(Image derived from Paul Bailey’s Wordle, generated after our session)

Last month we ran a session at the JISC Next Generation Technologies in Practice conference (10/11 March, Burleigh Court, Loughborough University).  We were asked to consider Innovative change, institutional policies and communities. James began the session by outlining our project, the notion of disruptive technologies and our “5R” approach to analysing institutions and their responses to emergent technologies:

1. Roles & Responsibilities
2. Rules & Regulations
3. Rewards
4. Relationships
5. Routines

For this session we focused on two of these areas:

• Rules and regulations, or more precisely formal institution-internal policies; and,
• Relationships, or more precisely communities that extend beyond the boundaries of the institution.

We ran two exercises, inviting session participants to identify relevant institutional policies and cross institutional communities. Then, using coloured dots, participants indicated whether each of the policies or communities was supportive (green), non-aligned (amber) or constraining (red) in relation to the innovative use of emergent technologies. Although time was short and hence participants had to make quick decisions, these exercises provide some insightful results and rich topics for discussion during the session. (An interactive session was also well received after a rather hearty lunch!)

Results: Policies (Institution-internal rules & regulations)

The results indicate considerable variability between individuals and between institutions. Some general patterns, however, stand out. In terms of policies, the strongest support for innovative use of emergent technologies was seen as coming from polices for Teaching and Learning and e-Learning, with strong support from policies in the areas of inclusion and disability and plagiarism. Departmental policies, Library and information policies and Quality Enhancement policies were also seen as mostly positive for innovation.

Policies which were more generally seen to hamper innovation were Corporate Visual Identity Policy, Service Agreements from the Computing Service, HR Policies, Student and Staff IT Policy & Computer Acceptable Use Policies, Course Accreditation Policies, Business IT Policy, and Data Protection and Privacy Policy (including Copyright).

An interesting observation suggested during the session was that more positive policies came from policy areas which are more ‘student-facing’ and less supportive policy areas are more likely to be ‘back office’.

We might also note that, overall, policies were seen as more likely to be constraining than supportive, with 108 red dots compared with only 77 green dots. (Full results are shown in the table below).

Results: Communities (beyond institutional boundaries)

The second exercise, considering the role of communities, gave much clearer results. Almost all communities (except the Business IT Community, the Senior Manager Community, and the Student/Staff  IT Service Community) were seen as supportive of emergent technologies. In short, unless communities had formed around ‘institutional’ enterprise technologies, they were considered to be supportive of emergent technologies.

Perhaps this should not be surprising given that many emergent technologies are often linked to social networks and communities, rather than formal organisations and institutions.

Making an impact on the conference

Our session generated a large number of tweets, from attendees commenting during the session and from others in parallel sessions. In fact, in summing up the conference, Paul Bailey demonstrated two Wordle images from the twitterstream: before and after our session. Disruption indeed!

Full results for Policies exercise

Note: Red = ‘constraining’, Amber = ‘non-aligned’, Green = ‘supportive’ (Ordered by number of green dots)

Policy area	Red	Amber	Green
Teaching and Learning Policy	2	0	10
E-learning Policy	2	0	10
Disability Policy/SENDA and Inclusion Policy/Disability Accessibility Diversity	4	2	8
Plagiarism Policy	3	4	7
Library/Information Services Policy	3	2	5
Department and Faculty Level Policies	1	0	5
Quality Assurance Policy/ QA Code of Practice	6	4	4
Quality Enhancement	2	0	4
Course Accreditation Policies	8	3	3
Assessment Policy	4	0	3
Student and Staff IT Policy/Computer Acceptable Use Policy	9	4	2
Attendance Policy	4	0	2
Communication Strategy	2	4	2
Equality and Diversity Policy	1	0	2
International & Cultural Policy	0	1	2
Careers Services Policy		3	2
Corporate Visual Identity Policy	14	2	1
HR Policies	10	0	1
Accounting Principles and Policies	6	0	1
Estates Strategy/Space and Accommodation Policy	6	2	1
Business and Community Engagement Policy	1	1	1
Research Ethics Policy		1	1
Computing Service Service Agreement	12	1	0
Business IT Policy	8	1	0
Data Protection and Privacy Policy (& Copyright)	7	5	0
Staff IPR policies	4	0	0
Policy and Strategy Writing Policy	1	0	0
	108	40	77