Strategic Leadership, North Bedfordshire Federation

The following spray diagram attempts to simplify the North Bedfordshire Federation film, it aims to identify the key themes and points worthy of further discussion within the context of strategic leadership.

The changes taking place within the federation amount to an amalgamation of expertise and a sharing of good practice, whilst also ensuring the schools create a common curriculum.

It was clear throughout that the main aim was to promote student learning and improve performance, Clemence believed quite strongly that schools should not work in isolation. The strategy was to get all three schools that fed into Sharnbrook to work with the same curriculum thereby maintaining the standards of all middle schools within the trust.

A 'powerful guiding coalition' (Kotter 1996) in the shape of John Clemence and Hugh Carr-Archer, were the main drivers steering the change forward and the formation of a working group of head teachers was key to the strategic planning. According to Lavell this created a good working environment in which to share ideas and harmonise key issues. This can be placed quite clearly within the 'Strategy as design' lens, (Johnson et al, 2008) as the working group was utilised to create the logical process and provide strategic direction. However considering how the team based their strategies on the adaption and adjustment of their combined experience there is also evidence of strategies being made based on experience.

Ideally this should have been an evolutionary change bringing about an incremental process instead it was rather rapid seeming more like a revolution. This led to the top down approach because there was insufficient time, although this could be considered a 'time of crisis' necessitating a top down approach (Session 9, Course notes).

It could be said to have failed to ensure that staff were ready and willing to take part in the change (Step 1 Kotter 1996) but this is now in the hands of the respective heads, as one task is to address complaints that the leadership is too top down.

References

Fullan, M. (2007) The New Meaning of Educational Change, 4^th edn, New York, Teachers College Press.

Johnson, G., Scholes, K. and Whittington, R. (2008) Exploring Corporate Strategy, 8^th edn, Harlow, Pearson Education.

Kotter, J. (1996) Leading Change, Boston, Harvard Business School Press.

The Open University (2008) E856 Educational leadership: context, strategy and collaboration, 'DVD 1: Introduction to the North Bedfordshire Federation', Milton Keynes, The Open University.

The Open University (2011) E856 Educational enquiry, Session 9.2, 'Bottom-up and top-down change' [online], The Open University, http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=617575&section=2 (Accessed 2 January 2012).

Analyzing MB School

Introduction

Having watched the case study it is clear that this was quite a complex case study before trying to address the group work question I created a spray diagram to try and highlight the main points.

The Organisational Context of Margaret Beaufort School
Margaret Beaufort School was a school that was being led by a very loose leadership that lacked direction and appeared not to be moving forward. It was failing students because it never had a suitable means of measuring the success or improvement of its students. Consequently a bad Ofsted report acted as a trigger point for improvement.

An External Factor
A significant factor in this case is the requirement to meet standards set down by Ofsted this combined with much better reports from other schools in the consortium led MB to realise they would be better off joining the consortium after all. It is questionable whether a better Ofsted report would have meant that MB would have remained antonymous, however as the case study unfolds the benefits of joining the consortium become more and more apparent.  

An Internal Factor
A number of internal factors that impact include the loose leadership and poor direction provided by the leadership team. It was also more apparent later on during the change of leadership that a number of staff were both set in their ways and opposed to any form of change. These staff may well have been a significant factor in the schools failings.  

Conclusion
Removing those resistant to change and bringing in a stronger more collaborative leadership team meant that new systems could be put in place. This combined with shared leadership and a renewed sense of ownership has given a clear direction for the school to move in which was seriously lacking. Although the school claimed to want to maintain the Ethos and  Sense of Community at MB they were doing so at the expense of academic achievement. 

Exploring Tangible Benefits of e-Learning:

The following is a summary of a number of case studies found when 'Exploring Tangible Benefits of e-Learning',JISC (2008). I have also tried to identify what is my opinion the main areas of innovation covered and the driving factors.

