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ICTs in the context of pedagogy and organization (Lewis, 1999; Privateer, 1999;. Dutton & Loader, 2002). The two paradigms are associated with distinctive.
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Journal: Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management Paper: 235068 Title: ‘An alignment of the planets’: Mapping the intersections between pedagogy, technology and management in Australian universities Dear Author During the preparation of your manuscript for publication, the questions listed below have arisen. Please attend to these matters and return this form with your proof. Many thanks for your assistance

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Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management Vol. 29, No. 2, July 2007, pp. 1–16 0

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‘An alignment of the planets’: Mapping the intersections between pedagogy, technology and management in Australian universities

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Ilana Snyder*, Simon Marginson, and Tania Lewis Monash University, Victoria, Australia

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The research interrogates the connections between information and communication technologies’ (ICTs’) use and change processes in Australian higher education. The empirical investigation focuses simultaneously on three domains of practice: the educational, the technological and the organizational, with a particular interest in their overlaps and intersections. There were 15 case studies, covering three discipline clusters (Medicine/Health Sciences, Economics and Business, English/Cultural Studies/Communications) in each of five different types of Australian university. The main research technique was semi-structured interviews with academic, executive and administrative staff, supplemented by focus groups with students and the study of curriculum and strategy documents. The main findings of the study were that the most effective use of ICTs in universities occurs when educational and organizational objectives are in harmony; when ICTs innovations are dominated by corporatist objectives at the expense of pedagogical objectives, benefits are limited and tensions evident; and pedagogical initiatives by discipline-based ICTs ‘champions’ require central support if they are to add value on a sustained basis. The optimal conditions for ICTs innovations in teaching and learning are disciplinary independence and capacity, conditions present in only one of the 15 case studies.

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Introduction

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In Australian higher education, as in most of the developed world, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are playing a growing part in teaching, learning and administration. Although some writers warn against naı¨vely promoting technology as the simple solution to complex educational and organizational processes (Cunningham et al., 1998; Newman & Johnson, 1999; Peters 2002; Wajcman, 2002), others continue to declare that technology will revolutionize higher education by enhancing accessibility, quality and cost effectiveness (e.g. West, *Corresponding author. Faculty of Education, Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia. Email: [email protected] ISSN 1360-080X (print)/ISSN 1469-9508 (online)/07/020001-16 ß 2007 Association for Tertiary Education Management DOI: 10.1080/13600800701351769 Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management jhe117728.3d 25/4/07 17:40:47 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 -

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1997–8). Indulging in what Woolgar (2002, p. 6) calls ‘sweeping grandiloquence’, technology boosters welcome ICTs as the universal catalyst and panacea for all needs and problems. New technologies in any sphere are often accompanied by uncritical boosterism, as if to clear the way for the new while conferring a special authority on advocates of the new. But although technologies can have profound implications in higher education, those implications are not always benign or transparent, and they are always connected with social, cultural, organizational and political exigencies. Technology is not a straightforward driver of change, free of social relations and the sole element in innovation. It is people who make changes to higher education amid dynamic social and cultural relationships and practices (Lewis et al., 2005). We need to ask questions still not commonplace in the ICT-related literature. For whom and what purposes are ICTs introduced? In what ways are they associated with different practices? Under what conditions? To explore these questions empirically we need to focus on people’s everyday professional experiences with ICTs across a range of sites.

