Delivering the benefits All resources About this toolkit
About Envisioning The VLE
Landscape Looking to
the future Planning a
VLE review Engaging with
your Institution Resources
[Stakeholder engagement and communications] | [Choosing the project team] | [A model for engagement] | [Methods of engagement] | [Students as change agents]
Methods of engagement
We deliberately talk about both engagement and communication in this section of the Toolkit because they are not necessarily the same thing. Transmitting a message is different from engaging in consultation and collaboration.
There are many approaches and tools available to help in this aspect of the project. Below is an example of how various approaches might look in practice during a VLE review and there are some examples from different universities in our case study vignettes.
| Level of engagement | Characteristics of approach | Means of engagement |
|---|---|---|
| 6.Empower | Stakeholders set the agenda for change and self organise/manage. | Not applicable for procurement but may be elements of this in implementation. |
| 5.Collaborate | Decisions taken in partnership with stakeholders. | Stakeholder-led consultation. Stakeholders on Steering Group. |
| 4.Involve | Joint working to ensure views are heard and understood. Decision-making still largely in hands of project team. | Jointly led workshops/focus groups/voting. |
| 3.Consult | Agenda largely framed by project team. Stakeholder views actively solicited. | Workshops/focus groups/interviews/surveys led by project team. |
| 2.Inform | Stakeholders are regularly provided with contextualised information and made aware of means of participating in the project. Dialogue is implicitly welcomed. | Blog with comment facility/mailing list/use of Twitter. |
| 1.Notify | Stakeholders are passive recipients of (largely un-contextualised) information. | Static web pages/minutes made available/untargeted publicity. |
Involving the right people at the right time
If you are to come to the best decision you need to ask the right questions of the right people.
In some cases you will need an assessment of staff and student capabilities in order to understand their perceptions and know what will be needed to move you beyond the status quo.
Here are just a few examples:
- The University of York had invested heavily in customising its existing VLE and the degree of bespoke development made it difficult for end users to make like-for-like comparisons between different products. For this reason 'lay users' were involved in visioning and usability testing but a group of specialists undertook detailed product evaluation.
- Edinburgh Napier University found that familiarity was as much a factor as the affordances of the product. Academics who used the existing VLE only occasionally were much more likely to find the interface difficult and clunky than regular users.
- The University of Huddersfield had supplier involvement in user testing because it felt that simply locking academics in a room to replicate what they already do would not help them understand the affordances of other products.
|
"It's so important to get everybody involved - both staff and students have to have a voice." Correy Murphy, Blended Learning Co-ordinator, Glasgow School of Art |
<p.<></p.<>
