Leadership in Implementing Technology-Enhanced Learning in Educational Institutions

Conventional designs of educational programs are usually based on implicit instruc‐ tional design approaches that look equally at all learners. However, research indicates that learning is a complex activity involving a number of different aspects. Using tech‐ nology to deliver and support learning adds another layer of complexity. In a rapidly changing environment a template to map the implementation of blended learning is proposed to contribute to the ongoing debate in higher education in implementing blended learning approaches. In a challenging economic environment, some of the key strategic leadership challenges that institutions must address are articulated. Much of the research into deploying e-learning initiatives suggests that it is a complex undertaking and that educational institutions are at various stages in the develop‐ ment and deployment of technology-facilitated initiatives. A number of key leader‐ ship challenges are outlined that academic leaders must address in delivering the curriculum using technology. A proposed framework for deploying blended learning coupled with a template for educational managers to embrace in their strategic de‐ ployment of technology in delivering the curriculum is presented.


Introduction
While higher education has traditionally been slow in implementing change, external changes are challenging higher education's resistance to change [1]. More educational providers are being encouraged to move towards more online and blended courses to meet existing students' needs and reach new students [2]. As stated by Folkers [1] coupled with these external changes, higher-level institutes face the continued growth of Internet use, decline in governmental support for education, and the emergence of a new student population. As highlighted by rising at a compound yearly rate of approximately 20% and had enrolments of over 100,000 [12]. By 2005 this number was over 200,000 [13]. Wilson [14] states that the University of Phoenix is now the second largest higher education institution in the US with over 450,000 students. It is also insightful to note that neither the University of Phoenix nor the Open University use the online model exclusively but offer a range of options along the blended learning continuum [11]. Wilson [14] states that the University of Phoenix has 200 campuses in 39 states including Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Puerto Rico.
It has been argued that electronic education should not attempt to replace traditional education but to support both staff and students through the provision of services that facilitate teaching, learning, and education-related administrative tasks [15]. The drivers of greater flexibility required by participants, third-party competition, and further rivalry among educational institutions mean that technology will play an ever-increasing role in the delivery of learning.

Challenge for educational management
Technology has to be taken seriously as a strategic asset and should be harnessed as a solution and a tool for the way educational institutions will support learning and research into the future [5]. Since 2002, the Sloan Consortium has surveyed chief academic offices with respect to the strategic importance of online learning to their institutions. Since the 2005 survey, the percentage of institutions agreeing with this statement has reached a plateau of approximately 60% [16].
A potentially useful framework, identified by the Higher Education Funding Council for England [17], suggests that there are benefits of using technology at three levels in educational institutions: i. Efficiency -existing processes can be carried out in a more cost-effective, timeeffective, sustainable, or scalable manner

ii.
Enhancement -improving existing processes and the outcomes

iii.
Transformation -radical, positive change in existing processes or introducing new processes.
The design, development, and implementation of e-learning in the delivery of learning can represent a significant investment without any guarantee of success. Therefore, it is vital that a strategic approach is embraced in deploying any initiative using technology. Embracing a strategic approach can result in the successful deployment of a blended program meeting the needs of participants and other external stakeholders.
A study by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (2009) [18] identified a number of key leadership and policy issues for institutions leaders to consider. These include the following:

i.
Leaders need to understand the characteristics of the online teaching populations in their institutions and use communication strategies that engage all faculty members

ii.
Leaders should maintain consistent communication with all administrators and faculty regarding the role and purpose of online learning programs as they relate to the academic mission and academic quality. Faculty, administrators, and managers must work together to improve the quality and perceived quality of online learning outcomes

iii.
In a climate where financial resources are declining, educational leaders need to regularly re-examine institutional policies regarding faculty incentives iv.
By better understanding what motivated faculty to teach online, leaders of educational institutions have the potential to expand faculty engagement in online instruction.
McPherson and Nunes [19] suggest that the role of academic leadership is to balance the dramatic effect that the political and social changes have had on teaching and learning within higher education institutions and guide institutions through the development of sound strategic change. Their research suggests that if "top-down" strategies are devised to implement e-learning strategies, it is the duty of academic leaders to ensure that appropriate levels of staffing and support are put in place. The critical success factors to facilitate this are captured in Table 2.

