Retention of eLearning Development Manager (ILT Manager) Introduction To redress shortfalls in income against expenditure and prepare for

expected funding cuts from government, Cornwall College has to find budget savings of at least 4 million pounds. One approach is to reduce the wage bill through a organisational restructure that is consolidating functions centrally, merging roles and removing posts. This document makes a case for the retention of the post of eLearning Development Manager by highlighting its value to the business. Described below are five areas that present compelling evidence and an assured confidence that the post is of important and significant value to the college. The position centralises the development and operational effectiveness and efficiency of enterprise strategy and business as usual Information and Learning Technology (ILT) functions across the collage and beyond. The post holder, Julia Dando, makes a positive net contribution to college income through exploitation of grant opportunities. The post represents the collective business client, engaging external and internal service providers such as software vendors, externally hosted network and software service providers, partners and internal service providers such as IT and training. This paper describes the eLearning Development Managers activity and benefits as: Strategic and developmental Operational - business as usual/training External grant funding Promoting the college and improving its reputation Research & development

Centralisation of Strategy and Development of ILT According to research published by the DfES [1], the most effective ILT organisational structures have a senior leader with oversight of all ILT developments and operations; draw together technical and ILT teaching and learning personnel, give sufficient status to ILT managers, have a coordinated approach to ILT management across sites, and transparent processes for resource allocations. In the age of sophisticated electronic communications and collaboration ILT is the vehicle for delivering college services in ways that meet the needs of todays students and teachers. The eLearning Development Manager is the colleges recognised expert with the knowledge and understanding to make informed recommendations and drive developmental initiatives through to successful delivery. To dilute this function across other roles will require new spending and

a steep learning curve for individuals. It is likely to result in unclear understanding and recognition of prime authority and responsibility for strategy and policy. Research by the DfES recommends that senior leaders need to give greater priority to embedding ILT within learning and teaching in their college's vision, strategies, organisational structure and operations.
It was evident that a senior manager with an interest in pushing for the embedding of ILT was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for effective ILT development across the college. This person required an overview of ILT across the college, in order to be able to take strategic decisions, whilst being supported by both curriculum managers and those with technical expertise. In some colleges where responsibility for ILT strategy was devolved to departmental or site heads, no single person had this overview. In these instances some individual departments or sites developed and achieved their own vision through the efforts of their Head of Department and external funding, for example CoVE (Centre of Vocational Excellence) funding. However, there was no evidence that one good department was instrumental in bringing on others with unlike characteristics. [1]

Cornwall College was astute enough to recognise the value of an eLearning Development Manager and invested financially in the development of the role including training to the level of a Masters Degree in Open and Distance Education, with particular focus on Applications of IT in Education and Action Management in Education. A few good examples of projects successfully managed by the eLearning Development Manager include the selection and deployment of the college VLE, obtaining funding for WiFi to be embedded at the college whilst piloting the use of mobile technologies, and last years very successful ILT Fair. A small recent example of a project initiated and fully delivered by the eLearning Development Manager is the eSafety material to be delivered via tutorial and online, and social networking policies and how knowledge and understanding of the subject can effectively move us forward as a leading and recognised college of innovation. The eSafety materials prepared recently have now been adopted and are being used by more than 50 colleges in the UK emphasising the good name established by Julia for Cornwall College. The college is not yet fully mature in its corporate understanding of ILT and there are further opportunities to make substantial savings through the effective use of business lead processes underpinned by selected technologies and suppliers, external and internal. For example, making better use of remote services for online training for both staff and students. Since January we have had several licences for a software service called GoToMeeting, which enables us to deliver online training at any time to anyone with an Internet connected desktop or laptop PC. This has great potential in both reducing costs and improving staff training and has been initiated by the eLearning Development Manager as an effective and efficient mode of improving the delivery of staff training by streamlining and supporting face-to-face training provision.

