Landscape Report
Download the IRET Landscape Report (PDF, 300kb)
Introduction
The landscape report describes the range of responses that institutions have made to emergent technologies (the landscape) and explores some of the forces that shape that landscape. It was developed through interactions with pilot projects in the IRET programme and consultation with the wider educational community.
Executive Summary
What we think of as an institutional response is dependent on how we think about institutions. We identifed five ways of thinking about institutions:
- as a set of Rules and Regulations;
- as a set of Roles and Responsibilities;
- as a set of Rewards and Rational Choices;
- as a set of Relationships; and,
- as a set of Routines and Regularities.
The institution can respond in each of these domains. A ‘full’ response would imply changes (or at least consideration of changes) in all of these domains (and perhaps others). Any considered institutional response requires the institution to formulate a working representation of emergent technologies. Few insitutions have done this yet.
Key findings
- Emergent technologies are not seen as a coherent category in Higher Education but more as a set of discrete technologies.
- In spite of developments, standards remain significant issue for service and application developers using emergent technologies.
- The institution is the response: the blurring of boundaries associated with emergent technologies calls the institution into question.
- Most institutions are struggling to institutionalise their response to particular Emergent Technologies.
- Different institutions respond differently. Responses reflect deep seated institutional features.
- In most institutions responsibility for Emergent Technologies is both distributed among a range of actors and ambiguous.
- Emergent technologies are mainly used in three ways. As new channels to reach students (including potential students and alumni), staff and collaborators; as complements to existing systems, filling in gaps in provision; and, as a sandbox for experimentation.
- Personal and network security are often mentioned… but are generally seen as manageable issues.
- Users are ambivalent about many emerging technologies seeing them as promising new levels of informed autonomy but also as generating new work and new responsibilities.
- Perhaps surprisingly, Emergent Technologies have not engaged with issues of costing or university financial planning and operation to any appreciable degree.
Formulating an institutional response is a multi-dimensional activity which calls into question the identity of the institution and it relationships with staff, students and other actors.
Download the IRET Landscape Report (PDF, 300kb)