Provideinspirationalleadership Examplesofissuesforconsideration
Realize agreed strategy ⋅ Involve staff in change processes Can a move away from expectation of two lecturers, one lab, one tutorial, etc., per week be encouraged?
Have issues of affordability and viability been determined?
Has time resourcing, e.g., more time to teach online, been taken into account?
Source: McPherson and Nunes [19]. The challenge for educational institutions is to get the best from the available resources and ensure that the program meets the objectives of participants in the context of the resources available. Even when the financial resources are available to invest in e-learning content, it does not ensure the success of the program. In the absence of resources to develop sophisticated e-learning content, the instructor must be empowered to embrace blended learning and acknowledge that his or her role must change. This presents significant strategic challenges for leaders in educational institutions.

Blended learning
The term blended learning has been widely adopted to depict combinations of face-to-face and technology-based learning [20]. Blended learning is a balanced learning design with this balance achieved by the combination of classroom instruction with self-paced instruction that is delivered over the Internet [21]. No two blended learning designs are identical, which introduces the great complexity of blended learning [22].
Blended learning, therefore, potentially offers the advantages of both traditional instruction and online learning. There is a need for a more formal approach to the development of policies and operations required in supporting blended learning approaches [23]. As stated by Pailing [24], blended learning may bring about major changes in the way educational material is designed, developed, and delivered to people who want to access learning but have other constraints that affect the process of learning. Blended learning, therefore, potentially offers the advantages of both traditional instruction and online learning.

Implementing technology-facilitated learning
Garrison and Kanuka [23] suggest that for academic administrators and leaders, the successful adoption of a blended learning approach requires the following:

Creation of clear institutional direction and policy
2. Frame the potential, increase awareness, and commit 3. Establishment of a single point of support, quality assurance, and project management 4. Creation of an innovation fund to provide the financial support and incentives to faculty and departments to initiate blended learning course transformation

5.
Strategic selection of prototype projects that prove to be exceptionally successful exemplars of effective learning 6. Development of formal instructional design support available through a blended format 7. Systematic evaluation of satisfaction and success of the teaching learning, technology, and administration of new course 8. Create a task group to address issues, challenges, and opportunities as well as communicate and recommend new directions for the higher education community.
Delivering distance learning can involve a host of teaching and learning practices that can offer convenience for students but may be far more labor intensive for staff in higher-level institutes. For staff it includes (i) creating courses, (ii) maintaining chat rooms, (iii) responding to students queries by email around the clock, (iv) the new expectations of students on these programs including "anytime, anyplace learning," "round-the-clock availability of instructors," and "24/7 advising" [24,25]. Newton [26] in an analysis of funded research by the Learning and Technology Support Network -Information and Computing Studies Group identified the following barriers to using technology in teaching and learning within the academic community in the UK: (i) increased time commitment, (ii) lack of incentives or rewards, (iii) lack of strategic planning and vision, (iv) lack of support, (v) lack of training in use of the technology, (vi) lack of support for pedagogical aspects of developments, and (vii) philosophical, epistemological, and social objections.
At an institutional level, the Higher Education Authority report [27] titled "Open and Flexible Learning -HEA Position Paper" suggested that matters such as innovative and imaginative timetabling, off-campus and workplace provision, etc., need to be addressed in encouraging staff involvement and facilitating greater engagement from learners. Research by the Joint Information Systems Committee [28] highlighted through a series of case studies that the tangible benefits of integrating technology in program delivery can be categorized as (i) cost savings / resource efficiency, (ii) recruitment and retention, (iii) skills and employment, (iv) student achievement, (v) inclusion, (vi) widening participation and social equality, and (vii) other benefits. Some suggestions as to how this can be capitalized upon within higher education institutions are proposed in Table 3. Use of technology to delivery blended programsleverage the expertise gained further within the Institute.

Benefit Explanation Possible strategy to deploy in institutions
Integrate technology further as part of assessment.
Further offering of programs on an international basis.  It is incumbent on management in higher education to make a strategic decision on the role of technology in the delivery of learning. If the strategic decision is to embrace technology in the delivery of learning, then budgets need to be dedicated to resourcing appropriately the technological infrastructure, support and training mechanisms, and appropriate rewards and recognition systems for staff involved in the programs.

