Sometimes, going to a national conference on technology and learning seems to be an exercise in joyful daydreaming. The endeavors tend to be high-minded. Administrators and instructors will talk about standardizing instructors' electronic presentations. They'll talk about setting up standards for online learning across the campus. They'll talk about having instructors do their own multimedia builds. Setting up that alignment between people in an organization may be quite a challenge. Making change is terrifically hard work.

One exercise that we did during our conference was to brainstorm a force-field analysis about online learning on campus. Kurt Lewin's theory considers the various factors (pro and con) that lead to a particular current state of equilibrium. In this context, what factors decreased innovation for online learning and which factors encouraged innovation--to lead to a current campus's current state?

Encouragements:

• Talent
• Leadership
• New audiences
• Collaborations
• Integration of technologies (highly usable ones)
• Moneys
• Innovations
• Cross-cultural interchanges
• Contemplation places
• Political protection
• Supportive work environments
• Leadership
• Vision
• Efficiencies
• Deadline pressures
• Increasing competition
• Clear legal guidance against liabilities
• Time

Discouragements:

• High technology learning
• Insufficient staffing / moneys / time / knowledge of how to use software technologies for multimedia builds
• Not seeing the value of online learning

The concept behind force-field analysis (Lewin's theory) is that an organization arrives at its current state because of a number of forces / influences. It has not arrived at its current state willy-nilly. The way to move an organization forward is to put pressures and leveraging on some of those forces---to create change in the right direction.

I notice that in my notetaking that I didn't write down the discouragements brainstormed. In a sense, these can be the flip sides or lacks from the encouragement side. Plus, I was focusing on what would make positive change, not really what would hold one back.