Pass the SoLT

The standout theme over the last week has been the importance of communication. This topic has come up in several different contexts from questions about 'why do I blog?' to 'how come students don't seem to know important stuff?,' including how to access their online learning environment.

In a posting a few weeks ago, I mentioned how I regard communication as one of the most important components of good leadership and effective change management. This view is solidly backed up by the academic literature. Unfortunately, it's much harder to apply the principles and practices written about change and communication in large organizations when there are so many stakeholders and competing demands on our time. At best in my own work the art of effective communication remains a work in progress.

I'm certainly no expert on the topic but at a basic level there are two considerations that need to be taken in to account when thinking about developing a communication strategy: (i) the message and (ii) the mechanism. Alignment between the two 'm and ms' of communication (along with identifying the audience) is crucial as too often this is left to chance.

It may seem a bit over the top but in my own case I actually have a Communication Plan for this blog as when I first started 'Pass the SoLT' it was important for me to define what I was wanting to achieve, who was the audience, what was the message, etc. If I was going to devote valuable time to maintaining a blog then I needed to be understand 'why', especially if the initiative was going to be sustainable.

After all, we know the history of innovations in using new technology in education is littered with startup initiatives that people and institutions fail to sustain. In many respects, such initiatives do more harm than good as they reinforce the technology expectation cycle (Cuban, 1986). Put another way, they do nothing to break the cycle of hope and hype and send the message that teaching with technology is a fringe activity for those on the edges.

Importantly, for the record, one of the reasons I continue to blog is that I firmly believe we send mixed or even quite contradictory messages to our staff/students by expecting them to teach/learn in new ways with new technologies when we don't practice what we preach by using the same technologies. Moreover, it's not until you actually use a technology that you begin to better understand how the innovation can be used (or should not be used) for educational purposes.

My experience over the last year in using Twitter has certainly reinforced this point. In a similar vein, knowing how to use a new technology and modeling its use was why we felt it was important to use video to directly talk to potential participants for a research project that I'm currently leading on the experiences of first-time distance learners. This project involves distance students recording video diaries of their stories and experiences using Sony Bloggie cameras; and the following example was my crude effort a few months ago to introduce the project using the same technology.

Stepping down from my soapbox, but extending this theme, this week I came across the following two videos which underscore the value of effective communication and engaging directly with your key stakeholders. The first video is the latest edition of the Vice Chancellor's Youtube series targeted at Massey University students. Note how the message about the digitalization of the learning experience is positive, set in the context and language of students, and the video helps to maintain forward momentum, which is an important factor in John Kotter's principles and eight steps of successful change.

The second video comes from the Open University in the United Kingdom. The point I take from this video is the importance of proactive communication with your stakeholders and building a sense of anticipation around a proposed change or innovation. In my experience the 'no surprise policy' is always a good strategy along with keeping your 'customers' informed and 'on board'. Of course, the challenge is to deliver on any raised expectations as a result of this type of communication but I'm reliably told that institutional branding is more about image than substance.

Click here to view the video...

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/11363089/peepz-movie

Finally, on a personal note, the reflective lesson or takeaway from this week is a pledge to think in more creative and innovative ways about how to communicate key information and the meta-level messages we want to convey to staff, students and the wider university community. To borrow an overused quote from Gandhi:

'You must be the change you wish to see in the world'

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of leadership. On a similar theme this week I watched a video presented by Professor Geoff Scott prepared for the Massey University senior leadership team in which he talked about his research on leadership in higher education.

A key finding from the study of senior leaders in the Australian university sector is the importance of 'listening, linking and leading' - in this order. Although I read the full research report, Learning Leaders in Times of Change, a year or so ago, Geoff's presentation got me thinking about the leadership challenge in the context of professional development in the area of online, blended and distance education.

In my own work, three key words standout and inform my thinking about leadership in this area: (i) service, (ii) communication and (iii) impact. Put simply, I often remind myself of the importance of serving or leading with impact in a manner that keeps everyone aware and informed of the end goals that we are trying to achieve. The latter point underscores the importance of communication that builds a sense of purpose (vision) and collective ownership which in my experience is crucial to any successful and sustainable initiative.

You could say these three key words form my mantra for leadership, with a strong emphasis on impact. After all, there is no sensible reason to dedicate hours to an initiative or innovation which is unlikely to have significant impact... what's the point!

It also follows that people are central to effective leadership as it is almost impossible to make an impact in a large project or organization by working on your own. Thus, teamwork is vital along with leadership through influence and networking rather than through direct management.

But putting all the leadership ingredients together to achieve tangible outcomes is no easy matter, as evidenced by the challenges in the area of academic development. The history of academic and professional development in higher education has been problematic for many years. On a regular basis senior managers question the value of academic development, and academic developers--people employed to support academics to enhance the quality of teaching and learning--usually struggle to report clear outcomes as a result of their time and effort.

However, in the current higher education environment it is essential that central service units such as centres for academic development are able to demonstrate their return on investment, including both tangible and non-tangible benefits. The days of assuming benefits automatically follow from the work of a team of academic developers are long gone. And rightly so! The old excuse or argument that evidence of impact is near impossible to demonstrate simply does not hold up in the age of performance management.

Having said that, identifying the most appropriate performance measures of impact is crucial as I am mindful of Einstein's warning that "Not everything that can be counted counts, not everything that counts can be counted".

