Exploring technology-enhanced changes to working practices
The extent, pace and complexities associated with technology-enhanced changes to working practices can make understanding both the potential and the impact of such changes difficult. While the Work-with-IT project was primarily concerned with staff, the effect of the new working practices on staff derives not only from the technology itself but also from changing business aims and objectives. The project therefore used a three component framework – staff, technology and business drivers – to explore technology-enhanced changes to working practices from a socio-technical perspective.
The exploration phase consisted of desk-based research followed by two consultative workshops – one in Birmingham, the other in Glasgow, to ensure representative geographical coverage. Each workshop had 18 participants who were selected on the basis of role, institution and involvement with innovative working practices. This ensured a broad but well-focussed data sample. The workshops proved highly popular and successful, with both workshops being oversubscribed. However, difficulty was experienced in encouraging sufficient FE participation in the Birmingham event. As the emphasis of the workshops was on consultation and information gathering, a facilitated open approach was adopted. Further details of the approach used can be found in the workshop report (McDonald, Cullen et al. 2008).
While a third workshop had been initially anticipated, after discussion with the JISC programme manager, it was agreed that it would be more beneficial to JISC’s overall aims and objectives in the field of ‘Roles and Responsibilities’ if the project team to participate in two other related JISC projects’ workshops to ensure that there was a sharing of emerging findings and a cross-fertilisation of ideas. The first was the ‘Roles Workshop’ of the JISC-funded ‘Roles and Competencies Landscape Study’ project (JISC 2009). This workshop was concerned with exploring the modelling of roles found in HE. The second workshop was a Scenario Planning Event on ‘Future Roles, Responsibilities & Working Practices in the Education Sector’ led by JISC Netskills (JISC 2008). The main objective of this latter workshop was to explore potential future scenarios and much of the baseline work was based on the findings from the two Work-with-IT consultation workshops.
The desk research and workshops led to synthesis of a more detailed framework for exploring technology-enhanced changes to working practices which is presented in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 - Technology-enhanced changes to working practices framework
The circle to the right captures the key changes to technology-enhanced working practices that were identified. The top left circle represents the direct effects on staff and the top right circle represents the key skills demanded of effective technology-enhanced working. These three large circles then correspond to the three research questions relating to technology-enhanced working identified in section 1 of the final report (click link to report) . The final large circle to the bottom left represent the business drivers considered in Phase I.
This section then uses the findings of the desk-research and consultative workshops and subsequent case studies – see section 3 of final report to address each of the research questions in turn, expanding on the key features captured in the framework.
References: