INCLUSIVITY & ACCESS RESOURCE | CoAction Learning Lab

Framework for Stakeholder Inclusion in the Technology Planning Process

This section provides insight into stakeholder needs as well as suggestions for including their perspectives in your process. Real exemplars from higher education institutions are featured as concrete benchmarks. These examples from various institutions employ proven or experimental approaches in their technology planning and adoption processes.

Phase I: Defining the Initiative

Opportunities for technological maintenance and innovation are surfaced through a wide variety of processes, including but not limited to organized feedback sessions, vendor partnerships, institutional benchmarking, periodic strategic planning cycles, gap analysis, and unsolicited feedback. Most likely, you’re approaching this resource either in search of a technology for a known challenge or need, or looking to expand use cases for a particular technology or technological innovation.

Regardless of the catalyst for change, your initiative takes place in the context of broader technological and educational innovation, and reflects your engagement with the creation of the future of education – and through education, society.

The unprecedented digital transformation of the global economy and society is likely to increase the complexity of the modern world, as well as the speed of change, largely because of increased connectivity and more educated individuals worldwide. These two elements — complexity and speed of change — mean that connecting education to the trends shaping the world we live in has never been so urgent.

 

“Urgent” is a call for action. But it is not necessarily negative, although certainly population growth and ageing societies, inequality, climate change and resource scarcity all compel us to focus on sustainability and the needs of future generations. Yet urgency also brings opportunity, and a window for action, as evidenced by the power of digitalisation to transform, connect and empower.4

To engage with this technological and educational transformation we must constantly re-adjust and alter course based on where we’re going, not where we are. Attention to the transforming context that surrounds and permeates your work can provide valuable insights, ideas, and connections as you define your initiative and engage with stakeholders.

Identify Stakeholders
This resource assumes that your initiative (challenge, need, or technology) will impact students, learning facilitators, and technology leaders. These three categories of stakeholders encompass many distinct personas and departments.  Consider making a list of the various people and departments who are impacted by the need, technology, solution, or opportunity you are considering. Articulate the members of these groups in your context:

  • Students: People formally enrolled in higher education institutions who are seeking a degree(s) or credential(s), including alumni who were previously enrolled;
  • Learning Facilitators: faculty, teaching assistants, learning, education, and instructional designers, lecturers, instructors, professors, assistant professors, centers for teaching & learning, librarians, Provost’s office staff, curriculum and assessment developers; and
  • Technology Leaders: information technology staff (educational technology leaders, core systems staff and developers, etc), technology leaders outside the IT department, expert technology users within academic departments.

Keep in mind that your initiative may have differing impacts on people within the same stakeholder group. For example, consider how the overall user experience may impact on-campus and online students, different generations of learners, first and additional language speakers, Indigenous learners, etc..

Build Bridges
From this early stage it’s important to set clear expectations and maintain an awareness of the cultural environment in which the initiative will take place. Seek input from the stakeholders represented in your articulation exercise. If you are trying to address a challenge, ask questions to understand its nuanced impact on stakeholders. The goal is to obtain a complex picture of the relevant needs and opportunities.

Often, the successful implementation of technology requires bridging the gap between teaching and learning experts and technology professionals; it is critical that both groups jointly work to understand each other’s worlds and focus on their shared purpose.  Provosts, chancellors, deans, CIOs, academic technology directors, academic directors of innovation, and other high-level leaders can demonstrate alignment and drive this culture of collaboration. Building relationships across units can also help address challenges encountered along the way; assist in addressing and balancing broad enterprise-level solutions and specific needs of disciplines and faculties; and spur possibilities for creative cost-sharing solutions. It is also important to establish processes for communication that are transparent and inclusive of all stakeholders.

 

Methods for Connecting with Stakeholders

Below are several recommended ways of connecting with stakeholders. Depending on the scope of your initiative, some may be more applicable than others. For IT strategic plans and other large-scale efforts impacting the whole of the institutions, the following approaches can be considered:

