USING THE LASO MODEL TO REVIEW A LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION IN ENHANCING DISTANCE E-LEARNING

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LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES, DIVISION OF STUDENT LEARNING

USING THE LASO MODEL TO REVIEW A LEARNING MANAGEMENT

SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION IN ENHANCING DISTANCE E-LEARNING

14th October 2015

Assoc Prof Philip Uys Director, Learning Technologies

Slides available from www.slideshare.net/puys



Introduction• Charles Sturt University• Blackboard during 2014• Overall aim all of university uptake by 2015 • Implementation process can be described and

reviewed using the Leadership, Academic & Student Ownership and Readiness (LASO) Model

• LASO Model emphasises the necessity for integrated and orchestrated top-down, bottom-up and inside-out strategies.



LASO model• Managing change for institution-wide

transformation in general, and in higher education in particular is problematic since people are central to the process and higher ed has a distinctive culture

• Proposes powerful bottom-up approaches based on the Innovation Diffusion theory (Rogers, 1995)

• Necessity for top-down, bottom-up and inside-out approaches to be integrated and used in a dynamic and adaptive way



Vision

Reward Structure

Strategic Framework

LEADERSHIP

ACADEMIC AND STUDENT OWNERSHIP & READINESS

WorkgroupsPilots

Training Teams

Dr Philip [email protected]

http://www.globe-online.com/philip.uys*LASO: Leadership, Academic & Student

Ownership and ReadinessSeptember 2001

© Copyright Philip Uys

Student Interest

…

…

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.globe-online.com/philip.uys



LASO model at CSU: Top down strategies1. CSU vision was to “introduce a leading learning

management system and educational technologies, integrated with other student system plans, and considerate of student and staff support and change management requirements: to provide distance and on-campus e-learning

2. sponsor of the project was a senior manager at CSU namely the Acting PVC (Student Learning) and later myself



3. Steering Committee widely representative of general and academic staff of the University.

4. The presenter, who is Director of Learning Technologies, was responsible for the change management and communications program

5. Interact deliberately with middle-management namely the heads of school and the course (program) directors – both roles manage staff, financial resources and workloads.



LASO model at CSU: Bottom up strategies1. Change fatigue was uncovered during the

implementation of the new LMS at CSU due to other major projects being carried out at the same time namely a new way of designing courses (programs), as well as a new assessment and moderation policy in 2014.

2. Extensive help with the transition of learning content from the previous LMS (Sakai) to the new LMS (Blackboard)



3. A phased implementation was further used that started at the beginning of 2014 and concluded in February 2015 so that staff could learn from each phase and also to ensure a gradual uptake by staff and students

4. Educational Technology Reference Group5. Professional learning program: training in the

functionality of the new LMS and integrating in learning designs; ran workshops; regular drop in sessions; one-on-one support; extensive online help materials



6. emails were sent to all students, online banners were placed on all student computers on the campus and student-facing websites were used to convey messages about the new LMS.

7. Regular and targeted communications were also send to teaching staff using a variety of channels including email; University news; general Yammer use; a dedicated Yammer group; via the educational designers; heads of school; course directors; and a site in the new LMS called “About Learning Technologies”.



8. The work of the LMS project team was another bottom-up strategy to support the implementation of the new LMS. This team included members from the Library, the IT division, the office for students and the Division of Student Learning.



Integrating top down and bottom up strategies

“Guiding teams” was set-up in each of the four faculties and the relevant divisions and had a mix of senior and junior staff. The guiding teams had to interpret the change and communications for their constituencies that regularly were sent to them.



LASO model at CSU: Inside-out strategies1. Inside-out strategies acknowledges the central

importance of people in the transformation process. As such it attempts to address perceptions, attitudes and behaviours of students, academic staff and project teams in higher education.



2. Three unique aspects of educational change (Bromage, 2006)

- mutual education: academics and EDs- collegiate approach: academics and EDs - providing high quality evidence: case studies

could have been provided3. critical that an educational rationale as well as

the benefits of the change be provided to academics to increase acceptance



Summary

-CSU-wide uptake of the new LMS with all distance and on-campus students using the new LMS since the beginning of 2015 to engage in e-learning.-Some teething problems but the feedback in general has been positive. -Distributed change and professional learning approach via a large number of guiding teams and also having educational designers distributed across all the schools in the University seemed to work very well. Guiding teams variable.



-An extensive and deliberate change process as described using the LASO model has proved to be effective.-The LASO model has again proved to be robust as a guiding and review framework for institution-wide technological transformation. -Confirmed again during the implementation of the new LMS at CSU for distance and on-campus e-learning that it is critical that top down, bottom up and inside-out strategies work in tandem



Thank You

Assoc Prof Philip Uys (Director, Learning Technologies): [email protected]

Slides available from www.slideshare.net/puys