Ward

JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

REVUE DE L’ÉDUCATION À DISTANCE

2010

VOL. 24, No. 1, 21-42

Making it Real: Project Managing Strategic e-Learning

Development Processes in a Large, Campus-Based University

Mary-Helen Ward, Sandra West, Mary Peat and Susan Atkinson

Abstract

The University of Sydney is a large, research-intensive, campus-based Australian

University. Since 2004 a strategic initiative of project-based eLearning support has

been creating teams of non-academic and academic staff, who have worked

together to develop online resources to meet indentified needs. The University’s

aims in continuing to provide this framework are to engage academics in

educational change and to implement innovation. Project management principles

are intrinsic, including an extended application and planning process (in which

committees of academics represent faculties); they provide a framework and a

shared language for talking about both conceptual development and practical

issues involved in creating online learning and teaching resources. This fosters

teamwork, dissemination of ideas and networking of teaching practitioners both

within and across faculties. In this paper we will detail how the project process

has allowed development teams to align the personal and pedagogical goals of

academics and educational designers for teaching improvement with the strategic

goals of the university and its constituent faculties.

Résumé

L’Université de Sydney est une université australienne qui est grande (plus de 45

000 étudiants), axée sur la recherche et qui a le siège de ses activités sur un

campus. Depuis 2004, une initiative stratégique impliquant du soutien à

l’apprentissage en ligne fondée sur des projets crée des équipes de personnel

académique et non-académique, qui travaillent ensemble pour développer des

ressources en ligne pour répondre aux besoins identifiés chez les enseignants

(Wozniak, Scott, & Atkinson, 2005). L’objectif de l’université en fournissant ce

cadre est de soutenir l’enseignement dans le changement éducationnel et de

mettre en place l’innovation. La manière de gérer l’apprentissage en ligne à

l’université a été décrite dans un article antérieur par Ellis, Jarkey, Mahoney, Peat

& Sheely (2007)): ils décrivent comment le jeu entre l’orientation stratégique de

l’université et les objectifs d’apprentissage et d’enseignement au sein des facultés

détermine la forme de l’apprentissage en ligne qui soutien alors l’apprentissage

des étudiants. Le but de cet article est de décrire comment les principes de la

gestion de projet sont appliqués pour soutenir des collaborations stratégiques

dans le cadre de projets entre les spécialistes de l’apprentissage en ligne et de

petites équipes de professeurs afin de créer des activités d’apprentissage qui sont

alignées avec les résultats d’apprentissage des étudiants.

Introduction

The University of Sydney is a large (more than 45,000 students), research-

intensive, campus-based Australian university. Since 2004 a strategic

initiative involving project-based e-learning support has been creating

teams of non-academic and academic staff, who work together to develop

online resources to meet indentified teaching needs (Wozniak, Scott, &

Atkinson, 2005). The university’s aim in providing this framework is to

support academics in educational change and to implement innovation.

The way that e-learning is managed at the university has been described

in an earlier paper by Ellis, Jarkey, Mahoney, Peat & Sheely (2007): they

detail how the play between the strategic direction of the university and

the learning and teaching goals within the faculties determines the shape

of e-learning that then supports student learning. The purpose of this

paper is to describe how project management principles are applied to

support strategic project-based collaborations between e-learning

specialists and small teams of academics to create learning activities that

are aligned with the learning outcomes of students.

Project management principles are intrinsic to the approach used on

these strategic projects. In brief, the process includes:

• an extended application and planning period, in which committees

of academics represent faculties and help to articulate and

prioritise projects over a six-month period followed by a

conceptual planning process lasting from three to seven months

(involving a project manager and academic staff)

• a project development process lasting up to nine months (involving

project manager, academic staff and educational designer/s)

• a learning and evaluation period during which the students

experience the e-learning activities.

These three stages provide a framework for talking about both the

conceptual development and practical issues involved in creating online

learning and teaching resources. They provide a shared experience that

helps to foster teamwork, dissemination of ideas and networking of

teaching practitioners both within and across faculties.

