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A university goes online: Avoiding throwing the innovative baby out with the strategic bath water
Ian C. Reid
Coordinator, Online Services
Flexible Learning Centre
University of South Australia
University managers can see the imperative of utilising Internet technologies in teaching and learning if their institutions are to survive. Innovative teachers are striving to invent new ways to harness technologies to enhance their students' learning experiences and to improve the effectiveness of their instruction. Yet between these two poles, working within that magnetic field we call a learning environment, students and staff in our universities, are struggling to find coherence and relevance in the technical solutions that are promoted by their academic leaders and technology advisers. What is required is a way to:
- incorporate the work of innovators and support the late adopters of technology
- cater for staff development needs, and the changing nature of academic work
- link online delivery with institutional strategy, technical viability and economic sustainability
- change resource development practices from the traditional multimedia product models to an online learning system view, involving devolved approaches, sometimes termed 'post-fordist'
- develop strategies that are agile and flexible, in order to be able to rapidly respond to changes in the external environment
- respond to the impact of the web on all facets of life, and in particular to harness the opportunities it presents a University as a whole, and individual teachers and learners
This paper describes the development of the online learning environment of the University of South Australia, UniSAnet, its features, and future prospects. In doing so, these requirements are shown to have shaped it and assisted the rapid growth in its use in a diverse, dual mode, multi-campus institution. Launched in March 1999, the primary aims of the UniSAnet project were to improve the promotion of the university's courses, to improve the flexibility of its learning environment by providing online learning and administrative resources, and to improve the institution's strategic advantage by doing this in a comprehensive and cost effective manner.
In order to do this the project had the following objectives:
- to develop an online presence for all staff, subjects and courses in the University
- to link this presence to online teaching and learning resources and to facilitate their enhancement by staff by providing easy to use tools which incorporated instructional design guidance
- to provide methods by which already existing learning resources could be re-used and re-packaged for the online environment
- to re-engineer corporate information management processes to give primacy to the online dimension, while maintaining quality
- to achieve all of the above in a sustainable manner without creating production 'bottlenecks'
UniSAnet enables any staff member to author web based learning resources that have one of three roles. The resources may be supplementary to other modes of teaching, they may complement current teaching in some way providing particular enhancements by their use of the online medium, or they may even replace previous teaching methods. By placing these choices in the hands of academics, and by incorporating instructional design guidance to staff as the resources are produced, using online wizards and forms, the problems of costly post-production work and consequent bottlenecks are avoided. UniSAnet's consistency and ease of use further facilitates professional development work, and provides learners and teachers with informed choices regarding the level of their engagement with resources delivered online.
Examples are provided of the types of online teaching and learning that UniSAnet has facilitated, in addition to qualitative and quantitative descriptions of the quality and depth of the pedagogical transformations it is effecting. Insights will also be provided regarding the implementation of an institution wide project, of particular interest to those facing similar challenges.
Contact person: Ian C. Reid. Email: ian.reid@unisa.edu.au
Voice: +61(0)8 8302 7074 Fax: +61(0)8 8302 6363
Please cite as: (2000). A university goes online: Avoiding throwing the innovative baby out with the strategic bath water. In Flexible Learning for a Flexible Society, Proceedings of ASET-HERDSA 2000 Conference. Toowoomba, Qld, 2-5 July. ASET and HERDSA.
http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/gen/aset/confs/aset-herdsa2000/abstracts/reid1-abs.html
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Created 20 June 2000. Last revised: 20 June 2000. HTML: Roger Atkinson [atkinson@cleo.murdoch.edu.au]
This URL: http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/gen/aset/confs/aset-herdsa2000/abstracts/reid1-abs.html
