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JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION REVUE DE L’ÉDUCATION À DISTANCE 2010 VOL. 24, No.

JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION REVUE DE L’ÉDUCATION À DISTANCE 2010 VOL. 24, No. 1, 91-106 Agile Project Management for e-Learning Developments Iain Doherty Abstract We outline the project management tactics that we developed in praxis in order to manage elearning projects and show how our tactics were enhanced through implementing project management techniques from a formal project management methodology. Two key factors have contributed to our project management success. The first is maintaining a clear educational focus in our elearning projects whilst defining project success in terms of facilitating and/or enhancing student learning. The second is ensuring that our processes mesh with the collegial nature of a university culture. Our paper concludes by discussing the need to engage with institutional strategic and organizational concerns in order to increase institutional capacity for elearning. Résumé Nous dressons le portrait des stratégies de gestion de projet que nous avons développé in praxis afin de gérer les projets d’apprentissage en ligne et vous montrons comment nos stratégies ont été améliorées par l’implantation de techniques de gestion de projet provenant d’une méthodologie formelle de gestion de projet. Deux facteurs ont contribué à la réussite de notre gestion de projet. Le premier est le maintien d’un focus éducationnel clair dans nos projets d’apprentissage en ligne tout en définissant la réussite du projet en termes de facilitation et/ou amélioration de l’apprentissage de l’étudiant. Le second est de s’assurer que nos processus sont compatibles avec la nature collégiale de la culture universitaire. Notre article conclut en discutant du besoin de s’engager dans les préoccupations stratégiques et organisationnelles institutionnelles afin d’accroître la capacité institutionnelle d’apprentissage en ligne. Introduction The purpose of this article is to provide an account of elearning project management processes that were developed in praxis and then enhanced through employing a formal project management methodology. We suggest that whilst successful project management processes can be developed in praxis, formal project management processes provide for a more sophisticated approach to managing projects, particularly in terms of quality assurance, project closeout processes and elearning maintenance strategies. Project management processes need to be implemented with an understanding of the unique challenges of working in an academic culture. This entails an awareness of the collegial nature of university environments in order to avoid potential conflict with academics who do not have a managerial view of the world. Project managing elearning developments also involves being aware of the concerns of all stakeholders. This broad awareness ensures that projects receive a level of School and Faculty support and helps to realise School and Faculty strategic aims. If projects are run in this way then the foundations are laid for wider Faculty engagement with technologies for teaching and learning. Learning Technology Unit The Learning Technology Unit (LTU): http://www.fmhs.auckland.ac.nz/faculty/ltu/ at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland was established in 2004 as a direct result of a report by an external elearning specialist on an existing Flexible Learning Unit within the Faculty. Whilst the report recognised areas of strength in the Flexible Learning Unit, the report was critical concerning the lack of management and lack of project management processes. Therefore, establishing the LTU included appointing a Director with responsibility for management of the Learning Technology Unit. The Director immediately focussed on putting in place appropriate project management processes as the basis for establishing and running a successful unit. The project management processes that we describe should be understood in this context and the conclusion to our paper will make clear the key role that our project management processes have had in developing the reputation of our unit within the Faculty. The purpose of the LTU is to support the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences in its flexible and distance teaching needs. The LTU has 3.4 staff comprising of: • a full time Director (academic); • a full time Senior Tutor (academic); • a part time Senior Tutor (academic); and • a full time Learning Technologist (non-academic). One of the senior tutor appointments was made relatively recently— 2008—and the LTU Director deliberately created this position in order to 92 AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT increase the number of academic positions within the unit. The logic behind this decision was that our university is research intensive and grounding teaching innovations in academic research was a strategic move to mesh our activities with the university research culture (Asmar, 2002). Thus, whilst elearning developments occur in a management environment, the majority of LTU staff are academics who are actively engaged in research. As we will see below, this helps to bridge the gap between a management culture and the academic culture and so helps to mitigate potential conflicts in the development of elearning solutions (Bullen, 2006). Supply and Demand In project management parlance (Office of Government Commerce, 2006, p. 10) the LTU can be understood as having the status of a supplier since our Unit provides specialist resources and skills to create elearning “products” for academic staff. The LTU also employs sub-contractors to carry out elearning development work—filming, video editing and Macromedia Flash programming—when the creation of the elearning product requires skills that we do not possess. The Director of the LTU acts as the project manager with the key responsibility of “overseeing” all project work within the unit. In this role the LTU Director is ultimately responsible for the successful delivery of the final product. However, the LTU takes a devolved approach to the day-to-day management of elearning projects with each LTU staff member being responsible for running their particular projects. The LTU customers—academics who require assistance with their flexible and distance teaching needs—come from the Faculty. A s customers, the academics commission the elearning products that the LTU produces. Academics are the subject matter experts and they play a central role in the creation and verification of the products (Office of Government Commerce, 2006, p. 10). Ultimately, however, it is the students who will make use of the products that we create. We, therefore, judge the success or otherwise of an elearning project in terms of whether or not the product facilitates and/or enhances student learning. This means that we focus on pedagogy in our elearning projects whilst recognising that different stakeholders—academics, Heads of Schools, Heads of Departments—will have different perspectives on the design process and differing criteria for the success of the project. The Importance of Pedagogy Our understanding of the term elearning is derived from the activities that the LTU undertakes. Elearning is, “a broad term that encompasses a AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT 93 variety of educational contexts in which technology is used to enhance or facilitate learning” (Bullen, 2006, p. 169). Elearning covers a wide s p e c t ru m of teaching activities ranging from using technologies to enhance face-to-face learning through to distance teaching in which particular technologies are used as the delivery medium for content and as the medium for interaction between staff and students and between students and students. The literature has identified many causes for elearning project failure ( A l e x a n d e r, 2001; Dokeos E-learning A rchitects, 2008; Ismail, 2002; Romiszowski, 2004; Russell, 2006) and the LTU has experienced project difficulties in each of these areas. For example, the academic acting as subject matter expert may unexpectedly leave the institution and if a suitable replacement cannot be found the project will be decommissioned. Copyright issues concerning resources—images, sound files, video clips, and animations—can become problematic as a project progresses and if these copyright issues cannot be satisfactorily resolved the project may be brought to an end. Failure to understand the characteristics of the potential audience can cause a project to fail. For example, whilst the elearning product may meet the agreed acceptance criteria and be completed on time and to budget, technologies can act as a barrier to learning if the students do not have the requisite information and communication technology skills to use the product. When this happens a project has failed. Poor infrastructure—for example, a Learning Management System that is unreliable, slow and not supported outside of “business hours”—can cause frustration on the part of students to the point where learning becomes an arduous task. This problem is particularly acute for postgraduate medical and health science students who are in full time employment and studying at a distance in the evenings and at weekends. Whilst factors such as those identified above must be taken into account in planning and managing elearning developments, inadequate learning analysis and design has been identified as one of the key factors in the failure of elearning projects (Alexander, 2001; Dokeos E-learning Architects, 2008; Frydenberg, 2002; Ismail, 2002; Segrave & Holt, 2003). Technologies per se do not improve learning. This point has been recognised by a number of academics in the field of elearning (Greenagel, 2002; Laurillard, 2008; Reeves, Herrington, & Oliver, 2005; Salmon, 2005). Rather, it is good learning design that improves student learning (Ismail, 2002) with technologies being employed in a meaningful and purposeful way to facilitate and enhance student learning (Jones, uploads/Management/ ej-892361.pdf