Leading from the middle
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Education Technology is changing fast. Agile and iterative cycles of development as well as teacher-informed strategies are needed. How can we balance these needs when top-down management takes so long to negotiate? The answer is leadership from the middle.
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Leading from the middle
- 1. R. Springett. WelTec Education Technology Manager Leading from the Middle
- 2. Why lead from the middle with education technology? Drivers The pace of technology change. The reach of education technology. Education Technology
- 3. Why lead from the middle with education technology? Drivers The pace of technology change. The reach of education technology. Current solutions and methods Taking the Lead (2008) eLearning Maturity Model (2012) eLearning Guidelines (2014) Where does this come from? What is agile and iterative? How is Leading from the Middle different? It has pace. “An repeated process cycled with increased pace.” New York Times 2010.
- 4. The project will look at the capabilities and permissions needed in order to Lead eLearning change from the Middle. Leadership From the Middle Faculty Leading from the Middle fits with institutional approaches to self-assessment and continual improvement. Leading from the Middle is the driving gear. Capabilities and Permissions Organisational Fit
- 5. The Project Approach Theorize • Permissions • Capabilities Collect • Request permissions • Confidence we have the capabilities Identify • Permissions required • Capabilities needed Report • Share • Iterate
- 6. The Benefits R. Springett. WelTec Education Technology Manager Clarity of staff capabilities needed to lead education technology development. Understanding of the permissions needed to lead education technology development. Education technology development aligned with self assessment cycle. Teaching and learning practice will drive technology use. Investment guided by a cycle of development that is based on activity that improves outcomes and student experiences.
Editor's Notes
- I’d like to talk about managing or leading change in education technology. Ed Tech because it is an area that is changing so fast and its reach is so complete in an education organisation.
- Current approaches tend to focus on the need for clear direction. Some support flexible approaches. All require feedback or consultation fro education practitioners. The measures of progress, quality maturity are similar. Ultimately, though, it is about improvements in learner outcomes and experiences. Having worked both outside and inside large institutions one thing is apparent – it takes time to bring a strategy to bear in an institution. Longer than it does for a customer-orientated business. There are plenty of reasons for this – the point is, for whatever reasons, education institutions are often slow to adopt new practice. Particularly practice that is consulted and informed by the teaching and learning staff. That is a point many case studies laud – that their strategy was informed by the practitioners. But by the time the feedback has benne gathered, the strategy developed and agreed and the mandate to change had been released, and practice begins to change two things have happened: Firstly, the change is someone else’s idea. Ownership of the initiative is no longer the teaching staffs, but it is management asking for the teaching staff to deliver their interpretation of the feedback given some time ago. Secondly, things have moved on. Ed Tech is moving very quickly. If you are not changing practice on a two to three year cycle then you are dropping behind. Leading from the Middle is different because it is quicker and the ownership of the change ideas reside with faculty. This is possible because the process mirrors business practice. It is agile and iterative. If we ignore the buzz words and think about the process we see that the whole business is quickened. This also has the affect of reducing risk. It does not matter so much if the approach is going to change every year. The cycle of testing will also provide robust evidence for long term investment.
- So what does leading from the middle consist of? I imagine it to be a department, led by a middle manager, charged with negotiating a faculty perspective on eLearning and feeding the aggregate view into leadership strategy. This manager will also have to embed a process of apply and review, and ensure communication between the stakeholders is clear and purposeful. This, however, is not what this project is about. This project is about finding out what sort of person this middle manger is and what sort of world they will need in order to be successful in leading eLearning change. So far we have talked about a single group and manager but this model could apply to groups and staff throughout an organisation. The key is understanding the capabilities and environment needed for leadership to flourish.
- The project will make an educated guess about what sort of skills are needed and work with a case study that is willing to provide permissions on a as-and-when-needed basis. The case study is WelTec. The Ed Tech Manager will be the test subject. The project will run from July 2015 to July 2017. At which point I hope to see faculty using their cycle of self assessment to inform their practice around eLearning, and, importantly, for the Ed tech Manager to be able to take the findings across departments and make evidence-based recommendations to senior management. This then results in an institutional eLearning approach which is applied and revised annually. The Project itself will analyse the interactions of the Manager (using third parties) and identify the skills applied in the process. It will also analyse the permissions and processes needed to complete the case study. This data will be compared against current role descriptions and authorities to identify areas that require change. The outcome is a new profile and role description describing a manager capable of leading and managing ongoing change in eLearning in a tertiary institution.
- As well as helping employ people and train people to be better suited to the task they are required to do, the process of managing ongoing change in eLearning provides significant benefits. Investment will be underpinned by practice and evidence of improvements in teaching and learning. Faculty will own the strategy, reducing barriers introduced by disconnection through time and communication. Teaching and learning practice will be guided by technology use. Students will have better experiences, be more engaged and have better outcomes.