Spheres of Influence: Ventures and Visions in Educational Development*

3-6 July, 2002
The University of Western Australia
Perth, Western Australia

Abstract

Herding cats? Obtaining staff support for curriculum change and implementation.

Christopher K. Morgan, The University of Sydney, Australia
David Roberts, The University of Sydney, Australia

Academic staff can be notoriously difficult creatures, particularly when others might seek to intervene in their teaching. How then do we go about something as threatening as the overhaul of an entire undergraduate curriculum within a Faculty? Change management literature provides some direction for dealing with such a challenge and leading staff through the development and implementation issues. A prominent aspect of successful change such as this is to go beyond merely obtaining majority compliance - it involves considerable negotiation and communication, inclusiveness and teambuilding, and leadership and drive.

This paper reports on a recent occasion when a radical transformation of a Faculty's curriculum was attempted. In doing so it reviews the approach that was taken against criteria developed for models provided in the literature for change management in organisations. It looks to these criteria for explanations of successes and difficulties encountered. It seeks to evaluate performance of the change management processes adopted. This in turn has informed plans for future action. The approach taken here with this case study demonstrates how a framework can be applied when widespread collaboration is critical to achieving transformation within a higher education setting. It is an approach that can be utilised in other contexts and applied to situations where academic staff are to be effected by major change.

Key words:
Academic collaboration; Transformation management; Curriculum change

Objectives, outcomes and activities:
Interaction within this session will focus on the issues associated with successfully implementing extensive curriculum change throughout a diverse faculty. Discussion will be focussed on how to achieve:

• A process that deliberately engages all affected academic staff in a collaborative partnership and forges ownership among all for the change;
• A powerful guiding coalition of significant staff acting both formally and informally who create and maintain a sense of urgency; and
• An understanding that the process is one that needs to be monitored and reviewed through its various stages and to ensure effective communication with all participants occurs.

Chris Morgan is Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) in the Faculty of Rural Management located at the University of Sydney's rural campus at Orange. This responsibility involved him centrally in seeking to review, renovate and rationalise the entire undergraduate curriculum within the Faculty. He is active in teaching as well as management and educational research and is the inaugural recipient of his faculty's Innovation in Teaching Award.

David Roberts is Senior Instructional Designer in the Faculty of Rural Management. He has a wealth of higher education experience having taught and worked in several universities both in Australia and overseas. He was given the task of being Project Leader for the Faculty's Undergraduate Curriculum Review. It is that review process that is the focus of this paper.

Contact: Christopher Morgan, email: cmorgan@orange.usyd.edu.au