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In the fields of higher education studies, school education, education management, educational computing and educational psychology, there is much discussion of ICTs-associated innovations. But many claims about ICTs are inadequately supported by research, and existing research is often evaluation orientated. Although evaluation studies can produce useful data, such as classifications of innovations and insights into the interaction between organizational and educational factors (e.g. Gunn, 1999; Reeves & Laffey, 1999), these studies are often characterized by the absence of research questions and ‘talking up’ of ICTs and institutional ‘re-engineering’ (Snyder, 1997). Similarly, conferences on ICTs and pedagogical innovation proliferate, but are often ‘show-and-tell’ reports of teaching practices and efforts to engender change (Collis & Moonen, 2001). Grounded investigations represent a small fraction of the total literature. There are two broad paradigms providing alternative conceptions of the use of ICTs in the context of pedagogy and organization (Lewis, 1999; Privateer, 1999; Dutton & Loader, 2002). The two paradigms are associated with distinctive purposes and approaches to people and social relations in higher education. We refer to them as the e-constructivist paradigm and the e-corporate paradigm. The e-constructivist paradigm has emerged directly out of the teaching and learning context. Constructivism, which evolved independently of and prior to the use of ICTs, understands the desired form of learning as ‘a process of socially based active co-construction of contextualized knowledge’ (Salomon & Almog, 1998, p. 229). While there is no canonical form of constructivism, and emphases on the role of the individual vis-a`-vis group learning vary (Bonk & Cunningham, 1998), constructivism highlights the proactive, reflective, self-regulated learner, and seeks to develop

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the use of ICTs so as to enhance these aspects of pedagogy. Here computermediated communication is seen to augment the potential for collaboration; and the design and manipulation of web-based media are seen to foreground student initiative, self-regulation and self-motivation (Laudrillard, 1993; Looi, 1998; Gunn, 1999; Lin et al., 1999). The e-corporate paradigm is focused on the potential of ICTs, particularly online ICTs, to bring higher education to a larger student population, while reducing per capita costs, standardizing systems, creating saleable product and enhancing the competitiveness of the institution, corporation or academic unit. It gestures towards student-centredness, but it foregrounds the proactive student as consumer rather than as collaborator or critical reflector (Giroux, 2005) and the principal mode is transmission. Associated with increased managerial control and declining academic autonomy, this paradigm tends to emphasize standardized curricula in the form of intellectual property. There is also a tendency to technological determinism as reflected in assumptions that ICTs in themselves develop cognition, initiative and collaboration (Fabry & Higgs, 1997). This pedagogically lightweight paradigm is strongly criticized by many scholars (cf. Andrews, 2004). On the other hand, its proponents see it as key to the survival and advance of institutions in an increasingly marketized and efficiency-driven mass higher educational environment. The two paradigms are characterized by different constellations of concepts, values, bodies of research, bodies of practice and social-institutional interests. Each paradigm has a normative element, and an observable purchase in real-world settings that can be tracked empirically. But it is a mistake to see the two paradigms as monolithic, hermetically sealed and wholly oppositional. The points of intersection and overlap are just as interesting as evidence of a divide. Academics and administrators in universities are continually negotiating and working across and between the two paradigms.

The study

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The study was supported by a 2001–3 Australian Research Council Large Grant. Data analysis continued into 2005. This is the first overall summation.

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Research questions

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Specifically, the study examines whether the use of ICTs is associated with more ‘student-centred’ learning, meaning self-regulated and reflective, and with increased administrative efficiency. It is framed by three research questions: 40

1. To what extent does the use of ICTs facilitate the cultivation of student-centred learning in social contexts? 2. To what extent does the use of ICTs facilitate the implementation of transmission-based pedagogy?

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3. What are the implications for ICTs innovations of coincidence between educational objectives and organizational objectives?

