The processes used in universities 59

Having established a spectrum of process types from teleological to ateleological this section seeks to understand the nature and types of processes commonly used in universities. In doing so the section looks at university processes at three different levels:

1. Management and planning – processes used in the strategic planning and operation management of universities.

2. Institutional learning and teaching – processes used by universities to implement learning and teaching, including institutional e-learning. 3. Instructional design – formal decision-making procedures that guide the

choice and development of effective instructional strategies.

4. Teaching – processes used by individual academics to prepare and offer courses.

The separation of instructional design from teaching seeks to separate the

the processes used by the majority of university academics who do not have formal training education.

The following will suggest that most of the processes used by universities – at least the espoused theory of such processes – are teleological. There is significant and growing support for this use of teleological processes. There are also

suggestions, however, that such teleological processes are not an appropriate fit, create problems, and, in some cases, do not represent what actually happens.

Management and planning

While universities are increasingly more independent of the state, they are also becoming increasingly regulated (Clegg & Smith, 2008). Governments have encouraged, and in some cases required, universities to adopt strategic planning approaches in order to be more effective in managing the types of change necessary due to broader societal changes (Jones, 2004). It has been suggested that there is a need to facilitate a greater degree of sophistication in institutional thinking in strategic planning and policy implementation (Newton, 2003). In this context many, if not most, universities follow, or at least profess to follow, a purpose driven approach to setting strategic directions (McConachie et al., 2005). Codd (1988, p. 235) defines policy as any action relating to “the selection of goals, the definition of resources or the allocation of resources”. Drawing on this definition, the standard institutional task of policy formation is a teleological process.

There have been suggestions that strategic or teleological approaches to

institutional planning are valid for higher education. For example, Chafee (1983, p. 60) suggests that those affected must be considered and included in the decision

making, Gibbs et al. (2000) suggest leadership must communicate widely and continually about the issues using straightforward language, and Newton (2003) identifies the need to be able to respond to the inevitable tensions and negative perceptions that arise during implementation.

Others suggest that such teleological processes are inappropriate for universities and their context. Cohen and March (1974, pp. 114-115) suggest that except for a few areas, universities fulfill none of the three presumptions underpinning

long-range comprehensive plans. Meister-Scheytt and Scheytt (2005) identify significant conflict arising between the non-ambiguity required by teleological approaches and the multi-faceted and paradoxical nature of universities.

Duderstadt et al. (2002, p. 191) argue that transforming an institution as complex as the university is neither linear nor predictable. In reviewing the literature around organisational change Kezar (2001) finds limited support for the idea that teleological process models are representative of how change occurs in higher education or that such models have any efficacy for facilitating change.

Institutional learning and teaching

The same pressures behind the adoption by strategic planning have contributed to the recent development of university’s having institutional learning and teaching strategies (Gibbs et al., 2000). Changes in government funding have contributed to universities becoming more strategic (i.e., teleological) in their approach to learning and teaching (Gibbs, 2003). For example, Australian universities must have an institutional learning and teaching strategic plan publicly available from their Web sites before being able to participate in a government learning and teaching fund (Inglis, 2007). University teaching has become an object of policy with the definition of mission and specification goals becoming part of the

definition of learning and teaching excellence (Clegg & Smith, 2008).

Universities create learning and teaching strategies to outline goals, priorities and actions aimed at improving learning and teaching (Radloff, 2008). Learning and teaching improvement strategies become the focal point for self-regulation

(Harvey & Newton, 2004). It appears that the institutional practice of learning and teaching is becoming increasingly teleological.

