ONTOLOGICAL EXPERIENCES FROM A UNIVERSITY'S CHANGE MANAGEMENT OF ITS ONLINE LEARNING INITIATIVE AND ASSOCIATED CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR ACADEMICS

摘要

Although technology enhanced learning has been advocated as one way of meeting student needs more effectively and efficiently, a challenge for university senior management is how best to facilitate this development, empowering staff and encouraging participation, aligning individual motivations and concerns with organisational goals and developing engaging policies and practices in relation to the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of the academic staff (Maguire, 2005). This paper examines a qualitative research study (Goolnik, 2010) that investigated - through a phenomenological analysis of the introduction of the two successive virtual learning environments - how change management was handled at one UK University with regards the pursuit of online learning and the impressions of those who had directly experienced these changes and the CPD that was developed and delivered in this initiative. The population sample were made up of senior managers (University and academic), academic managers, academics and academically related change agents.