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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

7 Impact of networked learning on staffing and collaboration

Networked learning brings about potential for changing and new roles and opportunities for collaboration; however, this may also impact on workloads and thus on attitudes to this form of learning. In addition, the technology allows for new forms of communication to emerge.

Staffing – change of role and new staff

There has clearly been in a change in roles for some members of staff and a number of new appointments. This is suggested by the evidence above in terms of the development of new teams and commented upon by some of the respondents.

… it’s created new jobs and new job titles which are quite handy… in particular people, instructional designers, that we’ve appointed which is a sort of hybrid between the lecturer and the technological support, editors, sub editors, the multimedia people. So there is a whole new group of professionals that are coming out of this initiative that we didn’t have before… (H10I3)

The same respondent further noted that the development of new teams had been an early priority in the project.

… we knew that from our thoughts about e-learning… what’s needed in the team as well, so we appointed these quite early on and the number of people has grown, so the that team is growing… (H10I3)

Further evidence of an increase in staffing was commented on by another respondent.

And we advertised recently for 22 new posts… and I think seven of those were administrative and three or four of them were technical… (H10I5)

So there has clearly been an increase in staffing and new roles created as a result of the development of networked learning. The changing nature of work will be considered further in a section below.

Staff – changing nature of work

A number of the respondents noted that there were changes to the nature of work for some members of staff.

One way is that it undoubtedly requires [effort] upfront, people that are able to write content appropriately although we have got supporting people instructors, designers and editors, it still needs professionals that have an approach to writing the material… So it is getting a professional approach to content development… And the second way is that tutors support learners and have to focus much more on that support process… (H10I3)

Well it’s a completely different way of working for the academics… in a normal sort of validation a new award would be looking at indicative content and learning outcomes and the programme structure and that kind of thing… but then we ask the academics to write the content… once they have written the course that gets internally peer reviewed and externally peer reviewed so it is something that academics are not used to in terms of their teaching materials… So that is the key thing, it is fundamentally changing the way that academics work of course. (H10I5)

So there are changes in terms of producing the content of modules; however, also noted in the first quote was the change in role towards a more supporting role. The second respondent also commented upon this.

… you can’t just take a good classroom teacher and expect them to be a good online teacher… So… it’s just a fundamentally different way of working for them. (H10I5)

It was further stated that this role, at present had to be done alongside a range of other duties.

The difficulty… for the lecturers has been having to do this alongside their day jobs so alongside their traditional lecturing and their research commitments… (H10I5)

However, it was also anticipated that these changes would potentially lead to changes with new roles emerging.

… we are moving to an environment where each module will have a module manager and there will be a number of moderators who work for that module manager, the e-moderators… (H10I5)

This kind of ‘team’ approach to delivery was also commented upon by a different respondent but in a slightly different setting.

… the nature of work changes because instead of being an individual exercise with one person who is a knowledge guru… you have now got a team of people bringing different bits of knowledge to the module, but you also have then the staff at the partner colleges involved in delivery… (H10I1/6)

Finally it was also suggested that the e-learning increased demands on staff’s availability to respond to students.

… because we are encouraging staff to be available to their students and to visit discussion forums on a daily basis and that kind of thing… (H10I5)

Networked learning is, according to these respondents, having a considerable impact on the nature of work in educational institutions, especially for the academic.

Staffing – workload

Issues around workloads are clearly important to an institution and the issue of workload was therefore explored with the interviewees.

Academic workload has increased, yes. All of those workloads have increased… (H10I5)

At the moment is taking tutors more time than we anticipated and than they anticipated. What I don’t know is whether that is a developmental process and that will decrease in time… (H10I3)

Another respondent also commented on an increase in workload and suggested that an increase in the workforce may be helping to reduce the workload.

… we are now in a situation where the staff… the additional staffing resources that we have got more matches what the work is whereas in the middle [of the new development] it didn’t and therefore there was a much increased workload with roughly the same staff which was quite difficult to handle. (H10I2)

So there is a perception of an increase in the workload but also that this situation, at least for some staff, is improving.

Staff attitudes

New developments can be seen as both positive and negative. For some it is a threat to the way they do things and for others it offers new opportunities for development. Whilst development of networked learning in this institution was initiated from above, it was also supported by a number of individual enthusiasts within the institution; however, there was also some recognition that this enthusiasm was not shared by all within the institution.

Some people see networked learning as a major threat to what they do, they don’t see themselves necessarily as having the confidence to gain the skills to participate. Some people genuinely believe that the only way of delivering educational programmes is by traditional methodology… (H10I4)

… some staff would have been very enthusiastic, they already use ICT in a variety of ways and enjoy it, there is also a significant number of staff who didn’t use it and would have been very apprehensive about it… then there is a group of staff in the middle who are a mixture of those two attitudes … (H10I1/6)

… it was quite clear that some wouldn’t want to be involved… in the early stages there were large numbers … because it’s been seen to be successful it’s making some who may be on the boundaries of whether to be involved or not, want to be involved, but undoubtedly in any university, there is still going to be the sceptics …and I guess for the sceptics the jury is still out… (H10I3)

There are thus a range of different attitudes to the new developments. Some reasons for sceptical attitudes were put forward.