This increasingly teleological approach to institutional learning and teaching has also begun to impact the practice of e-learning. The OECD (2005a) found that most universities initially lacked a coordinated e-learning strategy and tend to rely on emergent faculty-led initiatives before finally adopting a more integrated institution-wide approach. By 2003 a survey of US university leaders found that most saw e-learning as a critical long-term strategy (Allen & Seaman, 2003). A range of authors (e.g., Forsyth, 2003) suggest that it is time to consider e-learning as an integral part of academic activity. One that needs to be routinely supported and as a consequence it has become almost obligatory to add e-learning to mission statements and strategic plans. Klink and Jochems (2003) make the argument that it is necessary for management to have a clear view of the purpose intended to be achieved through the introduction of e-learning in order to determine the

necessary work. Similarly, and somewhat earlier, Dearing (1997) suggests that full exploitation of e-learning resources by universities could be made more effective through the development and implementation of a coherent and comprehensive e-learning strategy.

There is, however, evidence to suggest that teleological processes are not appropriate for the institutional context around learning and teaching. Table 2.5 mirrors Table 2.4 in that it uses Introna’s (1996) necessary conditions for

teleological processes to provide evidence from the literature of how the

conditions for use of a teleological process may not be appropriate. Where Table 2.4 uses more general literature, Table 2.5 draws specifically on literature

covering learning and e-learning within the university sector.

Table 2.5. Potential mismatch L&T strategy and requirements for a teleological process.

Requirement Mismatch

Stable and

predictable Trowler operation of L&T strategies is non-linear and unpredictable (Trowler, 2002). E-learning is characterised by high levels of variability, change and uncertainty (Jones, Gregor et al., 2003). A social shaping perspective suggest that e-learning in universities can follow many paths (Dutton & Loader, 2002).

Direct manipulation Fanghanel (2007) points out that academic staff filter strategies and policies through their experiences, epistemologies and ideological beliefs.

Gibbs et al. (2000) suggest there may only be a weak relationship between how teachers make sense of

challenges and respond to cultural pressures and rationally derived analyses and plans.

Accurate

determination of goals.

Gibbs et al. (2000) point out that strategic goals may become irrelevant as new opportunities and obstructions overtake the best laid plans. Newton (2003) suggests that there is no blueprint for learning and teaching strategy and that the search for one is flawed, even naïve. Cowburn (2005) describes how the different aims and objectives between the different strategic plans within a university increase misalignment and conflict.

Clegg and Smith (2008) show how research evaluation polices pressure academic staff to focus on research at the expense of teaching.

Oliver and Dempster (2003, p. 144) argue that there is no ready model or single clearly successful path for

institutional e-learning strategies that will ensure e-learning is embedded.

In addition to the apparent misfit of teleological processes with institutional processes around learning and teaching shown in Table 2.5 there is evidence that ateleological processes are more effective. Knight and Trowler (2000) argue that the development of improved teaching and learning practices is most likely to

likely to result in change processes that are contingent and contextualised

producing outcomes that are unpredictable and fuzzy. Along similar lines, Mishra and Koehler (2006) argue that innovative and quality teaching can only be

achieved through the use of a nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between technology, content and pedagogy to develop appropriate context

specific strategies.

Instructional design

Having examined the processes used for institutional strategic and learning and teaching planning and policy, this and the next sub-section examine the processes used for teaching. The importance of learning and pedagogy is covered in the Pedagogy component (Section 2.7) of the Ps Framework. Rather than examine theories around learning these two sections focus on the types of processes used. This section describes processes associated with the more formal processes used by instructional design professionals. The following section examines processes used by university academics who typically have no formal educational training. Reigeluth (1983) defines instructional design as a set of decision-making procedures guiding the choice and development of effective instructional

strategies. These strategies are based on a set of outcomes for students to achieve, and knowledge of the context within which they will achieve them. Reiser

(2001b) describes how the field of instructional design arose out of the need for large groups of psychologists and educators to develop training materials for the military services. After the war this work continued and increasingly training was viewed as a system to be designed and developed using specialised procedures (Reiser, 2001b). Models of instructional design still have strong connection to the models developed in the 1950s based on the ADDIE (Analyse, Design, Develop,

Implement, Evaluate) process (Irlbeck, Kays, Jones, & Sims, 2006). ADDIE is a framework designed for objectivist epistemologies where front-end analysis precedes the development of curricular content (Der-Thanq, Hung, & Wang, 2007). While seeking to understand the variety across instructional design projects, Visscher-Voerman and Gustafson (2004) identified four different paradigms for instructional design – instrumental, communicative, pragmatic and artistic. The instrumental paradigm – planning-by-objectives – was found to be the dominant paradigm in both literature and practice (Visscher-Voerman & Gustafson, 2004, p. 77).

