Sustaining Institutional Innovation to Enhance Learning

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Sustaining Institutional Innovation to Enhance
Learning Teaching Through Technology
Tom Carey Associate Vice-President University of
Waterloo
a few innovation stories some emerging
lessons to be learned on organizational
practices
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Innovation story 1 UW-ACE Course Management
System

• UWaterloo Context-
• reputation as innovator in learning leader in
  technology
• institutional history of innovation as
  invention
• tradition valuing local over central initiatives
• loyal, committed, stable staff
• 1999 behind the curve on
• course management systems
• but aware of CMS limitations

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Will Course Management software enable us to
renew institutional practices?
For the most part, faculty who make e-learning
a part of their teaching do so by having the
electronics simplify tasks, not by fundamentally
changing how the subject is taught. Lecture notes
are readily translated into PowerPoint
presentations. Course management tools like
Blackboard and WebCT are used to distribute
course materials, grades, and assignments A
number of people are coming to believe that the
rapid introduction of course management tools has
actually reduced e-learnings impact on the way
most faculty teach. Blackboard and WebCT make it
almost too easy for faculty to transfer their
standard teaching materials to the Web. Thwarted
Innovation What Happened to E-Learning and
Why Robert Zemsky and William Massy 2004

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The retrospective successful plan
Find a beach-head Distance Education
Use the bowling pin tactic migrate materials
to campus

• Look two steps ahead
• focus on learning activities, supported by
  subject content
• engage faculty with the T5 instructional model
  find a slogan!

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Components of the T5 Model
Tutoring supply side Teamwork
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The retrospective successful plan
Find a beach-head Distance Education
Use the bowling pin tactic migrate materials
to campus

• Look two steps ahead
• focus on learning activities, supported by
  subject content
• engage faculty with the T5 instructional model
  find a slogan!

Manage the innovation performance gap until it
can be resolved
Negotiate a solution for mainstream sustained
innovation
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UW-ACE Integrating Innovation with a CMS
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Innovation story 2
MERLOT is a cooperative - 20 institutions and
systems of higher education working together.
MERLOTS mission is to improve teaching and
learning in by expanding the quantity and quality
of online learning resources - and knowledge
about them - used by faculty and instructional
staff in the courses they design for their
students
MERLOT is a set of processes - Implementing peer
review of online teaching-learning materials and
building online, discipline-based
communities. MERLOT is software - a searchable
database of online learning materials,
pedagogical support, and people. all
as of 2000-2005
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Usage Continues to Grow
USAGE Dec 2001 Dec 2002 July 2003 July 2004
Hits per month 710,216 1,310,526 1,512,463 1,903,938
Average Unique Visitors per mo. 9,579 13,985 15,216 16,176
Average number of Users per mo. N/A 18,742 21,643 27,289
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People Metrics Continue to Grow
MEMBERSHIP Dec 01 Dec 02 July 03 July 04
Students 959 1,994 2,569 3,652
Faculty 3,774 6,621 8,965 11,563
Staff 1,003 1,677 2,107 2,522

TOTAL of Members 6,387 11,561 15,069 20,030
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MERLOT Collection Continues to Grow
COLLECTION Dec 2001 Dec 2002 July 2003 July 2004
of Materials 6,757 8,837 9,587 9,806
of Peer Reviews 296 789 987 1,445
of Materials w/ User Comments 1,485 1,904 1,885 2,044
of Members w/ Personal Collections N/A N/A 351 924
Dead-links removed -average 22 materials/mo.
99 live links
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Good Innovation Story - Why Worry?

• Repositories soon to be ubiquitous price of
  success
• Course management systems become front door
• Potential loss of community spaces
• Difficult to scale up to tipping point 100,000
  faculty

2005-2010 The New Plan for Innovation

• Replicate MERLOT success campus, system,
  discipline
• MERLOT becomes community of faculty communities
  for
• collaboration in high quality online
  resources for learners
• rewrite the mission statement to achieve the
  vision!
• Target 40-50 faculty communities with 5-8
  leaders
• 300 faculty champions per community
• each faculty champion engages 10 other faculty
  per year
• e.g. Co-operative Learning Object Exchange in
  Ontario
• ELIXR

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Story 1 2 integrating an institutional CMS to
regional and national repositories/communities

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CLOE Co-operative Learning Object Exchange
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ELIXR Engaging Learners
In X a discipline At R an
institution

• resources for developing faculty expertise in
  blended learning
• reusable along dimensions of X and R
• provide exemplary learning experience for
  faculty
• stimulate discussion about institutional
  pedagogies
• pilot partners CalState system Canadian
  research universities
• create new model for MERLOT system/campus
  memberships

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Lessons to be Learned Remember to

• Plan for the big picture of innovation
• but be flexible on the order!
• Create an inspiring vision
• but narrowcast it

• Build a powerful team including exemplary
  external practices
• but tack into the wind when you need to seek
  small wins
• Work toward urgency re productivity
• but go for everything else first patient
  social capital

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Working Towards Productivity
The primary goal of every e-learning innovation
is instructional to enhance learning
effectiveness and experience
active learning, rapid feedback, group
interactions, teamwork
secondary strategic goals
increase access, advance knowledge, develop
innovation, engage students, share resources,
support strategy, streamline admin
need to address systemic factors,
e.g. to contain costs.
faculty and student time is the critical resource
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Lessons to be Learned Remember to

• Plan for the big picture of innovation
• but be flexible on the order!
• Create an inspiring vision
• but narrowcast it

• Build a powerful team,
• but tack into the wind when you need to
• Work toward urgency re productivity
• but go for everything else first

• When you come to a fork in the road

take the path where you can dance.
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Related Info
URLs cited www.learning.uwaterloo.ca
www.merlot.org cloe.on.ca www.thelearningal
liance.info Books cited Leading Change, John
Kotter Tempered Radicals, Debra
Myerson Inside the Tornado, Geoffrey Moore
tcarey_at_uwaterloo.ca