Evolution of E-learning content
Bruce [29], when discussing the evolution of technology, states that there are three scaling laws that apply: (i) Moore's Law -processor capabilities double every eighteen months, (ii) Saltzer's observation -solid-state and rotating memory double every twelve or so months, and (iii) Metcalfe's Law -the price of commodity bandwidth decreases by 50% every nine months.
With the continued evolution of the Internet, providers of training and learning continue to integrate new technologies to improve the learning experience for the learner. Web 2.0 technologies have increased the availability and accessibility of content for both learners and instructors. Web 2.0 has enabled both instructors and learners to produce content, blurring the line between the instructor and the learner.
The range of initiatives and options available in the use of technology in the delivery of learning has promoted the option for educational institutions to collaborate in the development of content. Repositories of digital materials are now available in many disciplines to access elearning material [30]. Some of the more established initiatives in this field in the sharing of experiences and creation of communities of practice in the delivery of learning content are Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) in the US, JISC in the UK, and National Digital Learning Repository (NDLR) in Ireland. This trend towards repositories is an attempt to share knowledge and reduce the cost of learning content development. It also offers the advantage of shared experiences and collaboration allowing for shared risk and rewards in content development. There is evidence that developers of content are creating learning material referred to as reusable learning objects and are sharing them by placing them in learning object repositories [31]. However, Cormier and Siemens [32] suggest that the significant number of high-profile open courseware initiatives from elite universities suggest that content of itself is not a sufficient value point on which to build the future of higher education.

Looking to the future
A report titled "Enhancing Learning and Teaching through the Use of Technology -A Revised Approach to HEFCE's Strategy for e-Learning" [17] has developed a framework to assist institutions in maximizing the strategic benefits of technology outlined in Table 4. Underpinning this report is recognition of the diverse institutional missions and strategic priorities meaning that it would be counter-productive to prescribe institutional activities. The intention of this HEFCE report is to highlight those strategic areas where institutions may see a benefit from investing in technology and to help institutions map those benefits to specific institutional goals, strategic plans, or internal documents.
The framework is designed to help classify priorities for development. The implementation scaffolding is designed to be flexible, and HEFCE anticipate that institutions will adjust this framework to suit their specific requirements. In order to plan effectively for enhancement, institutions will need to convert these into specific goals, development pathways, and measures of success. Institutions are providing technical support at an appropriate level to staff and students as users.
Institutions are taking an informed approach to adoption and implementation of standards to support system interoperability and coherence.
Institutions are making effective use of the network services and resources invested in by the sector as a whole.

Proposed strategy for educational institutions
As Taylor [33] states, the Internet can be a wonderful tool for instructors. Creating a new course or transforming a traditional instructor-led program to an online format involves much more than converting notes to HTML pages. Howell et al. [34] suggest seven strategies to be adopted and applied in facilitating the delivery of distance learning using technology. These are as follows: • Enable higher-level institutes and departments to accept more responsibility for distance education activities • Provide faculty with more information about distance education programs and activities • Encourage faculty to incorporate technology into their traditional classrooms • Provide strong incentives for faculty to participate in distance education • Improve training and instructional support for distance education faculty • Build a stronger education faculty community • Encourage more distance scholarship and research.

Proposed strategic deployment model
If one considers the delivery of blended learning to include (i) e-learning content, (ii) virtual learning environment (VLE), (iii) instructor-delivered content, instructor support for students, (iv) student engagement, (v) student support, (vi) assessment and evaluation, and (vii) accreditation similar to a supply chain, the key strategic decisions that need to be made are with respect to what can be potentially outsourced, where collaboration may be possible, and what elements should remain in the domain of educational institutions.
One possible model of the redefined supply chain could be as outlined in Figure 1. As technology has become ubiquitous, having the capacity to manage the IT infrastructure to support learning is an element in the delivery of learning that educational institutions should continue to develop a competency in house. Outsourcing content delivery and creation or collaborative approaches to develop content may result in potential saving for institutions. Educational institutions are best placed to support students, engage in the assessment of learning and accreditation of participants learning. This module is illustrated in Figure 2. Socialization is a key reason for participants engaging with traditional models of education. It may be useful to construct a framework that will assist in deploying lifelong learning using technology. This framework, outlined in Figure 3, is constructed around four key parameters: 1. Participants

