BYOD Project Management: Journey that Never Ends

In secondary education these days there is a big push to incorporate educational technology in the classroom. Economic reality dictates creative solution for any school managing this, particularly large schools catering to more than 1000 students. Operating budgets cannot keep up with the cost and rapid change of devices required for classroom use. Smaller schools have been able to manage this change better, when the school board that serves the pieces of operational pie capital is adequately managed and funded.  To deal with spiralling operating overhead,  operating costs get outsourced to parents who now are expected to purchase devices for their children in the same way they are expected to purchase stationery (the politics of this can be discussed on Facebook or Twitter as it will detract from the purpose of this post!)

A further barrier to this influx of technology in the classroom is its effective use. Schools need to provide adequate training time to get staff up to speed on implementation policies, and achieve buy-in from more reluctant participants. In a unionised teaching world, there is only so much buy-in you can officially mandate/force.

I have been involved in several bring-your-own-device (BYOD) inititiatives, and am about to take the lead on one at a school that is rushing forward to embrace technology after a decade and a half of pretending it doesn’t exist. What follows are reflections on these various experiences.

 1. The problem/issue to be solved?

We needed to develop an implementation plan for students beginning at our school who would be expectected to bring a suitable device to school for learning activities on a daily basis. Both staf and students would need to be shown appropriate usage methods. Staff brought up to speed in e-learning pedegogy, and students taught management skills, digital citizenship, appropriate usage, and general expectations.

2. Were the overall goals communicated?

These were the operational goals:

For the teachers: the expectation that students use their device for at least a portion of each of their five classes on a daily basis.

For the Students: that they bring their device fully charged on a daily basis, and use it or educational pursuits only.

The teachers definitely had the messaage  hammered into them, and communiques were sent out to parents, and posted on the school Moodle site, but after one month it became apparent that the message eitherr did not get through, or was ignored by students and parents, or both.

3. Who benefited?

Teachers who approached the project with an open mind, and in general I think all students who brought devices reported benefits, like the teachers, tech/change resistant students did not engage well, nor benefit from the increased reliance on technology.

4.  Who were the stakeholders?

Students, staff and parents linked to the school. To a lesser extent tech organisations who provided support/hardware/networking services.

5. Was there a project plan put in place/what did this look like?

Yes, we ran weekly PD sessions lead by department representatives (of which I was one) that brought staff up to speed on both pedegogy and the latest applications.

6.  What changes in planning do you think would have helped with any of the barriers or challenges that were encountered?

The plan, I think, was fairly well implemented from a systematic point of view. Conway, Masters and Thorold (2017) note: “Thinking like a system means taking a holistic view: viewing the problem as made up of a set of interacting components that continusously produce feedback. It also means accepting the situation as dynamic with the relationships between elements in the system as important as understanding how the system will behave as the component parts. The starting point to understanding these dynamics is to identify the dimentsions of the problem” (p.14). A large school with hundreds of independent voices and opinions on the path forward is dificult to manage. Add to this the challenge of network reliability, teenage impulse, and varying degrees of tech-literacy, and it is virtually impossible to predict how such a system will react and perform. Another unique problem that no amount of planning or learning pedegogy could prepare for was the constant threat of a severe earthquake that could literally wipe out infrastructure, as well as participants without warning. (this thankfully did not happen on my watch, but we did have several loss of network/electricity issues to contend with). Given the complex challenges, the plan to spend time training teachers for two full terms before “going live” with students online in the third term was a good one, and most staff were ready to meet the challenge. Where we fell down, was not having a forceful plan to carry the initiative forward into the second year and beyond. There was no training the trainers, it was more a “what do you think the next steps should be?” collective discussion meetings, that frequently got off track and were only partially productive. This became apparant when one entire department was able to say “this doesn’t apply to our subject”, and flat out defied upper management to move forward or dedicate any more time to the initiative.

The implementation phase was relatively lengthy, with one year group of students being brought online at a time one group per year, as I write this the initial group is entering their senior year, and so the whole school is now BYOD compliant (except the afore mentioned department to my knowledge as I am no longer there) and started well as I mentioned. However, as Adrienne Watt (2014) outlines, the implementation process needs to feature consistent feedback throughout the process and this feedback needs to be acted upon. While those who bought in to the BYOD initiative saw soem real progress over the course of the two and a half years I was involved with the program, those who did not were not dealt with firmly enough by upper management, and specific up-skilling of the trainers was not provided. This lead us to self-educate as best we could to keep the program moving forward in a meaningfful way. Where I felt the biggest need of growth personally, was someone well versed in e-learning pedegogy to show me specifically how this might look in a high school classroom.

7. What methods do you see yourself using in your practice?

The purpose of BYOD programs is to help drive student directed learning. Where I feel like the disconnect was on my previous experience was trying to push this new learning tool onto an old teacher driven model of education. We need to empower the students and moving forward in this new project I hope to incoporate design thinking along with systems thinking. Taking the successes of my previous experience and evolving them to meet with big picture student centred model. Here I hope to a “user centred as opposed to manafactured-centric era of innovation” (Conway, Masters, & Thorold, 2017 p. 6). I plan to have the implementation systems in place, my colleagues aware of strategies to implement the new system of learning ahead of time, and also provided with the professional development required to help students drive the learning with technology as a means, not the sole mediu to this end.

Watch this space circa autumn 2018 to see how this adventure goes.

References

Conway, R., Masters, J., & Thorold, J., (2017). From design thinking to systems change: How to invest in innovation for social impact. Royal Society of Arts, Action and Research Centre. Retrieved from:  https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa_from-design-thinking-to-system-change-report.pdf

Kar, S. (2015). BYOD in classrooms [photograph]. Retrieved from: https://elearningindustry.com/using-byod-schools-advantages-disadvantages

Kayaken. (2017). Show me the money [photograph]. Retrieved from: (http://big5kayakchallenge.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/coolest-show-me-the-money-meme-tom-cruise-help-me-help-you-show-me-the-money-meme.jpg

Watt, A. (2014). Project Management. Victoria, BC: BCcampus. Retrieved from: https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/