Domains of investigation

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The study investigates these questions via observations conducted in three domains: the educational, the technological and the organizational. We are particularly interested in what happened at the points of overlap and intersection between the domains. The technological domain connects to both of the other domains. It is most interesting to study what happens when all three domains are in play at once. The educational domain encompasses both professional teaching and student learning (Ramsden, 1992). Teaching is affected by professional academic requirements and practices, disciplinary cultures, demographics such as the age of staff, institutional staffing policies, conditions of work and the balance of roles between academic staff and general staff (Marginson & Considine, 2000). Both policy statements and scholarly studies about ICTs evidence wide expectations of a paradigm shift in teaching and learning, in which students determine their own learning to a greater degree (e.g. Bates, 2000). This forms part of diverse and sometimes contrary discourses, from democratic notions of learning to the modelling of students as consumers and education as a business. Actual research-based evidence for changes in student learning is elusive. Evidence on student attitudes is stronger than evidence on learning outcomes (Dillon & Gabbard, 1998). On-line learning foregrounds student capabilities, in that the immediate presence of the teacher is weaker (Salomon & Almog, 1998). However, notions that students have a universal preference for ICT-based learning have no research backing (Ryan, 1998). Students have a variety of needs and responses. It seems that the potential of ICTs to meet varying needs remains under-developed (Bates, 2000). While some studies bring educational and technological factors into conjunction with the organizational (e.g. Yetton, 1997; Harris, 2000), the organizational domain is often seen as given or prior to the educational. We prefer to treat each domain as a relatively autonomous field with its own set of rules and practices, but with the potential to interact with the other domains in complex and sometimes unplanned ways. In the educational domain, changes associated with the use of technology are driven primarily by academic objectives. In the organizational domain changes associated with the use of technology are often driven by institutional objectives, such as cost reduction, the broadening of modes of delivery and/or the implementation of new systems of research management, personal accountability or task control. There is something of a fit between the educational/organizational distinction and our two paradigms in the sense that e-constructivist practices are more likely to be centred in the educational domain and e-corporate practices in the organizational domain. The fit is not precise or limiting. Both paradigms can arise in each domain of higher education and may be present concurrently.

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For empirical investigation we used a case-study methodology (Stake, 1995). The study comprised 15 individual cases, representing three discipline clusters, in five Australian universities. The five universities and the three disciplines are of contrasting types:

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Disciplines: Marginson and Considine (2000) identify three broad ‘families’ of disciplines in Australian higher education, with distinctive missions and pedagogical dynamics: (a) professional training; (b) general-vocational training; and (c) the ‘basic’ disciplines. The three disciplines clusters chosen for the study were Medicine/Health Sciences, Business Studies and English/Communications. It was expected that these would evidence contrasting receptions of ICTs, from close pedagogical applications, to a special interest in application to mass delivery, to reticence. So it proved. University types: the locations of the case studies were distributed across the five types of Australian universities identified by Marginson (1997) (see also Marginson & Considine, 2000): Sandstones; Redbricks; Gumtrees; Unitechs; and New Universities.

Conduct of the studies

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At each site, we interviewed academic and administrative managers with the technology portfolio, deans, academics said to be using ICTs in ‘innovative’ ways and focus groups of students. We also interviewed some institutional leaders, managers and support staff from outside the particular academic units. The interviews were semi-structured and focused on the participants’ views, experiences and ICT-mediated teaching and learning practices in the formal education context. Participants were asked about the pedagogical and organizational aspects of ICTs innovations. The interviews canvassed the origins and preconditions of the innovations, including infrastructure, resources and funding, and the responses of academic peers inside and outside the institution. We asked if the innovations had changed over time and, if so, how the changes might be explained. We were particularly interested in exploring whether the innovations had met pedagogical and organizational objectives and, if not, what had been the obstacles. The research produced 130 separate interviews ranging from 30–90 minutes in length. In addition focus groups with students were conducted in each university. We also collected relevant documents, including curricula and university plans and strategies.

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Using ICTs to facilitate the cultivation of student-centred learning in social contexts The most sustained and far-reaching example of the use of ICTs to promote studentcentred learning was at the Sandstone Faculty of Medicine. In the mid-1990s a

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problem-based learning (PBL) approach to postgraduate medical education was initiated: There were essentially three major factors of change. One was converting from an undergraduate to a graduate entry. The second was adopting PBL as the method. And thirdly, the IT—that it would be heavily based in IT. So you can see, any one of those can be a major change for a faculty, particularly if you think of medicine … a very traditional course for so many years. (Senior Lecturer, Department of Medical Education, Sandstone)

