Bringing Organisational Development Guidance into IT
If you’ve every complained about the process of implementation of institutional IT projects, JISC is funding the following project in which we are partaking:
The area of change to be addressed in this pilot is the use of Wimba at the University of Winchester. The UoW will use Wimba as the system for online delivery and as a way to integrate seamlessly many other online functions into the Winchester Learning Network (Moodle). The ultimate aim of continuously enhancing the learning and teaching experience for all students is central to this initiative.
The project will:
- Contribute to the following strands:
- alignment of institutional strategies, leadership and organisational development;
- change management to embed new ways of working;
- staff development to support effective working;
- Engage with action research underway at Middlesex on support for IT implementations.
- Draw on this, and on wider experience, to allow the Organisational Development Group (ODG) to develop techniques and provide support materials.
- Apply and test these at Winchester to support their implementation of Wimba.
- Build capacity within the ODG to support further change across the sector.
Aims
The general aim is to bring organisational development expertise to bear on the implementation of technological change in higher education. More specific objectives are:
- To gather OD-perspectives of the impact of IT initiatives across the sector
- To share tools and techniques that are used by OD professionals in support of change projects
- To apply the Work-with-IT model and OD concepts to the implementation of Wimba at the University of Winchester
- To share our experiences with other members of the OD community to increase their confidence and competence in working with technological change
Expected Outcomes
The outcomes are usually taken as being the high-level consequences of the work. They are notoriously long-term, hard to measure, and difficult to attribute to any particular intervention. Nevertheless they are the real drivers.
For this project they would probably include:
- Work with IT that is more efficient and more effective
- Better run IT-implementation projects within HE
- Staff whose adjustment to new working practices has been more effective and less painful
- Organisational Developers who are brought in at an early stage within major IT-related initiatives
- A more effective Wimba implementation at the University of Winchester
- A better understanding of how to run effective IT-related projects at Midddlesex University
Read full project summary.
