the funding that was once available for online education projects has for the most part used itself up. He gave a great quote, I only wish I had noted down the source: "Universities are not in the campus business, but in the education business." To me, this puts the emphasis on the learning itself, not the facilities or the methods used to achieve the learning. He gave a startling figure from a recent Merrill Lynch survey which estimated that the growth in the number of individuals currently participating in higher education in China will grow from the current 3% to 20% by 2020. If this prediction is accurate, there will be 240 million Chinese students wanting tertiary education 15 years from now. It really makes you think how current education models will stand up to that level of demand. Jeremy closed by pointing out a website, No Significant Difference, which supported a book written by Dr Richard E Clark who argues that there is no significant difference in the outcomes of learners regardless of subject delivery mode.
Rob Phillips from Murdoch University followed with his presentation on change management strategies for instructional technology implementations, a topic of significant interest to me. He discussed Theory in Use vs Espoused Theories as they relate both to the change management of learning systems as well as teaching and learning practice itself. He argued that practice differed wildly from supported theories and asked the question, "Why is teaching and learning practice not informed by the research?" He wasn't able to get an answer from the audience. Rob also talked about three approaches to change management as it is used within education:
Top-Down: Where change is policy-driven and therefore not easily accepted by free-thinking academics who want to know the rational behind the change and to be able to become involved the change process.
Bottom-Up: Where change occurs as a grass-roots movement but lack buy-in from senior administrators and management and is also not effectively coordinated across the university.
Middle-Out: Where middle managers, usually within Teaching & Learning Centres, work as change agents to influence both the executive and the academic community and are therefore more successful in implementing and institutionalising change.
Rob went on to describe that the Middle-Out approach required these middle managers to be proactive, consultative, and closely involved in operational planning, as well as adopting a role of change agents, not just act in support of the change. All up a very practical and interesting presentation. I will definitely be reading Rob's full paper.
Next up was Phillip Uys from Charles Sturt University. Phillip has just completed a study of the organisational structure of 39 Australian universities, looking at how they structure their teaching & learning support centers as well as their teaching & learning systems groups. His study found, among other things, that the majority of universities (60%) chose to organisationally align their teaching & learning systems groups with their teaching & learning centres, rather than with their IT divisions. He did not however that a significant number of these (23%) used a distributed model where teaching & learning advisors and technical support staff were located within the schools/faculties they supported, but were centrally managed as a cohesive unit. He argued that this distributed model achieved the best balance of alignment and proximity to students and teachers, and efficiencies and strategic direction achieved by central coordination.
After a great closing session which included presentations on digital storytelling and learning design, I left the conference this afternoon feeling as though I had gained a very useful insight into the academic world. I was interested to note that during the closing session, the affiliations of the delegates was described, and the number of people who identified themselves as Professional - Managers, was very low (below 10% from memory). I was disappointed to see that not many IT and division managers had attended, and thought that if more IT managers, project managers, learning systems experts, and division heads attended these types of conferences, we would know an awful lot more about the educational needs of our clients, and would therefore be able to develop and deploy systems and technologies that more closely met their needs. I hope to be able to make it to next year's ASCILITE conference, and will encourage more mangers who are involved with learning systems and technologies to do the same.
Rob Phillips from Murdoch University followed with his presentation on change management strategies for instructional technology implementations, a topic of significant interest to me. He discussed Theory in Use vs Espoused Theories as they relate both to the change management of learning systems as well as teaching and learning practice itself. He argued that practice differed wildly from supported theories and asked the question, "Why is teaching and learning practice not informed by the research?" He wasn't able to get an answer from the audience. Rob also talked about three approaches to change management as it is used within education:
Rob went on to describe that the Middle-Out approach required these middle managers to be proactive, consultative, and closely involved in operational planning, as well as adopting a role of change agents, not just act in support of the change. All up a very practical and interesting presentation. I will definitely be reading Rob's full paper.
Next up was Phillip Uys from Charles Sturt University. Phillip has just completed a study of the organisational structure of 39 Australian universities, looking at how they structure their teaching & learning support centers as well as their teaching & learning systems groups. His study found, among other things, that the majority of universities (60%) chose to organisationally align their teaching & learning systems groups with their teaching & learning centres, rather than with their IT divisions. He did not however that a significant number of these (23%) used a distributed model where teaching & learning advisors and technical support staff were located within the schools/faculties they supported, but were centrally managed as a cohesive unit. He argued that this distributed model achieved the best balance of alignment and proximity to students and teachers, and efficiencies and strategic direction achieved by central coordination.
After a great closing session which included presentations on digital storytelling and learning design, I left the conference this afternoon feeling as though I had gained a very useful insight into the academic world. I was interested to note that during the closing session, the affiliations of the delegates was described, and the number of people who identified themselves as Professional - Managers, was very low (below 10% from memory). I was disappointed to see that not many IT and division managers had attended, and thought that if more IT managers, project managers, learning systems experts, and division heads attended these types of conferences, we would know an awful lot more about the educational needs of our clients, and would therefore be able to develop and deploy systems and technologies that more closely met their needs. I hope to be able to make it to next year's ASCILITE conference, and will encourage more mangers who are involved with learning systems and technologies to do the same.
posted by Kate at
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