The traditionally understood role of ‘non-academic support staff’ is

changing within the modern university (Housego, 2002). As well as

providing support for academic teaching (as these staff have traditionally

22 MAKING IT REAL

done), the Sydney eLearning team also sees its role as directly supporting

the academic endeavour by working with academics who are interested

in jointly engaging in educational change and implementing innovation.

P r oject managers work closely with academics, developing the

pedagogical underpinning of each project, suggesting technical solutions

and negotiating with the academic to determine project workload and

establish realistic project time frames. The team’s educational designers

continue to liaise closely with the academic as the project is developed,

and the evaluation and consequent tweaking of resources after students

have used them is built into the project’s scoping process.

It can be a challenge to create new teams with members who each have

specialised knowledge, and who require a shared understanding of how

their skills and strengths interact most effectively (Caplan, 2004,

pp. 186-187). Previous re s e a rch (Wozniak, et al., 2005) identified

uncertainty about roles in multidisciplinary e-learning teams; both

disciplinary specialists and educational designers reported difficulty in

understanding what the other team members’ roles might encompass.

Discipline specialists viewed their own roles as including “’coming up

with ideas to put online’, ‘showing the best way to teach content in my

discipline’ and ‘fostering creativity in the team’ (p. 738). Educational

designers saw their roles as “’to provide specific information and

content’, ‘provide good examples’, ‘ensure that project outcomes are met’,

‘provide technical and educational expertise’, and as an ‘agent of change

by promoting new ways of looking at old problems’”(p. 738).

This article aims to describe and discuss our experience in meeting

these challenges. It begins with a description of the structure of the e-

learning teams, then details the stages of development a project goes

through and how these relate to the faculty planning cycle, before

analysing the key stages of the project management process and the

relationship between the project development process and pedagogical

development within the institution.

Structure of eLearning Project Teams

Each project team consists of faculty-based academics who are usually

course or unit of study co-ordinators, e-learning designers who work

with them to develop the online activities, and an e-learning project

manager. Each project team works on a specific project that has been

endorsed by a faculty sponsor (usually the Dean or Head of School). As

the university is currently comprised of 17 faculties, Sydney eLearning is

organised on the basis of three clusters that loosely represent the strong

disciplinary culture of the university. Although project managers work

within a single cluster, educational designers work across the clusters,

MAKING IT REAL 23

depending on the skill mix that is required at different times in different

clusters. This has allowed the team to develop a broad view of learning

and teaching work across all of the faculties within the university.

Figure 1 provides a visual representation of the team structure as

implemented across the three disciplinary clusters. It also shows how

teams are both informed by and contribute to both faculty and university-

wide learning and teaching goals.

Figure 1: Structure of e-learning project teams

Faculty Representatives

Faculties' learning and teaching plans, aligned to the university learning

and teaching strategy, determine the strategic direction of the projects.

Faculty e-learning representatives are therefore a key part of strategic

project initiatives. Faculty Deans each appoint a representative who

fosters the implementation and development of e-learning within

faculties by active membership of the Faculty Learning and Teaching

Committee. It is expected that each representative will raise faculty

a w a reness of current university e-learning strategies, support the

dissemination of e-learning operational information (deadlines, events,

24 MAKING IT REAL

etc.) and maintain their involvement with regular e-learning cluster and

working group meetings

Academic-in-Charge

The academic-in-charge provides the academic quality assurance for the

project. S/he is usually responsible for the design of the objectives,

activities, assessment and outcomes of the unit of study or course that is

the focus of the project. Academics initiate a project through an

application (in conjunction with the faculty representative); they provide

the academic content during the project development phase of the cycle;

and they oversee the evaluation (in conjunction with the project manager

and the cluster director).

