ICT in leadership and management
Achievements in leadership and management
At the end of the third year it is clear that management of the change to an ICT-enabled institution has been carried out with vision, energy and commitment in the great majority of ICT Test Bed institutions.
The introduction of a high level of ICT into a school or college poses major challenges for leadership and management at all levels: classrooms, departments, institutions and, in the case of schools, the Local Authorities. The process of managing this change has been a complex one. Initially, senior managers had to focus mainly on the imperatives of procurement, installation and solving logistical problems. At the same time the educational vision of what the new ICT equipment could offer students and staff had to be developed and actively promoted. Once the equipment was fully installed (which in the case of more complex systems was not until the autumn of 2004), the focus shifted to process management, to put into place new ways of working to maximise the value of ICT.
The 2005 maturity modelling of the ICT Test Bed schools and colleges indicated that overall they have a clearer and more focused vision of the use of ICT across all aspects of their work. The way schools and colleges are governed and managed has changed with the introduction of new MIS systems and improvements in the way data is collected, recorded and handled. The increase in maturity over the first three years indicates a change in the way ICT is co-ordinated within institutions. For example, there is now more proactive rather than reactive management of initiatives involving the use of ICT, and integrated ICT-based assessment and recording systems are in place that are available to all staff, at least within the institution, if not from home as well.
Definitions of key terms
Leadership and management
The terms leadership and management are generally used rather loosely to cover the activities of principals, headteachers and members of the senior management team in schools and colleges. However, it is useful to make a distinction between them, as follows:Management is the formal processes of senior managers and middle managers carrying out work according to their role in the organisation, which involves accountability to a line manager and responsibility for overseeing the work of others, in both cases as specified in the organisational chart. Senior managers are responsible for accessing funding streams, meeting external requirements for accountability and ensuring the quality of service offered to students, their parents and the community.
Leadership encompasses the interrelated processes of developing a vision and communicating it to others in ways that unlock their energies and inspire them to give time and commitment to working towards shared goals. In practice, leadership is partly dependent upon - and constrained by - management structures, and partly depends on informal connections and the ability to understand and make use of the micro-political substructures that shape the organisation's culture. To change organisational culture, both good management and good leadership are essential.
Management information systems (MIS) and virtual learning environments (VLEs)
Management information systems (MIS) in education provide a way of enabling the school or college to manage the essential elements of the business, including student numbers, buildings, timetables and budgets, and enable them to make decisions, to plan and to respond to requests for information from managers, LEAs, governors and funding or other external agencies. WordNet describes an information system as "a system consisting of the network of all communication channels used within an organisation". The activities involved in operating an MIS include inputting data, processing and storing the data, and the production of outputs such as management reports.
A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a software application which facilitates the delivery and management of learning for pupils and students. The VLE provides access to a wide and increasing range of learning content controlled and structured by the teachers. In addition to providing access to content, most VLEs include modules for discussion forums, synchronous chat, surveys, announcements and calendars. The VLE enables assessment of progress through quizzes and exercises which can often comprise randomly selected assemblies of multiple-choice, true/false and one-word answer questions. The VLE system provides feedback to the learner as they do the tests and, at the same time, tracks the learners' progress and stores this in a grade book which can be monitored by the teachers. Some systems include new features such as blogs and Wiki where learners can contribute to the development of the content. VLEs can be used as the basic learning medium for distance education but within schools and colleges they are frequently used as supplementary material to classroom activities.