what is change management? and why is it...

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2 WHY AN ENTERPRISE LMS IS THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL K–12 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

WHAT IS CHANGE MANAGEMENT? AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

hange management refers to the strategies and tactics that organizations use to transition their em-

ployees to new ways of doing things. And it’s an area that school districts too often ignore.

Change is often difficult for employees to accept. “Your initiatives impact how individual people do their work: their processes, job roles, workflows, reporting structures, behaviors, and even their identity within the organization,” says Prosci, a change management consulting firm.

When the change involves using new technologies, the anxiety level among employees is even greater because they must learn unfamiliar tools on top of adjusting to new roles or responsibilities. Paying attention to the human factors involved in the transition is just as important as managing the technological details.

Prosci has been studying why projects succeed or fail for nearly two decades. The company’s research shows a direct correlation between how well the change is managed among employees and how successful the effort is.

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Effective change management is critical to the success of any digital transformation project in K–12 education. Here’s what that looks like in three leading US school systems—and why an enterprise LMS is the foundation of these efforts.

hy do some instructional transformation projects succeed while others fail? Around the world, K–12

school systems are looking to transform their instruction with the help of technology to make it more personal, rel-evant, and deeply engaging for students. But for a number of reasons, these projects often fail to generate enough momentum to succeed.

Of all the factors that determine whether K–12 digital transformation projects will succeed or fail, one of the most important is adopting a thoughtful and deliberate change management process. Effective change management in-volves several key elements, but these can be grouped into three broad steps: establishing a vision and a plan; building support among stakeholders; and creating an environment for success.

An enterprise learning management system is an integral part of this process. By bringing together several different systems within a single digital ecosystem, an enterprise LMS provides a conduit that enables holistic, district-wide transformation to occur—empowering educators to teach more effectively while at the same time making it easier for them to do so. Such a system helps remove the barriers to successful digital transformation, allowing educators to change their instructional practices with minimal effort.

This ebook will explore the keys to effective change man-agement in more detail and will examine how three leading K–12 districts have used an enterprise LMS to achieve their goals.

When employers judge the change manage-ment process to be poor, only 15 percent, of projects meet their objectives, but this fig-ure jumps to 94 percent when the change man-agement process was considered excellent. Prosci,Change Management Research

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Read our Change Management Whitepaper

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EFFECTIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT IS ABOUT WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS

Transforming K–12 instruction and learning is a monumental task. A strong district vision for what teaching and learning should look like is an essential start, but beyond the big picture, K–12 leaders need to clearly define steps and measurable goals for how to make the transition.

eading change effectively requires shifting the mind-set and behaviors of an entire organization. An anal-

ysis by IBM’s Organization Change Management division reveals the most effective means of changing employees’ attitudes and behaviors.

According to IBM, the most effective strategies include involving leaders in role modeling, establishing and commu-nicating a compelling case for change, and identifying and empowering people who are passionate about the change.

Interestingly, the least effective strategies for implement-ing change involve creating top-down pressure and apply-ing sanctions to achieve compliance. This research suggests that driving change effectively is about winning the hearts and minds of employees, and not simply mandating a new approach or solution.

Prosci’s research has found that the number-one factor in effective change management is “active and visible executive sponsorship” of a project, meaning the organization’s top leaders must communicate clear goals and objectives to stakeholders, provide a compelling reason for the change, and model the change for their employees. This advice aligns with what IBM identifies as the most effective strate-gies for leading transformation.

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4 WHY AN ENTERPRISE LMS IS THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL K–12 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

CHANGE MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES

Prosci has developed a change management model called ADKAR, which stands for the five steps of successful goal-oriented change for individuals and organizations. It is a helpful model for organizational leadership to manage both the human and the business side of change simultaneously.

etting teachers to buy in to the district’s vision of instructional transformation is critical to success.

Asking teachers to change how they’ve been teaching

for dozens of years is difficult. Districts need to provide systematic and structured support that helps teachers es-tablish small wins so that the bigger wins become possible.

For instance, teachers or other staff members might be apprehensive about the unknown; they might not support the plan because they did not have input into its crea-tion; or they might believe the change involves too much complexity or gives them too much responsibility. Letting teachers collaborate, helping them to transition their prac-tice and improve student outcomes, and providing them with something they haven’t had before—such as timely, actionable student performance data—can be very persua-sive.

