Factors impacting the success in increasing adoption

Bill Ashraf, Strategic Consultant, APAC, Blackboard    

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What are Strategic Services?

Strategic Services support institutions in achieving their learning and organizational vision through the use of learning technologies on any platform. Strategic Services include: • Strategic review and planning• Readiness Assessment• Change Management Strategic review and planning

Platform Services that deliver customized support, adoption and implementation to enable optimal performance Custom Development Services that encompass the design and delivery of customer-specific IT strategies and implementation programs

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What are Strategic Services?

Platform Services that deliver customized support, adoption and implementation to enable optimal performance

• Technology adoption • Implementation and training • Mentoring and coaching • Ongoing support and maintenance services • Solution design• Review and benchmarking

Custom Development Services that encompass the design and delivery of customer-specific IT strategies and implementation programs

Blackboard Consulting

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Global Impact1,396 Clients Served

Over 5,000 Individual Projects150 professionals + a global network of partners

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Six Characteristics To Increase Technology Adoption

• Leadership from the top

• Institutional commitment and investment

• Robust and reliable infrastructure

• Effective and available support for academic staff

• Ability to demonstrate the benefits to the student and staff

• Evidence-based decision-making and a continuous cycle of improvement

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1. Academic Leadership from the top

Creating a shared vision for technology enhanced learning for a curriculum which is technology rich in its delivery and content. Aligning this vision to the Learning and Teaching strategy

Recommendations

• Facilitating ‘Focus on...’ sessions for the executive leadership team. These are effective forums for exploring and clarifying the benefits of new technology among senior managers.

• Developing a 3-5 yearlearning technologystrategic plan, specifying objectives, adoption goals and developmental cycles.

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Desire to grow online provision and to extend the use of technology across all provision in blended/hybrid mode. Specific focus on the development of taught postgraduate masters provision

Postgraduate Curriculum Redesign

Located in Manchester, United Kingdom

Founded 1824

39,000 students

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2. Institutional commitment and investment

With leadership from the top in the form of a strong executive sponsor and articulation of how the change supports strategic goals – institutional commitment is further demonstrated through investment

Recommendations

• Establishing an institutional change management programme led by a senior executive that supports the academic community through the transition.

• Providing mechanismsto recognise and rewardthose who make a positive contribution and set standards across the institution.

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Way Forward: Education and Students - an ambitious programme of transformation within the institution

• “consistently be among the top 100 universities in the world and the top 20 in the UK’

• driving international and postgraduate recruitment,• increasing international opportunities and• improving overall student satisfaction

Becoming a Top 100 University

Located in Cardiff, United Kingdom

Founded 1884

28,500 students

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3. Robust and reliable infrastructure

Learning technology is playing a central and mission critical role in delivering high quality learning opportunities and supporting the broader student experience

Ask the following

• Is learning technology available 24/7?

• Can it perform at the speed users need?

• Does it work as expected? • Is it accessible across all platforms

and devices? • What metrics are shared with your

academic community?

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• Strategic move to a managed hosting solution, in order to remove any worries about performance and uptime.

• Hosting service has led to significant improvements; faster migrations, smoother running, greater innovations and an even stronger uptake of Blackboard Learn

Improving Service Using Managed Hosting

Located in Groningen, Netherlands

Founded 1614

30,000 students

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4. Effective Support for academic staff

For most academic staff, adopting learning technology for the first time is a change to their well-established and proven practice

• Technical

• Technology skills development

• Pedagogical best practices

Recommendations

• Developing an informal diagnostic or questionnaire

• Considering introducing student employees and interns to the learning technology support structure

• Peer Mentoring • Making course development

manageable

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5. Ability to demonstrate the benefits to the student and staff

It is vital that the impact and benefits to the learner are considered as well as that of the staff when adopting new technology

Recommendations :

• Collating and publishing “one paragraph” case studies

• Looking for quick wins that positively impact the learner experience

• Recruiting champions and convert the late adopters

• Recognition • Point out the positives

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6. Evidence-based decision-making and continuous cycle of improvement

The adoption of technology in teaching and learning frequently raises questions about how it impacts on students’ success, improves the student experience and makes effective use of staff time.

RecommendationsWhat is our evaluation strategy?

• How is adoption measured?• What’s the baseline? • What evidence is needed to make good

decisions?

Learning Analytics • Leveraging data across different

data sources• measure the impact of technology

adoption • Large data sets of learner activity

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Institution wanted to explore whether the data it held could help• Identify at-risk students & increase student engagement• Find relationships between student activity and success• Transform data into informationUsing different data sources to build combined self-service

reporting and using as part of course evaluationInformed by an Australian Government funded research project Learning Analytics: Assisting Universities in Student Retention

Learning Analytics for Retention

Located in Darwin, Australia

Founded 1989

21,000 students

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Six Characteristics To Increase Technology Adoption

• Leadership from the top

• Institutional commitment and investment

• Robust and reliable infrastructure

• Effective and available support for academic staff

• Ability to demonstrate the benefits to the student and staff

• Evidence-based decision-making and a continuous cycle of improvement

Acknowledgements

Louise Thorpe

Head of Strategic Services & EMEA Market Lead

Blackboard Consulting

Blackboard International

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