Project Managers

The project manager is responsible for the quality assurance of the

development processes. S/he prepares, organizes, ensures completion of

and sometimes maintains 12-15 strategic projects within each cluster

every year. Their first contact with the academic applicant will usually be

as much as a year before the development phase is commenced, and on

the basis of ongoing discussion in that period the project is shaped and its

size and scope determined. The importance of documentary tools to

ensure that all team members are as clear as possible about the scope and

limits of the project are emphasised by Hurst and Thomas (2004) and once

development has commenced it is the project manager who ensures that

deadlines are being met and satisfactory pro g ress is being made,

according to the Letter of Agreement and scoping documentation. The

p r oject manager is responsible for all project documentation and

reporting, including assembling and distribution of applications for

ranking by the faculty representatives, and may sometimes be involved in

evaluation of project outcomes and on-going maintenance of the

resources created within the project's development phase.

Educational Designers

Educational designers generally have postgraduate qualifications in

education, and at least one of a number of other advanced skills in an area

related to online design work, for example, graphic design, 'back-end'

technical skills, pedagogical theory, or skills with animation. Educational

designers are allocated to project teams on a contingent basis. Each

semester the project managers negotiate the skills they require for each

project in context of the available educational designers. For example, if a

project requires substantial graphical work, an educational designer with

expertise in graphic software packages will become part of the team.

MAKING IT REAL 25

Cluster Directors

Cluster directors are experienced members of the academic staff who are

seconded from faculties (0.2FTE). A cluster director works closely with

the faculty representatives to develop e-learning awareness and strategies

within the cluster and with the Director of Sydney eLearning to ensure

congruence with university-level strategy. S/he also works closely with

the project managers, advising and consulting on the progress of both

current and future projects. A cluster director's experience in academic

culture can be an especially useful aid in supporting a project manager

when complex academic issues need to be resolved. They also play a key

strategic role in their work with the faculty representatives on the

selection of projects for the following year.

Integrating Strategic Educational Design into Faculty Curriculum Planning

The purpose of the e-learning development cycle is to integrate

innovative educational design into the curricular planning of faculties

.The staged approach to the e-learning project management process

allows it to extend over a two to three year period, but also to integrate

with the teaching semesters of the University. Writing about the

experience of incorporating eLearning into a university's teaching,

Alexander (2001) points out that “Teachers' planning of learning

experiences…is strongly underpinned by their thinking about what

learning means.” (p. 244). Being aware of the strongly disciplinary nature

of academic culture at Sydney, we have worked as closely as we can with

faculties to incorporate both disciplinary understandings of pedagogy

and the teaching aspirations of individual academics into our project

planning process.

Stage 1: Project Selection

One of the key faculty representative roles is the fostering and facilitation

of nascent projects in the consultation process that takes place in the

selection of the projects to be undertaken in the following year. Figure 2

provides calendar-related details of the selection process. This extended

period allows both academics and project managers to conceptualise the

intended educational outcomes of the project in quite a detailed way. This

is not to say that the project 's final form is always clear at this stage; this

is usually decided once the educational designer becomes involved the

following year. However, appropriate pedagogical principles, bro a d

outcomes and curriculum design are often clarified in discussion during

this period.

26 MAKING IT REAL

Figure 2: Timeline for selection process

The selection process involves two formal written applications: the

expression of interest and the formal application. Pro formas are provided

for both of these, and academics are encouraged to submit drafts to the

project manager and/or their faculty representative for comment.

The expression of interest (usually no more than a page) asks the

academic-in-charge for a brief description of what they would like

assistance with and the aims of the project, the perceived benefits, and

some details about the breadth of its application and which of the

universities' strategic teaching goals it addresses, along with any key

timeframe issues. These preliminary proposals are discussed at a meeting

of faculty representatives, the cluster director and the e-learning project

manager.

The application, which is written by the academic-in-charge after

further consultation with both their faculty representative and project

manager, much more strongly reflects the strategic nature of the project

application process. Table 1 lists the categories of information that are

required in the final proposal, in which it is clear that applications are to

be aligned with both the university's and the individual faculty's strategic

goals.

