Barriers to Innovation

As a JISC Innovation Support Centre we often discuss the conditions needed to foster innovation, at local as well as national levels. So I was interested to come across this Futurelab literature review on Overcoming the Barriers to Educational Innovation by Kieron Kirkland and Dan Sutch.

Although the report focusses on innovation in schools, there is a lot that is directly applicable to universities and colleges. The authors group barriers into the following key themes:

“1. Innovation
2. Informal and social support structures
3. Formal environment
4. Risk aversion
5. Leadership
6. Shared vision
7. Change management”

I was particularly interested on the findings in the risk aversion theme:

“Core findings under risk-taking include:

* Innovation inherently engages in some degree of risk which can make individuals reluctant to innovate.

* Iterative change management cycles can mitigate some fears which impede innovation, such as fear of failure.

* To overcome risk aversion there needs to be motivation to innovate – this can be internal motivations, such as teachers wishing to improve the learning experience for pupils, or external motivations, such as pressure from above.

* Management style is core to supporting risk-taking behaviours, through encouragement and creating a sense of permission to engage in appropriate risktaking. This can be applied on a local level or on a wider national level.

* Institutional level practices have an important role in mitigating risk-taking, e.g. running pilot programmes and sound evaluation procedures.

* National level funding has a significant impact of risktaking behaviour.”

The last point is particularly relevant to the work of JISC emphasises “taking the risks that institutions would not normally take themselves” (JISC Draft Strategy 2010-2012).

However you could argue that it is actually individual projects who are taking the “risks”, and they will be under pressure both internally (from their management who endorsed their project) and externally (from JISC) to succeed.

The JISC Draft Strategy 2010-2012 outlines a framework for managing risk at a national level, perhaps projects too need more guidance on managing risk in their projects.

Bid Advice for Learning and Teaching Innovation Grants

Writing a project proposal is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process, so how do you maximise your chances of success?

In previous articles I’ve gathered some of the many JISC resources with advice and tips of success.

The current JISC call for Learning and Teaching Innovation Grants is accompanied by a review of the first two calls by Dr Neil Witt at the University of Plymouth. The success rate for the calls is alarmingly low, in Call 1 just 2 out of 82 proposals were funded and in Call 2 only 2 out of 85. So what has been going wrong ?

Dr Witt analysed the collated marks for the bids and found that the vast majoirty were “out of scope”. The criteria for being out of scope are listed below along side the number of bids that failed to compily in brackets.

1. The proposal must not duplicate existing JISC funded work. (Call1: 32%, Call2: 35%)
2. The proposal must not be part of the core institutional remit. (7%, 12%)
3. The proposal must not include the development or purchase
of learning material/learning content. (20%, 21%)
4. The proposal should not include the further development of an existing tool (10%, 6%)
5. The proposal should not include software and equipment purchase (13%, 13%)
6. The proposal must have the support of the lead institution and any partners. (18%, 3%)
7. The proposal must not be a direct resubmission of a previous bid to a JISC funded programme (4%, 2%)
8. Over length (this is an additional issue that will make a proposal Out of Scope)
(6%, 0%)

In the current call the JISC have adapted their documentation to address areas of weakness identified by Dr Witt. Proposers clearly need to set aside significant amounts of time to read the appropriate criteria and ensure that they meet them, so institutional managers clearly need to make space for staff to write bids. My concern is that while academic staff in universities are expected to bid for funding as part of their job, this is not always the case for support staff or staff in further education colleges.

The JISC executive are well aware of these problems and reviews like these as well as bid writing workshops can really help staff write successful proposals.

Can Twitter survive the hype cycle?

An article by BBC’s Maggie Shiels charts the rise and rise of Twitter, but wonders about the viability of the service – which has yet to make any money.

I’m a fan of Twitter (working in a distributed organisation it keeps me in touch with what my colleagues are up to) and Maggie usefully traces the development of the service from humble beginnings to endorsement by Oprah Winfrey.

But questions about how companies like Twitter become profitable remain. And in this new age of “economic austerity” it seems likely that companies won’t have the luxury of such extended profit free beginnings.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8015777.stm

Twitter is fast becoming a part of daily life

I just came across this post by Michael Calore at Wired about how developers are building applications for the home on the back of Twitter.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/twitters-hackab.html

The idea is that twitter enabled devices around your home and work can send you messages to tell you when the washing machine has finished the spin cycle – or (my favourite) when your plants need watering.

What would be nice is for my fridge to tell Tesco’s that we’ve nearly out of milk and put in an order for me….

An OpenSocial Foundation

Yesterday Google announced that it was:

joining together with Yahoo! and MySpace in the creation of a non-profit foundation for the open and transparent governance of the OpenSocial specifications and intellectual property. This foundation, modeled after the community-led and industry-supported OpenID Foundation, will seek to ensure that the technology behind OpenSocial remains implementable by all, freely and without restriction, in perpetuity.

It has also launched opensocial.org, as a home for the developer community and the OpenSocial specifications.

http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/opensocial-foundation.html

via OLDaily

Horizon Report 2008 the emergence of mobile broadband and social operating systems

Once again the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative consider key emerging technologies in their annual Horizon Report.

Predictions include the increasing use of mobile broadband. The report estimates that over the next two to three years :

“Mobile broadband, fully-featured internet, touch screen interfaces, remotely upgradable software, and high-quality displays will become as common as cameras are today”.

Also highlighted is the emergence of innovative data mash-ups which

“Help us reach new conclusions or discern new relationships by uniting large amounts of data in a manageable way”

On the further horizon (four to five years) are developments in collective intellenge and social operating systems which will further harness the power of the crowd:

“The first social
operating system tools, only just emerging now, understand who we know, how we know them, and how deep
our relationships actually are.”

This report also contains a look back at the last 5 years and reflects on how accurate their predictions have been. Seven metatrends are identified:

“These seven metatrends include the evolving
approaches to communication between humans
and machines; the collective sharing and generation
of knowledge; computing in three dimensions;
connecting people via the network; games as
pedagogical platforms; the shifting of content
production to users; and the evolution of a ubiquitous
platform.”

My Space – study group glue?

In the latest issue of the ALT newsletter Mike Thelwall looks at students’ use of social networking sites and considers how students are using these sites. He observes that while students may not be using My Space to hold academic discussions, many are using social networking for “organising their offline meetings and group work”.

Mike discusses ways in which tutors could encourage students to use social networking sites to create online study groups for their courses.

Martin Weller:The VLE/LMS is dead

Martin lays out his argument as to why the age of the VLE is passing in his blog:

http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2007/11/the-vlelms-is-d.html

He suggests some good new tools for creating a loosely coupled environment for learners and teachers.

There also an interesting discussion emerging in the comments to the blog about whether institutions are ready to move into an age where systems and tools are more loosely coupled. I suspect the answer is that some are and some aren’t.

via Stephen Downes.

Jim Farmer: Faculty and publishers advance e-learning

Writing in the ALT newsletter Jim Farmer charts the rise in the popularity of textbooks and accompanying supplementary material (e-learning content) amongst Faculty in the US.

Publishers are investing billions of dollars in developing these materials, an investment colleges and universities will not able to match – even if they work collectively.

Jim concludes:

Publishers have developed a business model to support a large investment in the development of course materials, have created a direct and productive relationship with faculty, and have focused on learning how students learn. This seems to be model where faculty, students, and publishers all benefit at least in the short term and in the absence of any more creative approach within higher education.

As always Jim illustrates his arguments with lots of thought provoking statistics. Well worth a read.