Course:

MIT 522-Organization and Management of Instructional Technology  Fall 2003

Instructor and Project Advisor: Dr. M. Moallem, UNCW

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Situation:

NC Technology Competencies for Educators stipulates educators must use computers and other technologies effectively and appropriately in order to facilitate learning and communications to colleagues, parents, and others. Pender County technology plan calls for increasing communication skills for students through the use of technology. Significant infrastructure has been created in Pender County High schools to support web utilization.

Performance Issue:

Utilization of the internet by teachers and students for communication and learning purposes is lacking due to lack of teacher motivation and skills to perform and teach web page development.

Desired Performance:

1. Within three years, all teachers and students will have the tools (hardware, software, and training) and motivation necessary to design, develop and maintain web pages as well as teach these skills to students.

2. Within three years, all students upon graduation will demonstrate basic web development skills.
3. An educational environment will be created where Web-based publication is a primary method of communicating and sharing information within school and community

Solution:

Proposed  three-phased pilot program for gradual implementation of staff development training aimed at producing the skills and ability to teach these skills to students, beginning with the graduating seniors in 2004.Outcome was expected to  produce significant impact on student performance while satisfying many indirect needs of staff, community and students. Clear measures and periodic benchmarks for performance were included.

Role:

Acting as part of three person instructional technology team, my role was to facilitate the planning process based on input from other team members who had direct client contact.

Project Summary:

After conducting needs assessment and establishing performance goals, a multi-phase plan to implement and manage the required change over a three year period was developed. Major elements included a staff development plan with performance goals for each phase. Heavy emphasis was placed on managing the diffusion of this innovation and change required within the Pender County high schools. A communication plan was developed to bring about organizational support throughout the implementation based on informing intended activities, relevance to NC and Pender requirements, trial ability, and publicizing observable results.

Budgets and detailed project plans were provided.

Results:

Submitted to Pender County Schools Director of Technology.

Reflection:

This project allowed for development of change management skills required to sell and implement a significant organizational change in an educational environment. Utilization of change management and diffusion of innovation models were explored and used as a basis for the project.

Faced with similar situations in the future, I would use project management skills and tools to present the proposal incorporating scope, definition of deliverables, and gant and pert charts denoting schedules, resource needs, and budgets. This would also allow for identifying the impact of any changes to original proposal.