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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 F1

5 Impact of networked learning on institutional development

Development of networked learning and current position

The documentation, questionnaire responses and interviews provide evidence of an institution that seeks achieve its aims of increasing flexible and blended learning opportunities, and improving access through the use of technology to support learning and teaching.

There is agreement that the college is still at a relatively early stage in its development of networked learning.

We’re really at a very early stage; I would have to say, in online learning itself. (F1I3)

All the questionnaire responses indicate that networked learning was introduced centrally, and in interview there was agreement that the development of networked learning had been from the top down.

I suppose we were doing very little. Next to nothing before [name], our Principal came, and that’s four years [ago]. (F1I3)

… and then the big sort of step change was when there came a new Principal in 1999 who threw his strategic weight behind developing a college intranet for both admin staff and for learners and strategy was channelled into that. (6)

Drivers

Respondents were also asked about drivers that influenced the development of networked learning. The responses indicate that the main drivers were probably central and senior management and the Principal was seen as a key driver.

Well [the principal] was really the driving force behind it. It has been led from the top from day one. I think that’s key to the success that he was able to drive the cultural change as well as make the resources available from day one. Obviously he led from the Board of Management and as senior representative of the college, and he formed a team (F1I5)

The respondents also identified a range of other drivers. These included the need to attract external partners to improve the funding situation and reduce a deficit, the changing student profile, the challenge of the rural location, and the changes in student expectations.

It came about I think as our student profiles are changing, we all have that problem I’m sure, in that students don’t necessarily want to come into college anymore. The definition of a full-time student with set modes of attendance that we used in the past seem to be disappearing …[as] lifelong learning is coming about. Also one of our challenges is that we are a rural college and we don’t have the infrastructure in place, trains and buses for people to get to us. So, as a strategic aim [name] took the decision, with the Board obviously, that rather than students coming to us we should go to them. … and that we should strategically focus on networked learning so that students could study any time, anywhere and also at a pace that suits them as well ….So the key things were just the change of students and the approaches to learning and the fact that we are a rural college and we needed to go out to the student. (F1I5)

I believe the demand will come from the students who will turn round and say why am I having to come and listen … when everybody else … can just use the intranet? So I think they [the staff] will comply with pressure. So we see this as not as setting up courses online, it’s about using this as a means of delivery [and improving] access and actually providing FE throughout the region. So it is core to our business and it has been one of our key drivers, which is driven by the Board. (F1I4)

So we were trying to drive through an ICT strategy, and at the same time come out of a deficit and try to improve [provision within] the organisation. (F1I6)

The availability of additional funding was also important in allowing development to take place.

… and then the big sort of step change was when there came a new Principal in 1999 who threw his strategic weight behind developing college intranets for both admin staff and for learners and strategy was channelled into that. …a lot of millennium grants were around in 2000 [along with] the low cost and availability of hardware and software a combination of a lot of things, but it was clearly driven by the Principal with his background and interest in ICT (F1I6)

Planning

One of the crucial factors was the senior team plan to change the staff attitudes to the use of ICT through the development of an online administrative intranet prior to the development of the online learning intranet. The Principal set up a new team, an ‘intranet group’, to steer this development, and to take up the strategic challenge of developing networked learning including putting resourcing and support in place.

So what we have now is what we saw as phase one. We always believed that the toughest nut to crack …[was] the academic staff because you are actually asking them to change themselves because they are the product in teaching. (F1I4)

And so he [the principal] set up an intranet group… which planned how to move ahead in that … the student side, took much longer, because it’s much more difficult to do than to put all your policies and procedures onto an intranet. (F1I3)

Yes, we have a development team looking after the intranet, development programmers looking after the [learning side] … and their job is to work with the academic departments…to sit down with the staff to help them move from the paper based [to an] onscreen version to the more interactive part of that … Last year [we] met with all of the academic staff in groups, took them through the use if the intranet [for teaching] and told them what it was about. (F1I5)

Strategies

As noted above the college is clearly intent on the development of networked learning and the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) strategy appears to be central to this. Three of the respondents referred on more than one occasion to the ICT strategy, indicating that this is recognised as relevant and important.

… [the] strategic plan, flexibility and learning, has high priority its part of our strategy, its part of our ITC strategy. (F1I3)

So I came into a situation in which there was a partial infrastructure but no strategies for using that either in terms of how the infrastructure would develop or how it would impact on learners and how it would impact on staff. So we spent quite a bit of time evolving a college ICT strategy …(F1I4)

In addition, the ICT strategy was closely linked to the management restructuring.