MAKING IT REAL 27

Table 1: Details Sought in Final Application (Expression of Interest)

• Project title and description

• Perceived benefits

• Alignment with strategic e-learning objectives the university has identified

• Alignment with university and/or faculty learning and teaching strategic plans

• Resources required, other aid applied for, time and/or expertise faculty can devote

• Listing of other issues that will assist in ranking, e.g., large classes, pre-existing

resources

• Date completed resource required

• Additional information

As academics with an active interest in learning and teaching, the faculty

representatives form an important link between faculty learning and

teaching policy formation and e-learning strategy. Presentations by

project managers of ongoing projects at regular meetings both adds to

shared understandings of how projects proceed and aids with problem-

solving at a very local level. The annual project selection process detailed

above is dependent on the discussion among and recommendations from

the faculty representatives. Being aware of strategic concerns in their

faculties and having talked to the academic applicants and received

advice on e-learning strategic and technical matters from the cluster

director and project manager, they decide in committee which projects

will go forward for development the following year and how many hours

each project team will receive.

F rom the time an academic makes their first enquiry, they are

supported and assisted by their faculty re p resentative and pro j e c t

manager, through ongoing discussions that help to shape the final

application. Once the ranked applications have been supported by the

Director of eLearning and the DVC (Education) (see Figure 1), the project

manager continues working with the academic-in-charge to further shape

the project before the development period begins. Staff are advised to

attend our staff e-learning training to help them think about what they'd

like out of the project, and we are presently discussing ways of tailoring

training for academics who have been awarded project hours—this

would be training equivalent to Stage 2 of Ellis's model (Ellis & Phelps,

2000). One common outcome of this part of the process is that academics

report that they have become much more aware of the pedagogical basis

for their teaching—what has been implicit in their transfer of disciplinary

knowledge has now become explicit for them and for some has provided

a language that is facilitating other discussions of learning and teaching

matters within faculties.

28 MAKING IT REAL

Project selection is essentially a 'bottom-up' process: individuals are

assisted to articulate their own teaching needs and align these with

disciplinary pedagogical practice and university strategic policy, without

pressure or involvement at the level of either faculty management or

university management more widely (cf McMurray, 2001). The case that

McMurray describes is one in which project management principles were

used in a way that conflicted with the academic organisational culture;

our choice has been to use them to support and foster teaching culture in

faculties. Each e-learning project is generated by an academic, who is

responsible for providing the academic content for the educational

designer to create the resource. The autonomy of individual academics is

not limited by this process—on the contrary they are supported to reach

their self-defined teaching goals.

Project Experience 1: Music Education

This project demonstrates the way that the structure and resources

p rovided by the strategic eLearning projects can assist academics'

development as online practitioners, and in turn influence the wider

community in their faculty.

The music education academics expressed interest in working on their

own strategic eLearning project after first receiving a small number of

hours of "at-elbow" support within the faculty. These were provided as

part of another strategic project designed to assist academics to get started

with eLearning. This music education project thus aimed to develop the

informational sites by including online activities that would help students

to link the theory learned in the face-to-face classes with their experiences

while on practicum.

When the project manager first met with the academics, after their EOI

but before their detailed submission was due, the project seemed quite

modest, but as the conversations progressed, it developed into an entity

which was more focused on learning and better integrated with the face-

to-face component of the units. Later feedback from the academics

explained that these early meetings assisted them to "clarify our thinking

and develop achievable goals...".

Since then, the academics have applied for further projects to extend

the sites and to make changes to activities in response to student feedback

and their own experience delivering the online resources. As their skills

and experience with eLearning have developed, the online activities have

become more sophisticated and assured and the sites now contain

discussions, reflective and case-based activities, quizzes and multimedia.