Parents can also help a district succeed or fail in new initiatives. Smart districts include parents and recruit their energy and enthusiasm to help improve their children’s learning experiences.

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Asking teachers to change how they’ve been teaching for dozens of years is difficult.

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Awareness of the need for changeAwareness of the business reasons for change. Awareness is the goal/outcome of early communications related to an organi-zational change. For example, students are not graduating with the desired college and career readiness skills.

Desire to support and participate in changeDesire to engage and participate in the change. Desire is the goal/outcome of spon-sorship and resistance management. For Example, our district is going to develop a college and career readiness program.

Knowledge of how to changeKnowledge about how to change. Knowledge is the goal/outcome of training and coaching. For Example, we will implement necessary pedagogical methods and supporting tech-nology to get us there.

Ability to implement the changeAbility to realize or implement the change at the required perfor-mance level. Ability is the goal/outcome of additional coaching, practice and time. For example, an enterprise level LMS will allow us the ability to change.

Reinforcement to sustain the changeReinforcement to ensure change sticks. Reinforcement is the goal/outcome of adoption measure-ment, corrective action and recognition of successful change. For example. Communica-tion and collaboration with stakeholders will allow us to make this possible and sustain-able.

lthough ADKAR is a commonly used methodolo-gy, there are others. Adapting or simplifying the multi-step framework can also be useful. For Lenny

Schad, chief technology information officer for the Houston Independent School District (HISD) in Texas, this five-step process boils down to three key stages:

1. Establishing a clear and compelling vision and a plan to execute it;

2. Communicating these and building support for the plan among stakeholders;

3. Creating the right environment for success.

“You have to clearly define your mission and your focus, first and foremost,” he explains. “Then, you have to communicate your mission to stakeholders and articulate what their role is in achieving your goals. That’s where you start to gain buy-in among teachers. But that buy-in will only continue if you have the right systems in place to support them.”

In Indiana’s Bartholomew Consolidated School Corpora-tion (BCSC), district leaders wanted to get teachers on board to participate in the change to Universal Design for Learning (UDL). They encouraged teachers to start slowly by teaching at least one unit with help from the system. “We tried not to overwhelm people,” Mike Jamerson, director of technology, says. “What we found was that once teachers did one unit, they would get excited to do more, because they discovered so many opportunities.” For instance, teachers can have students discuss concepts in an online forum, which leads to richer exchanges than would be possible in a face-to-face setting. They also can record a lecture and have students watch it outside of class, so class time can be used for hands-on projects.

To ensure that the change takes hold, it helps to give teachers some “easy wins,” says Pete Just, chief technol-ogy officer in the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, Indiana. In other words, “show them how they can immediately impact student learning with a few simple steps.” An example of an easy win with the Wayne Learning Hub is “allowing teachers to co-develop courses in a common space in our Hub. This will let them share the load and feel the pride of contributing to a shared instructional resource. Being able to do, say, 10 percent of the work and get a product that is 100-percent ready and customized for your lessons is a big win for minimal effort.”

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Pete Just, chief technology officer in the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, Indiana

6 WHY AN ENTERPRISE LMS IS THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL K–12 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Some of the characteristics of this kind of success include:

• One centralized platform to manage technology and pedagogy

• Systematically managing curriculum and content district wide

• Enabling communication and collaboration among teachers, students, and parents

Here are some examples of districts that have successfully accomplished this kind of change:

For HISD, Wayne Township, and BCSC, adopting an enter-prise LMS has been instrumental in building support for their vision and creating the right environment for success.All three districts are using itslearning as a central digital ecosystem that ties together curriculum, instruction, as-sessment, personalized learning, professional development, communication, and collaboration within a single, easy-to-use platform.

Implementing an enterprise-wide LMS has empowered teachers in these districts to reach their students in richer, more meaningful ways—while at the same time making teachers’ jobs simpler. That, in turn, has led to widespread adoption of new and transformative practices such as per-sonalized, collaborative, and student-centered learning.

