eLearning Benchmarking Exercise Phase 1 EDSuT Report

1
e-Learning Benchmarking Exercise Phase 1EDSuT
Report

• July 2007

2
Role of the EDSuT

• Extract lessons for the sector at Programme level
• Help institutions enhance their own capacity to
  evaluate themselves and disseminate their
  outcomes
• Complement the work of the support consultants
  who have a defined operational role
• Collaborate with the consultancies supporting the
  benchmarking methodologies and, when relevant
  contribute to or attend the support events and
  activities
• Enhance the capacity of institutions taking part
  in the Benchmarking Exercise for dynamic
  reflective dissemination to the sector

3
Phase 1 Review Questions

• Rationale for participating in the benchmarking
  exercise
• Factors that influenced choice of methodology
• Anticipated and actual scope of the benchmarking
  activity
• Who was involved
• Affordances for the institution
• Main constraints, institutional reactions and
  unexpected issues
• Do differently
• Plans for implementing changes
• Key messages about e-learning for the sector

4
Anticipated and actual scope of benchmarking

• Nearly all took a whole institution approach
• Some also used slices
• Other comments included
• University as a decentralised entity comprising
  substantially autonomous units
• Due to time constraints and broad scope
  essentially skimmed the surface rather than
  looking at any one area in depth

5
Who was involved

• Almost half established an e-Learning
  Benchmarking Group
• Several others used some kind of existing group
  (eg an e-Learning Strategy Group, an MLE
  Steering Group)
• Many co-ordinated by the e-Learning Manager or
  similar role, or through a central Learning
  Development Unit
• In general, the remaining projects were
  co-ordinated by assembling an ad hoc working
  group
• Involvement of representatives from a range of
  institutional faculties or schools and central
  services

6
Affordances and benefits

• Raising senior management awareness of e-learning
• Facilitating intra-institutional communication
• Opportunity to re-energise the conversation
  internally
• Identifying features of good practice as a set
  of indicators by which to measure ongoing
  e-learning developments
• Benefit of consultant input and peer support
  through cluster meetings and workshops
• Review, refinement and realignment of the
  institutions Learning, Teaching and Assessment
  strategy
• Comparing their institutional e-learning story
  with that of others
• Generating useful evidence on the advantages of
  online learning for students
• Helping to prepare for Pathfinder

7
Constraints, reactions and unexpected issues

• Time
• Managing the process, gathering the data and
  producing reports
• Internal communication
• Lack of a common understanding and definition of
  e-learning
• Lower levels of institutional engagement than had
  been anticipated
• Efforts to engage senior managers
• External communication (blogging)
• Late realisation of the necessity to obtain
  Ethics Committee approval for conducting research
  with staff and students

8
Do differently

• Get more comprehensive responses from all
  stakeholders
• Ensure sufficient time available for reflection
  and report writing
• Schedule all consultant visits and cohort
  meetings at the outset
• Try to secure active engagement from senior
  managers
• Make more effort to talk to students
• Changes to benchmarking process
• Undertake in-depth case studies with two
  different schools/faculties
• Define clearer work packages for data collection
  and analysis, to enable fuller and more informed
  follow-up data collection
• Secure dedicated support for data analysis
  (engage a research assistant)
• Set aside a specific budget (including travel and
  catering)
• Provide incentives for participating
• Plan more focus groups, face-to-face interactions
  and discussions
• Engage participants in a continuous dialogue
  (making more use of the internal blog)