Staff development for technology enabled learning: A devolved approach

The management of the university is moving rapidly toward a more devolved and enabling model that puts the decision making where the educational activities take place, to provide for greater responsiveness to the needs of students, and a greater level of ownership and effective change. The devolution of the implementation of LTA strategy to the Schools was therefore seen as the most effective way of embedding change. The Schools were asked to respond to three key trends: flexibility - in terms of delivery; the increasing diversity of students; and opportunities for realising the potential of the appropriate use of technology enabled learning (TEL). Schools were urged to focus on flexible delivery and to scope out ways of using TEL to achieve cost effective flexible delivery while not losing sight of the social and collegial aspect of education. All Schools responded with their own LTA strategies and implementation plans.

The devolved approach led to the Schools asking for more staff development in the area of TEL - The Learning and Teaching Institute (LTI) was encouraged to synthesise these "bottom up" needs with the "top down" requests. The LTI thus found itself caught in the middle - in what has been termed the "implementation gap." In designing our response to the Schools, we were aware of the disadvantages of devolution - such as the difficulty of delivering a central initiative, lack of local ownership, poor dissemination, danger of duplication of effort, and the possible lack of coherence in infrastructural support (especially for a TEL initiative). The paper describes how we tackled these obstacles in a variety of Schools, each distinctive in their own way.

This paper will outline educational development strategies and tactics for success in a devolved institutional setting with case studies from the LTI engagement with Schools. Our response ranged from implementing one-to-one C&IT updating; to structured sessions in managing online learning for all staff in a particular School (including administrative and technical staff); to bringing a number of Schools together, for example to create an online dissertation unit for over 400 students where 60 tutors met to agree assessment criteria. Our strategy saw us moving beyond what we commonly think of as "staff development" and workshops, to action research projects, and hopefully, the embedding of good practice in C&IT in learning at teaching at the university.