JISC

Preface

In 1996 a book was published entitled Managing Change in Higher Education. It sought to define a learning environment architecture that could be used to help universities manage the inevitable change towards e-learning.

The introduction to that book stated:

All providers of higher education today are faced with the challenge of building a system of higher education which will be equipped to meet the needs of society in the next century. The requirement to respond positively to change and to manage it effectively has never been so urgent. Universities and other institutions which provide higher education, are now subject to an unprecedented level of external scrutiny; the demands made of them have expanded, and the expectations have changed. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) inhabit a more competitive world, where resources have become scarcer and where the impact of technology has never been so great or so unpredictable. They have entered global educational markets, while also forging local and regional links which are blurring the distinctions between study and employment and between different sectors of educational provision.

(Ford et al. 1996:1)

Today these sentiments are still relevant; not just for higher education (HE) but for the whole of the post-compulsory education sector. The original book used a ‘Learning Environment Architecture’ to help with the implementation of change. This book aims to expand the horizons to embrace the whole spectrum of e-activities within the post-compulsory education sector across management, administration, learning support and teaching. With this wider scope the approach used before is not appropriate. Instead, the process by which this book has developed involved extensive dialogue with practitioners from HE and further education (FE) in the areas of pedagogy and support services, as well as management at many levels, and with key players from e-business. The intention is to explore whether2 and how developments in e-business can inform current and future practices in post-compulsory education.

This book is not trying to suggest that the UK HE and FE sectors should operate more like a commercial business. It is saying that universities and colleges can respond constructively to the intense commercial and other pressures they are now facing by exploiting the opportunities (and recognising the threats) offered by new technologies – in particular, Web-enabled information transfer and communication. It should also be emphasised that the authors are not advocating an e-business approach just because it is becoming technically feasible to do so, or that the only way forward is wholesale change. The exploration of e-business approaches in a post-compulsory educational context enables readers to consider a range of options. These can be pursued or rejected according to their own perception of the need for, and speed of, change within their own institutions. Nevertheless, the authors remain convinced that movement towards, and a critical understanding of, e-business approaches is important to help meet the future challenges of post-compulsory education provision.

Today, the World Wide Web forms a window onto all educational processes. The portal is now regarded as a powerful tool to allow unified Web access to hitherto unrelated data repositories, providing staff and students with quick, easy and comprehensive access to the information they require.

Finance staff and administrators routinely use e-business tools in their day-to-day activities, and the need to support e-payment transactions for fees, bills, as well as salaries and wages, is now inevitable.

Evolving in parallel with business and learning needs are the various technologies that support them. Modern networks support the convergence of voice and data, allow image capture and transmission, and support an increasingly powerful range of multimedia learning tools. The roll-out of broadband access and the potential of wireless connectivity now take self-paced study and lifelong learning into a new era. Information exchange and communications become ever more integrated, faster and secure.

Educational institutions need to respond to, and embrace, these new options to provide a rich and competitive learning environment for the students of tomorrow. Educational institutions need to respond to, and embrace, these new options to provide a rich and competitive learning environment for the students of tomorrow. These students will expect their portable or hand-held devices to integrate with the learning and administrative processes of their study and, in a highly competitive educational marketplace, those institutions that are slow to exploit the full potential of such evolving devices will inevitably lose market share. Of course, this does not mean ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. Existing traditional approaches to teaching and learning have many strengths and the e-revolution should be seen as complementary to these and offering enhancement to them, not as an alternative that will replace them.

At the same time, the emergence of the ‘knowledge economy’ will alter the profile and perceptions of the modern student as well as those of the teacher, researcher and administrator. The mobility of the student’s studies through electronic credit transfer will become essential, with national and even international authenticated access to student data. Furthermore, the potential employability of the student will become increasingly tied in to the needs of the knowledge industry. All stakeholders (both within and outside the institution) will need to be very alive to the support needs, potential benefits and pitfalls that are associated with these issues.

These factors suggest that it is time to look beyond the mere automation of information (with administrative, academic and educational support functions still maintaining their separate functional silos) towards a more integrated and responsive system across a university’s or college’s processes, which rethinks what, where and how services are provided. This means both focusing more clearly on the institution’s own core business and on building collaborations with others to share facilities, resources and services. There are many lessons to be learned here from the best of current e-business practices.

This book paints the picture of an e-institution from a variety of perspectives and charts a way forward from current situations. This book paints the picture of an e-institution from a variety of perspectives and charts a way forward from current situations. It was written by bringing together educational specialists from e-business, together with experts across HE and FE, from principals and pro-vice chancellors, to academics and researchers, to senior administrators and learning support staff. Substantial contributions were made by staff from IBM and Cisco systems. Several group meetings were held across the country to plan the structure of the book. From this beginning, some contributors wrote specific chapters while others gave valuable advice and guidance on drafts. We thank all of those involved in this process for their time and effort.

This book is aimed at senior managers in the HE and FE sectors, mainly in the UK but also elsewhere. It is intended to provide an outline of current developments in the e-business world and to provide an assessment from different viewpoints as to the value of these to universities and colleges. It does not try to offer one particular solution but to capture the state of play across various educational institutions, to share these and to look at potential ways forward.

The authors and other participants recognise the desirability for national government involvement to help with implementation of the suggested approaches outlined here. This book was facilitated by JISC, which provides expertise and guidance in relation to information and communications technology (ICT) and the post-compulsory educational sector. Their support is much appreciated, as is that of the many senior academics and managers who have given their time to help with this book. The work here is just a beginning, which we hope will inform the important and continuing debate about how to manage post-compulsory education in an e-world.