Using networks to innovate Workshop facilitated at SEDA Conference November, 2016

1. Slide 1
From conundrum to
collaboration, conversation to
connection: using networks to
innovate
SUE MORÓN-GARCÍA & ANDREW MIDDLETON
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE & SHEFFIELD HALLAM
UNIVERSITY
#SEDA_NETS @andrewmid@DrSueCELT
Workshop proposal
Session Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, delegates will be able to:
• Identify conundrums that can be solved by the power of networking
• Identify what networks (internal & external to the institution) they have that could help with their own
conundrums
• Evaluate the impact of networks on their own practice
• Create an action plan / strategy to address one of their conundrums
Session Outline (no more than 300 words)
Key issues / themes to be addressed are:
Multi-disciplinary and multi-professional collaboration;
Collaboration between institutions as well as within institutions
We know that networks play an important role in academic life (Moron-Garcia, 2013) especially when dealing
with the “unhomeliness” (Manathunga, 2007) of life as an academic developer, working across disciplinary and
professional borders. This workshop will showcase an ongoing learning space collaboration that started over a
casual conversation at a network meeting sharing conundrums and developed into a wider conversation across
two institutions at different stages of learning space development. Between us, we will reflect on the power of
conversation (Barrett et al., 2004), practices learnt and shared and highlight the importance of building inter-
professional networks within and across institutions in order to inform and guide change (Pennington, 2003).
As leaders in the academy academic developers are often given the tricky institutional conundrums to solve,
however the delights of our role are the opportunities to build those networks, drawing on the generosity of
our various communities enabling us to ask the awkward questions (Cousin, 2013) and answer them together
working as a “critical friend in the academy” (Handal, 2008).
The activity will allow us to draw on our experiences of engaging in conversations for innovation. We will
reflect how our motivations and purposes are different and will change throughout a collaboration, and how
we sustain or conclude our work. A number of questions will be addressed with the aim of developing further

2. collaborations among participants, sharing knowledge and establishing that you don’t need to know what you
need to know before starting the conversation:
How do you ask for help?
Who do you ask for help?
How do you build networks within and between institutions?

3. Slide 2
Surviving and thriving
#SEDA_NETS
Locating this in the context of this conference: how do we as educational developers survive
and thrive?
- we often find ourselves juggling multiple areas of work;
- we use evidence from research, scholarship and experience to inform development,
acting a critical friend (Handal 2008) and with a ludic function (Land, 2004), speaking
truth to power.
However it can feel like a Sisyphean task and leave us with conundrums that are difficult to
resolve with the resources or knowledge we have / that are available.
We look to our networks to help us with these, either intentionally or as happenstance,
revelations through conversation.
As an aside, it is important to acknowledge the difficult / discomforting nature of academic
development and offer others a narrative about the power of generosity, the need to be
brave, the importance of trust and openness and suggest where we might draw strength
from.
N.B. Peseta observed that academic developers ‘have tended to report victory narratives
that defend and extend our relevance as a community, rather than making public the intense
difficulty of our work’ (2007, p. 17)
We want to discuss with you the importance of networks in sustaining us in this context and
encourage you to identify and make use of those networks.

4. Slide 3
Network
Learning
community
Community
of Practice
#SEDA_NETS Tweetchat Q1: What do we mean by networks?
But first we need to consider what we mean by networks and locate this in the literature:
We hear frequent talk and claims about the existence or creation of communities of
practice, however this term is often incorrectly applied to what are really networks and/or
learning communities (loose epistemic groups or those coming together to investigate a
particular issue), moreover we know communities of practice come about / are not created,
that they have reified practices and rules that come about from a shared domain of practice.
This suggests that this relationship has been in existence for some time or, at a minimum,
that the practices are established. Networks may be associated with individuals or
organisations, but they seem to denote a loser more fluid association. Another way of
looking at it is that networks and learning communities might be stages on the road to
communities of practice (though not all will make it and communities of practice may exist
within networks).
Network???
A distributed community of practice (lave & wenger, 1991)?
loose epistemic groups, not everyone will know or come across each other, networks within
networks …. (Brown & Duguid, 2001)
- No shared understanding or wider purpose other than a common interest
“No agreement exists on the definition and types of networks” re Horelli (2009)
1. “wholeness of communication i.e. system of independent nodes and links”,
2. “contains dynamic elements and processes that reject any uniformity” p. 207
Re Wenger (1998) networks are about relationships and flows of information p.287 c of p
about practice that comes out of this, networks less cohesive

5. Do learning communities sit somewhere in between?
Learning communities (collaborative communities, critical friends groups): “a group of
educators that meets regularly, shares expertise, and works collaboratively to improve
teaching skills and the academic performance of students.”
http://edglossary.org/professional-learning-community/
We know CoPs have reified practices and rules, networks? Is it about location / close
proximity? Size, function? Not sure …. But if we start to think about our networks this may
help us.
Tweet chat Q1: what do we mean by networks?

6. Slide 4
Networks?
Which networks are you involved with (for work purposes)?
What motivates your involvement?
How do you engage? What responsibilities do you have?
What do you get from involvement?
4thNovember2016
4#SEDA_NETS Tweetchat Q2: What motivates and sustains your network engagement?
So bearing all this in mind think about your work networks (we’re bounding this discussion).
Think about these questions individually and then discuss in pairs / small groups.
The idea is to think about where we get strength / how we can support each other.
Help you make a case for involvement in networks & their importance in developing our
practice and advancing our learning.
Once the general discussion is done concentrate on What motivates your involvement? why
did you connect to this network, group, association, community?
Let’s also consider what we as members do to manage and set expectations in terms of
others motivations, what responsibilities do we have to ourselves, our colleagues, our
institutions, the networks we use / join?
Tweet chat Q2: what motivates and sustains your network engagement?

