Embedding or aligning innovations outlined some typical institutional needs and drivers and how learning teaching and asessment (LT&A) innovations can address them. Institutions will often develop specific strategies around such needs and drivers e.g. widening participation, e-learning, work-based learning. This is an opportunity for those developing innovations to “embed” them in these strategies. However, care must be taken not to be too prescriptive – the appropriateness of such innovations in different faculties/schools/contexts will be dependent upon many factors including the teaching/learning context, types of students “readiness” of staff and students etc.
Given below are some guidelines for incorporating innovations into specific strategies:
- Ideally, innovation projects should be driven by institutional drivers and needs – and the alignment and incorporation into strategies should be sustained throughout and beyond the project.
- Evaluation of innovation projects should focus on impact of the innovations which should be mapped back to drivers, needs and strategies (where relevant). Measures of success in relation to impact should be defined.
- Ensure senior managers understand how your innovations can support the implementation of their strategies – this will require adopting a “business” approach e.g. in addressing issues such as costs/benefits, resourcing, implementation issues, change management requirements (e.g. for overcoming resistance and barriers).
- Work with the “owner/developer” of the strategy to identify how best to incorporate innovations into the strategy.
- Provide effective guidance about the appropriateness for using the innovation e.g. in which contexts, which disciplines, required “readiness” of staff/students, support, training, costs/benefits, meeting the strategy aims and objectives etc.
- Address implementation needs of the strategy – what will programmes teams, for instance, need in terms of support, training, guidance, evidence of effectiveness, case studies?
In some cases, it may be appropriate for your innovation purely to have a mention in a strategy as one possible tool; in other cases an innovation may be a key feature of a specific strategy.