The academics themselves became eLearning mentors within their

faculty, taking on the role of faculty representatives and presenting their

work at in-house sessions. The process has now turned full-circle, with an

MAKING IT REAL 29

academic from the faculty commenting that he was so inspired by a

demonstration given by one of them he put up an informational site for

his unit of study this semester.

This can sometimes be a new experience for academics, as Scott,

Mahoney and Peat (2008) discuss. They identified a lack of clarity about

responsibilities within teams for all involved in the early days of

eLearning projects at Sydney. For example, one academic reported feeling

pressured when asked to provide teaching material that had existed “in

their head” in a more concrete form for the project:

“The e-learning bit was dealt with by the e-learning team but the rest of us

were sitting there doing our own thing. You think 'Oh, the e-learning team

will do all of that.' And then they say, 'Where is the content?' You think,

'Well, it's in my head.' But, you know, somebody has to go on and do that,

so I think we didn't factor in those things so well.” (p. 3)

These reported challenges have been taken into account as the e-learning

team has continues to streamline its project processes. For example,

greater efforts are now made to be as transparent as possible about the

process for allocating educational designers to teams, and the scoping

document (discussed below) now includes very clear listings of the

responsibility of each team member, along with the deadlines for content

provision that are decided with academics as soon as the project has been

approved for resource creation some months hence. However, not all

faculties have as yet fully incorporated workload policies for e-learning

(see Alexander, 2001, p. 246), and some projects are not effectively

completed because of shifting academic interest and commitment. The

challenge for the eLearning team is to work within this less-than-certain

environment. Hurst and Thomas (2004) provide an excellent discussion

on the issues of accountability and uncertainty in online environments,

and their conclusion that “Sometimes the trick is simply to assign an

initial responsibility, and then trade it off as necessary”(p. 213), would be

one that our experience would lead us to endorse. In the Music Education

project detailed above, initial flexibility led to a successful, although not

the original, outcome, with pay-offs for academic staff that had not

originally been foreseen.

Stage 2: Project Development

Most of the project development work occurs in the second year. During

this stage, the academic-in-charge, project manager and educational

designers collaborate to produce the online learning objects or modules

that are the tangible project outcomes.

One of the challenges in this stage is the competing demands on the

time of the academic-in-charge and colleagues who may be involved in

30 MAKING IT REAL

the project. Every year 4000 hours of educational design and project

management time is allotted to each cluster of five or six faculties, and the

projects are worked on in two blocks over the academic year (Figure 3).

Project period 1 (12 weeks), takes place during the first semester of the

year (beginning of April to the end of June), and project period 2 (24

weeks), occupies the second semester and the summer/Christmas break

(beginning of August to the end of January).

Figure 3: Strategic project development periods

The extended proposal process discussed above provides opportunity for

the academic-in-charge to incorporate adequate time to prepare materials

in advance of the project development phase. Academics know what

their commitments will be to the project either four months (project

period 1) or 10 months (project period 2) before the educational designers

are ready to begin work. During this time the project manager keeps in

touch with them and will work with them to create a realistic time-frame

for resource development. Some apply for a separate grant in order to

provide themselves with more time and/or staff resources in order to

p r e p a re their project material or to engage more actively in the

development processes. As identified by Hurst and Thomas (2004), the

role of trust in the development of online learning projects is important to

consider. Our extended time frame increases the time in which this

essential trust can be developed. Initially the faculty rep and the project

manager establish a relationship with the academic through the

application process, and the early conceptual stages of development. As

the resources are being developed the educational designers work to

consolidate this initial trust.

If a project cannot be completed in the time available due to

unexpected complications in its development (e.g., difficulties with

technology, over-confidence either of educational design or academic

predictions of required work load), the academic is usually able to apply

for further time in the future, and a high degree of flexibility is exercised

MAKING IT REAL 31

by the project managers to limit the number of uncompleted projects (see

Project Experience 2 below for details as to how this might work in

practice) . Where projects have not been completed as planned it is

commonly related either to the circumstances of the academic (change of

employment or teaching allocation), or where a better solution than we

were able to offer has been found (this frequently relates to advances in

web-based technologies that we are not able to support).

