at 3 February 1997

Recommendations for change in UK HE institutions

Decisions on adopting new technologies on a large scale require long term survival as the criteria, rather than short-term profitability.

The adoption of new technology follows a pattern. Early research identifies something which may be of future benefit, but needs much investment (in capital and training, even different or less staff). Even before it is certain that the technology must eventually be adopted, some organisations (maybe those investing in the original research) begin to use it. All must decide the timing and pace of their investment. Too soon and big - the costs cripplingly outweigh the short term benefit, and can cause collapse. Too late and slow - the competitors gain all the business, and again there is collapse. In between there is a difficult judgement.

A wise strategy is to have a sparse but knowledgable network of staff aware of the potential of the technology, using it in a small way, and ready to move fast to adopt it in a big way. We believe that the University of Glasgow has been doing this spontaneously, due to the existing traditional university structure that supports diversity and personal initiative, and that TILT is placing the University of Glasgow in the position of being even more ready. The "big way" is probably approaching rapidly as IT becomes more available and pervasive, and TLTP learning resources appear.

From experience within TILT and in discussion with other TLTP and CTI staff, we made the following detailed recommendations:

CAL & IT proponents

• show benefits at awareness workshops
• offer a practical advice support service
• treat HE staff as fellow learners
• relate to individual teachers' perceptions
• recognise & build on an institutions' culture

Courseware providers

• choose cross-platform software
• minimise resource-hungry features
• design for users' present facilities
• provide package in small modules from which a teacher selects those needed
• evaluate packages formatively with classes
• specify environmental needs of package - hardware, software, support material
• specify what the package does, and what the teacher must add
• provide help and maintenance

Individual teachers

• form local courseware teams
• join national courseware consortia
• use national databases, CTIs
• make time for training
• evaluate their teaching

Departments & cost centres

• fund staff to improve their teaching (eg reduced workloads)
• require rigorous formative evaluation of expensive innovations
• treat courseware as publications
• make internal purchases of institutional support services
• large units - provide own support services

Institutional management

• underwrite (or top-slice for) support services in
  • training and assisting in the use of IT in learning
  • training and assisting in formative evaluation of learning
  • creating & modifying courseware
  • training in authoring software, and conversion to Internet readability
• coordinate part-time secondments, on rotation, of teachers to expert service units
• coordinate formal and informal support networks of enthusiasts for improving teaching
• show that teaching counts for promotion
• coordinate installation of computer networks and adapt accommodation

Funding and quality assessing bodies

• encourage software & hardware standards
• negotiate national copyright deals
• underwrite or fund maintenance of successful courseware
• establish national purchasing deals for learning and authoring software
• fund national database(s) of learning software and disseminate methods for its effective application
• treat courseware as research publications
• train Quality Assessors in evaluation of IT use
• support research and development to improve learning

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