For change to take root and flourish, it must be systemic in nature, HISD’s Lenny Schad says. In other words, the dig-ital transformation must reach every level and touch every

process of a school district, breaking down the silos that often isolate individual classrooms and departments. Hav-ing a single, all-encompassing platform that unifies several disparate systems across an entire district makes this kind of systemic change possible.

WHY AN ENTERPRISE LMS IS CRITICAL FOR REALIZING DISTRICT CHANGE

An enterprise LMS can be a fast route to district wide change because it can help drive systematic pedagogical and technology change at the same time. Adopting such a tool can effectively give the district the “ability” as mentioned in the ADKAR framework to make that change happen. When implementing pedagogical methods such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL) or 1:1 technology implementations, an enterprise LMS can pull all these initiatives together setting up an environment for successful change in classrooms and across the district.

For change to take root and flourish, it must be systemic in nature, Lenny Schad, HISD

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There is general agreement among educators about the need to leave behind traditional teaching and learning modalities to prepare students for global citizenship in the 21st century. As technology has grown more sophisticated in its ability to support unique personalized learning experiences, legacy programs and resources can be phased out in order to make way for a more end-to-end solution that will support districts undergoing change. At both BCSC and Houston ISD, the LMS supports the dis-tricts’ use of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles as they shift to student-driven learning.

UDL PRINCIPLE 1Provide multiple means of representation

UDL PRINCIPLE 2Provide multiple means of action and expression

UDL PRINCIPLE 3Provide multiple means of engagement

“We were looking for a way to remove barriers for students, so they could access materials in ways that work for them—and so teachers could find multiple ways to engage their students,” says BCSC’s Mike Jamerson. “Students can learn through video, audio, or text, and they have many ways to demonstrate their mastery. That’s really important to us.”

According to Samantha Rosenthal, edtech specialist at HISD, district leaders believed that UDL would ensure

quality access to learning because the front-end design anticipates the needs of the entire spectrum of learners.

At both HISD and Wayne Township, leaders have created a “hub”—a single ecosystem that supports holistic change by putting curriculum resources, teaching strategies, stand-ards-based lessons and assessments, ongoing professional development, and communication tools all in one central place. The hub removes barriers to changing teachers’ prac-tices and supports them as they transition to new teaching strategies that more powerfully impact student learning.

In Wayne Township, teachers will use the Learning Hub to personalize instruction, extend students’ learning beyond the school day, and encourage them to think more deeply, among other activities. “The Learning Hub will form the core of our entire learning environment, while empowering educators to teach and students to learn more effectively,” says Just.

And at HISD, the system—which district officials are also calling the HUB—is at the center of the district’s efforts to transform teaching and learning for the 21st century through a project called PowerUp.

The HUB gives students 24/7 access to instructional materials from any device. Students can communicate and collaborate with their classmates and also reflect on and take ownership of their learning through blogs, discussion boards, and electronic portfolios.

In all three districts teachers have access to all of their curriculum resources within a central digital library, and they can provide multiple ways for their students to learn. Teachers can create and share lessons and other instruc-tional resources easily with their colleagues throughout the district, and they can extend students’ learning with online activities and discussions that take students’ learning to deeper levels.

What’s more, these districts have worked with itslearn-ing to make all of their instructional resources available through the platform with just a single sign-on.

“Imagine being a teacher and having to log in to 20 or 30 different platforms to access different tools or content, each with its own password,” says Beatriz Arnillas, director of IT-education technology for HISD. “This was impossible to manage, so one of our main concerns was to simplify the user interface. Let’s have teachers focus on what really matters instead, which is teaching and learning. The technology needs to be invisible so that the learning is visible.”

HOW AN LMS FACILITATES DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: 3 DISTRICTS DRIVE CHANGE

Pannel Discussion on Every Student Succeeds Act and Universal Design for Learning

8 WHY AN ENTERPRISE LMS IS THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL K–12 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

The power of these central learning hubs has helped teachers in all three districts buy in to the change, because teachers saw the benefits for themselves and for their stu-dents almost instantly. And the fact that these hubs have made the instructional process so convenient for teachers has enabled teachers to change their practices without investing a lot of time and effort, so the digital transforma-tion has taken hold quickly among staff.