  • Surveys: This approach is useful for reaching as many people as possible and collecting mostly quantitative data.
  • Focus Groups: Small-group conversations can address specific questions, experiences, or stakeholder groups and collect mostly qualitative data.  Data from focus groups can also inform the design of survey questions.
  • Interviews: One-on-one conversations with individual stakeholders can help to closely understand specific questions (very similar to focus groups). Interviews can also be filmed and used to “advertise” the initiative, if done so intentionally and transparently.
  • Official Working Groups or Advisory Boards: Including members of stakeholder and administrative groups in an advisory board or work groups promotes inclusivity, leverages varied perspectives, and distributes process responsibilities.
  • Continuous Feedback Loops: Establishing a process to make feedback a core part of ongoing operations facilitates iterative improvement and ongoing relationships with stakeholders. Feedback loops can take many forms, including a digital “suggestion box.”
  • Marketing and Communications: Continuous communications to stakeholders about opportunities to get involved can help recruit stakeholders and keep them up to date. Marketing and communications can even facilitate multidirectional communication between organizational units and stakeholders, for example through social media interactions.
  • Informal Feedback: Informal interactions — in the hallway, faculty room, or even via social channels such as Twitter — provide an opportunity to obtain unsolicited feedback about a new technology or discover unintended consequences emerging while an initiative underway. These types of experiences can initiative more formal follow-ups such as a workshop or survey.
  • Exploratory Playgrounds/Sandboxes: Providing stakeholders a digital and/or physical space to review, test, and explore new possibilities can illuminate new applications and surface “super-users.”
  • Design Thinking Sessions: Creative sessions can help your institution approach potential challenges, needs, and opportunities from new angles, fostering agility and iteration.

 

Questions to Ask Stakeholders

In defining the catalyst for technological change — be it a problem, a need, or a new technological possibility — here are some questions to ask all stakeholders:

Ask All Stakeholder Groups:

  • What resources/support would you need to ensure successful implementation?
  • What problems or challenges are you facing?
  • How does this problem/need/technology impact you? How do you experience it?
  • What use cases do you see for this technology?
  • What does success look like from your perspective? How would you measure it?

 

Questions to Ask Yourself

Below are some questions for you and your team to ask yourselves:

Consider on Behalf of All Stakeholder Groups:

  • Are we taking their perspectives into account?
  • What past experiences do stakeholders have with technological change at your institutions and how does this shape their receptiveness and expectations for the current initiative? Will your process purposefully further or explicitly break from past cultural norms?
  • Are different members of a stakeholder group impacted differently? In what ways? How does this inform our understanding of the problem, need, or technology?
  • What training/support is required for each stakeholder group? How will this be accomplished?

Consider on Behalf of Students:

  • How does this problem/need/technology/change impact the user experience for the student?
  • What is the resource commitment required of the student (time, money)?
  • What are the implications of this initiative for accessibility? What accessibility resources or actions are needed?
  • If you already have a technology in mind, how accessible is this solution/technology to all students?
  • What should we consider to ensure access for all students?

Consider on Behalf of Technology Leaders:

  • How will teaching and learning centers/learning facilitators and information technology professionals work together to identify and address needs? Who on the T&L side “speaks IT?”  Who in IT “speaks T&L?” How will relationships be built between these often siloed groups? How will formal and informal leaders build a culture of collaboration?
  • How will the budget and project be managed?
  • Are different learning facilitators impacted by this challenge differently? In what ways? What does this mean for our understanding of the problem to be solved?
  • Are there other projects in-progress or planned for the future that impact or intersect, either positively or negatively, with the proposed initiative?

 

‘Defining the Initiative’ Exemplars

  • Include stakeholders in strategic planning. The University of Cincinnati drew on extensive input from students, staff, and faculty to develop its eLearning Strategic Plan for 2017-2020. This included 1,300 surveys, five focus groups, and additional interviews.5
  • Consult the community to define principles. To inform its strategic initiatives and principles, the University of Toronto Information Technology Service consulted with community groups across the university.
  • Request feedback. Iowa State University is developing a new Information Technology Service strategic plan, informed by feedback from stakeholders.
  • Include stakeholders in governance. St Cloud State University developed its IT strategic plan with guidance from a planning committee comprised of representatives from governance groups across campus, including Student Government.
  • Seek stakeholder input through multiple mediums. In creating its current campus-wide IT strategic plan, North Carolina State University sought input from stakeholders, particularly students, through focus groups, a survey, and other means.
  • Intentionally continue to improve.  Conestoga College makes student feedback a cornerstone of its continuous improvement process and tracks key performance indicators for priorities across campus.
  • Practice transparency. Ithaca College is prioritizing transparency and inclusivity in designing its next Strategic Planning process. This includes leveraging   surveys and providing appropriate access to the collected data.
  • Build a community of practice. The University of West Florida is building an online community of practice within their current learning management system to break down silos, and engage learning facilitators and technology leaders from across campus in discussions about the digital learning landscape at UWF.
  • Focus on accessibility and affordability. DeSales University highlights the accessibility and affordability of new technology initiatives in their technology planning process.
  • Create a culture of community action. Arizona State University created the Innovation Collaboratory, an entity designed to use cross-institutional collective action to catalyze and enable teaching and learning innovation. The IC brings together a wide breadth of stakeholders at all levels to co-design and co-create the future of education.
  •  

4 OECD, 2019, p. 13
5 eLearning Strategic Planning Committee, 2017

Phase II: Investigating Solutions

Of primary concern to all three stakeholder groups is the ease of meaningfully using the new technology. For learning facilitators and technology leaders, it is also important that there is a clear plan for supporting the technology. Additionally, each stakeholder group has specific concerns, summarized below. Use this information as a foundation to explore and expand upon in your unique context.

