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| Objectives | The workshop is designed to demonstrate to participants that small, planned events can prompt significant and important organisational change. It is designed to give participants confidence that they can, no matter what their formal role in the organisation, operate as successful change agents, by combining the exercise of power, influence, or authority, and a good understanding of the way their organisation works. During the workshop, participants will: - Analyse their ability to cause change by leveraging their own power, influence, or authority
- Evaluate their own organisation, using a "cultural lens" activity
- Identify change management strategies they can implement in their own organisation
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| Intended audience | University change agents working with educational technologies, educational design, a range of delivery modes, and diffusion of innovation and change. Participants do not require any specialised expertise, but should have a good professional understanding of their own roles in assisting the university to achieve its strategic goals, and knowledge of their university's strategic and operational plans and governance structures.
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| Facilitator | Deborah Veness is presently Team Leader in The Australian National University's Flexible Learning Project. The Project provides expertise for transforming coursework programs, and works with ANU's Colleges to strengthen the University's 'student-centred' curriculum and course design culture. During 2001 to early 2007, Deborah served at the University of Canberra in a number of positions including Project Manager in the Flexible Delivery Development Unit, Joint Coordinator of the Centre for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and Scholarship, and Director of the Technology and Educational Design Services. Much of her work was in a liaison and interpretation role, operating between senior managers of the University and academic staff and managers of academic units. In 1995 to early 2001, Deborah was Manager of the Flexible Learning Unit in the Centre for Academic and Professional Development at the University of Western Sydney. Her work during this period included being a key advisor for the University's introduction of web based teaching and learning.
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| Details of activities | - Introductory activity: Building networks (25 minutes)
- Introduction to the themes of the workshop: power, influence, authority, "the tipping point", "the law of the few" (15 minutes)
- Activity: Are you a connector, a maven, or a networker? (20 minutes)
Participants will identify their own preferences, and review their own networks: how effective are they likely to be? - Brief presentation: surviving chaos (15 minutes)
Landscapes of fitness, living companies, flocking, knowing who knows, and why 150 is big enough - Break (15 minutes)
- Activity: Cultural web (30 minutes)
Participants will compare their cultural web diagrams with the organisational charts published by their institutions and discuss the differences. - Activity: AtKisson's Innovation Diffusion Model (15 minutes)
Participants will
• identify the extent to which they currently act as change agents and discuss reasons, and
• assess AtKisson's five critical characteristics for successful diffusion of innovation. - Activity: Creating opportunities for the introduction of change (45 minutes)
Reflection on personal preferences and discussion of take-home messages and plans; using personal, media and political channels to spread the message.
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| References | AtKisson, A. (1991). The Innovation Diffusion Game. In Context: A quarterly of humane sustainable culture, 28(Spring), 58. http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC28/AtKisson.htm [verified 8 Sep 2007] Johnson, G. (2000). Strategy through a culture lens: Learning from a manager's experience. Management Learning, 38(4), 403-426. |