Project Experience 2: Second-Year Field Science

E-learning projects have been used to support teaching in science where

the use of face-to-face practical teaching time is being re-organised to

maximise learning during periods of practical experience.

A unit of study co-ordinator in Environmental Science originally

approached us to create a virtual field trip, to both prepare the students

for the reality of their first field trip and act as an aide-de-memoir after it

was finished, and to replace the field trip experience for the few students

who were unable to attend. This was initially agreed to, and a site was

prepared, but the time necessary to create the resources that were needed

to replicate the field trip experience was underestimated, and the project

wasn't completed.

The following year more project hours were set aside to complete a

scaled-down version of the site, which would not aim to replicate the

field-trip experience (which, it was now agreed, wasn't really possible),

but would act as an aid for students preparing for and revising their

experience. On that basis the site was then re-organised and completed by

another educational designer, but the lecturer still did not feel it met his

needs and again the resources that had been created were not used.

Project evaluation established that the revised proposal may not have

been fully understood by the educational designer, and that there was a

lack of communication between the unit of study co-ordinator and other

teaching staff who had not been invited to contribute content.

In the second semester of that year a new team member who had high-

level skills in graphic design was assigned to work with the lecturer to

improve the usability of the site. He was able to build on the work of the

previous team members to improve the site by making greater efforts to

include content from other members of the teaching team, and by making

the appearance of the site more engaging.

The unit of study co-ordinator is now very satisfied with the outcome

of the project. He has a usable site, and was able to report at a training

seminar that the extended experience of working with our team, although

it had been frustrating for him at times, had changed the way he was

teaching the unit of study - he can now expect students to do more

32 MAKING IT REAL

independent work in preparation for their field trip, and he feels they are

doing their field work much more efficiently. The site is still being used

by students for the first time, so no formal evaluations are yet available.

Stage 3: Evaluation

The semester following the completion of Stage 2 provides the first

opportunity for academic staff to evaluate the integration of the new

online activities with the student experience of learning. Student focus

groups or online surveys are commonly used during this teaching period

to collect student perspectives. Common evaluation questions for this

stage of the process include:

a) what were the main two or three things you learned in your

course (your main course outcomes)?

b) What was the relationship between the key outcomes of your

course and the e-learning activities you engaged in?

c) To what extent do you think the e-learning activities helped you

understand the main outcomes of your course?

d) How did you approach your e-learning activities in your course?

What did you do and why?

While not exhaustive, evaluation questions like these allow lecturers to

evaluate the extent to which students understood the purpose of the

course and the extent to which the e-learning activities assisted them to

achieve the key learning outcomes.

Kenny (2004) suggests that “When independent professionals such as

academics and teachers are involved in an innovative project, the project

management process needs to support practices that enable professional

growth and learning.” (p. 390). Our extended project process, which goes

far beyond a simple response to an expressed need, is embedding the

practices Kenny refers to into our project cycle.

Project Experience 3: Third-Year Lab Science

The hands-on nature of laboratory-based science education and the

consequent extensive reliance on an experiential pedagogy has meant that

staff have not often considered opportunities to develop online resources

beyond those required for document delivery. However, the changing

nature of science teaching has meant that e-learning is increasingly being

seen as a means of providing support for laboratory teaching.

A Biological Sciences lecturer initially approached the e-learning team

because his previous teaching model was not sustainable with the

increasing student interest in his third-year class in advanced laboratory

techniques. He wasn't sure what we might be able to do to help—he

MAKING IT REAL 33

didn't really have a lot of interest in “online” learning but he'd heard that

we might be able to help him put some video resources online. He was

concerned that the available class-time didn't simply become focused on

manual skill development; he wanted students to engage with the theory

and underlying principles of what they were learning to do.

