Managing the change

Managing the change

Enhancing learning and teaching practice through better use of a new or existing VLE is a major exercise in change management and you should not underestimate the resource required to achieve the desired benefits. In the section on Stakeholder engagement and communications, we talk about the need to ensure that all stakeholders are aware of what is going on and are able to be appropriately involved in the decision-making process. Now you are taking things a step further and requiring many of them to change established behaviours and do things differently. Technology change doesn't directly result in change to processes or culture but it can be a trigger to help effect change.

Change management at the University of Huddersfield

The University of Huddersfield is conscious that the implementation of a new VLE needs a well structured approach to change management.

Andrew Raistrick, Business Analyst and Project Manager, told us that they have a well resourced transformation team focused on winning the hearts and minds of academic staff and supporting them through the process.

Features of the change process at the University of Huddersfield include:

• sponsorship of the transformation team by the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning;

• high-level representation from each school on the transformation team;

• collaborative working with the supplier's own change management team;

• awareness sessions for each school talking about how the change will happen and the benefits (29 sessions run so far);

• a marketing team working on information for academics such as a set of posters addressing concerns with the previous system; retraining for all academics;

• support for content migration by creating zip files of the existing content;

• planning sessions encouraging academics to view this not as a simple migration from one VLE to another but to think about delivering better structured active learning and transforming the online aspects of learning;

• module build sessions for academics so that they can build their new modules in a supported way;

• screencasts and guides to support staff learning (over 200 developed in the first six months of the project);

• use of analytics to see who is engaging with the resources.

Focus on the benefits

London Business School conducted a VLE procurement exercise in 2013/2014 and, in a close-run process, different parts of the business had a preference for different suppliers.

Mark Pountney, Head of Business Technology and Innovation, told us a decision was made based on a specification with 650 requirements in the knowledge that no system would do all of those things. However, those people who didn't get their first choice tended initially to focus on the things that weren't delivered rather than the improvements that the new system brought.

Mark feels the implementation project wasted time trying to find solutions to the gaps. In his view they would have been better off accelerating the implementation rather than spending six months focusing on things that the new product didn't do.

The first area of the institution to go live with the new VLE was one that would have preferred a different solution. However they soon found it worked well and became champions for the project. With hindsight they realised they had initially been worrying about the wrong things and couldn't see the benefits they were getting.