2.
The delivery of the instruction

Figure 3. Framework of parameters in blended learning
There should be a balance between online learning and traditional learning and between the participant and the relationship formed with the instructor as part of any module to be delivered. A change in any one of these parameters has consequences for any other elements of the framework. The emphasis on instruction method, the balance between online and traditional instructions, and the degree of directed and independent learning will change, based on the individual's learning preferences, the material to be learned, the skills, ability, and instructional methodology of the instructor and the prior experience of the individual.
Blended learning offers institutions the opportunity to engage in using technology in conjunction with traditional delivery to offer learning. The issue then becomes how to configure this blend? There are often clear differences between the various subject disciplines in terms of technological and pedagogical innovation and what appears well embedded in one subject area may be quite innovative in another. Institutions are challenged to identify appropriate strategies for the various subject discipline areas.
On the basis of detailed research carried out in Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland, where the deployment of a blended learning initiative was evaluated from both participants' and instructors' perspectives, a proposed framework for deploying lifelong learning is outlined in Table 5, identifying milestones, looking at key aspects of each milestone, suggesting possible activities to be undertaken to address the key aspects identified, and identifying the possible benefits as a result. Recognize that a "one-size-fits-all" approach will not work.
Individuals have different prior learning experiences.
Use Learning Style Profiling Tool(s).
Instructors are aware that various instructional methodologies in both the classroom and online environment can enhance the learning experience.
Can plan for instructional methods to capture peer learning. Once module has been designed and learning outcomes agreed, agree on elements that will be delivered in a traditional setting and the elements that may be delivered online.
Overcomes the sense of isolation that participants may experience.

Assessment
Agreed breakdown of assessment methodologies.
More engaged with work / improved work performance. Provide adequate reward scheme.
Staff required to be more flexible in dealing with participants.
Staff more motivated.
New skills sets developed.
Broadens the institution's reach into industry.
Source: Wall and Ahmed [36]. This framework builds on the literature review and analysis of the formal blended learning program in Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT). It is fundamental at the outset to appreciate the learning process. By acknowledging that learning is complex, instructors and educational institutions should be open to new ideas / increased flexibility. The use of a learning style profiling tool such as Kolb Learning Style Inventory can assist in making instructors aware that there are many learner types and plan for a variety of instructional strategies, ensuring the benefits of understanding the variety of learner types. Establishing the appropriate infrastructure and standards of delivery will ensure a minimum standard of consistency. This still recognizes that instructors may be at different levels of confidence and experience in the use of technology in the delivery of learning. It will also encourage instructors who gain confidence to become more sophisticated and advanced in their use of technology over time.
By agreeing the breakdown of classroom and online elements prior to the commencement of the program, instructors know what is expected and participants can plan how to integrate formal continuing professional development (CPD) into their work and personal life. It helps plan dates and times for traditional delivery in advance. By focusing explicitly on assessment at the outset, instructors can plan a coherent assessment strategy and an evenly distributed workload can be achieved. Recognizing the ICT infrastructure of the participants' highlights at the outset of any potential problems, allowing for these challenges to overcome/mitigate early during the program. This will help in providing an appropriate level of induction, ensuring a smooth delivery and administration of the program. The use of multiple methods of communication allows the integration of both asynchronous and synchronous communications and also acknowledges the variety of possible learning styles as mentioned earlier.
The usefulness of social events should not be underestimated. As regards breaking down barriers, it can help build community morale on the program.
Identifying the creation of online resources as a discrete milestone challenges institutions to take a strategic approach to deploying blended learning. Searching for new/novel methods to encourage active learning helps build on the experiential learning of the group and encourages a continuous search for new instructional approaches. Finally, recognizing the key role of staff will ensure the initial and ongoing level of success or otherwise of the blended approach.

Conclusion
Current methods of working in educational institutions will be difficult to sustain in an environment where (i) the funding to institutions is reducing, (ii) demand for services is increasing, (iii) the demographics of students are changing, (iv) students are becoming more technologically literate and demanding, (v) the requirements to broaden access are growing, and (vi) there is an increasing need to provide flexible lifelong and work-based learning opportunities while maintaining the reputation for excellence in teaching, innovation, and research.
As funding mechanisms continue to change and rapid advances in ICT continue to transform the way education is delivered, developing a framework to deploy learning to address the diverse learning needs of future learners presents many challenges to higher education. The adoption of ICT to support and facilitate the development of educational programs can be at various stages of the technological adoption cycle in higher education. In many cases, it remains unknown and as such carries significant risk in terms of costs if not deployed successfully. Higher education institutions are under pressure to find new strategies and delivery models to enhance student learning. There is no unique formula to apply for the successful development and delivery of blended learning. Deploying blended learning is a complex and demanding undertaking from pedagogical and technological perspectives, which places new roles and responsibilities on both the participant and the instructor.
Recognizing the rapidly changing landscape of education challenges, leaders in higher education institutions need to respond in a proactive manner. The frameworks proposed in this paper are put forward as a "roadmap" that may assist institutions plan the "route" to further integrating technology in both curriculum development and delivery.