Strategies for Effecting Strategic Organisational Change in Teaching Practices: Case Studies at Deakin University

Abstract

The vision of Deakin University is, in part, to be recognized as a world leader in flexible and lifelong professional learning and in the innovative and timely applications of information and communications technologies to teaching and learning. This paper describes aspects of the university's Online Teaching, Learning and Enhancement Project, which sought to bring about faculty change by adopting a combination of institutionally imposed and faculty-driven strategies to expand the use of information and communications technologies in programs across the university. In particular, the paper describes and analyzes the models of change underpinning the project, discusses the ways in which the adoption of information and communications technologies for teaching and learning were used as a mechanism to effect and encourage desired change, contrasts the approaches used to implement the project in three faculties, and identifies several key pedagogical and administrative outcomes of the project. Finally, the paper draws some tentative conclusions regarding critical success factors for the adoption of technology-based teaching and learning in higher education.