This represented a curriculum-driven, ICT-mediated change in the direction of econstructivist learning. When the Internet became widely available in the mid-1990s, students had electronic access to the weekly ‘problems’, other web-based resources, their tutors and each other via an electronic forum: ‘an enriched environment that students can access from anywhere.’ Despite ‘all sorts of cases of typical resistance’, the consensus was that the technology-mediated curriculum was successful. Both the PBL approach and the use of ICTs were seen as pivotal to the success of the program. In the words of the faculty Head of Medical Education: ‘The students are well prepared … more outspoken … tend to be much more proactive … they tend to do things.’ Medically, ‘these students are much better prepared for their clinical responsibilities than in the past’, although a few critics of the program complained that the students ‘don’t know much basic science when they come out’. The innovation had been initiated by a ‘champion’ (Schon, 1963), who retired just as it got going. However, the commitment to education-driven change she had generated continued (cf. Taylor, 1998): The basic tenet of how we run this course is that the educational needs drive IT; IT does not drive education … We had a sort of conjunction of the planets, if you like, an alignment: we were introducing a new course at the right time, when this technology had been shown to be stable. (Sub-Dean IT, Faculty of Medicine, Sandstone)

The change was controlled at the faculty level and largely independent of central university management and financial support. The relationship with the university centre and its broader ICTs agenda was devolved: They’ve watched with interest. They haven’t interfered. They haven’t said ‘no’. But they haven’t pressed either. It’s not been the result of some Vice-Chancellorial edict that we did that. I’d say peaceful co-existence. We haven’t looked to them for much financial help … they haven’t changed their allocation to us. It’s calculated in exactly the same way as it was. (Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Sandstone)

At the Redbrick and the Gumtree universities, the Faculties of Medicine had different approaches to the use of ICTs. Though it was moving to a similar PBL approach, the Redbrick medical faculty had decided not to go ‘high tech’. Part of the explanation lay in the culture of the university, which prioritized a high-quality,

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‘on-campus’ experience. Many of the interviews indicated a negative view of ‘online delivery’: for them, ‘online equated with Distance Education (DE), and that DE was inferior to the on-campus experience’. Another part of the explanation, as perceived by the Head of the Teaching Research Unit, was that even though the Pro-ViceChancellor Education was in favour of developing IT capabilities, the money hadn’t ‘really been forthcoming’. Perhaps the most significant part of the explanation was offered by the Dean of Medicine: Institutionally the changes have been measured. It’s not an institution that goes through wild pendulum swings.

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The need for change came from without … [as] the graduates of traditional medical courses were seen as not being very good communicators and perhaps didn’t have the societal focus they should have. (Head of the Teaching Research Unit)

Despite examples of innovation in the faculty—the digitizing of resources for online databases that facilitated more independent learning—the Dean’s sense was that technology would not play a central role in the curriculum change. Its use was not seen as intrinsic to what he described as the faculty’s pedagogical goal: ‘to develop students’ capabilities as self-regulated learners.’ The Gumtree Faculty of Medicine, where a PBL program begun in the 1970s was still ‘flourishing’, also prided itself on promoting self-regulated learning without the integration of technology. In a university with a high degree of faculty autonomy and stretched finances, there was little evidence of a push from the centre to increase the use of ICTs for teaching and learning. Nor was there a push from within the faculty. This was perhaps ironic, as in the early days the Faculty of Medicine had boasted a Computer-assisted Instruction Unit. A version of the unit was still in existence but it persisted in using computers for their capacity for programmed learning, rather than for developing an e-constructivist approach to PBL. The PBL cases were paperbased in contrast to their online delivery at the Sandstone. The explanation was the lack of resources to support such a change. However, students were communicating electronically and live video link-ups were used with remote students. As with Medicine at both the Sandstone and the Redbrick, the old DE model of education provision for students at a distance, formerly paper-based but now online, was identified as a continuing incentive for the use of ICTs, but regarded as a solution to a problem of geography rather than as a favoured option. Overall, Medicine appeared to be more amenable to the use of ICTs than the other discipline clusters. This is probably explained by financial and infrastructural factors, as much as by characteristics of the discipline: medical faculties are more likely to have the resources to engage in major innovations in approaches to teaching and learning that are both technology-mediated and under their own control.

