5 Impact on Infrastructure and support services

This section reports on the findings relating to the impact of networked learning on infrastructures and examines technical issues, technical support, staff development and library and learning resources.

The questionnaire asked about both the technical and support infrastructure, and there were also references to changes in the infrastructure within the documentation. However, during interviews the respondents were not asked any direct questions about the infrastructure, nevertheless the interviews proved to be a rich source of information about both the technical and the support infrastructure. The information presented in Figure 5-1 to Figure 5-7 below represents summaries of some of the main issues arising.

5.6 Staff Attitudes

No questions were asked about the attitudes of staff to networked learning in the interviews or in the questionnaires, and yet attitudes were referred to at many points within the interviews. This allowed the researchers to build up a picture of how the staff in each institution appeared to be responding to the introduction of large-scale networked learning. It must be remembered that those interviewed were chosen because of their own personal interest in networked learning, it might be expected therefore that they would see the positive side and perhaps be less likely to remark on negative issues since they were responsible for the development of networked learning.

Where the respondents spoke about the attitudes of staff to the use of networked learning they spoke about positive and negative attitudes, they gave commentary on the methods and ease or difficulty of converting staff to networked learning, and they spoke about the cultural changes that had occurred or were taking place within the institution. The number of respondents speaking about each of these attitudinal aspects is shown in Figure 5-8: Overall institutional staff attitude below.

The staff in three HE institutions, H4, H5 and H8, appear to have, overall, positive attitudes, H2 seems to be balanced equally between positive and negative, although there is evidence of a culture change, and the remaining HE institutions appear to have staff who are rather negative about the changes that are occurring. In four of the FE institutions (F2, F3, F5 and F8) attitudes to networked learning appear to be generally positive; with the remainder, except for F10, taking a generally more negative view. F10 appears to have a balance of positive and negative views, but when the detailed responses are read it is clear that the positive responses refer only to the individuals being interviewed, but the negative responses refer to staff in general. Thus, F10 may be considered negative. Further, although six interviews were attempted at F10, one was refused and two took place by telephone rather than face-to-face interviews. This apparent unwillingness to discuss networked learning may indicate a somewhat negative institutional stance. Typical examples of the views expressed within each institution are summarised in Figure 5-10. Quite often, the respondents gave reasons for their portrayal of staff attitudes; these are shown in Figure 5-11. When these reasons are summarised (as shown in Figure 5-9) some interesting themes emerge; negative reasons such as fears connected with technology, lack of confidence in the technical infrastructure and age are likely to represent general fears associated with lack of sufficient understanding of the technology involved. Such difficulties might be overcome by more carefully targeted training. Other negative reasons such as workload/time and fear of job loss are issues that may need to be tackled by senior management and human resources departments, and will be referred to again in Section 6 Impact on staffing and collaboration. The issue of ‘lack of ownership’, although only mentioned once in the negative reasons, may be significant because ‘ownership’ is also listed as a positive reason. This could be an important issue that merits further exploration, since issues of ownership and empowerment have been raised by Teare and Dealtry (1998) who recommended that organisations should seek to enact change through individuals.

Attitudes are likely to be affected by aspects of support that have been put in place by the institution, these are considered in Figure 5-12 below.

Where attitudes are positive there is a good deal of support in place, champions and materials development units or teams are made available to staff, and these institutions tend to be have been involved with networked learning for a considerable length of time.
Where attitudes are negative, support tends to be limited, sometimes institutions have champions, some have materials development units, some have neither, and most have been involved in developing networked learning for only a few years. There are exceptions: H5 does not have a materials development unit and H8 does not have Champions, but both have considerable experience (10 years or more) in networked learning.

Figure 5-8: Overall institutional staff attitude towards networked learning

Figure 5-9: Summary of reasons for staff attitudes towards networked learning

For examples of specific reasons please see Figure 5-10: Examples of Expression of Staff Attitudes about Networked Learning and Figure 5-11: Reasons given for staff attitudes below.

Figure 5-10: Examples of Expression of Staff Attitudes about Networked Learning

Figure 5-11: Reasons given for staff attitudes
(sorted by overall institutional attitude portrayed)

Figure 5-12: Attitudes in relation to institutional support strategies
(*P=postivite; B=balanced; N=negative)