To address this leadership challenge the Council of Australian Directors of Academic Development (CADAD) recently supported a project to develop a set of benchmarks for academic development centres. CADAD report that they undertook this project for two interconnected reasons.

First, academic development (or the expectations of what it should involve) is changing as universities respond to more competitive higher education environments. Second, institutional performance in learning and teaching is now more important to university reputations and is subject to performance funding. Thus, the performance of academic development units has become increasingly under the spotlight.

The project identified eight key domains of practice for academic development units that could be used to benchmark performance. Each domain is divided into several sub-domains.

Domain 1: Strategy Policy and Governance

1.1 Strategic advice
1.2 Strategic planning
1.3 Governance
1.4 Policy Development and implementation
1.5 Strategic initiatives

Domain 2: Quality of Learning and Teaching

2.1 Standards
2.2 Evaluation and improvement
2.2.1 Student feedback
2.2.2 Peer review
2.2.3 Curriculum review

Domain 3: Scholarship of Learning and Teaching

3.1 Grants and Awards
3.2 Significant projects and research into learning and teaching
3.3 Research into Academic Development

Domain 4: Professional Development

4.1 Planning
4.2 Management
4.3 Delivery

Domain 5: Credit-bearing Programs in Higher Education

5.1 Program and Course Design
5.2 Management
5.3 Delivery

Domain 6: Curriculum Development

6.1 Curriculum planning and Design
6.2 Education resource Development

Domain 7: Engagement

7.1 internal engagement
7.2 external engagement

Domain 8: Effectiveness

8.1 Mission and strategy Alignment
8.2 Leadership and management
8.3 Impact
8.4 Quality Assurance and improvement

Each of these domains and sub-domains is assessed on a five point scale as described below:

1. Beginning / Developing
3. Functional / Proficient
5. Accomplished / Exemplary

The benchmarks have been developed to support both self-assessment and benchmarking with partners. They come with a set of templates to support the benchmarking exercise.

Although the benchmarks are light in terms of identifying the explicit theories which inform practice, professional development, decision-making and performance reporting, they provide a useful framework for developing a whole of institution approach to listening, linking and leading in this area. With a stronger theoretical or philosophical statement supporting the nature of academic development, they should help leaders and micro leaders within these centres to understand the strategic potential of professional development, and to evaluate and enhance academic development unit performance regardless of the design and delivery model.

That said, the relationship between the benchmarks and previous benchmarks developed for professional development in online, blended and distance education (e.g., ACODE Benchmarks) is unclear and there is potential to merge or weave some of these elements into the proposed overarching set of benchmarks for academic development centres. But this is a job for another day.

I get a little tired of hearing people complain about the current state of technology-enhanced learning in their institution without offering solutions to the problems they raise. Typically they assign or direct blame for the lack of vision, support, infrastructure, and so on, towards senior staff in formal leadership roles. Without denying the importance of these leadership roles, including my own, the so-called leader is an easy scapegoat and much of this attention reflects a very narrow and traditional view of leadership.

In recent years the leadership literature has increasingly acknowledged the importance of micro leaders and distributed leadership models in the effectiveness and sustainability of any educational innovation. In light of this literature a key distinction needs to be made between (a) the leader, (b) leadership and (c) leading as all three layers of leadership--macro, mesa and micro--are essential in a modern organization.

In a similar vein, Tony Bates and Albert Sangra (2011) in their recent book on Managing Technology in Higher Education argue that leadership can be understood in terms of two different senses. Citing the work of Mintzberg (2009, pp. 65-66) the first is with regard to position and the led: the leader is in charge, motivates and inspires, elicits shock and awe….In the second sense, leadership is seen more broadly, often beyond formal authority: a leader is anyone who breaks new ground, sets direction that shows others the way.’

The concept of vision and lifting other peoples' aspirations of what is possible is common to many definitions of leadership. Notably, Michael Fullan argues that vision building rests heavily on the shoulders of micro leaders as top down visions can be blinding. These are the people who will ultimately determine whether specific innovations are successful and go on to become institutionalized features of the organization. In contrast to John Kotter, Fullan claims that vision is something you should build over time and end with rather than necessarily establishing at the outset.

The key point is that leadership is possible no matter where you are in an organization's hierarchy. And everyone can play a role in leading through influence. Sometimes the most influential people are opinion leaders who have the respect of their colleagues. I have found through my own experience that these are the people you need to establish strong working relationships with as they can be far more influential on the outcomes you wish to achieve than early adopters and centrally driven efforts.

With these general points is mind, I'm currently involved with colleagues from Charles Sturt University (CSU) in an interesting research project looking at different approaches to leadership in the context of blended, flexible and distance learning. The specific aim of the research is to build knowledge and understanding of the impact of distributive leadership approaches to transforming teaching and learning in relation to the new normal of distance education. The research involves eight stories or case studies of adaptation at CSU and Massey at the macro, meso and macro levels of the institution. More information about the project is available from the following link:

• Fostering institutional change through distributive leadership approaches: Stories of adaptation in blended and flexible learning and distance education.

On a related topic, I'm also centrally involved as an expert reviewer in the development of a suite of online professional development courses on university leadership and management through the Epigeum team at Imperial College. I was the person who originally proposed the development of this course and it has been an interesting project so far working with some leading scholars in the educational leadership literature. We hope to complete the beta version of these courses in the next few months.