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Executive Summary

1 Introduction

2 Context

3 Methodology

4 - 9 Findings, Analysis and Discussion

10 Summary of Findings

11 Discussion of Findings

12 References

13 Case Studies

Acknowledgments & Partners

Case Study Map 

Institution H10

5 Impact of networked learning on institutional development

Development of networked learning and current position

It is clear from the documentary evidence that the institution does seek to engage in the use of technology to support learning and teaching. In interview, the respondents were asked to consider whether the institution was involved in large-scale networked learning. All five respondents supported the view that the institution was involved in networked learning and the majority felt that it was large-scale.

Yes… Just over two years ago we applied for funding from Europe to develop materials online… we’ve developed at the moment, 30 modules online. (H10I3)

Undoubtedly so, yes. I think that about 75% of our students will be engaged in networked learning under that definition, and to some extent it possibly might be higher than that. (H10I4)

Yes… we have a very significant scheme called the E-College scheme with 600 learners on it and that is a minority of our learners, but nevertheless it is a big scheme for us. (H10I1/6)

Definitely, there are lots of fairly small initiatives going on across the campus, there is lots going on but for the last three years or so I have been on a major E-Learning development project called E-College… (H10I5)

This suggests agreement between four of the respondents; however, the fifth respondent could be seen as questioning whether it really is large-scale.

… it depends on how you define large-scale, I would say it’s… large-scale in particular subject areas. (H10I2)

The institution is evidently involved in the development and delivery of networked learning and amongst these interviewees the majority felt that it was large-scale. There was recognition though that it was confined to specific areas and this links to the institutional documentation, which indicated that complete e-learning courses were only available in specific subject areas.

Drivers

The initial development of networked learning was explored and a number of initial drivers were identified.

… it developed particularly as a result of the Enterprise College… a matched funding project to develop e-learning, as we call it, within a particular subject area. That was from my perspective initiated largely centrally within the university… it was a development that came from the top and [networked learning] obviously was kick started greatly by having this project. (H10I2)

We were lucky because the Pro-Vice Chancellor had come from a background of e-learning, of online learning and he had the vision, and we needed somebody with a vision in starting this sort of project. (H10I3)

At the same time we were starting up a number of major projects one of which is a project which is part European funded… it’s now being funded to the tune of 15 to 16 million pounds to deliver Enterprise and Management programmes.… And that programme, because we managed to persuade our governors and directorate here to invest in match funding… meant that we could afford to work logically and systematically through the process of developing the system. (H10I4)

The main drivers were a mixture of directorate, the Vice Chancellor, the Pro Vice Chancellor… and the people in the […] School… (H10I1/6)

… a mixture of people really but in our […] School we run something called the […] Institute, and Professor [… ] runs that; and in the early days of setting up the project and applying for funding he was kind of the main driving force within the university for that. But we realised that such a big project would need to be centrally managed… it wasn’t just going to be the […] School initiative, it really was the whole university… our Vice Chancellor has been the main sort of driving force… (H10I5)

Whilst it is clear that there were specific individuals involved in the early developments, support from senior management is evident from an early stage. The role of project funding in driving the development is also apparent.

Planning

Future planning was not discussed by all participants; however, it was noted that the current market in higher education required institutions to be proactive and that any new developments needed to take account of the wider market needs.

So now whenever somebody comes to me and says, I’ve got this fantastic idea for [a] network [learning] programme, and it’s only going to need this, this and this, I say… where’s the market? How many of them are there per year, in this country, in Europe, internationally? What percentage of the market could you get? What are your competitors in this marketplace? (H10I4)

Planning ahead is clearly strategic and market oriented – the business aspect of the development of networked learning will be further discussed in relation to business issues.

Strategies

Particular strategies in relation to networked learning were not discussed at length with the respondents. However, it was noted that the institution had a learning and teaching strategy, that it was applying for a range of European funding and that it had created a multi-disciplinary project team that met weekly. These developments are part of the strategies to support networked learning. A further strategic decision had been to move from individual initiatives in networked learning to a corporate approach.