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Wealthier medical faculties are in a position to customize their own ICTs systems and platforms, enabling a fuller expression of disciplinary autonomy in initiating innovations. The study also highlighted the reality that less wealthy medical faculties do not have that same capacity for independent initiatives. The pattern was somewhat similar in the Sandstone and Redbrick universities for Business Studies. The Sandstone University Faculty of Business had invested heavily in Blackboard Instructional Management software five years before the university centre decided to purchase the market alternative, WebCT. As the Dean explained: ‘We had to get a robust IT platform into place.’ Despite the incentive of a centrally paid for and supported management system, he decided to continue with Blackboard: ‘I’d want to be assured that any centrally provided server was both comfortable and reliable.’ Many people interviewed at the Redbrick Faculty of Commerce and Economics believed that the university had been rather slow in entering online education, and that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. At the Gumtree, the Management Faculty had again been slow to take up technology, more so than the Medical Faculty. The English/Communication departments at the Sandstone and the Redbrick (and the other three university types), where they used ICTs, made do with centrally provided management software whether WebCT or Blackboard. Further evidence of changes to curriculum and pedagogical practices associated with the use of ICTs was in isolated pockets and connected with ‘champions’ across the universities and discipline clusters. The Redbrick had a number of examples. One enthusiast was an Associate Professor in the English Department who had won an IT Fellowship offered by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Education, which was almost the only example we saw there of institutional support for an ICT-mediated innovation. He valued the Fellowship as ‘invigorating and reenthusing’, providing an opportunity for him to ‘rethink pedagogical issues’. He also emphasized the importance of central support for the initiative’s potential long-term success. Leading the way in technology-mediated innovations at the New University was the Faculty of Human Development (see Table 1: Life Sciences/Nursing). This faculty had the highest rate of uptake of WebCT and offered two online courses. The Dean attributed this to grassroots developments rather than central direction: ‘staff have gone and done professional development training courses … so they know what it is and they’ve got ideas about what it can be used for’, while emphasizing that the university’s support for WebCT had also contributed. By contrast, at the Unitech, it was difficult to find evidence of the use of ICTs to promote student-centred learning across the three clusters of disciplines. More than at the other sites, the e-corporate paradigm was in the ascendancy. There were individual teachers struggling with large workloads and still managing to design and run innovative programs, but they were isolated and often worn down by the lack of institutional support. In the words of one lecturer at the Unitech: ‘Psychologically, I felt whipped’, and of another:

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I was in charge of 500 students online without any support plus my usual load … there’s no doubt about the aim … it’s basically efficiency … masqueraded as a better medium … the Nirvana of the New Age.

Overall, in the 15 case studies there was just one example of a major technologymediated curriculum change that unequivocally generated more student-centred or self-regulated student learning. It seems that unless a number of basic conditions are present—financial capacity, financial independence, academic autonomy, a devolved administrative structure and tolerance from the university centre—such initiatives are difficult to organize and sustain. It does not seem coincidental that this example was at the Sandstone university in the discipline of Medicine. The more common scenario across the five universities and the three discipline clusters were instances of highly motivated individuals and small teams of enthusiastic technology-savvy academics working to construct ICT-mediated learning environments that were designed to promote independence in their students, based more or less on econstructivist principles. But they were scattered, often unconnected, and weary from the increased work demands associated with the innovations. Where supportive institutional strategies were absent, these individuals did not always work with others, and sometimes their efforts were resisted by colleagues (cf. Hannan et al., 1999).

