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The context I’ll use for this exercise is a worldwide non-profit organisation which had become known throughout the world for its dedication to education and research in orthopaedic and spinal surgery.

First and foremost, about the Vision, that in the future they may state that ‘‘learning and teaching at that institution are supported by learning analytics’; i think it is plausible just because of its vagueness. if this institutions will manage to generate any analytic data and make use of it in any way, they may indeed claim that their education is ‘supported’ by analytics. the quality, extent and productivity of this support is not included in this declared vision.

Headings:

·      Technical/context/communities:

This refers to the technical infrastructure that is already available and/or is being planned to be available. at the present time, this organization has an LMS (built on d2l) and an IT department that runs its website and communications frame. of note, this department has not been involved in the contextual development of the LMS other than adapting the generic interface to their own. further, this department does not have any educational background nor the need to develop a technical community which is at least familiar with educational concepts is recognised. these factors will be major obstacles in achieving their vision.

·      Pedagogy:

This organization had become beknown in surgical education because it was the first in the field that had made use of the expertise of educationists. they were the first to implement hands on workshops, structured group discussions and faculty training. almost revolutionary at their times (1970s to early 2000s). at the present though, although this contextual infrastructure is still functional, they are experiencing difficulties in transferring this expertise into the current state of the art and adopting new technologies. two intertwined factors are in play:

o   they had become overly enchanted by their past success, it virtually paralyses them

o   their organisation had become so large and bureaucratic that it is virtually stagnant.

·      Ecology of practices:

this, by itself, is a major obstacle hindering progress in the context that within the ecosystem of our organization, any alterations in the pedagogical framework will affect the entire organization.  so it’s not only pedagogy that needs to be updated, but the entire corporate culture. you have to be sure that this is indeed what you intend to do. developing an educational vision that does not resonate with the organization’s corporate vision may prove to be useless.

·      Student community:

Consists of surgeons who recognise the need for education but not only because it will transform them into better surgeons but also because it is a prerequisite for being (re) licensed. so on one hand, they may embrace any innovation provided that it demonstrably produces a value but on the other, they may not care all. this is a delicate balance that needs to be recognised by the organization and exploited (e.g., TEL and learning analytics will improve your chances of successfully completing the activities).

·      Teacher community:

Interestingly, this is mostly volunteers. which comes with the advantage that they may be more flexible in adapting themselves into new paradigms or circumstances but also the disadvantage that they may not actually care unless they are presented with clear incentives. further, analytics may be a scary concept for teachers. much work is needed to train this community on the requirements of our new vision.

·      Pedagogic research community:

interestingly again, there is a fully developed Education Institute (EI) in this organisation. this may sound cynical but I have to confess that despite my fairly thorough understanding of the organization itself, what EO does beats me. as an example, as this organization has been performing activities for almost 4 decades now and as all these activities and faculty has been evaluated by participants and overseers, there are literally tons of paper full of data on learners feedback, peacefully living in cabinets (several hundreds of them) at the headquarters. why? because we lack the resources to hire people to digitalise and then analyse this data. now this, is a very major obstacle. we may of course hope that this attitude and code of conduct will change in case a TEL and analytics framework is employed.