“We felt like having a one-stop shop for teachers to go to, where they could access as many elements that are required in their day as possible, would streamline their work,” Schad

says. “If we’re going to ask them to take on such a huge cultural change, and we aren’t looking at how we can make it as streamlined and as easy for them as possible, then shame on us.”

“Students can learn through video, audio, or text, and they have many ways to demonstrate their

mastery. That’s really important to us.”

Mike Jamerson. BCSC

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A CLOSER LOOK AT CHANGE MANAGEMENT HOUSTON ISD

ike any successful digital transformation project, HISD’s PowerUp HUB began with a vision for what

district leaders wanted students to know and be able to do when they graduate.

“We felt like if we weren’t able to articulate a vision for what we wanted our school district to be as a learning organiza-tion, it would be very difficult for people to understand what their role in (the change) was going to be,” Lenny Schad says. “When you talk about a digital transformation, you are fundamentally changing instructional practices and behaviors that have been in place for decades. If we weren’t able to continually ground ourselves with what our new mission and vision was, it would be very easy to rubber-band back to the old ways of doing things.”

HISD’s profile of an ideal 21st-century learner required district leaders to redesign the role of teachers as well. Dis-trict leaders determined that teachers should be cultiva-tors of deeper learning, facilitators of social and emotional learning, architects of personalized learning, and develop-ers of literacy and a desire for lifelong learning among their students.

“Too often, districts will articulate a vision for what they want students to do, but then they don’t apply that to how teaching must change, and so processes remain the same,” says Beatriz Arnillas. “To have real transformation, you must look at the system as a whole and articulate how teaching and leadership styles need to change as well.”

In approaching this change systemically, “we also needed to look at our infrastructure and how was that going to facilitate these skills that we felt were required,” Schad says. “We sat down and talked about: If students have devices, what are they going to use those to get access to? Where is that information going to reside? What are the practices that have to be put into place for teachers to be able to leverage this (change)?” Those conversations led to the design of the PowerUp HUB.

The technical challenge of creating the HUB “was actually one of the easiest layers of our digital transforma-tion,” Schad says. “What is most difficult is getting people to understand that what they have done for years, they will not do anymore.”

HISD created a cross-functional leadership team with representatives from the curriculum and IT departments, as well as school principals, to drive the change through strong executive sponsorship. “If you don’t have leadership at the campus level, you won’t move the initiative forward,” Schad says. “This is one of the things you set up first and foremost.”

But once the PowerUp HUB was in place, it became easy to convince teachers to transform their practices, because they saw the obvious benefits of doing so. For example, the system has made collaboration among teachers much easier.

“We had teachers doing amazing work throughout our district, but because we didn’t have a system that allowed col-laboration and sharing, we were doing it in silos,” Schad says. “One of the concepts behind the HUB was creating this space where we can now leverage the great work that teachers are doing and share that amongst everybody.”

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10 WHY AN ENTERPRISE LMS IS THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL K–12 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

METROPOLITAN SCHOOL DISTRICT OF WAYNE TOWNSHIP

n the deployment of their Learning Hub, Wayne Town-ship leaders wanted to simplify teachers’ jobs by rolling

out a single digital ecosystem for all of their instructional needs. “Based on our conversations with our teachers, we knew we needed a technology platform that would manage the entire learning process,” says Pete Just.

“Typically, teachers have to find instructional resources, de-sign assessments, and look at student data in various systems with their own separate log-ins. That’s too complicated,” Just says. “Now, we’ll house all of our resources within the hub, and teachers will be able to use a single log-in for their digital resources, curriculum, lessons, and assessments. That’s huge. It adds great efficiency for busy educators and makes them more productive with their limited time.”

Wayne Township’s Learning Hub forms the core of the

district’s entire learning environment. It serves as a central digital repository for curriculum, online courses, digital resources, and standards-based lesson plans. The Hub empowers educators to teach more effectively because it incorporates resources teachers can use to learn how to take full advantage of the system.

“Because we have different types of users, we have designed different levels of professional development that are tailored for each of these groups,” Just says. “We have offered the professional development online, so teachers can take it at their convenience, but we also have an on-site facili-tator to help as needed.”