There were issues with that structure that we needed to address for line management purposes, and that was also a good opportunity to support this ICT strategy [through change in the structure. We changed] the structure for primarily curriculum and line management reasons, and for budgetary reasons as well, because we were trying to get out of a large deficit at the time. So we were trying to drive through an ICT strategy, and at the same time come out of a deficit and try to improve provision with the organisations, so there was a lot going on at the same time, so that gave us a chance in the restructuring to say ‘how do we want to deliver our ICT strategy’ (F1I6)

The college is using its strategic plan to develop networked learning and within this there is some careful long term planning to ensure that the staff are fully engaged in the process. The planned five year, phased programme for implementing networked learning is explained clearly below:

We have seen this as a staff and curriculum development exercise, because I have been involved in this game for a long time and the barrier you always hit is staff engagement and utilisation of the material. The decision we made was that we would see this as a long term development, what we wouldn’t do is set up a little unit somewhere developing online material that only a few converts would use. What we are trying to do is drive the process… so that once we have got a convert to this, the whole infrastructure is there to support them. Once they switched on to using [online learning] … there are staff there to help them develop the material, there is an infrastructure there. We are trying to drive along the process by making sure the infrastructure is in place. We saw this as at least a five year development. The first phase was the infrastructure in terms of the hardware, the second phase, which was largely overlapping was putting in place the intranets and again we made a decision that the first intranet we would concentrate on was the admin one, because all staff need to do admin. So while they could look … at online material and decide not to use it, if we made our administrative systems totally dependent upon our intranet [staff] had no choice, you were by definition a convert and that has been very, very successful. … (F1I4)

Structures

Incorporating new ways of working within an institution may affect its overall structures, and, as noted above, in this institution there was a clear decision to change the structure in order to facilitate the development of networked learning. The respondents were asked to what extent they perceived there to have been changes to the management structures of their college. The main development identified by respondents was the formation of the Intranet group to manage the intranet developments. This intranet team comprised senior members of staff representing academic, technical, administrative and library functions within the college.

And so [the principal] set up an intranet group, which is [the Principal], (name) and myself and … the library manager (F1I3)

...he formed a team, actually I’m part of the team (name) is part of the team, who is Head of the Curriculum Department, and (name) our Library Manager. So the four of us were key players at the start of this…(F1I5)

However, the new intranets have required new teams to administer and support them and their use. In addition a group of ICT experts or ‘champions’ is being set up to provide support to academic staff in using intranet for learners.

Yes, we have a development team looking after the admin intranet and programmers looking after the learning intranet and we have just appointed an e-skills co-ordinator. Next year we are developing a team of ICT champions in each department to work as a link person with the e-skills co-ordinator. (F1I4)

Funding and resources

Three of the respondents gave their perspective on funding sources. There has been considerable new funding and resourcing for the college, and for networked learning in particular, since the arrival of the new Principal. A lot of external funding has been successfully brought in, including SFEFC money, NOF, and European funding. However, despite the college’s success in bidding, funding is still always an issue and the funding methodology causes particular problems for FE colleges with students learning through flexible or blended learning means.

So when [the new Principal] came we had very little IT to support all this, but since then …we’ve applied to every funding agency possible and we’ve been very successful in that. The Scottish Further Education Funding Council, a couple of years ago wrote to all the colleges inviting them to apply for funding for a project that was ICT based. And we applied to do e-learning. So, and we were successful. (F1I3)

A little bit of both I suppose because of the way colleges are funded the bigger contributions we managed to obtain through ESF [European Social Fund] and NOF [New Opportunities Fund]. Without that external funding we could never have been able to achieve what we have. (F1I6)

I don’t think we have serious problems apart from funding to keep everything under control, and retain licenses and make sure we’ve got enough staff. … (F1I3)

The huge issue is money. The employment of programmers and of all of the staff that we want … the investment in the infrastructure has been the first strategic call for the college. We are not a rich college, when [the principal] came here we were in operating deficit. This year for the first year we will move into an operating surplus. So we’ve done this at the same time as we’ve had to lose staff, [and] restructure to make savings. It has not been easy at all; it’s been a real challenge and continues to be a real challenge for us. (F1I4)

