How to train your giant…..or working with organisational change (649) Home : Annual Conference 2014

How to train your giant…..or working with organisational change (649)

Public Group active 6 years ago

Mon, Sep 1 2014, 2:05pm – 3:05pm

Description

Research-intensive institutions are not renowned for moving fast when it comes to technology-enhanced learning and teaching innovations. However, in the last year, many similarly minded institutions had to respond quickly and firmly to the establishment of FutureLearn, the UK’s answer to massive open online courses (MOOCs).

The University of Bath found itself in a position replicated in each of the fellow FutureLearn partner institutions. It had around 6-8 months to design, develop and deliver a number of courses, to be delivered on the a platform that was still being developed, from scratch and with continuously emerging functionality, to a worldwide audience of learners who could come from any educational background and with any level of prior experience in the subject.

With institutional reputations at stake, there was limited opportunity to get things wrong and few UK based examples from which we could learn. Balancing innovation and risk was imperative as was the need to managing change and rapid development

In this short presentation, we explore the organisational change and development which was needed and the steps undertaken to bring about the cross-institutional collaboration necessary to successfully deliver our first two FutureLearn MOOCs.

Professional services of a diverse nature (IP and Legal department, Marketing and Communications, the E-learning Team, the Library, etc), which don’t often work together, and academic teams, with limited e-learning experience, had to work in partnership under very pressured timescales to achieve results that would enhance institutional, departmental and personal reputations.

We will honestly discuss the changes which were needed, the triumphs and the hiccups along the way, and talk through the development of these processes, and present the transformations that took place within the teams that were brought together. Most importantly we will discuss the embedding of such innovations within our existing processes and procedures so as to ensure that these transformations are also able to positively impact on the core business of the Institution, benefit our traditional on-campus students and promote our research agenda.