Personal Blogs

• • Do you sense that your innovations (as supporters of learning) have been valued, encouraged, supported?  AND what evidence do you have to support your view?

• • How widespread is innovation in your organisation?  Are there policies or statements that relate to innovation? If yes, how are they implemented?
  • What implications, if any, does this have for your attitude towards innovation?

First of all, I need to say that I feel rather detached from this question. Considering myself as semi-retired , my only work role is a part-time one as an Associate Lecturer (AL) with OU. To some extent this limits any ambition to be innovative in development of educational initiatives in a macro sense.

However in terms of my micro practice (session design, student team and individual support planning and learner –teacher interaction participant) I suppose I still believe that I do have such ambitions. I wanted to deal first with these issues of micro pedagogic management, before saying a word about my perception of OU macro management of innovation.

My perception of my role as an AL is limited because:

• I have only been one for 2 years, although my experience as an OU student has been intermittently continuous since 1990;

• The role of ALs is currently under discussion with a suggested move that is much nearer to ‘staff’ status than its current slightly ad hoc contractual basis based on contracted work for an individual module – each module 'worked' having its own contact.

• The modules I teach on have both involved much vaunted innovations that have provoked varying reactions but a large degree of vocal, if passive resistance, from other ALs commenting in Tutor Forums. The prevailing mood in Year 1  on a Level 1 UG module (for me) was of experienced tutors with not only resistance to innovation but a highly vocal reminiscence on a more ideal OU past – of face-to-face interaction with one’s ‘own’ students, especially at Summer schools. I was a student during these periods and my reminiscence, though not negative at all, is far from seeing those arrangements as ideal or easily idealisable.

As a description of my experience thus far, I have found the practice of the OU, its staff and peers highly variable. My experience of involvement in micro innovation has been highly constrained by these variations in individuals and module staff team groups. The role of ALs in the OU is very much the product of a benign top-down paternalism with its explicit and implicit limitation of the AL role as the executive of design decisions from above. Many mourn these values still, it would appear.

Even innovation can be handled this way, with ’collaborative’ work with learners, guided by tutors, being pre-scripted (as a suggestion but nearly always universally adopted) and administered top-down. In one course even the use and description of forum types is prescribed – module forums for an entire cohort MUST NOT discuss teaching and learning matters for instance (they are disgnated as not 'teaching spaces'), other than in unsupervised chat. Cluster rooms must be used rather than tutor rooms in discussion and instruction with tutors.

Nevertheless this top-down presence is never entirely efficacious. My experience is of changes labelled 'innovation' leading to actual regressive stagnation, or stasis in which the innovation is adopted and colonised by older and 'tried' methodologies and pedagogies. Nevertheless this relative inefficacy leads to some autonomy for ALs who want it. Whether contractual discussions will, or are even intended to, squash this autonomy is another question and I do not know. The issue of the primacy of 'experience' in pedagogic design, which needs to be problematised in any innovation, is crucial and is largely supported by trade union activism.

In as much as I have innovated in micro terms I have been supported by line management, except where I found those innovations running counter to formal policy or working cultures.

My areas reflect my interests, skills (from my working past as a social worker and teacher) include:

• Raising expectations of students at threshold points in learning (where key skills and concepts in psychology) raise resistance in most novice learners;

• Working with people with a disability in an empowering but facilitative manner, especially in the use of advocacy;

• Follow-through on disability matters to stop regression for an individual to the lowered expectations with which they started. In a current case, I have taken on the role of unpaid advocate (within OU policy) for a continuing student I do not now teach;

• Using forums to highlight differences between cognitive presence and social presence by encouraging reflection on the methodologies of teaching and learning themselves and sharing them;

My interest in these areas has been tolerated but not overtly encouraged, except by an excellent staff tutor.

At the macro level, the OU is clearly an innovation leader, using a ‘champions’ model that is effective but in no way contradicts top-down processing and implementation of change. This is most marked in The Knowledge Media Institute (KMI). It can be accessed together with its ‘fabulous’ (my age will out ) publications and links in http://kmi.open.ac.uk

Viewing publications here has led me to believe, rightly or wrongly that the crux issue in innovation relates to either scientific and technical disciplines or ones in which a link to priorities in ‘national’ needs are apparent (in health and social care).

However, I found evidence here too (admittedly less) from 2015 publications of an interest in those things I most value: human values, creative values, and expansion of metacognition through greater openness in learner / teacher roles and relationships (more than willing to share citations on these)

My attitudes are still emergent. I was hoping that H817 would act to crystallise them a little more for myself moreover. Let’s see.

So much for my musings

Steve