#Change11 Change, Change Management and Transformation

I love this post on Change Management:

Change is endemic in the education sector. The pressures for change come from all sides: globalisation, government initiatives, doing more with less, improving the quality of student learning and the learning experience, and the pace of change is ever increasing. Living with change and managing change is an essential skill for all.

Change Management

What does change involve?

Change usually involves three aspects; people, processes and culture as shown in the following figure:

People: How would people be impacted due to changes? Are people responding to changes nowadays somewhat different from that in the past decades? What might have been changed in the behavior and cognition amongst people, that may be reflective of the learning in networks and communities?

Here Inge de Waard in her Explore a New Learning Frontier – MOOCs mentioned how people learns in a MOOC.  How did people change throughout the MOOCs?  Here is my reflection in a previous post.  This is an interesting topic of research, and I would like to explore in Change11.

What sort of literacies and skills are required to respond to changes at this era?

In this participatory culture, new literacies all involve social skills, developed through collaboration and networking.

The new skills include: play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multi-tasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, and negotiation.

See this and this on the debates on required media literacy, rather than mere content expertise. How to facilitate new media literacies?

In this Social OS and collective construction of knowledge, Stephen writes:

Dolors Reig writes that one of the most important tasks of educators is to extend and enlarge participation in new media and in these online communities. [23] Students need to access the basic skills required to use technology, and to take advantage of online services to extend their participation into the wider community. New technologies allow them to reach into these networks independently of any institutional constraints. And they create the possibility of new forms of participation – of blogs and Twitter posts, for example – beyond the more traditional modes of conference presentations and academic papers.

But if meaningful change is to be enabled, if the premise of participation is to be realized, then it will be necessary to extend practice beyond the traditional reach of institutions and community networks.

To manage change within institutions and among people, both educators and students do require analysis and planning as shown in the Change Management diagram above.

Processes:

(a) Technology and social media – Is technology the perfect solution to education? No?  It seems that technology alone won’t provide improvements in the score of tests and examination.  You need people – teachers and social support.

(b) Pedagogy, teaching and facilitation – This involves a change in the sort of teaching and learning theories and strategies in managing change.

(c) Development of Personal Learning Environment and Personal Learning Networks

Culture: 

Culture involves both the explicit way of working – the formal systems and processes in place and how they operate, and the tacit level of operation – the informal and semi-formal networks and other activities that people employ to get things done and by-pass, subvert or seek or influence the more formal processes (Change Management).

How would culture effect changes?  What are some of the cultural changes in societies? The world views of rich societies differ markedly from those of poor societies.  This does not imply cultural convergence, but it does predict the general direction of cultural changes.  More than ever, the world is brought closer together through the internet, social media and web connections. However, as each community and network’s culture is unique, I suppose a multi-cultural global network has a diverse culture, where its local and global digital citizen would dwell as visitors and residents. I think changes among people are based on their cultural attitudes, technological beliefs and personal habits.

Why Changes?

This post by Stephen on refuting every points by Doug on Divergent Thinking, Constructivism and Dentistry well illustrates the need of changes, in respond to changing ecology, societal and professional  or academic requirements, and a need to think and reflect what all those changes mean to individuals, communities and networks.

How do you see changes?

I see changes as part of my life.  Sometimes the challenges that change in life could be both constructive and disruptive.  On the positive side, changes in education would sharpen my focus on the purpose, content and process (which is indeed fundamental in education). On the negative side, changes in education may lead to feelings of apprehension, discomfort, and a loss of control.  These have been reflected in various writers about how education and social media has changed their lives and interests.  I am particular impressed with those change of interests shared by Stephen Downes.

Transformative Learning

In this Transformative Learning in Adulthood by Susan Imel, transformative learning occurs when individuals change their frames of reference by critically reflecting on their assumptions and beliefs and consciously making and implementing plans that bring new ways of defining their world (MEZIROW 1997).

A view of tranformative learning as an “intuitive, creative and emotional process” is beginning to emerge (Gralov 1997, p90).

Both the rational and the affective play a role in transformative learning, especially in networked learning.  Teachers also need to consider who they can help students connect the rational and the affective by using feelings and emotions both in critical reflection and as a means of reflection (Taylor 1998). This form of reflection is now used in blogging and network conversations.