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At the Unitech the imagined potential of distance-based ICTs to support future markets in international education was a powerful driver of institutional policy. This was despite the absence of clear-cut evidence of international demand for online education at scale and the failure of previous global ‘e-U’ ventures (Cunningham et al., 1998; Marginson, 2004). The position of the Unitech in this regard was distinctive. In the other institutions, interviewees were more wary of the promised dividends of e-learning, though all were taking advantage to different degrees of ICTs online delivery to remote students. At this point it should be emphasized that our findings in relation to the Unitech were specific to the time of the case study in the early 2000s: since then there have been two subsequent Vice-Chancellors and major changes in ICTs and organization. We mention the Unitech example because at that stage it was a sharply realized case of the corporatist paradigm in ICTs innovation. The Unitech was widely described by interviewees at all levels, as ‘fragmented’, ‘disorganized’, ‘diverse’ and comprising ‘different tribes’. In pursuit of greater standardization and coherence, the institution’s then executive was working to gain more central control. A principal means for achieving this was:

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the corporate learning management system … integrated with the academic management system, integrated with the knowledge management system and the timetable system. (Director, Learning Technology Services Unitech)

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Part of the plan was the teaching and learning strategy:

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It’s about managing the relationship between the lecturer, the tutor and the students in a way that ensures all students are getting the level of service the university wants them to get … We’re trying to find that balance between teacher effectiveness … and efficiencies and cost effectiveness’ (Director, Learning Technology Services Unitech).

Also part of the plan was the aim to develop every course in the university in online form, including the courses for which there was never any intention of online teaching: the cost-efficient strategy would develop potentially saleable intellectual property while securing central institutional ownership of courseware. It would standardize and render transparent the entire body of curriculum and ‘retool’ all teachers as online course developers without paying the full costs of professionals. As such, the highly centralized ICT-mediated teaching and learning strategy was shaped by the e-corporate paradigm more directly than at the other four universities: Our teaching and learning strategy is based on a belief that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And this involves a radical departure from the traditional view that academics have of their role in the university. Most academics are discipline focused, their self image as an academic is very much centred around their role in their discipline ... One of the fundamental precepts is that as an academic you have to surrender your autonomy as a discipline expert and become part of a group that is collectively responsible for the overall intellectual development of the student. Some of my less charitable colleagues accuse me of being not all that totally removed either personally or politically from the Stalinist view of forced collectivization. (University Manager, Learning Technologies, Unitech)

Although managers acknowledged that centralizing processes needed to be balanced with scope for innovation at the level of the academic unit, academics across the three discipline clusters, particularly at the junior to middle level, believed that the DLS had been imposed rather than allowed to grow organically and noted poor communication between the centre and the periphery. There was broad-based hostility towards the innovation enterprise. For example, in the large Unitech Business Faculty there was resistance to what was interpreted as a command from the centre to move to online delivery, though the move was already gradually taking place. The lecturer, who was managing 500 online students without any administrative or teaching support, described the Unitech’s online strategy as ‘economically driven’. Life Sciences, in particular, Nursing, was less advanced in the move to online teaching, but its incipient resistance had been met with a firm response from the centre: it was being pushed into change. Students and staff complained that they were not prepared and that infrastructure and support services were inadequate or absent. In Applied Communication there was a different approach that took more account of the disciplinary needs. There, however, even one early adapter was critical of the DLS. While noting that the university had tried

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to accommodate diversity, he argued that the centralized system was ‘lacking in flexibility’, hampering rather than encouraging innovation. The students at the Unitech, across the three disciplines, did not express a preference for ICT-based learning. Although some appreciated increased opportunities for data retrieval, inter-student communication and electronic assessment, or some applauded the time–space flexibility of online learning (cf. Lockyer, 1999), others regretted the loss of contact with teachers and each other, and expressed concerns about the potential for greater surveillance associated with online teaching (cf. Swartz & Biggs, 1999; Kitto, 2003). The potential of the use of ICTs to meet varying needs was under-developed at the Unitech and indeed at most of the sites. Technology strategies did not always connect with students’ uses of technology. Students were pursuing their own e-constructivism that was quite separate from the university’s e-corporatist technology strategy: It doesn’t seem to have deeply penetrated their approach to university. If they’re on the Internet, it’s a different box from uni work. They’re very skilled on it sometimes. You know they’re publishing, communicating, doing amazing things, but nothing to do with getting a degree. (Technology Leader, Academic Unit, Unitech)

