A key strategy was the decision to adopt a distinctive brand for Massey University’s new online learning environment. After reviewing a shortlist of options developed by an external agency, ‘Stream’ was announced in January 2009 as the name of the University’s new platform to support online learning and teaching.
One of the first challenges for central support units responsible for implementing Stream was to establish alliances and relationships with key staff and opinion leaders in Colleges. A full-time Project Manager played a key role in this regard along with the Director of Distance Education who had responsibility for overseeing the Stream Project. Together they sought to develop a close working relationship with the Pro-Vice Chancellor whom after initial caution was fully supportive of the College of Business leading in the University’s implementation of Stream. Indeed, the task of ‘getting everyone online’ as soon as possible became a major part of the College of Business reform strategy coupled with other developments.
An initial communication strategy was to share the University’s vision and rationale for adopting a new Learning Management System at staff fora on the Albany, Manawatu and Wellington campuses. In these fora the ‘bigger picture’ of the growth of online learning was presented along with mock-ups of Stream to illustrate what the new environment would look like. The strategy here was to build support for the innovation from a change management perspective.
At a grass-roots level, the Coordinator of the first year Bachelor of Business Studies (BBS) was an important ‘opinion leader’, despite not having line management responsibility. In spite of not being particularly digitally savvy, the BBS Coordinator understood the importance of Stream adoption and assumed the role of disseminating the vision and managing the implementation of Stream in a more palatable and realistic way.
The BBS Coordinator worked closely with the central Stream Project Team whose role was to maintain alignment with the centralized university vision and to support staff and consider risk mitigation in the face of the intense pressure to meet the implementation deadline of Semester One in 2009. In addition, the Stream Project Manager and related central service staff played a brokering role, which was to assist in bringing together early adopters.
A key part of the implementation strategy and business case for the adoption of Stream was the appointment of several new Flexible Teaching & Learning Consultants. Across the University six new positions were established to go with several existing positions to support academic staff using a ‘hub and spoke’ model, which involved consultants being embedded 80% of their time in Colleges with line management retained by the centre. These consultants and the employment of an Online Developer in a contract role to undertake more technical migration work were crucial in helping staff to meet initial deadlines.
In addition to ongoing evaluation and normal University quality assurance processes, the concluding activity in Phase One was a formal staff and student evaluation. In September 2009 an online survey was circulated to all first year students enrolled in the BBS Programme and this was followed up with a staff survey in June 2010. Evaluation was deemed important to learn the lessons from the “BBS experience” and validate the efforts of staff over such a short implementation timeframe. Towards the end of 2010 a special bank of questions about online learning was also included in the University’s use of AUSSE.
Learning leadership in Higher Education 