implementing e-learning Analysis Phase

Learner-Centred Process Review

A key part of the organisational change needed to move learning and teaching practice forward is consideration of the processes that support learning and teaching. Both our organisational structures and administrative processes have grown incrementally over time and the underpinning processes sometimes seem designed to meet the needs of internal fiefdoms rather than serving the needs of the learner.

Most of us recognise that some of these processes could be improved but it is often difficult to know how to tackle the issues or indeed what to tackle first. The problem is neatly summed up in a quote from AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh:

"Here I am, coming down the stairs, bump, bump, bump, on the back of my head. It is, as far as I know, the only way- Maybe there is a better way. If only I could stop bumping for a moment and think of it."

We have already looked at change management as an essential component of transforming your organisation with e-learning and nowhere is this more important than in reviewing processes. Processes that are complex, bureaucratic, or even downright silly, often reflect assumptions, misconceptions and organisational barriers that lie at the very core of your organisational culture.

In Scotland, the Councils place great emphasis on effective student engagement in quality processes. Students have an important role to play in processes to improve the quality of provision in FE and HE institutions and the Councils support student representation through a national development service called sparqs.

Implementing new systems is often a driver for considering how we carry out business processes, but you don't necessarily need technological change to do things in a better way. The Process Review infoKit is aimed at people new to the topic and those who have undertaken process reviews in the past who want to find out about different tools and techniques. It offers a simple, fast-track method of evaluating your processes and finding better ways of doing things to better suit the needs of the customer - i.e. the learner - and the material available here will be of particular use to those of you who are undertaking e-learning transformation projects funded by the SFC.

Aims

So what are you trying to achieve? At the risk of stating the obvious, early questions when considering e-learning development should establish your reasons for pursuing that path, this will then also form the basis of your scope. We've already touched on resources looking at the 'why-what-how' that form the strategic approach and also mentioned that e-learning cannot be viewed in isolation without reference to the business processes and systems with which it is inextricably linked. As a core component of an organisation's Managed Learning Environment (MLE) it is important that the definition of what that environment might comprise and the reasons why you might want one are understood. As institutional MLEs can vary massively in terms of their system components and processes this is not as straightforward a question as it may first appear, and indeed there are increasing numbers of organisations who are linking MLEs across partners to provide truly distributed e-learning.

JISC infoNet also hosts the evalKit, a directory of ICT evaluation tools and toolkits for use by the education sector covering the broad area of curriculum development, media selection, resource selection, quality assurance and evaluation of ICT development projects. The resource base within the evalKit includes a database of evaluation tools and toolkits and this contains models that can be applied to e-learning development.