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“Based on our conversations with our teachers, we knew we needed a technology platform that would

manage the entire learning process,”

Pete Just, District of Wayne Township

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BARTHOLOMEW CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL DISTRICT

artholomew (BCSC) wanted to transform their dis-trict into an anytime-anywhere learning environment

where all students could have unique, personalized learn-ing experiences. They made a commitment to Universal Design for Learning, a philosophy that eliminates barriers to learning for all students.

With UDL, learning becomes student-centered, rather than teacher-centered. “When students have choices they feel greater ownership in their learning,” says Nick Williams, coordinator of instructional technology at BCSC. “We searched for an LMS to support UDL by providing multiple formats for students to acquire and demonstrate knowledge.”

BCSC’s commitment to UDL was the driving force that unified district educators as they made their shift to digital learning. “The very first thing we did after choosing itslearning as our LMS in October 2014,” reports Williams, “was to or-chestrate professional development where itslearning repre-sentatives worked with 50 lead teachers

across the district. By spring break, there was so much excitement that teachers were literally beating on the door demanding access to itslearning.”

Williams credits BCSC’s successful implementation to their adherence to UDL, which creates individualized learn-ing paths for all students that give them choices but also hold them accountable. Strategic and steady leadership as the district transitioned to UDL and 1:1 was also a factor.

The district has also utilized itslearning for profession-al learning for teachers. “Using the same platform for both instruction and professional learning makes it easier for us to model our expectations,” says Williams.

“The enthusiasm of the original 50 educators was conta-gious, and that got other teachers excited about participat-ing,” says Williams. “Everyone was onboard with a learning platform that facilitated our transition to student-centered learning.”

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“When students have choices they feel greater ownership in their learning,” Nick Williams, coordinator of instructional technology at BCSC.

12 WHY AN ENTERPRISE LMS IS THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL K–12 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

CHANGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES LEAD TO BETTER RESULTS

n all three districts, an effective change management process—supported by an enterprise LMS—is paying big

dividends.At BCSC, the district’s LMS has resulted in near-univer-

sal adoption of its digital transformation, Jamerson says, leading to richer learning: “On any given week, you’ll see 95 percent of our students and faculty signed in and using the system. That’s an adoption rate that I think is very significant.”

In Wayne Township, the initial users of the Wayne Learn-ing Hub report great success, and Just and his staff are preparing for a full rollout in time for the 2016–17 school year. “We’re going to have such a great system for our teachers to manage the instructional process and reach kids in new and profound ways,” he says. “And that’s what I live for—to be able

to provide great resources—because then great learning can happen.”

And in Houston, the PowerUp HUB is helping teachers to meet their students’ diverse learning needs while giving students “a voice and a choice in their learning,” Arnillas says.

Teachers can deliver formative and summative assess-ments to their students, see how students are performing in relation to each state standard, and search by standard to find content in various formats that will help each child master that standard and succeed.

“We’re not just talking about an LMS,” Arnillas says. “We’re talking about a center where teachers can orchestrate all of the activities” to ensure student success.

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Change Management Webinar

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RESOURCES

Change Management: Houston ISD’s Mission to Support 21st Century Learners (itslearning webinar). Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/164590831 Jorgensen, H., Bruehl, O., and Franke, N. Making Change Work...While the Work Keeps Changing: How Change Architects Lead and Manage Organizational Change. IBM Organization Change Management, 2014. Retrieved from http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/gb/en/gbe03618usen/gbe03618usen.pdf Prosci. Best Practices in Change Management, 2016. Re-trieved from http://www.change-management.com

T: 1-888-853-2761 www.itslearning.net [email protected]

US16901 © 2016

WHY AN ENTERPRISE LMS IS THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL K–12 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

About itslearningDesigned specifically for K–12, itslearning is an enterprise LMS that allows districts to support the shift to personal-ized learning by putting curriculum resources, instructional strategies, standards-based lesson plans and assessments, as well as professional learning, all in one central location for easy access.

itslearning is a cloud-based learning platform that connects teachers, students, parents, and school leaders both in and outside the classroom. The platform provides countless ways for teachers to create engaging lessons and resourc-es, makes teacher collaboration and sharing of materials easy, and automates routine tasks so teachers have more time to focus on their students.