3.1.2. Institutional context
You will need to build up a clearer picture of your own institutional context. This will involve building up a profile of the nature and structure of your organisation, an understanding of the context at different organisational levels, and distillation of local cultures and perspectives. You may also want to define the characteristics of your organisation, its mission, niche market position and business needs, along with the associated risk and cost benefit analysis of your MLE implementation. Further information on this is available in the resources section.
3.1.3. Institutional strategies and policies
An understanding of your institutional strategies is important because they provide an outline of how your institution carries out its key operations. A useful exercise is to identify the strategies which are of particular relevance to the MLE development and then consider how well joined up they are and how well they align with the MLE development. You should also think about where the MLE and e-learning developments might impact across these strategies.
The next step is to consider the mechanisms for translating the strategies into practice and again where the MLE development sits with respect to this. Part of this is about applying the knowledge and understanding of the external and internal environment to the MLE development, including identification of key barriers and enablers. For example what externally funded projects might provide useful resources? How can current internal projects be adapted or aligned with the MLE work? For example, is the finance department looking to procure a new system, has the medical faculty commissioned someone to develop them a Web portal, or is the registrar doing a review of admissions procedures and processes? How does this relate to any links with local businesses or schools? These are all potential activities which could impact on your MLE development. Linking of institutional activities is not only important in terms of avoiding duplication of effort, but also provides a mechanism for stakeholder buy-in by demonstrating how the MLE development benefits other activities in the institution. When mapping your MLE development to other activities it is important to be mindful of the timescales of each of the initiatives, as well as giving careful consideration to realistic timeframes for achieving things. In particular it is important to allow an appropriate length of time for initiatives to be implemented and evaluated. Having carried this mapping exercise out you may wish to alter your proposed work plan for the MLE development to align more with these other initiatives. You will however need to ensure that the scope of your MLE project is clearly defined and achievable. You may have a detailed plan for immediate priorities and an outline plan for later phases. Follow this link to the project Management infoKit to find out more about planning using a sliding planning window.
3.1.4. Stakeholders' perspectives
Finally, it is important to understand different stakeholder perspectives and agendas and to develop mechanisms for capitalising on this as well as managing expectations and dealing with political conflicts. You will have initially considered this in the section 'why might you want an MLE' and will return to it in terms of requirements gathering. Here we focus on the general stakeholders who need to be involved throughout the process. In particular it is important to clarify the needs of different stakeholders (such as academics, support staff, librarians, and senior managers) and to work with them and appropriate external organisations. This includes identification of different staff perspectives and analysis of the associated changing organisational roles and identities and the impact on changing practice. This is considered in more detail in the fact finding section and in the section on 'gathering requirements'.