As with other contexts, however, it is possible to identify situations where this teleological approach to process is not appropriate for instructional design. Table 2.6 draws on instructional design literature to show that Introna’s (1996) three conditions for teleological design (Table 2.4) may not always hold.

In addition to the potential mismatches outlined in Table 2.6 there are suggestions that instructional designers do not always follow this process. Kenny, Zhang et al. (2005) describe how for many instructional designers a majority of their time is not spent working within such processes, nor do they follow them in a rigid fashion. An observation that can equally be made for faculty academics and one that is examined in the next section.

Table 2.6. Suggestions that instructional design does not satisfy Introna’s (1996) three necessary conditions for teleological processes.

Necessary Condition Reality

Stable and predictable system

Discipline categories bring differences (Becher & Trowler, 2001) and are social constructions, subject to change from within and between disciplines. If a student finds a learning strategy troubling, the student can switch to another at will. The designer could not have predicted which strategy the student would actually use (Winn, 1990).

Traditional instructional design is not responsive enough for a society characterised by rapid change (Gustafson, 1995).

Manipulate behaviour Change in student strategy can circumvent the intent of the design, unless the design is extremely

adaptable (Winn, 1990)

Human behaviour is unpredictable, if not indeterminate, which suggests that attempts to predict and control educational outcomes cannot be successful (Cziko, 1989)

Academic freedom in teaching refers to the right to teach a course in a way the academic feels reasonable (Geirsdottir, 2009)

Accurately determine goals

curriculum decision making is characterised by conflict and contradictions and by attempts to guard the interest and power relations within the

disciplinary community (Henkel & Kogan, 1999). As the student learns, their mental models change and hence decisions about instructional strategies made now, would be different than those made initially (Winn, 1990).

Influences on the choice of teaching approaches adopted are clearly more complex than any simple analytic model can convey (Entwistle, 2003) It cannot be assumed that everything is planned in advance (Levander & Mikkola, 2009)

In the real world, no-one is sure what the instructional goals should be (Dick, 1995).

Visscher-Voerman and Gustafson (2004) speak of cases where goals cannot be formulated at the start of the process

Teaching

Responsibility for the design of the majority of teaching within universities remains with university academics and not instructional designers. University academics – as described in the People (Section 2.6) and Pedagogy (Section 2.7)

components of the Ps Framework – do not typically have formal training in education, and consequently the process they adopt to design teaching may differ from instructional designers. Lattuca and Stark (2009) found that how academics design their teaching is not described by a rational planning model and does not separate planning from implementation. One contributing factor for this is that the dominant setting for academics is teaching an existing course, generally one the academic has taught previously. In such a setting, academics spend most of their time fine tuning a course or making minor modifications to material or content (Stark, 2000). Academics are usually not often required to engage in the development of new courses or major overhauls of existing courses (Stark & Lowther, 1988).

In addition, Levander and Mikkola (2009) observe that the actual teaching and learning that occurs is more in line with the teacher’s implicit internalised knowledge, than that described in published course descriptions. Similarly, Argyris and Schon (1974) suggest that formal descriptions of the curriculum do not necessarily provide much understanding about how teachers put their curriculum ideas into action. Entwistle (2003) argues that analytical models of teaching fail to capture the full complexity of the decision making that occurs when choosing teaching approaches. Finally, Stark (2000) suggests that

instructional design is not only a science, but also a creative act, linked to teacher thinking. One that must be examined contextually and thus is not amenable to a single formula or prescription. Together this suggests that a purely teleological approach to teaching is not representative of common practice, and may also not capture the complete complexity of what is required for effective teaching.