Higher Education 35: 241–244, 1998. 241

Book Reviews

Peter Ford, Peter Goodyear, Richard Heseltine, Roger Lewis, JonathanDarby, Joyce Graves, Pat Satorius, Dave Harwood, Tom King. 1996. Man-aging Change in Higher Education: A Learning Environment Architecture.Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open Univer-sity Press. xii + 161pp. (Pb.) £19.99 (Hb.) £45.00 (Pb.) ISBN 0-335-19791-4.(Hb.) ISBN 0-335-19792-2.

In many ways this volume, an integrated endeavour by nine authors, is time-ly. Throughout the world, certainly the developed countries, institutions ofhigher education are grappling with the complex task of addressing the dif-ficult interacting challenges of massification occurring against a backclothboth of diminishing unit of resource and of an explosion in information andthe means of transferring, storing and handling information. In essence thisvolume focuses upon ways in which institutions can plan and manage theirresponses to these issues in relation to the development of learning environ-ments.

The authors bring their considerable experience to bear in the volume.Professor David Watson, in the foreword, applauds the conceptualisation ofthe academic process which this text offers. He also refers to the sensitivityto institutional values and perspectives, which the authors frequently stress.In substantial measure one can subscribe to these views.

The volume merits attention from a wide audience in higher education.One suspects that it will be read by senior managers and heads of serviceresponsible for various aspects of information technology, for whom one ofthe attractions of the text may be the “cookbook approach” with carefullyorganised structures, processes, models and diagrammatic representations oflayered approaches to the development of a learning environment architecture.It should also be read by all involved in the teaching and learning processes.The reaction of that audience is more difficult to predict but one suspects thatthose deeply-steeped in educational and learning theories might consider thediscussion of vital topics to be excessively brief, if not non-existent. In theseareas the volume has to be seen as a distilled viewpoint of the authors ratherthan the exploration of views which would instantly emerge in real debateswithin an institution.

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Readers may struggle with some of the technical language adopted bythe authors, e.g. OPEN framework, learning chunks, learnplaces, learntasks,learning vehicles. The justification for the jargon rests with the desire tocapture specific meanings and the terms are clearly explained in the text.Nonetheless the jargon could irritate some readers, such as mainstream aca-demics who tend to dislike what they perceive as unnecessary “jargon” notassociated with their discipline. This reader found the language impededattempts to put into practice the recommendation of the authors to skim thevolume then selectively focus upon parts of it that were of greatest interestand relevance. Another obstacle to the adoption of that strategy is the fact thatmuch of the material is, in truth, quite easy to understand but some points arecomplex. Length of treatment was not, in the view of this reader, an accurateguide to complexity or importance.

The ten chapters cover: the development of a system for the next genera-tion, business issues and trends, managing change, perspectives and qualities,business objects, business processes, social system, workplaces and services,technical system and the way ahead. The learning architecture method isbriefly described in the Introduction and covered in greater detail in laterchapters. Chapter 2, Business Issues and Trends, concentrates upon four keychange forces (massification, competition and control, changing student pro-file, provision of learning resources), whilst Chapter 3 presents a frameworkfor managing change that permeates the remainder of the volume. The authorsborrow a five stage transformational model outlined in the MIT90’s reportwhich postulates two evolutionary levels (localised exploitation and internalintegration) and three revolutionary levels (business process redesign, busi-ness network redesign and business scope redefinition). Whilst the authorssay, in Chapter 3, that institutions must make their own decisions about thelevel they aspire to reach, the reader is left in little doubt by the end of thevolume that a comprehensive approach along revolutionary lines is beingadvocated.

The second guiding force in the volume are the seven perspectives (enter-prise manager, student, employee, trading partner, user, service provider,developer) and five qualities (availability, usability, performance, security,potential for change) introduced in Chapter 4. It was not clear if the per-spectives and qualities were derived from experience, deduction or research– a matter of some significance in the political debates that would inevitablyoccur within institutions discussing the creation of a learning environmentarchitecture. The latter is articulated in Chapter 5 including the intriguinglearning chunk gooseberry model. Next the authors turn to the managementand development of learning environments. Here they introduce distinctionsbetween subject-dependent and subject-independent life cycles and between

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service and academic departments. Whilst they recognise that such divisionsare over-simplistic and that interconnections are inevitable, the simplifiedschema is followed, in part because it facilitates depiction in diagrams. It wasaround this point in the volume that this reader became a little uncomfortablewith the implication in the text that stronger managerial control, with cleararrangements such as service level agreements, which were commended forservice departments whilst devolution to academic departments seemed to beless circumscribed. Given the description by Lewis Elton, amongst others, ofteaching and learning in higher education as one of the last cottage industries,the notion that departments would readily adopt and implement the conceptsand frameworks offered in the volume seemed to merit greater discussionor justification. This reader did wonder if notoriously sensitive territory hadinfluenced the balance of coverage. Alternatively the knowledgeable authorsmay have greater insights to the sea-change impacting upon disciplines frominitiatives such as CTI and TLTP than has been apparent to the reviewer.

Under the heading of the Social System (Chapter 7), the authors brieflydiscuss organisational structures and academic staff roles, before turningto the topic of work groups. The latter is the term which the authors useto describe cross-functional groupings such as learning chunk developmentteams or learning environment architecture committees.

In Chapter 8 the attention focuses upon workplace and services, with studentlearning as the integrating dimension and the student as the principal user,thereby providing the link to learnplaces.

Chapter 9, Technical Systems, relates IT support to learning environments.Topics are efficiently, if briefly, covered, with little discussion or debate. Theauthors might usefully have reflected upon Maslow’s hierarchy of needs inthe context of technical systems. The reviewer hears yells of frustration dailywhen networks fail to perform. Under such circumstances it is difficult tofocus upon lofty aspirations and ideals. Nor, as some privatised utilities havediscovered, are complaints apparently reduced by the introduction of servicelevel agreements, despite the apparent attractiveness of that device to theauthors.

The various strands are drawn together in the concluding chapter whichposits a four step model for the creation of learning environment in an insti-tution. The reviewer felt some unease with the opening bullet point whichadvocates the appointment of an “owner” of the architecture. Ownership sure-ly should be widely distributed, even if primary responsibility for overseeingthe management of the change is formally associated with one senior per-son. Step 2, we are advised, would be aided by using the tools offered inOPEN framework and Step 3 by following the advice in the components ofthe book. Step 4 is to document the architecture and get it approved.

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In a devolved structure a more evolutionary approach may be a necessaryfirst step. Indeed devolved structures appear to have a preference for tailoredapproaches that sit comfortably with individual disciplines or groupings ofcognate disciplines. Whilst the authors can claim that their framework canaccommodate those preferences, that approach would present challenges toattempts to create overarching, i.e. common, social and especially, technicalsystems.

GEORGE GORDONUniversity of Strathclyde