Unfortunately there seems to be a major funding problem, which appears to be generic problem in further education rather than specific to this college. There is a serious tension between two different aspects of Government policy: the promotion of the development of e-learning and the audit procedures that affect the funding available to FE colleges. This problem was mentioned by three respondents, and is described by one here:

I think there are some other key factors that are not resolved yet and one is the funding methodology that we’ve got. I’ve made this point to the funding council who promote flexible blended learning and independence of the learner but they don’t fund us that way. On a simplistic level there is a definition of a full-time student who has to attend x number of weeks, for x number of hours in order to get funding. If you move to a blended learning model, which is related to the outcome, where a student may not have to attend the college for maybe four weeks because they are doing this bit online they wouldn’t get the funding as a full-time student.
… it’s about physical attendance for x number of weeks on site and engaged in x number of hours with a member of academic staff in front of them, that’s how they define it. So we are talking about a new model where an academic member of staff may not be in front of a class for large periods of time.
… The [Funding] Council are saying many of the things that we’ve said here today, that they don’t see e-learning as a solution, it is part of the delivery mechanism, not a total online experience, ie the kinds of things we are trying to achieve. We’ve fed back as a college and as an individual that they [the Funding Council] are in danger of failing because a lot of people are looking not to engage in the change process and if they do all this work, but they can’t claim the funding for it, then it will not happen. (F1I4)

In summary, the availability of additional funding sources was initially helpful in the move towards networked learning, particularly in setting up the infrastructure and paying one-off costs. However, some of the Funding Council auditing and tracking procedures, in effect could disadvantage FE institutions which invest in flexible and blended learning, and make access to regular ongoing funding difficult, if not impossible. This could cause the momentum towards networked learning to come to a standstill.

Business

One of the major changes has been in developing a strategy to access the potential market within the region by making greater use of networked learning to improve flexible learning opportunities and widen access. Although this began about 10-12 years ago the links have been substantially augmented in the last few years, as a result of the growth of networked learning.

… the driver is taking current curriculum provision to our community. It started initially with the video conferencing probably 10 or 12 years ago in that if you had only got three people that were able to do a HNC at (place name) which is 75 miles away and we were offering a HNC in (place name) then you could video conference and listen to and interact with the lecturer and we could still provide a HNC for those students who were 75 miles away (F1I6)

… one of our challenges is that we are a rural college and we don’t have the infrastructure in place, trains and buses for people to get to us. So as a strategic aim (name) took the decision, with the Board obviously, that rather than students coming to us we should go to them. … So that’s really how it came about. So the key things were just the change of students and the approaches to learning and the fact that we are a rural college and we needed to go out to the student. (F1I5)

The rural community poses special problems for students who wish to access learning opportunities and there is a perceived need to take the learning out to the community. However, this is also seen a potential market waiting to be tapped.

[the] strategic aim of the college to reach remote learners within our region and improve access for students who find it difficult to attend a central campus location. (F1I6 questionnaire)

Summary

There is considerable evidence that the college seeks to achieve its aims of improving access, widen participation and increasing flexible and blended learning opportunities, through the use of technology to support learning and teaching. The rural location poses special problems for students who wish to access learning opportunities and there is a perceived need to take the learning out to the community. However, this is also seen a potential market waiting to be tapped. The opportunities have been substantially enhanced as a result of the growth of networked learning.

There is a general consensus that the college is still at a relatively early stage in its development of networked learning. The main drives to introduce networked learning have been centrally driven by senior management and the Principal.

The college has developed a five year, phased strategy for the introduction of networked learning. Factors that were identified as crucial to its success include identifying and realising external funding opportunities to resource the necessary infrastructure and support; and developing a positive attitude in staff to the benefits of information and communications technologies and networked learning. The college has successfully sourced funds from Europe, the Scottish Further Education Funding Council and NOF.
The college has invested in developing two intranets to support administration and learning. Management structures have been changed to support these developments including the establishment of a new cross institutional ‘intranet team’ to oversee and manage this development. This Intranet team comprises senior members of staff representing academic, technical, administrative and library functions within the college. The college has also set up new support teams and new appointments have been made, eg an e-learning coordinator.

A particular challenge for the college is the tension raised by a fundamental mismatch between two different aspects of Government policy: the audit procedures that affect the funding available to FE college students which is based on ‘contact teaching hours’; and the promotion of the development of e-learning which is outcomes based. Essentially the more an FE college engages in networked learning, the more student funding they are likely to loose. This is perceived as the major threat to continued development of networked learning.