During preliminary discussions with the Project Manager he identified

two main outcomes for a project: as described in the pre l i m i n a r y

paragraph of his application, he wanted students to “actively and

independently seek answers to the set tutorial questions for each

laboratory experiment”. He also wanted some relief from the repetitious

task of repeating safety information to every class.

The second of these was dealt with relatively easily: the university had

recently activated a streaming solution which would deliver videos - that

he could easily create—through the LMS, enabling him to quickly check

that students had watched them before the first lab class.

He was granted project hours to create an online quiz-type resource

structured in such a way that students would not merely give answers,

but would have to prepare for tutorial and lab classes. The Educational

Designer devised a 'carrot and stick' approach, in which students would

be asked to do a quiz with complex questions before class, then discuss

the quiz in the class. Feedback to the answers would only be available to

students who attended the face-to-face session. If students hadn't

attempted the quiz, the class discussion would not be very meaningful to

them.

This online resource has not yet been evaluated as it is presently being

offered for the first time. However, the lecturer reports that the process of

working with the educational designer and developing the pro j e c t

materials has helped him to think more clearly about what and how the

students in the unit were learning.

Project Management Principles Informing Pedagogical Practice

Classic descriptions of project management theory list nine principles of

project management or knowledge areas: management of cost, time,

scope, quality (for purpose), human re s o u rces, communication,

procurement and risk, and integration of all of these (Project Management

Institute, 2007). Each of these is addressed at Sydney eLearning in a way

that meets the needs of the university culture and our goal of enabling the

teaching goals of staff and their faculties.

Issues of cost have been dealt with by making the unit of currency in

the projects the number of hours allotted to each project rather than a cash

amount. The academic, in early discussion with the project manager,

nominates the number of hours they will be able to devote to materials

preparation and consultation. However, arguably the most difficult job

34 MAKING IT REAL

that project managers face is allotting putative hours to upcoming

projects in preparation for the project's consideration by the committee. It

is an imperfect science but it is not often a point of complete failure.

Sometimes projects are reduced in scope to fit the hours; sometimes other

projects don't progress for a variety of reasons and more time becomes

available. Most cluster groupings will have at least one ongoing resource

project, such as a website of good practice examples, that can expand or

contract as necessary across each project cycle.

Procurement is not an issue either, as inputs of staff time, skills and

salaries are sustainably funded on an annual basis, not from within

faculty resources. The remaining project management principles outlined

above, and the necessary integration of these, constitute the basis from

which we carry out our management of e-learning projects. Keeping in

mind warnings about 'classical' project management principles needing

modification for the successful development of learning resources at

tertiary institutions (Kenny 2004), and in order to lessen the risk of

projects failing by either not being completed or not meeting the goal of

i m p rovi ng learning for students, the approach to management of

eLearning project development is based on the following principles, all

discussed in more detail below:

• Selection and careful planning

• Quality control

• Reporting and other communication

• Control of timelines with flexibility

• Ongoing maintenance

Risk Management Overview

There are two key risks for our e-learning projects: either that the project

is not completed in time and thus may never be completed, or that it is

completed but does not meet the original aims or desired outcomes. Some

factors that could allow this to happen are:

• insufficient material/content

• insufficient or untimely feedback, resulting in delays in finalising

work

• timelines not adhered to

• misunderstanding of team members as to what is required from

them

• misunderstanding of team members as to what it is possible to

achieve through a project

• unanticipated technical complexity arising during the project

MAKING IT REAL 35

In the project management process outlined here, risk is managed by:

• conceptual planning: as detailed above, several months of

discussion takes place between individual academics and e-

learning staff before the project is articulated for peer review

• consultation: committee of academic peers (the faculty

representatives and cluster director) discuss each project at least

twice before approval is given and hours are allotted

• detailed planning, initially by the project manager and later by

educational designers, with the academic-in-charge, leading to–

■

documentation, including a clear scoping document, giving

details of who is expected to do what when, followed by–

close supervision of educational designers by project manager,

time tracking of project and continuing discussion with

academic-in-charge

flexibility as far as possible within and between cluster teams to

meet unexpected contingencies.

