Planning and facilitating digital innovation - Snippets of practice

Invited by Jennie Walker, Principal Lecturer, on 2 February 2022 and 18 May 2022 I delivered guest teaching to two cohorts of healthcare students studying towards their BSc Leading and Innovating.  The topic I talked about was 'Planning and facilitating digital innovation - Snippets of practice'.  Which was focused on my pragmatic situated examples of initiating, planning and facilitating digital innovation in an educational context.  Whilst highlighting helpful processes and frameworks to support students develop their own digital innovation interventions in their contexts.

The aims of my session were:

1. Introduce basic definitions to set foundations and support digital innovation
2. Describe the application and approaches of my own situated digital innovation examples
3. Invitation to share your own digital innovation pitch ideas to help refine, gain clarity, evaluate and develop your own approaches

The session was focused on my pragmatic situated examples of initiating, planning and facilitating digital innovation in an educational context; a large-scale example about my influence of the university-wide H5P integration, and a smaller-scale developmental group - which will be my next blog post.  Whilst highlighting helpful processes and frameworks to support students develop their own digital innovation interventions in their contexts.  The session seemed to be enjoyed by students and generated much sharing during the group discussion activity.  Below is the presentation I used to support the session.

This invitation led onto possibilities about developing the innovation module to incorporate digital leadership.  A colleague and I are in discussion of what material can be included for this, as well as me returning to talk about such topic.

EDIT:

On 18 May 2022 I delivered the same guest teach with additional mentioning of current digital innovation facilitating: IHAP Digital Development Group; Virtual Reality wall and Virtual placements.  And alignment to Lean Thinking and Six Sigma methodologies.  As these are introduced earlier in the module and are used in the NHS.

The Education and Training Foundation have a good online Continuing Professional Development module 'EdTech: Identifying and addressing opportunities for innovation and innovative practice'.  It provides a good framework to facilitate digital innovation.  Based on this resource, I have summarised an adaptable process below:

1. Establish a digital development group or task and finish style group with selected colleagues.
• "Innovation is best planned and developed as a supported team activity" - ETF.
2. Discuss and identify current challenges, problems or focus areas in digital practice (e.g. literacy and skills), online teaching (e.g. engagement in online synchronous sessions), digital curriculum process (e.g. assessment workflow) or agree a goal or two to be achieved imminently.
• Draw on staff and student feedback and experience where necessary.
3. Identify and review potential digital innovation opportunities arising from these challenges, problems or focus areas.
4. Confirm the innovation category e.g. product, process or business model.  And the technology innovation type e.g. architectural innovation, radical innovation, incremental innovation, disruptive innovation.  As this will help the group to better establish their approach towards it.
5. Discuss the feasibility and prioritisation of the identified digital innovation opportunities.
6. Evaluate the identified digital innovation opportunities against ETF's Innovation Matrix:
• 
7. Discuss and agree where these opportunities are situated in the matrix to determine the focus of attention.
8. Discuss the identified approach(es), new or current, ways of working or technology, against a model introduced in my presentation above, e.g. SAMR model.  This will help you as a group to understand current digital technology use and the way you propose to use it moving forwards (what you want digital technology to support, improve, enhance etc - the purpose).
• "...innovation is about doing things in a new way – not always just using new technology" - ETF.
9. Use the selected model to deep-dive on the issues and identify what can't be changed (e.g. timetabling) and what can be changed through digital technology.
10. Discuss potential solutions and possibilities, and clarify as a group the way digital technology should be used/adapted to address the initial challenge/problem.
• Conceptualising ideas and evaluating alternatives may form part of this.
11. Develop a implementation plan of how the agreed innovation will be carried out, including timescales, resource, communication etc.
12. Consider senior and/or wider stakeholder involvement if the solutions require approval and/or are resource intensive and require organisational/cultural change.  Support from other teams and departments may need to be considered too if managing change.

A little reflection after seeing the Tweets below:

Neil Mosley - "It's fascinating how the last couple of years have led many educators into thinking that a particular approach when teaching remotely/online is innovative, when in reality it is fairly idiomatic but previously unfamiliar to them.

Neil Mosley -  "I think this is obviously a pro in terms of practice, great that people had exposure to a different way of teaching that caused them to reflect and rethink. Although it's quite jarring when long-standing online teaching practices are framed as innovative in dissemination..."

John Brindle - "I suppose, if it’s a new method to the individual, it’s innovative for them, can’t really criticise that. I’ve worked on AI and Chatbots with some colleagues and discussion boards with others. Innovation is as much about perspective as it is about introducing the cutting edge."

Neil Mosley - "Yes that's true John and I'm not a massive fan of the term innovation....but the point here is really dissemination of something as new, that isn't...."

John Brindle - "I suppose it’s an issue with educational research in general, it’s mostly same theories, different contexts. Some of what I’ve seen as “innovation” in HE is stuff I learned training as a teacher 18 years ago, it’s just in FE you’re not pressured to publish 🤣"

Whilst I feel the original Tweet is a subtle attack/prompt to provoke responses on this 'common argument'.  I agree with John, that through my experience of innovation in digital education, it is situational to the person, their practice and context.  Not every educator, subjects and courses are aware/seen existing said digital innovation, been through such digital innovative discussions or benefitted of working with a learning technologist.  Plus let's be realistic, not everyone will prioritise, have the time or skill to research academically/know where to find existing digital innovation, if their innovative idea has been done before.  And that's not really the goal of innovation to check whether it's been done before and if it's deemed 'genuine innovation' - I feel that leans more into invention.  Some people are desperate to claim that they have seen it before and dampen others efforts.  Just let innovation naturally occur within context and then look to share, publish and disseminate in a non-competitive manner.