Implications for ICTs innovations of coincidence between educational objectives and organizational objectives An ICT-mediated educational innovation, located in a supportive and benign university environment, with a clear agenda, carefully formulated and based on consultation and planning, seems most likely to succeed. More than at any other site we investigated, the Sandstone University Faculty of Medicine’s radical curriculum change, based on e-constructivist principles, embodied these characteristics. With some dissent, both academics and students confirmed that the venture had been successful. By contrast with the Unitech’s lack of institutional coherence and mounting tension between the centre and the faculties, the Sandstone operated on a principle of ‘give-and-take’. The centre was attempting to instigate a universal teaching and learning platform, but in keeping with its ‘collegial spirit’ preferred ‘people-centred’ approaches to change rather than imposition from above. The ViceChancellor told us that the centre’s role was to induce change through ‘incentives not by regulation’: the members of the senior executive regarded a degree of autonomy as intrinsic to the production of innovations in teaching and learning. As a senior manager told us: No matter how vertically integrated an institution like a university is, you can’t rule by fiat … it doesn’t work.

The institution’s apparently democratic sensibility provided conditions for ICTsmediated innovation to thrive.

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At the same time, some characteristics of the e-corporate paradigm had begun to take hold at the Sandstone. Evidence of tension between the centre and the disciplines was emerging. Decentralization did not in itself provide every Sandstone unit with the same freedom to act. Faculties that chose to work outside the central system were not provided with technology infrastructure or support services, and not all had the same resource capacity. This was much better for Medicine than for academic units in poorer faculties such as Arts. While the Sandstone Arts Faculty as a unit took advantage of the central provision of IT software and support, the English Department was openly resistant to online forms of education and most of its academics ignored the IT resources on offer. In the Sandstone University’s Business Faculty, with its own networked Blackboard technology that was set up prior to the central WebCT initiative, many academics with little pressure from above chose to use the software, but as in Business faculties in most other universities, ‘teaching with ICTs’ often meant little more than putting course outlines and notes on the Web. The complexity of the issue of local autonomy versus central control is evident. While devolution at the Sandstone brought with it the opportunity for major disciplinary driven innovation, only Medicine seemed to have sufficient funds to support this. In other faculties, most academics seemed to agree with the central university managers about the need to centralize ICTs for teaching and learning. Self-determination cost too much. As in the Sandstone, the Redbrick ran along devolved collegial lines with the faculties and deans exercising considerable power. At the time of data collection, there were moves afoot to strengthen the role of the centre via the appointment of a ‘CEO’ Information Services to manage IT strategic directions for the whole university. One explanation given was that few initiatives were emerging spontaneously. Overall, the Redbrick was trying to balance a conservative, gradualist approach to ICTs’ use while recognizing that students liked the flexibility of online options. The university was being pulled in a number of directions. It wanted to prioritize the on-campus experience but was increasingly aware of competition from other universities on the ‘flexible’ path. Financial constraints at the Gumtree limited the extent of central initiatives in IT. The school in which English was located had constructed its own central computing system, chosen mainly because it was cheap: there were terminals on academics’ desks, but with the software centrally located and controlled. The managers saw it as a wonderful initiative because it did not cost much. However, there was resistance to the standardised hardware and software within the school. One academic, who had come from a better-resourced Sandstone university, and for whom ICTs was integral to his teaching, was no longer using technology. For him, the system was a step backwards. The Gumtree acknowledged the importance of central planning and control in IT operations, but financial constraints combined with democratic traditions to make it difficult to achieve. The university had to make do with pockets

