Conole argues that a number of catalytic triggers can be identified in terms of the impact of technology on organisations.
Is this your experience?
The norm, unfortunately, is for high-spend IT projects to fail completely. ‘If you build it, they will come’ is the underlying philosophy for a lot of technological initiatives, but this rarely works in practice. Organisations have strong norms and routines in place (often informal ones that people may be unconscious of) – trying to introduce change without tuning in to these will never usually work.
Can you think of examples of when technologies have had a radical impact on your own practice – either personally or professionally?
Some of the most radical changes are seemingly small but, if well focused, can be very profound. So for example, when my company created a global ‘internal phone system’ with everyone around the world searchable and with just a four digit extension, that really had a profound impact on rapport levels.
What do you think are some of the key barriers to the uptake of new technologies?
I think the main one is a lack of focus on implementation. There is a strong underlying expectation that people will intuitively adopt technology, so you see a lot of investment going into design and capex spend, but no one thinks it necessary to invest time and resources into implementation. We are at point ‘A’, we can design and visualize the technology we need to get to point ‘B’, but we do not assign any specific planning or responsibility to people whose job it is to get us from ‘A’ to ‘B’.
There’s also the issue of the sheer volume of change – no one is ever at a position to consolidate the usage of a technology because the technology keeps evolving, so organisations are in constant state of catch-up. That means that no-one has the bandwidth to sit still and think deeply around how best to make a technology ‘bite’.
From your own experience, can you think of change processes you have been involved with – a new technical system, restructuring of your department, a change in job functionality?
How was the change process managed?
Typically there is a champion who coordinates a diverse team of representatives from around the organization.
What was the impact on individuals?
Change of any sort is normally stressful for all the individuals concerned.
What was the impact on day-to-day operations?
If the senior leadership of the firm is deeply aligned to the changes that are being implemented, they will happen. If the senior leadership are not aligned, then the changes will tend not to bite – organisations will revert to ‘norm’.
As Mayes, Puttnam and others have argued, education seems to have been slower than other industries in embracing the potential of technologies.
Can you think of reasons why this might be the case?
If you are in the bean-counting business then Microsoft excel will have revolutionized your ability to add up numbers and perform calculations. If you are in the teaching business, where the level of human mediation is much higher, then the impact of technology will be less.
Is there anything significantly different about the nature or culture of education that has had an impact?
The fact that education is traditionally a ‘not-for-profit’ activity will have had an impact. Necessity is the mother of invention, so in cultures that have a brutally simplistic ‘profitability’ target, along with continuous pressure to cut costs and maximize profits, it is more likely that technology will be exploited to increase productivity and effectiveness.
Do you think this is also true for Web 2.0 technologies?
The more we have tools that empower the user, the less we will have obstacles caused by the natural tendency of organisations to resist change.
Do you think that the hype about Web 2.0 tools is justified?
I think the empowering nature of Web 2.0 tools is radically different from much of what we have had before. It has transformed our ability to communicate. Its impact on the quality of creativity may be less than the hype would suggest, but it has definitely made it a lot easier for people to communicate with eachother.
Do you think there is any evidence yet that Web 2.0 tools are having a significant and increasing impact on how teachers teach and learners learn?
Not that I’m aware of yet, but I would like to know what the teachers in our tutor group think.
Are we on another ‘groundhog day’ cycle or is there something significantly different this time?
If we are expecting a revolution, we are probably going to be disappointed. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t profound incremental change happening over a long period of time.
If your conclusion is broadly that each technology is just another cycle of change, with promises not matching reality, is the perspective any different if the lens on this is over a longer time frame? In other words, has there been a significant change in practice when you take a longer-term, cumulative account of a range of technologies?
I think we need to be very granular in assessing ‘what is different’ and ‘what is changing’. And we need to respect the fact that seemingly small changes can be highly impactful. For example, I get the sense that people do not rate the existence of online research libraries as being representative of a profound change – but to me these are incredible. When I did my Masters’ degree in 1992, every resource I researched had to be in hard copy and sourced through the physical library system. My ability to locate new research was limited. I can now research worldwide from a laptop in my kitchen, and download all the articles and latest research that I want. This is revolutionary.
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