7. Slide 5
Challenges & points of comparison
Institutional adoption of Surface Pros
Development of institutional approaches to use digital
technology for teaching and learning
Learning Space development
Desire to move to more active teaching and learning
Capacity issues
#SEDA_NETS
Setting the scene for our collaboration
How ours came about – meeting at HEDG, discussion of approaches to tech use and
development of learning spaces in HEIs, shared conundrum
Set up discussion visit, to view progress and share ideas, expertise.
What made this happen?
- Shared challenges, even though at different stages
Two heads of centre wanted it to happen
Colleagues interested in finding out what was going on in another institution
Similar Uni context
Rhetorical question leading to next slide: How important is like-mindedness, comparable
situations, similar or dissimilar knowledge sets to an effective collaboration? Do you need to
know exactly what you have to offer before starting a collaboration?
How can one network grow another? Inter-relationships

8. Slide 6
What factors support or hinder network
development & sustainability?
strengths weaknesses
opportunities threats
You
Your
environment
#SEDA_NETS Tweetchat Q3: What factors are important in effective networks?
Group discussion
Think about your experiences of working in networks – internal or external to your
institutions
• Are there essential factors that need to be in place or help a network to be effective?
• What are the Strengths and Opportunities that lead to an effective network?
• What hinders their development? How can you make time / gain support?
Tweet chat Q3: what factors are important in effective networks?

9. Slide 7
Networks for innovation
Take your problem and turn it into an opportunity
Associate: explore it by mind-mapping, drawing or brainstorming possibilities
Question: critique, refine and redefine your problem statement
Observe: see how your problem looks in different contexts. Does it grow or
dissipate. Why?
Network: Find some people just like you (somewhere else in the world?)
Experiment: Take risks, fail early and fail often and learn
#SEDA_NETS Tweetchat Q4: How do we ensure networks make a difference?
We set out to discuss how networks can aid innovation, so now we want to discuss the
innovation process and the role of networks within this.
Innovators are great but often these innovations stay with the innovators and don’t get out
of that context / application / instantiation.
What is the relationship between the networks we value and academic innovation?
Deviant developers! - Innovation conjures up images of lone mavericks – to what extent are
networks the innovators and the mavericks?
To what extent can the educational developer be provocative, social artist, maverick or
deviant?! Or is our network role to be compliant and grounded? Is there a conflict of
interests for us as networked educational developers?
We learn from failure and rethinking approaches after failure can be a really rich experience,
however, how often can we fail?
How do we ensure that ideas and activities take flight?
How can we support those innovators and ….
Also what supports and sustains those pathfinders?
Or are we the innovators in this context?
Tweet chat Q4: How do we ensure networks make a difference?

10. Slide 8
Innovator Ground Rules (IDEO)
One conversation at a time
Stay focused
Encourage wild ideas
Defer judgement
Build on the ideas of others
Focused chaos
Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the loan genius
Try stuff and ask forgiveness (not permission)
Fail often in order to succeed sooner
#SEDA_NETS
Wise ground rules for innovation – how useful are these for dispersed networks?
Risk and failure
We know failure can lead to innovation – and may even be necessary for innovation.
How often in our institutional role can we fail?
Rhetorical: How can cross-institutional networking and collaboration protect us and
protect innovation? How can we share our failures and move forward? (safe spaces, trust,
courage …)

11. Slide 9
Effective collaborations and networking
In your pair/ small group:
 Select one of the scenarios or agree your own
 Design a model for effective collaboration or networking
 (play this for real and get to the detail)
 We will ask each group one or two points about what makes their collaboration or
network effective
 What strategies do you have for ensuring your collaboration or network is effective?
(15 minutes in total)
#SEDA_NETS
Now there’s a chance to discuss how you might use networks to solve your own conundrums.:
Example networking scenarios
The co-development of CPD offers and session plans
The University has made a strategic commitment to developing Future Learning Spaces. This
discourse creates an opportunity to engage our academic staff in developing more student-centred
active learning pedagogies – something that our current classroom stock inhibits.
To challenge our academic community it would help me to collaborate with other universities to
validate strategic direction, co-develop CPD and provide mutual support.
Mini-MOOC Swap Shop
Following this year’s NSS it is evident that my University needs to develop its approach to supporting
tutoring and academic advising. My PVC is keen that the tutoring role is valued by all academics and
has suggested we develop a mini-MOOC.
I know about tutoring but I have little experience of MOOCs.
Responding to changes in Disabled Student Allowance funding
The change to Government funding of DSA require my team to develop an alternative strategy to
replace note takers. This is an important and sensitive issue. The obvious direction would seem to
involve technology. I need to work with others in the University and externally to quickly mange the
risk and come up with suitable alternatives.
Understanding our role in the TEF
What is my institutional role in responding to the TEF? The risk of not responding to this effectively is
immense. A mentoring relationship would be really helpful.
Re-imagining the design of University PC Labs
The University PC Lab has had its day. Technology is changing and students are distracted by social
media leading to loss of engagement in class. I need to conduct research involving the wide range of
academic users and their students and then I need to generate more effective, sustainable designs
for learning space designs in which the use of technology is key.
I can’t be alone…
In your pair/small group:

12. • Select a scenario or agree your own
• Draw upon your own conundrums, experiences, perceptions
• Design and defend a model for effective collaboration or networking
• We will ask each group one or two points about how an effective collaboration or network can be
formed
• What strategies do you have for ensuring your collaboration or network is effective?

13. Slide 10
So where are we now?
Create & sharing action plans:
Where are you and what do you need to progress your networks?
Consider how you sustain your networks
#SEDA_NETS Tweetchat Q5: Tips for effective collaboration or networking
Tweet chat Q5: tips for effective collaboration or networking
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