The type of study: methodologies considered

A decision as to which methodological approach to adopt is influenced by, among other factors, the focus of the research, that is discovering the most appropriate way of addressing the specific research question and fulfilling its purposes (Crotty, 2003). Before establishing a clear link between the

research aims and the research design adopted, it should be noted that other methodological approaches were considered as potentially appropriate.

3.2.1 Change Theories

Given the considerable organisational, cultural and technological change outlined in the first two sections of the literature review, it would appear that any research in this area should be framed by theories of change. Nichols (2008) used Rogers’ (2003) theory of diffusion to assess whether it was possible to qualitatively measure a HEIs progress toward the sustainable embedding of eLearning. Similarly, Trowler et al. (2013) promote the value of change management theories to make HEI mangers aware of what to expect and make them wary of likely unproductive approaches as well as offering a way to view a HEI as “complex practice clusters with differing sets of

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seek to examine change, either past or future, but rather to get behind the existing practices of a system to see if lessons can be learned that will prove useful in resolving tensions at a macro level.

3.2.2 Design Based Research

Design Based Research (DBR) was initially seen as an appropriate

methodological approach to guide this study. The initial attractiveness of DBR stemmed from the idea that it is concerned with helping to “create and extend knowledge about developing, enacting and sustaining innovative learning environments” (The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003, p. 5). Blended learning course development and delivery can be perceived as an innovative learning environment, and this research seeks to create and/or extend

knowledge about how that learning environment is managed. DBR has also been portrayed as an approach that can bridge the gap between research and practice (Garcia & Gluesing, 2013) and, as such, is perceived to be useful to the development of organisational theory (Andriessen, 2007). DBR is also an apt approach in the context of the change process, in that it facilitates design and test interventions (Garcia & Gluesing, 2013). While this research is not aimed at developing organisational theory, there is an argument to suggest that one of its outcomes could be to build on organisational theory in a HE context. It is also significant in a DBR context that this research addresses the development and delivery of blended learning courses, which has a design aspect to it. A DBR approach to discovering what organisational issues could have been learned from blended learning course development and delivery, however, would have involved designing, testing and monitoring the

implementation of an approach to developing and delivering blended learning courses. Therefore, DBR was ultimately rejected as a methodological

because it requires the researcher to start with a proposed solution that is then implemented and tested (Andriessen, 2007), whereas this study has no solution and is concerned more with exploring existing solutions.

3.2.3 Action Research

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(Denscombe, 2007, p. 122), was also considered as a guiding methodology. Like DBR, Action Research focusses on processes but does not start with a solution, rather “involves fluid and overlapping cycles of investigation, action planning, piloting of new practices, and evaluation of outcomes” (Somekh, 2006 p. 5). Seen, like CHAT, as an interventionist methodology (Sannino & Sutter, 2011), Action Research has been promoted as a mechanism for helping HE managers introduce planned change to achieve a new collegiality that takes into consideration aspects of managerialism and collegiality (Burnes et al., 2014). However, an important aspect of Action Research “is that it is carried out by a partnership of participants who are insiders” (Somekh, 2008 p. 8), and as such is very context based. This study seeks to draw out propositions that are common in more than one setting, which makes Action Research unfeasible because of the time and resources it would take to become a participant researcher in more than one location.

3.2.4 A multiple case study approach: adopted for this study

This research is about attempting to explore how blended learning courses are managed in HEIs, in other words look at happenings within their context. Gray (2009) suggests that case studies are particularly useful when the researcher is trying to expose “the relationship between a phenomenon and the context in which it is occurring” (2009, p. 247). Similarly, Yin (2009)

defines a case study as an “empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context especially when the boundaries between the phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (p. 18). Yin’s last point about not clear boundaries further justifies a case study approach because, given that examples from the literature cited above suggest this context to be undefined and unclear.

With this study, the research problem seeks to examine management practices to discover what contradictions and tensions exist. When Russell and Schneiderheinze (2005) sought to examine a complex social situation in an educational context they analysed data from four cases to identify cross- case issues. Similarly, Benson et al. (2008) used multiple cases and analysed

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the data for a comparative study of e-learning. With the proposed research seeking to be explorative rather than comparative, the argument for adopting a multiple case design is that the evidence that emerges from multiple cases could be considered more compelling (Yin, 2009) than from just one case. Plus, the research is not seeking to focus on unusual, rare or revelatory cases but rather derive more generalised propositions with increased applicability, which may be more likely once it can be established that they emerged from more than one case. The selection of three cases probably increases the workload to the limit of what is possible in the time of this study, however, the selection of more than two cases blunts the potential criticism and scepticism of the “uniqueness or artifactual conditions” surrounding the use of a single case (Yin, 2009, p. 61). The intention with this research is to look at multiple cases and then draw a single set of cross-case conclusions (Yin, 2009).