Cameron Alexson
University of Saskatchewan
Leading ICT Academic Technology programs, teams and initiatives, I focus on enhancing the academic experience and improving learning outcomes for students. Our teams work with our partners to engage the academic community in the consultation, implementation, management and support of technologies and services that directly contribute to teaching and learning success. My research interests involve communities of practice in educational technology service delivery which I am exploring as an M. Ed candidate at the U of S. When I can get away, I appreciate fly fishing on scenic stretches of quiet water.
Join us as we share our experiences applying creative stakeholder engagement techniques as we evolved the enterprise wide Academic Video service at the University of Saskatchewan.
The University of Saskatchewan’s Information and Communication Technology organization provides infrastructure and solutions underpinning a variety of video services used for teaching, learning and discovery.
Faced with a ‘perfect storm’ of multiple service contracts coming to term, end-of life hardware solutions, along with an “Engagement with Learning Technologies” study (2016, Turner, Bassendowski, Squires, Wilson) recommending creating capacity for the “pedagogically sound use of video”, we seized the opportunity to implement needed change.
In early 2017, ICT in collaboration with partners under the Vice Provost Teaching and Learning and Student Experience embarked on a multi-phased project to review and renew our Academic Video service.
This is our success story, central to which was the use of creative stakeholder engagement techniques. We will explore the risks and rewards of using these various techniques to confirm stakeholder needs, to inform product selection, and to gain shared understanding and support throughout the design, implementation, and early adoption stages.
Stakeholder engagement was crucial to the success of our implementation and early adoption stages, as we had an extremely compressed time frame for both. We were able to leverage the shared understanding and ownership of the product choice to speed our implementation during July and August, then we had a ready-made group of engaged early adopters prepared to hit the ground running in September.
As we position for sustained engagement and support for the Academic Video service we touch on the role of our emerging community of practice for academic technology support in maintaining momentum.
Our experience supports the position that aptly applied creative stakeholder engagement contributes to service adoption and satisfaction.
