Change management guidelines that address barriers to technology adoption in an hei context

Abstract

The literature reviewed, has suggested that Technology Enhanced Learning and the related domains of education, technology and business interact in a complex and contextual manner as a new emerging episteme. This is one that faces numerous challenges in terms of the effective management when introducing a change for pedagogical practice that involves the ubiquitous use of computing and ICT against a global user base that is influenced by known and unknown barriers to technology adoption. It is suggested that that with a history of organizational change considerations being a pre-dominantly strategic business related construct, and technology related change being a predominantly project managed or service model construct, that a traditional CM or project approach may not adequately address many barriers to technology adoption. As has occurred in other business/IT related interactions such as the Information systems strategy triangle, learning using technology requires a clear marriage of the technological managerial and pedagogical domains. Organizational, Business, IS, and education strategy all need to interact synergistically in order to move forward with technology use for education. The purpose of this project was to conduct a study that focused on the broad context of technology barriers faced by students using technology around a Moodle based online learning environment. The underlying objective was to examine the interaction between change management activity and student perceptions of both technology barriers and change focusing on encouraging the adoption of technology for learning. The project created and presented a typical open source Moodle based virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in a BYOD situation, to a group of 35 second year university students in the form of activities and a quantitative and qualitative survey of the barriers and interactions.