The technology should be well-suited to address the identified problem and reflect stakeholder needs. It should align with the priorities of the institution, program, and course(s). It will be useful to:

  • explicitly define the criteria by which you will evaluate both a potential technological solution and its vendor, considering “must-have” and “nice-to-have” factors;
  • gather data from other institutions to support the use of the technology and learn about who is using the technology and what their experience is;
  • schedule demonstrations of potential technology for decision-makers and stakeholders;
  • utilize test accounts to evaluate whether the technology is a practical solution;
  • experientially evaluate training and support offered by the vendor;
  • conduct pilot programs to evaluate your top-choice solution(s);
  • conduct focus groups with stakeholders;
  • evaluate data security and privacy — consider how data will be used, who will have access, and what agency individuals have over who sees that data; and
  • seek grants to support innovation projects or pilot programs.

It is imperative that all learners have equitable access to and through the technology, complying with relevant regulatory requirements (e.g., in the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act; in Australia, the Disability Standards). Technology should be evaluated according to these standards. Many technology solutions have varying levels of “accessibility-compliant” standards. An accessibility standards review and testing group can help review and evaluate compliance.

Additionally, equitable access includes consideration of the cost of the technology for students and the ease of accessing it. The chosen technology should also:

  • be future-ready, reliable, flexible, independent of operating system or availability of internet access, and functional and applicable for a long period of time;
  • improve students’ experiences and be relevant to their lives, coursework, learning, and future beyond academia;
  • integrate well with existing tools in use, from both technological and functional perspectives;
  • respect the privacy and security of all users; and
  • be cost-effective but not necessarily the lowest-cost solution. (Consider the human capital cost, ongoing/maintenance costs, and institutional requirements.)

Working with technology leaders, adequate time should be budgeted for two-way engagement between vendors and internal development teams, focus groups, a technology pilot or pilots, and user training. Decision-makers should also consider how often learning facilitators are being asked to adopt new technology and be cautious of deploying solutions before they are fully functional, particularly if technology adoption is mandatory at the department or enterprise level.

Questions to Ask Stakeholders

Below are some questions to ask all stakeholders and each specific stakeholder groups as you evaluate each technological solution:

Ask All Stakeholder Groups:

  • What are your desired outcomes? What do you hope a potential solution will do for you (your teaching/learning/students)?
  • What vendors/tools are you interested in?
  • What use cases do you see for this technology? What is the user story for the technology?
    • What do you need? What is the use/work/learning/teaching scenario/goal?
    • Why do you need this technology?
    • How will you use this technology?
    • What is your goal(s)?
    • How will you interact with the technology?
    • When and where will you use it?
    • What are the scenarios/circumstances in which you will use the technology?
    • What choices/options do you need from this technology?
  • How would this potential solution impact you? What would it do for you? What would it not do for you? What would the solution do for students?
  • What excites you about this technology?
  • What concerns you about this technology? What are the potential pain points or gaps in use?
  • What questions do you have for me?

Ask Students:

  • How would this technology support your academic, career, and personal goals?
  • What are your desired learning outcomes and how can we support them?
  • How does this technology enrich and extend your learning?
  • How does this technology improve your experience?
  • What options do you want in a technology/solution?
  • What accessibility needs and concerns do you have about this technology?
  • What technology tools do you need to be successful?
  • How is this technology similar or different to technologies you currently use as part of your learning?

Ask Learning Facilitators:

  • How would this technology support your teaching and learning goals?
  • How will this technology support teaching and learning needs for you and your students?
  • How is this technology similar or different to technologies you currently use as part of your pedagogical practice?
  • What research or evidence demonstrates the use of this technology in supporting quality teaching and learning?
  • How will this technology enhance your pedagogy?

Ask Technology Leaders:

  • How would this technology support the goals of your team/department?
  • What research or evidence demonstrates supports the use of this this technology in supporting quality teaching and learning?
  • How will this technology impact on the existing processes and infrastructure?

 

Questions to Ask Yourself

Consider on Behalf of All Stakeholder Groups:

  • Are we taking their perspectives into account?