The case studies cover the following areas:-

• Working together collaboratively
• Innovative Online training 
• Staff training to raise the profile and awareness of e-learning
• Video conferencing sharing of modules across a number of universties.
• Eportfolio system
• Adoption of moodle
• Blended approach to learning
• Developing partnerships with local trusts 
• Exams designed to support disabled students
• VLE to support worldwide students
• Online learning for eteaching practice
• Podcasting to see real images instead of photographs
• Blended approach to training use of moodle, podcasting and handset voting
• Simulation gaming to help produce blended learning
• Elearning resource for sharing best practice amongst staff
• Website for the support of learning with wide ranging needs and support
• Elearning to support paper based distance learning material
• Virtual farm to enable collection of real time data
• Eportfolios fro reflecting on teaching practice
• Eportfolio to help support first year students
• Course design to accommodate childcare arrangements 
• Audio commentaries to accompany archaeology images
• Creation of a virtual space for sharing elearning resources for staff 
• Online assessment for medical staff reducing the assessment time required

In general the site offers examples of innovation that covers the following areas:-

• e-assessment
• Online learning
• Eportfolios
• Collaborative working
• Podcasting
• Gaming and virtual simulations

The driving factors apparent from these case studies include:-

• Improving the learner experience
• Developing staff effectively 
• Sharing best practice as both a student and staff level
• Performing assessment more efficiently
• Provision of support material for all areas of academic work

JISC (2008) Exploring Tangible Benefits of e-Learning: Does Investment Yield Interest? [online],
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/publications/publications/info/tangible-benefits-publication (Accessed 12 November 2009).

e-Assessment in Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/edinburgh/index_html
University of Edinburgh, e-Assessment in Medicine and Veterinary Medicine

The Online System for Clinical Assessment was developed in-house by the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine's Learning Technology Section to support the delivery of online assessments in the undergraduate medical degree programme and undergraduate veterinary degree programmes. Objective, Structured, Clinical Examinations are an essential component of assessments for medical and veterinary students.

The system was used to replace the labour intensive testing methods already in place and also to speed up the assessment process.Some of the Clinical Examination would be replaced by assessments, testing the same competencies/skills but delivered in a secure technological environment requiring no staff support thus enabling all students to be examined in two sittings over a single day instead of two days.

This innovative approach would enable electronic marking, a greater variety of scenarios yet still test the competencies and skills required.

The Learning Lab staff development initiative Swansea University

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/swansea/index_html
Swansea University, The Learning Lab staff development initiative

Summary
The Learning Lab is an informal collaboration between schools and departments on all aspects of e-learning. A forum to discuss, formulate and disseminate ideas and best practice and an area where learning and teaching rather than technology drive the process.The plan was to learn by actually performing a number of e-learning tasks; a hands on approach.

The learning lab is a website of shared resources and information to help support the University in engadging staff in participation and self learning. Sharing of best practice and ideas because a number of staff had very little idea when it came to using the tools or indeed understanding what e-learning was actually about.

By allowing staff to use and explore the use of the tools it was hoped that they would be able to identify the benefit to their classes where appropriate and start using some of the tools. However the Learning Lab site is a community and where everyone had an opportunity to partake, there was to be no dictation by 'Learning Technologists'.

A team-based approach to developing e-resource at Warwick

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/warwick/index_html
The University of Warwick, A team-based approach to developing e-resource

Summary

The aim was to introduce a planned approached to the development of elearning resources that would gradually develop rather than leave it to a few enthusiastic but isolated individuals.

It involved a number of planned activities designed to promote understanding and share best practice. It took the form of online support, face to face sessions and hands on training in the ICT suite.

Staff were encouraged to attend a number of sessions lured by the free hot lunch and invited to share ideas and suggest future activities

The innovation with this case was the fact that innovation was being used to sell innovative ideas and encourage the adoption of new practices and facilities. By learning about the e-resources in a combination of events it was hoped that staff could see and indeed embrace the benefits. This case did highlight the fact the staff lacked confidence in the use of the the tools available and the online conferencing.

Formative e-assessment in Economics at Derby

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/derby/index_html
University of Derby, Formative e-assessment in Economics

Summary
The purpose of this innovation was to support private study with the aim of reducing failure rates on the micro-economics first year module.

The idea was to put in place a number of formative e-assessments available to the students so they could be completed in addition to the lectures and tutorials. By putting these assessments in place and allowing students to take them multiple times it was expected that the students would be able to address common areas that were found to be a problem on previous courses.

The courses were already using a VLE and this was just an additional component. However to ensure that students actually completed them a support and follow up mechanism was put in place. This enabled the identification of students that needed additional support early on in the course.

 A slight problem was that of connectivity; the e-assessments could only be accessed on campus  through the network and were not available outside of the campus. Part of the reason for this was the file size, in fact initially it was found that many of the PCs on site were not up to specification.

Innovative
In terms of innovation, e-assessment is common place now it does enable repeat tests and students to self help. In the case of this study the assessments have been designed in house therefore cost effective and the case study emphasises the fact that the tests have been designed with extensive feedback loops therefore supporting the natural progression of the student.