Span the Silos for Comprehensive Distance Education

Functional silos have always existed in post-secondary institutions.  However, with the increasing demand for distance education, colleges and universities can no longer afford to allow departments to operate independently from one another.  In order for students and faculty to experience distance learning as a seamless process, all stakeholders must work together as collaborative and cross-functional teams.  Efforts to span the silos, such as job shadowing across departments, are well worth the investment of time and resources.

Problem of Perpetuating Silos

Silos on campus cause lack of communication and reluctance to collaborate.  Often this obscures any meaningful view of the institution as a whole and other employees as team-members.  Consequently, delegation of tasks is limited to a smaller skill pool than necessary, and broader solutions to challenges are overlooked.  Valuable employee time and resources within a silo are misspent protecting the silo from blame by those outside rather than exploring collaborative approaches to problems.

When departments remain isolated from one another, ultimately the campus community suffers from myopic decision-making based on limited information.  For example, without experience in teaching, information technology staff may fail to recognize which technological tools to purchase that best serve students and faculty.  Conversely, faculty who are not current with the latest innovations may be quite unaware of the many ways that educational technology tools can automate some of their more tedious tasks. 

In the delivery of high quality distance education, many separate and specialized departments must coordinate their efforts including information technology, faculty development, student support services, tech support, course development, administrative services, advising, disability services, library services, and bookstore.  Although the values, culture, priorities, and goals of each department can differ dramatically, the departments are inter-dependent. 

For example, those responsible for online course development without an awareness of the impact their software plug-in requirement decisions have on HelpDesk tech support staff may well cause unnecessarily long wait times for the Call Center.  And, faculty development trainers who don’t realize that academic departments are funded unequally for hardware and software may draw inaccurate conclusions about why some faculty tend to be more computer literate than others.  Another common problem occurs when information technology staff set computer network down times for system maintenance without considering the student registration schedule or faculty grade submission deadlines. 

Benefits of Spanning Silos

The benefit of understanding different perspectives is demonstrated in the selection of campus software licenses.  In the case of learning object development software, faculty respond best to tools that require a short learning curve (such as Respondus’ Study Mate, Hot Potatoes, or Lesson Builder) while the tech staff, who usually make the licensing decisions, prefer the flexibility and robustness of sophistocated software (such as Flash or Captivate).  Less spending will go to waste on unused software once faculty and tech staff achieve a mutual understanding about their technology needs.

The decision to outsource an academic technology service or build the service internally poses a particularly daunting dilemma for an academic technology leader.  Inclusion of faculty, staff, and administrators in the decision-making process to license a commercial learning management system (e.g., Blackboard or WebCT) or use open source (e.g., Moodle or
Sakai
), however, can make the task more manageable.  In order for this to be successful, higher education personnel outside academic technology must take proactive responsibility for achieving technological literacy rather than wait expectantly for information technology staff to interpret or simplify pertinent information.  Conversely, academic technology staff should make an effort to present data in a manner palatable to faculty and administrators.

Additionally, while information technology staff may believe that they are fulfilling their mission to provide scheduled and frequent technology upgrades, they need to understand that many faculty and staff consider such changes too disruptive and inconvenient to provide added value.  Consequently, both staff and faculty stand to benefit from a better understanding of each other’s priorities and values.

Solutions

Long-standing chasms between programs or departments that support academic technology and other campus entities will not be bridged easily.  Inspirational leadership can provide compelling and positive visions of the possibilities.  For example, leaders can assign employees to roles based on their aptitudes, rather than by functional silos, in order to gain productivity and encourage employees to become cross-functional.  

The change must be dramatic and widespread in order to yield rapid benefits that are obvious to laggards.  The first step toward spanning the silos is to give employees the opportunity to gain insight about the priorities and culture in departments other than their own.  Word-of-mouth about experiences working in cross-functional teams will garner support better than statistics and studies citing the increased efficiency of greater interdepartmental communication and collaboration.  Job shadowing is one strategy for promoting collaborative among distance education stakeholders.

Job Shadowing – Experiential Learning

Job shadowing can provide employees with the opportunity to directly observe routine challenges of a position in another department.  Employees can spend one or more working days, or half a working day, with an employee from another department. The shadower will observe the work environment and duties that come with that job by accompanying the host to meetings and other daily activities.  For example, an academic dean could spend 4 hours observing the HelpDesk call center.  

Employees should take responsibility for making the necessary arrangements well in advance and finding someone to job shadow who is willing.  Care should be taken to match up the shadow and the host in terms of compatibility so that focus can be on the roles and not the personalities involved.

Both host and shadower must be clear about their expectations and meet prior to the scheduled shadowing days to discuss aims and objectives. Objectives of the job shadow experience might include:

·         to broaden knowledge and understanding of an unfamiliar department;

·         to experience the culture of another department;

·         to observe unfamiliar management practices;

·         to acquire examples of good practice within another department;

·         to understand more about the current issues facing another department;

·         to identify areas for personal development;

·         to network with other staff;

·         to compare and contrast standards and achievements in my own department with those elsewhere.

In the initial meeting, the host and shadower should agree on confidentiality parameters.  For example, the shadower should agree to not attend any meetings of a highly sensitive or personal nature.  The host should make an effort to engage the shadow in the host’s role as fully as possible (and in the work and culture of the service and college). 

Summary

The traditional division of higher education services by functions, such as IT, HR, Registrar, has created “silos” in which employees specialize and narrow their focus.  Silos on campus are an anathema to comprehensive distance education, however. So, the visionary leader promotes collaboration and communication among employees in the many departments that support distance education even at the risk of challenging long- established divisions.