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of innovation, which, given strong disciplinary autonomy, was also the line of least resistance, and still left space for ritualistic claims to excellence: We’re probably the leanest central administration in the country. Our IT budget is miniscule compared with many others. Our nominal amount to be spent on IT infrastructure in a year is $2 million. [We] don’t put in crazy PeopleSoft systems at $25 million a pop because we can’t afford it … [But] I think we’re up with them in terms of what we do. Maybe not in the width of what we do but in terms of the quality. (University Manager, Learning Technologies, Gumtree)

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The New University was also trying to balance central control and a coherent organizational structure with faculty autonomy. The approach to technology had been a mixture of ad hoc initiatives by individuals, some faculty decisions and some strategies and guidelines from the centre. The Vice-Chancellor’s group had taken a ‘let’s wait and see’ attitude to the integration of ICTs. It had been cautious in adopting a networked student administrative system. The lack of coherent IT policy was reflected in the fact that at the time of data collection the New University had two parallel websites containing slightly different information. However, certain strategies for the implementation of ICTs across the university were being put in place.

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Final comments In sum, the main findings of the study are: 25

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The most effective use of ICTs in universities occurs when educational and organizational objectives are in harmony. When ICTs innovations are dominated by corporatist objectives at the expense of pedagogical objectives, benefits are limited and tensions evident. Pedagogical initiatives by discipline-based ICTs ‘champions’ require central support if they are to add value on a sustained basis. The optimal conditions for ICTs innovations in teaching and learning are comprised by academic and financial autonomy, and academic and financial capacity. These conditions were present in only one of the 15 case studies.

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The research suggests that in the first years of the twenty-first century in Australia the frequency of technology-mediated innovations in higher education was increasing. This can be explained at least partly by institution-level strategies and management. Nevertheless, most innovations we found had their origins within academic disciplines and were designed to improve teaching and cater for a more diverse student population. A smaller number were driven by university reorganization or the need to raise income. When institution-driven innovations worked outside academic cultures this sometimes resulted in tension between managerial and academic practices.

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In the case studies the universities were often negotiating between e-constructivist and e-corporate approaches. Academics and managers referred to features of these paradigms when discussing their own ICTs strategies and practices. Academics’ pedagogical innovations seldom occurred in a context free from institutional and managerial imperatives. Management spoke of organizational strategies in relation to both corporate agendas and teaching and learning agendas. However, the meanings and organizational implications of the two paradigms were at times rather different, depending upon the particular agendas of different people in the organizations. For instance, in the discourses and practices accompanying teaching and learning strategies we saw some evidence of efforts to develop self-regulated and selfmotivated learners. We also saw some evidence of the discourse of student-driven learning articulated to market-driven models of students as consumers, an approach which tended to be more concerned with administrative scope and efficiencies than with critical pedagogical outcomes. Given the centrality of academic practices to the productivity, standing and identity of universities, it is to be expected that reforms in which institutional innovation is drawn into synergy with academic innovation are likely to be the most effective. Another lesson garnered from the study is that technology-mediated pedagogical initiatives by ‘champions’ can be generalized in lasting fashion only when supportive institutional strategies are in place: when there is ‘an alignment of the planets’. This conclusion is consistent with literature on technological change elsewhere (cf. Lankshear & Snyder, 2000), which finds that complementarity between innovations in different parts of institutional and inter-institutional systems enables optimum development. If so, the key question for universities, and their academic units, is how to establish the resources, systems, discursive practices and other conditions that facilitate complementarity. The case studies suggest a number of basic requirements for the effective use of ICTs. To secure fruitful synergies in academic/management partnerships, each needs to articulate and communicate compatible (though not necessarily identical) goals and values. There needs to be a division of labour between the two elements in which the managers provide enabling work conditions while academics deploy autonomy creatively and productively. However, one bottom line is that unless institutions and units are financially strong, the integration of ICTs remains a challenge whether driven from the centre or within units.

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