Consider on Behalf of Students:

  • Is the technology/solution open and inclusive so all students have equitable access? In what ways?
  • Does the technology/solution accommodate diverse learner backgrounds? In what ways?
  • What are the challenges for using this technology as a student?
  • Are there additional costs to the student to use this technology? What are they? How will students attain the additional resources necessary to be able to access this technology?
  • Does the technology impose requirements upon students in terms of minimum hardware, operating system, internet access or bandwidth, etc.?
  • In what ways does the technology address pedagogical/engagement needs and broader aspects of digital capability development for the students?
  • How accessible is this solution/technology to all students?

Consider on Behalf of Learning Facilitators:

  • How will this solution meet discipline/course/university goals or outcomes?
  • Why is new technology being introduced?
  • What are the advantages for adopting this tool for teaching and learning purposes?  Is it pedagogically sound? Does it improve the teaching and learning experience?
  • What are the costs and disadvantages of using this technology for teaching and learning? What is lost by adopting the technology?
  • How time consuming would it be for learning facilitators to learn this technology, including learning how it integrates with their pedagogy?
  • How will you ensure learning facilitators are involved? How you invite learning facilitators to make suggestions and/or provide research support for pedagogical implications?
  • What problem does this technology address?

Consider on Behalf of Technology Leaders:

  • What is the total cost of ownership (initial, recurring/ongoing, support, human capital, integration with existing systems)?
  • Who will take ownership for this project and its different components? Will ownership be shared?
  • Will the technology solution come from an outside vendor or be developed within the university?

 

‘Investigating Solutions’ Exemplars

  • Center solution evaluation around university and user needs. In selecting a learning management system (LMS), Purdue University is conducting a large-scale review of stakeholder and university needs rather than a direct comparison between two tools. One of the first steps is a series of listening sessions at which faculty, staff, and students are invited to join the conversation.
  • Prioritize educational goals. Curtin University is focusing on shaping solutions built on prioritized principles rather than trying to bend off-the-shelf technology to approximate pedagogical intent. For example, their Challenge platform is an effort to create a platform that reflects relevant, globally connected, collaborative and challenge-based learning integrating unobtrusive data-driven assessment, analytics and feedback.
  • Dedicate resources to making data-driven decisions. Western Governors University has a dedicated team to pilot and learn in order to make data driven-decisions. The pilot teams uses a version of Google’s HEART framework to assess stakeholders needs from a quantitative and qualitative perspective.
  • Continually focus on stakeholders. Ithaca College’s Teaching and Learning with Technology is beginning to utilize the Awareness, Exploration, Use, Return approach from Berkeley’s UXe program. By looking at how we communicate and engage stakeholders, the focus remains situated on the client.
  • Identify criteria and solicit feedback from all stakeholder groups. When the University of Central Florida evaluated three Learning Management Systems, they first developed a list of evaluation criteria and collected feedback on each item for each system from vendors, faculty, the Center for Distributed Learning, Computer Services & Telecommunication and the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning.
  • Evaluate online student support services. The University of West Florida is creating a workgroup of fully online students, learning facilitators, and technology leaders to conduct a full evaluation of online student support services and technology.  They will be using the Online Learning Consortium Quality Scorecard for Online Student Support to evaluate existing solutions and identify new technology projects that will improve the online student experience at UWF.
  • Employ an incubation strategy to investigate new solutions. Charles Sturt University developed an Online Learning Innovation and Incubation Strategy in consultation with stakeholders across the university to foster communities of innovation, establish processes to develop creative solutions, and promote the adoption and adaption of new technologies for courses taught in online and blended modes.

Phase III: Adopting a Solution

The user experience of the technology must be prioritized. As the technology is implemented, adequate training should be available with major consideration towards integrating ongoing professional development opportunities.

“Sometimes new technology has so much potential, but because both students and faculty are uneducated in how to use it or why they are using it the technology becomes ineffective. When this happens, students typically are running ideas through their heads of more effective ways this technology can be used; however, no one will ever know until we are asked.”
-Carly Siegle, Penn State Student, 2019

Learning facilitators must be given the time and encouragement/incentive needed to pursue this training and development. Students should be similarly well-supported in the learning and use of new technology. For the student experience, it is also important that learning facilitators effectively modely engagement with the technology in planning and delivering curriculum.

The adoption process should be efficient with the expectations for use clearly articulated in ways that are relevant to each stakeholder. For example: Will this technology save faculty time in grading student work? Will it support deeper student interactions in digital environments? In what ways does this technology compare to the tool it is replacing?

