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Confronting the Dark Side l
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Stakeholders are the people:
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Whose choices influence how the
technology is used (e.g., students deciding whether and
how to use it in a course; faculty deciding how to
teach; information technology and teaching center staff
deciding whether and how to organize training; etc.)
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Who may benefit (or lose) from the
desired outcomes of using the technology or changes in
activities?
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Whose choices about policy or budgets
could change how the technology is used?
Those people and representatives of those
groups that have a stake in the use of the stuff -
ordinarily those stakeholders should collaborate in
designing the study and analyzing the data. If you need help
in gathering data (e.g., getting good response rates to
surveys), then they can help. They can also help you make
sure that your questions and language are clear and
compelling.
Matrix surveys:
One powerful way in which to involve stakeholders is through
a matrix survey. So far as we know, the only
user-friendly survey tool that can support matrix surveys is
Flashlight Online 2.0 (which you may well have as part of
your TLT Group subscription); this may explain why you might
never have heard of a matrix survey. A primary
election is a well-known example of a matrix survey:
different stakeholders (governmental entities and political
parties in different precincts and districts) all have the
right to put their own questions on the survey (i.e., the
ballot). The people in overall charge of the survey
can determine which respondents will see those questions.
For example, only people registered in a particular party
and living in a particular district can see the names of
candidates vying to be the nominee of that party for that
district. Yet it's all one survey (election), statewide.
You can use matrix surveys to do self-studies in your
institution, engaging different stakeholders so that a) they
see the evidence they themselves need, b) some stakeholders
may get more invested in urging their constituency to
respond to the total survey. For more web material on matrix
surveys,
click here. To discuss the use of matrix surveys
in accreditation self-studies, contact us at flashlight @
tltgroup.org.
One reason so few self-studies attend to
the role of technology in fostering (or failing to foster)
better learning is that the question is everyone's
responsibility, but no one's responsibility: no one office
or department is responsible for making sure technology is
used well to improve learning, despite the large fraction of
the budget devoted to it.
Some institutions place some of this
responsibility in a Teaching Learning and Technology
Roundtable, a group that brings together many leaders and
constituencies to provide advice to the chief academic
officer and the institution about how to better use
technology to support learning. (click
here for a definition of a Roundtable; by the way, most
roundtables are called something else, and some entities
called 'roundtables' don't fit our definition). Your TLT
Roundtable could provide advice on where the self-study
should focus, oversight during the self-study, and guidance
in using the findings to improve institutional operations.
One institution whose Roundtable played a
significant role in guiding its accreditation self-study is
the University of South Carolina -
click
here for a brief case study.
For more on
engaging stakeholders, see these other sections of
the Flashlight Evaluation Handbook:
The previous section of this chapter, "Confronting
the Dark Side," is also crucial for involving the right
people in your study.
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