And the first task of the group… was to look at everything that was being done, and then look at how we might take an institution corporate approach… we did that in the first year… and decided that what we should do is impose an institutional platform. And we went into the exercise of selecting the platform… And we went out into the marketplace, and we looked at as many platforms as we could find at that time, then selected, I think it was eight, to quote for the platform… And eventually selected [the VLE] (H10I4)

Structures

Issues in relation to the management structures were commented on by all respondents and it was noted by one respondent that one development had been that of new multi-disciplinary teams.

Yes, we’ve set up a committee that oversees the e-learning development, called the e-learning advisory group, and that’s a very important management committee, although that’s held it’s last meeting now it’s going to be captured in other policy. You know, we are trying to change from e-learning to learning which also comprises e-learning. There is also an e-learning management group which […] chairs and that’s for the E-college team… So they are key players across the university’s structure, they meet monthly and weekly… So we have created new management structures to help support the development, and that’s been really useful and important. (H10I3)

I think in terms of the e-learning it has been working across management structures. (H10I2)

It depends on what you mean by management structures. I suppose the answer has to be yes, and I think that some of our heads of schools would say that some of the decision-making has been taken out of their hands, they don’t have the levels of freedom that they had about some things. (H10I4)

There is a suggestion that changes have occurred; however, another respondent did not fully support this view but did suggest that changes were likely in the future.

… probably not… the fact that the university is organised into academic departments and support departments, and given the nature of the learning and teaching processes changing, I think that it is going to impact on the managerial arrangements. (H10I1/6)

However, it was clear that one impact of networked learning was the development of new multi-disciplinary teams.

And what we realised is that in any future development, the team has to meet at the start. It can’t be one lot developing, then handing it over… (H10I3)

This early realisation led to some changes within the institution.

So there is a central team at the moment that are made up of these different and strange roles, that support e-learning. (H10I3)

… we have got the project team that meets every Friday and that covers basically all aspects of the university so representation from the academics, from information systems, e-learning services… we get marketing people there, we get accountants there… (H10I5)

The first thing that we found, I guess that most people find, is that to do networked learning well, it’s a team effort, not an individual effort. So the academic is no longer king or queen, they don’t work on their own. (H10I4)

So, whilst some structures have remained the same within the institution, development of networked learning has led to the development of both new teams and new committees.

Funding and resources

The cost of developing and delivering e-learning was commented on by two of the respondents and seen as an important issue.

To do something really well with network learning, for a lot of subject areas, I think it does require a big investment, at the front end. I’ve a financial model now which shows that even if you put that investment in at the front end, across a five year offering both first year programmes and a run out say on a full degree, diploma running for seven years, or whatever, you actually don’t need it to be that scalable to recover your money, but it does take a lot of money at the front end to make a quality product. (H10I4)

The same respondent also offered an overview with some actual figures to show the cost of development.

The money goes into just paying for the development team, which is the academics and…, we have a team now of about twenty or twenty-five people who are on the non-academic part of the team… We reckon they cost somewhere in the region of, I think we can average those… something between £60,000 and £80,000 per twenty credit module. Which means that you are talking about around half a million pounds for one year’s programmes, one and half million pounds for an undergraduate award. (H10I4)

A second respondent also commented on cost but from a different angle.

… the funding models for higher education are still about doing more with less. And you can use projects and other things to get more resources in, when you come to try and embed those when the project comes to an end there are more difficulties and that will be the difficulty in terms of resourcing these sort of things… (H10I2)

There is recognition of the high cost of developing quality e-learning materials and also that project funding is one means of supporting development; however, the use of project funding potentially leads to difficulties when specific projects come to an end. It is also worth noting that the project funding referred to involved matched funding.

Business developments and copyright issues

Networked learning and the use of technology allow for more flexible delivery and potentially the opportunity for new business ventures and new markets; however, the development of materials and use of others’ materials can also create difficulties in relation to copyright. The interviewees considered both of these issues.