Clearly define ownership for each aspect of implementation and support, including responsibility for meeting human resource needs (training, professional development, user support, technology integration), paying recurring costs, and evaluating project success. As much as possible given your organization’s culture and priorities, it is valuable to embrace the possibility of failure and to adopt an attitude of iterative improvement and innovation: success is never a certainty in innovation efforts.

 

Questions to Ask Stakeholders

In planning and implementing the adoption of a technology, below are some questions to ask all stakeholders. It can be useful to draft a communication and training plan and present it to stakeholder groups as a foundation for discussion.

Ask All Stakeholder Groups:

  • How can we make the transition to this new technology easy for you?
  • What roadblocks might we encounter through the implementation of this technology?
  • What support systems need to be in place for successful implementation?
  • What questions do you have for me?

 

Questions to Ask Yourself

Below are some questions for you and your team to ask yourselves:

Consider on Behalf of All Stakeholder Groups:

  • Do we take their perspectives into account?
  • Do we consider user experience with the technology?
  • What are the success metrics and units of measure we will use for this initiative to determine impact to students, learning facilitators, and technology leaders?
  • What challenges may stakeholders face when adopting this technology?

Consider on Behalf of Students:

    • Are the faculty capable of helping students with the technology? Are faculty capable of using it themselves?
    • How will Help Desk and IT Services work with students and their learning facilitators to ensure effective and timely support requirements?
    • Are expectations of student use of this technology clearly communicated? Is use mandatory? In what situations?
    •  

Consider on Behalf of Learning Facilitators:

  • How will learning facilitators be trained in using this solution?
  • How steep is the learning curve? What effective and manageable supports will be put in place to mitigate the learning curve?
  • Is there proper support and adequate training?

Consider on Behalf of Technology Leaders:

  • What services and technologies will they be expected to provide during the initial implementation and long-term?

 

‘Adopting a Solution’ Exemplars

  • Engage with learning facilitators. Penn State’s Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) team focuses on partnering with teaching and learning stakeholders in technology use and innovation for education. TLT’s extensive professional development and support efforts engage learning facilitators in the innovation and implementation processes.
  • Invest in professional development. Conestoga College’s Teaching and Learning department has expanded dramatically over the past year, providing a full complement of professional development for faculty. The addition of an educational technology officer who focuses on providing training and guidance for effective implementation of tech into the classroom has been well received by faculty.
  • Support stakeholders during change. Western Governors University has implemented Prosci’s ADKAR method to provide the time and resources needed by the stakeholders impacted by the change. It allows them to assess their stakeholders to learn more about the implementation process.
  • Invest in cutting-edge pedagogy. DeSales University has a team dedicated to Distance Education and Instructional Technology to help faculty stay up-to-date on the latest technology related pedagogical delivery systems by offering periodic online and in-person training sessions throughout the year. The DeSales administration encourages faculty involvement through faculty development funds devoted to continually improving technology of scholarship and teaching.
  • Take a team approach to online learning. Charles Sturt University’s Online Learning team leads major initiatives in designing online courses. Teams include experienced academics, educational designers, education support coordinators and media technologists that work collaboratively with discipline experts to plan, design and implement high quality online learning experiences characterized by the features of the Online Learning Model.

Phase IV: Reviewing + Iterating

Once you’ve implemented the chosen solution, revisit the defined need and any defined criteria for success. To what extent did this project meet its goals? Have the needs evolved? This phase is often overlooked or given a low priority, and yet it is critical to the initiative’s success.

Follow up with stakeholders. Their feedback can help you assess the success of both your process and the chosen solution, and suggest opportunities for iteration and continued improvement — as well as new opportunities for innovation.

Questions to Ask Stakeholders

Below are some questions to ask stakeholders as you review the initiative and consider future improvements:

Ask All Stakeholder Groups:

  • In what ways did this solution meet your needs?
  • In what ways did this solution not meet your needs or fall short?
  • What opportunities do you see for future improvement?
  • What did you like and dislike about the evaluation/adoption process? What do you want me to know?
  • Given the choice, would you use this technology solution again? Why or why not?
  • Is there anything you’d like to ask me?

 

Questions to Ask Yourself

Below are some questions for you and your team to ask yourselves:

Consider on Behalf of All Stakeholder Groups:

  • Did we take their perspectives into account? How? Why or why not?
  • Are we providing opportunities for each stakeholder group to provide feedback, and are these opportunities fully and equally accessible to all stakeholders?
  • Did we provide individualized communication and training plans for each group to ensure a successful launch of this technology
  • What was this technology intended to do for each stakeholder group?
  • Did the tools used to measure the effectiveness of the solution provide accurate feedback?

 

‘Reviewing + Iterating’ Exemplars