O2.2.3

=Inclusion of e-learning aspects in relevant institutional policies and strategies is formally endorsed by the institutional leadership. =

Evidence
Turoff et al. (2004) comment on the importance administrators attached to research funding compared with teaching, and remark that e-learning’s more learning-centric focus is likely to require a reassessment of approaches to balancing academic teaching and research duties. Furthermore, they note that the e-learning environment ‘will make the quality of teaching more visible to the public and prospective students’ (p. 18), thus making learning and teaching policy and strategy more imperative.

Haughey (2007) analyses the organizational responses of several Canadian universities to provision of faculty support for teaching and learning over the period 1997-2005. Several recommendations follow. Haughey notes that there is a shift in technology focus from emphasis on course management systems and presentation software to blended learning and technological assistance for active learning. ‘The integration of digital technologies occurs not only in response to changing conditions, it is also driven by the vision of the institution’ (p. 28). The seven recommendations made on the basis of the research are: 1. A digital technologies vision is required to coordinate top down and bottom up adoption of technology. 2. Technology support and developmental units must work closely together. 3. Faculty need strong support to understand and employ learner-centred methods. 4. A combination of centralized and decentralized support. 5. The development of sufficient in-house technology expertise among faculty to track technological trends. 6. Be aware that policy change does drive pedagogic change first by restructuring and then by changes to teaching practice. 7. Resistance to change is inevitable.

Resources
Inglis (2007) has further found that there are 2 broad types of ways in which institutions are communicating e-learning strategy. The first is through discrete e-learning strategy documents and the second is embedding e-learning strategy in more general documents. Comparison of the documents at many universities showed that when e-learning strategies are embedded in general documents that the range of aspects of e-learning covered tends to be less. Inglis concludes that there is currently no consensus on what information these documents should contain or how they ought to be structured. However, he speculates that employing a standard approach will bring benefits to universities and groups of universities.