Operational - Business As Usual Beyond development, as service implementer and manager the eLearning Development Manager provides internal processes and procedures to the business community working with department managers and lecturers. The post coordinates and manages most operational elements of all ILT services, delegating, under uniform and agreed processes, departmental operations to trained individuals. Currently approximately 55% of the posts effort is used by BAU. Its important to acknowledge the organisational position of the eLearning Manager as a business role that must be separate from that of an internal college provider such as HR, Finance or IT. ILT should not be technology lead but given a clear business focus for delivering learning and education in effective ways. Its believed that central control delivers a consistent and business process focus on a complex set of integrated services. A distribution of this function will create muddled, confused and inappropriate working models that are not congruent. The cost of this, in staff time and training, can only be higher than employing a specialist and result in a weaker and confused situation across departments. ILT BAU includes troubleshooting and immediate assistance and support to tutors - this is vital in order to help staff develop their confidence in new systems and technologies and support lesson delivery. There is no other centre of confidence or post that can provide this support centrally, and it is already insufficient at a local campus level. With correct training and funding Learning Services staff could take on this role, but it would be difficult to make a business case based on making savings. After the loss of our Moodle technical support (James Barrett) is was necessary to form a Moodle Administrators Group to provide the pedagogical support and some of the technical and developmental aspects that the former role provided to staff and students throughout the college. The eLearning Development Manager chairs this group and there is unlikely to be anyone able to replace that role effectively. The other members of the MAG do so as and when they can and are not offered any remission or incentive to do so, financial or otherwise. Without this important support layer, all support requests will need to be directed to IT services, who can only deal with technical issues and currently do not have the necessary expertise or the resources to cover it. ILT cannot flourish without appropriately enthused and trained managers and staff. Developing and maintaining staff motivation, skills and involvement is vital in engaging staff with ILT developments. The eLearning Development Manager has been instrumental in providing the training resource and maintaining the motivation in activities that enable this vital link with staff to happen.

External Grant Funding (Income) As government mainstream funding streams diminish and become increasingly difficult to access externally funded projects are where the college will need to look for funding to foster developments in innovation and ILT. The role of eLearning Development Manager is a key position to forge partnerships, create bids, and manage those projects. The current post holder is one of the most experienced managers in the college in handling these types of projects but is also well known and respected by the agencies managing and allocating funding streams. Examples include; ADAPT (300K public and private match funding found personally), CLN 1 &2, Molenet 1 & 2 (200K capital funding)

With national reputation Julia Dando has been instrumental in bringing both capital funding and generating private and public sector match funding to the college in excess of 500,000. College Promotion (Reputation) In order to successfully negotiate future potential external funding streams it is important to not only have a good reputation and show commitment to ILT as a college but is advantageous to have a good representative to provide the outward facing diplomacy and negotiations required to nurture these relationships. The current eLearning Development Managers standing in the national arena puts her in a key position to do this through personal networking and collaborating within the UK education and technology community. To date this has included contributing to articles and national publications for agencies such as JISC and the LSN, presenting at local, national and international conferences, online training and seminars for public and private sector organisations. From liaisons with colleges and organisations Managers will be aware of the value a good reputation brings to the college, which can be realised in positioning the college at the hub of UK education rather than a geographically isolated establishment. Research and Development Technology in education is changing and growing exponentially. The college has made a promise to providing students with the highest possible quality of Teaching, training and learning. Recommendations from OFSTED in the recent inspection included that we focus more on learning and developing the learners ability to learn independently. ILT is a key enabler in delivering quality and independent learning and it will be vital for the college to keep up to date with innovation and new and emerging technologies. This is a key responsibility of

the eLearning Development Manager and one that is unlikely to be picked up by other staff as their work load increases. There is potential for more international and private business now, particularly as private training agencies are currently increasing in numbers as government funding decreases. Having a sound and established support structure in place to make use of and effectively support distance enabling technologies will be important in giving the college a competitive edge in acquiring and developing new business. At the extreme end virtual colleges educate students through distance learning and have no on-site class or lecture facilities, Florida Virtual College and the UK http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/ are examples. Conclusion Effective utilisation of ILT requires a strong and effective framework, strategy, process and governance with full senior manager support. It also requires a professional centre of competence to champion and manage ILT college-wide and in cooperation with partners and suppliers. As a powerful recommendation from the last OFSTED inspection is to concentrate our efforts toward the learner, the position of an ILT Manager is important to facilitate and deliver change. This is referenced by the existence and importance given to such roles in the UK college community. When professionally defined, funded, implemented and managed college wide, harnessing the power of ILT will contribute to college savings. A new enterprise strategy and centrally driven process engineering project (Process, People and Tools) would deliver efficiency savings and business advantage. To lose the role of eLearning Development Manager would be a false economy. Loss of effective and efficient central management would lead to higher costs for operational support, unclear strategy and policy, potential disharmony and lack of uniformity in implementation, standards and usage. The college would also lose a proven and successful grant bidder. However, the role of eLearning Development Manager should be changed. Firstly, by changing the job title to ILT Manager and changing the job description to include, as it has in practise, all aspects of ILT from strategy development to operational BAU management. The evidence and judgements in this paper reach the recommendation that contrary to removing the post of eLearning development Manager the position should be renamed ILT Manager and given clear responsibility to deliver, on behalf of the college business community, effective and efficient ILT to make savings and create the platforms to extend the college reach to new customers.

Julia Dando, eLearning Development Manager