Some people, yes definitely see it as a threat to their jobs. And some people just don’t like change, do they? (H10I4)

And I guess the threats are to do with people feeling their job is going to be deskilled, and that jobs will disappear… (H10I3)

Staff attitudes towards new developments are thus mixed; however, there is a suggestion that a growing number of staff are becoming interested in being involved with the use of e-learning.

Staffing - research

The institutional documentation noted that the institution puts great emphasis on teaching and learning this may account for the fact that issues around research did not surface to any great extent in the interviews. It was commented on above in relation to the changing nature of work and mainly in terms of it being one of the demands on lecturers’ time.

Collaboration

The impact of networked learning on collaboration is apparent and is mentioned several times by all the respondents. External collaboration, as is shown above in relation to drivers has had a considerable impact on developments.

I mean we always had lots of relationships with FE colleges, about 20 in … and others… and to develop the sort of delivery that we can make involving those partner colleges … (H10I2)

you have now got a team of people bringing different bits of knowledge to the module …you also then have the staff at the partner colleges involved in the delivery …and finally you have the students themselves … (H10I1/6)

Whilst this collaboration was in place before the development of networked learning, there is a suggestion that networked learning can make a difference to how that collaboration is managed. In addition to collaboration with partner colleges there were also other forms of external collaboration mentioned.

… if you take a wider perspective, our involvement in other activities, one of those would be the UK e-university. (H10I2)

It has also been noted above that networked learning can open up new markets and thus potentially new forms of collaboration. Internal collaboration was another issue that was explored and it was suggested by all that this had increased in a range of different ways.

… one of the things about e-learning is that it encourages team delivery as opposed to individual delivery so the traditional model has an academic who decides what he or she is going to teach and puts together a lecture seminar programme and does it with very little interaction with other people. This approach for e-learning… there is quite deliberately a team delivery of each module which there wasn’t before… (H10I1/6)

It was trying to work together to create something better… So teamwork was the first change. (H10I4)

… so basically cutting right across the university in bringing together a big multidisciplinary team and I think there has been collaboration across departments and… in the past, this is probably the biggest example of that kind of working that the university has ever undertaken. (H10I5)

Further developments in internal collaboration were also commented on by the last respondent.

I think if you looked at everyone of our academic schools now there would be at least one fairly major e-learning initiative that we would like to put forward so we are looking at working with [several of our schools]. We are working with our Learning Resources Centres… We are working with the Careers Centre… (H10I5)

Collaboration within and outwith the institution has, it is suggested by these respondents, increased as a result of networked learning.

Communication

The section above would suggest an increase in communication across different areas of the institution; however, communication was not discussed at length in the interviews. Two of the respondents made brief reference to the topic and this focused on communication in the development process and the use of email and the VLE for communication.

Absolutely, yes. Between content authors and the multimedia and the instruction designers and the technologists, if I can call them that. So there’s been lots and lots of communication between groups of people at various times in the development process. (H10I3)

The mode of communication was commented on by a second respondent but it was noted that the use of email was not necessarily a result of the development of networked learning.

… email was already a very well established form of communication but yes staff do use the VLE as well. And that has chat room facilities and that kind of thing; it enables a different kind of communication. (H10I1/6)

However, whilst it was noted that these forms of communication were in use it was not suggested that they had taken over from older modes of communication.
I mean within the university the favourite form of communication is still what we are doing – talking. But when you start dealing with staff in other institutions then videoconferencing, chat rooms, emails, obviously that becomes much more important. (H10I1/6)

There is thus a suggestion that there is an increasing use of technology for communication at a distance but that face-to-face communication still plays an important role within the institution, at least for one of the respondents.

Questionnaire data

Four of the respondents were asked, in the questionnaires, to comment on increases in staffing and collaboration. Three out of the four agreed that there had been an increase in workloads for all staff, and increase in staff development, internal and external collaboration and in technical support. The fourth respondent agreed with all of those with the exception of workloads for academics, which were seen as having remained the same. All five respondents were asked if there had been a change in the balance or nature of staff work and they all felt that this was the case. A shift in the role of the academic and the need for teamwork were reasons offered for this change.

Summary

Networked learning has clearly brought about a change in role for some staff and also a number of new appointments. Staff attitudes to these new developments were seen to be mixed, ranging from those who are extremely enthusiastic to those who are still sceptical. However, there was a suggestion that the pool of those interested in being involved in developments was increasing.

It was argued that e-learning had brought a change to the nature of work that was carried out and that workloads have increased. However, it was also suggested that further developments could potentially lead to a decrease in workloads. Collaboration, both internal and external, was seen as having increased. Communication was, it was stated, dependent on email; however, face-to-face communication was also seen as important within the institution.