Starting in October 2015 Jisc has been running the Digital Leaders Course for Higher and Further Education. The course built on some of the approaches and research from the Changing Learning Landscape programme. The purpose of the leaders course is not to give people a set of tools or top tips, but to investigate and develop the roots of their own digital practice and that of their organisation. In running and further developing the course, we gather information from the participants, via follow-up visits, structured interviews, and institutional feedback forms, to identify effective approaches early successes in change-management approaches.
As of April 2017 there have been three cohorts of staff across both Higher and Further Education, totalling 130 delegates, with further runs of the course scheduled for May and November 2017, and May 2018. I will present the various perspectives of the course participants, and those who participated in the Changing Learning Landscape Programme “strategic change projects” and contextualize them within the larger landscape of leadership challenges in a digital age.
The approach of the Leadership Course is development rather than training, and it draws upon research that centers motivations to digital practice (the Visitors and Residents approach to digital, contrasting with outmoded “Digital Native/Immigrants” notions). Delegates engage with the Visitors and Residents framework as a way of grounding their development in their own practices, mapping what they do, which then allows them to move to strategic approaches to their organisation’s digital footprint. There are no templates in this approach that can be elicited, no best practice that can be duplicated. The process is a journey, and the maps that leaders create are merely a snapshot of where their current practice stands. The Leaders’ Course uses digital practice maps created as a development tool, allowing delegates to understand and reflect, with their peers, on what they do, and importantly what their aspirations are.
The process of creating a map of practice allows you to reflect, not to dictate right or wrong, but to provide spaces where choices can be better understood. Once leaders have developed their own map, they think about maps for their organisation and how the organisation engages with its community. It is during this phase of the course that we see change management approaches emerge, with delegates looking at how they approach digital change projects and what makes them successful. Leading organisations in a time of supercomplexity is inevitably difficult, the digital layer should not be seen as another “challenge” to be overcome, but should be embraced as an opportunity.
Topics: Global challenges in Higher & Further Education , Topics: TEL Policy & Strategy