Scoping Documentation

The project manager, in conjunction with the academic-in-charg e ,

manages projects day-to-day. Their respective responsibilities are

outlined very clearly in a scoping document. The scoping documentation

provides deadlines for the identified project milestones (Table 2), and also

identifies the level of risk that each milestone carries and the effect on the

project if it is not met (Table 3). Such effects may be fatal and the project

could fail completely; sometimes it will mean that the completed project

will be smaller or incomplete; sometimes it is possible to move deadlines

by mutual agreement to meet unforeseen crises. In any event, the scoping

documentation means that the responsibilities of the project team

( a c a d e m i c - i n - c h a rge, other faculty staff, project manager, and other

e-learning team members) are all transparently delineated. Also included

in the project documentation is a list of things that are not part of the

project, for example complex programming tasks or hosting of completed

resources. Tables 2-4 show extracts from specific sections of a typical

scoping document.

36 MAKING IT REAL

Table 2: Sample Project Plan for Project Period 1

Brief Description of

Task/Milestone Time Frame Task/Milestone Responsibility

Task 1 End April PM* and ED** meet to discuss AiC*** and PM

project

Milestone 1 Mid May All content has been provided AiC

to PM & ED

Milestone 2 Mid May ED completes prototype of PM

online learning objects/modules

Task 2 End May AiC, ED & PM meet to discuss AiC and PM

prototype

Milestone 3 Early June ED refines online learning PM

objects/modules

Task 3 Mid June PM & AiC meet to review AiC & PM

project progress

Milestone 4 Late June ED finalizes online learning AiC & PM

objects/modules

Task 4 Late June ED conducts staff training for AiC & PM

ongoing maintenance of online

learning objects/modules

* e-learning project manager ** educational designer *** academic-in-charge

MAKING IT REAL 37

Table 3: Sample Risk Analysis for Project Period 1

Time Respons- Potential Potential

Frame Milestone ibility Risk Likelihood Impact Contingency

Mid May 1. All content AiC*** Some Med High Project scope may

provided to content need to be

ED delayed reduced

Late May 2. Dev. of PM* Work Low Med Time allowed for

prototype doesn’t research and

meet consultation

academic’s before dev. of

requirements prototype

Early Jun 3. Dev.of PM Work Low Low Time allowed for

online doesn’t redev and

modules meet consultation before

academic’s resources finalized

requirements

Late Jun 4. Staff PM & AiC Staff Med Low Time for training

training not made avail.

and avail. following week

handover

* e-learning project manager ** educational designer *** academic-in-charge

Table 4: Sample Communication Plan for Project Period 1

Communication

Time Frame Mode Present Purpose

Late April Meeting AiC***, ED**, PM* Project planning

Mid May Meeting AiC, ED, PM Project initiation; review

milestone 1

Late May Meeting AiC, ED, PM Review milestone 2

Early June email From PM to AiC Confirm progess and review

completion date

Late June Meeting AiC, ED, PM Review milestones 3 and 4;

Project review and sign-off of

development phase

* e-learning project manager ** educational designer *** academic-in-charge

38 MAKING IT REAL

Reporting and Other Communication

The development phase of the project generally results in the creation of

an e-learning resource. However, past projects have included strategic e-

learning training of a faculty's staff, reports on the use of a specific e-

learning solution and an audit of e-learning artefacts that were 'hidden'

on faculty servers—that is, they had been created by individual

academics for their own teaching purposes, but were not collected,

shared, reported on or listed anywhere that the faculty could reasonably

easily access. In this phase the reporting process is regular and formal:

• project managers submit a written fortnightly internal report on all

cluster projects (read by the e-learning operations manager who is

thus monitoring overall project progressions), which is available for

later auditing and analysis

• project managers also write a detailed report at the end of each

project period, covering all issues that have arisen in the projects,

which is used in external reporting