One of the things that we have decided to move forward faster and more effectively than perhaps we could with traditional structures, is to set up a separate organisation alongside the university… whose function will be to identify key markets, identify products… it will have its own capitalisation funding to fund those projects. It will buy its services initially from the university’s own schools and support departments… plus part-time staffing people on different forms of contract and expectation is that that organisation, which will be part of a private sector for profit company, will be put into place in the late autumn of this year. (H10I4)

There is the external market that is important for us to tackle and it’s either going to be courses that students can just pick up off the shelf and do on their own quickly and then come back to us with an assessment, now in that kind of environment because of the limited tutor support we might be able to cope with hundreds or thousands of learners, the other thing is the niche markets… we think that would be a very attractive proposition to canvas a relatively small subset of the population who might be willing to pay premium rates for that experience. (H10I5)

We offer some programmes in the Middle East… it’s paper based really. But after September 11 [2001] and all the troubles… it was difficult for our tutors to go out and deliver and we saw the benefit then of the email and such like. That obviously is begging for e-learning development… So I can see that there is going to be a ready market in the Middle East with our initial developments, and at the moment we get quite a lot of interest from other countries… (H10I3)

We are involved with the […] university which gives us a way into the wholesale market in the UK, we are also involved with […] which is a similar thing but with institutions across the English speaking world, the next thing we need to do is to move into the rest of Europe. (H10I1/6)

This indicates the intention to develop a range of business ventures and also demonstrates that there are current markets that can be further developed. However, these developments, it is recognised, need to take account of copyright issues.

… then there was the problem of copyright which turned out to be far bigger than perhaps we had expected… making sure that all the materials that we were going to put on the web, we were doing so legally… (H10I1/6)

… what we have identified… [we] seriously underestimated the resource required for what we now… what we here call resource identification and right clearance type things. Both in terms of the learners access to learning resources… but also clearing rights in the content that is being delivered in the module. (H10I2)

We have had to pull things out of the online environment because of the kind of problem and plagiarism is an issue… (H10I5)

One of the biggest issues that we’ve found problematic in really going for networked learning is the management of IPR [intellectual property rights]. Firstly ensuring that one is clearing third party IPR in anything that one is going to offer to other students…The other side of it, you have got the issue of how you reward academics for the IPR they generate. Technically under the contracts that we have… it belongs to us [the university]… On the other hand we want to encourage our best staff to want to participate in this. (H10I4)

As can be seen copyright issues are problematic both in terms of ensuring that there is no plagiarism or illegal use of others’ copyright materials and in terms of ensuring sufficient reward for those that author new materials.

Student retention and achievement

Another aspect of networked learning is the impact it has on student retention and achievement. This was also referred to by some of the respondents.

I mean, for example… some learners have done very well on it, there has been quite… at the early stages, quite a high drop out rate… (H10I2)

We had a drop out rate of greater than 50% in the first year of intensive distance learning networked programme. We’ve now… we’ve got an 86% retention rate of our current programmes. And we have done that by just paying more attention to the way in which we provide induction to our learners… the structure of programmes for learners, the way we monitor the learners that we provide better counselling for the learners. (H10I4)

Retention was thus a problem in the early stages but seems to have been successfully addressed. In addition there were also comments on student achievement.

… we did a comparison of results and the top six students last year were online students rather than traditional students. (H10I5)

This would suggest that careful monitoring of the provision and attention to support and structure of the online learning experience leads to successful outcomes for online learners.

Questionnaire data

Four out of the five respondents to the questionnaire felt that the development of networked learning was driven by centrally initiated initiatives. One of these respondents also stated that specific schools had been involved in the early stages. The fifth respondent saw it mainly driven by one single school. All of the respondents felt that networked learning was recognised by senior management as core business and cited the university strategy and the need to develop new markets as reason for it being core to business. Finally all five felt that networked learning had changed the focus of the institution. The interview data cited above is in general agreement with this data.

Summary

The institution is involved in the development and delivery of networked learning and the majority of interviewees felt that this engagement was large-scale. There was recognition however that it was confined to specific areas of the university. The development was seen as jointly driven by senior management and a small number of individuals within a particular school. It was further noted that external project funding had played an important part in these developments.

The institution has a learning and teaching strategy and this is one of the strategies supporting the implementation of networked learning. The development of a multi-disciplinary team is also part of the strategic decision-making process. e-Learning has led to some restructuring in that new teams have been developed; however, issues not related to e-learning were also seen as contributing to the restructuring. The initial development of e-learning focused on specific courses that relate directly to the business development plan and some funding for this came from external sources; however, this funding depended on matched funding from the institution. Copyright issues were seen as problematic, more so than anticipated, but this issue has been successfully addressed. Student retention was considered a problem in the early stages but measures taken to improve the student experience have improved retention.