A stakeholder approach to implementing e‐learning in a university

Abstract This paper describes the most recent phase in a mature e‐learning project, in the area of reusable learning objects, that has attempted to bring about technological and cultural change. Following an overview of the project and organisational context, an institutional change model is described that helps managers and stakeholders to identify critical interactions among processes and that emphasises the need to recognise interdependencies among technology, practice and strategy. Our model places a premium on informal change, feasibility and sequence. The rest of the paper is organised around three key themes that emerged from practitioner accounts of a recent phase of the project; these are institutional change and resistance, a model for good practice and working with students to change their experience. The research method for the work described in this paper was interpretive, and involved the first author's attempts to understand members of the project team's definitions and accounts of the situation. Thus the rich accounts were further augmented by an interpretive phase that drew on the explanatory power of our change model. We conclude by (1) proposing that the inclusion of different stakeholders, and particularly the student voice, has provided the catalyst for change within the three partners of the CETL, and (2) suggesting that the crucial factors in change implementation are the coordination and dynamic extension of informal change processes which already exist.