Organisational Development in Higher Education
1. Introduction
The ODHE brings together HE practitioners with responsibilities for supporting organisational-level development within their institutions. Senior members are involved with strategic-level decision making on organisational initiatives such as restructuring the institution or introducing new policies. Other OD staff are then involved with planning and supporting implementation of these changes.
Members of the ODHE are well placed to understand and support change processes within institutions. They engage at all levels, act on Senior Management’s instructions, and can promote useful information flows up, down and across the organisation. These dialogues help deal with the complex and multi-layered nature of change.
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2. ODHE and Digital Literacy
DLs are becoming increasingly embedded within organisational processes. Few, if any, organisational changes do not have DL aspects. HE staff cannot escape engagement. As the Times Higher Education comments, current hierarchical modes of working are outmoded (Davidson, C. ‘So last century’, Times Higher Education, 28/04/11.) For many this is a positive, democratic change, for others, an unwelcome shift. Change management is a core aspect of Organisational Development (OD) and practitioners are therefore central to embedding a more digitally literate culture.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that many OD practitioners are not comfortable with DLs. Opportunities for the effective use of DLs can easily be missed or not enthusiastically promoted. This bid is about helping organisational developers to gain confidence with DLs through building better understanding of best practice. ODs would then be able to contribute much more effectively to organisational take-up of DL initiatives.
As a result of this project, we anticipate that ODHE itself will become more digitally literate, using the JISC definition of "... those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society." We will create new platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc.) as appropriate for ODHE.
We plan to work with SDF, Vitae, and will investigate UCISA as suggested by Helen Beetham
3. Professional development
The ODHE can affect the practice of its own members: by engaging with a reference group of interested colleagues; by sharing the lessons from this and earlier projects; by keeping the topic on the agenda of meetings; by gathering examples of effective practice to cascade through institutions; by running DL sessions to build capacity, and by making more regular use of online methods such as web-conferencing.
ODHE members will then be able to influence the embedding of DLs within their own institutions. A particular impact that we can envisage is on those leading IT and information change. Just as OD staff are often unfamiliar with DL, so DL staff are unfamiliar with OD. ODHE will be able to feed its understanding of change processes into its exchanges with other sector bodies and professional associations and – via the JISC critical friends – into the main projects.
4. Baselining digital literacy provision
As we are already aware that many of the ODHE group are not necessarily particularly digitally literate, and there are only around 35 members, whom Meriel can contat personally, we have created a simple Survey Monkey survey, completable within 10 minutes.
Bearing in mind the 31st January deadline for the feedback report, we will set a deadline of 12 noon 27th January for completion of the survey. The survey results will determine our areas for development.
5. Resources (e.g. resources for students, resources for administrators...)
Organisational development has a particular concern with change management processes. Having previously worked with Andy Wilson (who is working on the SDF project), we quote:
"Technological developments typically involve change, and although there are clearly specific technical aspects, fundamentally change is change. And staff developers typically work to help people through change. Hence we have valuable expertise to offer and we have shared resources on this within the Embed-IT project. See the Change Management section within..."
Further findings from the BODGIT project will be posted in the Design Studio, taking into account privacy concerns with the material.
6. Activities and events
We will be presenting project activities and providing appropriate digital literacy training at ODHE annual National Events in 2012 and 2013 (likely February). As a result of the baselining provision, we will identify if there are further events required.
7. Findings and conclusions
These will be shared as they emerge.
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