Hi everyone,
Congratulations on completing the first Unit! You spent the last week finalizing your team consensus activity as well as delving into some different theoretical approaches to leadership. In both the team reflections and the posts that I have read so far, there has been a focus on a very human-centric approach to leadership where you have been considering both cultural and organizational contexts. I also noted in your team consensus posts that you are looking for leaders who are competent, honest, caring and supportive. An outstanding leader will focus on capacity building, will be adaptable and through collaborative practice will build trust and respect within their team.
I got a start last evening reading and responding to your blog posts, and see there are still more to come, so I will take time over the next few days to explore your reflections. Though we are moving onto Unit 2, I encourage you to continue to explore your peers' posts and to comment on at least one that resonates with you early this week.
We are now moving into our unit on change where we start to move away from thinking about leadership more abstractly, to the practical consideration of leading and implementing change within an organization. I encourage you to keep your thoughts about leadership at the forefront as you start to consider how change is managed. What are those values, traits or frameworks that can help with leading a successful initiative? There are three activities for this Unit.
- This week you will focus on completing the readings and writing a short post as part of Activity 1. This activity takes place within a framework that I hope encourages you to consider some broad issues in managing change within a different lens or perspective. It is an activity that focuses on choice and prompts you to use a perspective framework to respond, reframe or rethink current practice problems that have been shared by colleagues who take a critical approach to issues and strategies around implementing and leading in educational learning technology environments. You will be prompted to post in a learning space that allows for the collection of voices of students across cohorts, so it will be interesting to see what you think of the space (informally).
- Get started on Activity 2, where you will reach out to your network to have a conversation about what successful change looks like. You will use this conversation in Assignment 1, so please review the assignment. A reminder to review the section on the Ethical Review for this assignment (at the bottom of the page), as you will need to have your colleague fill out the consent form that is provided. Activities 1 and 2 will help you formulate your first Assignment--an external scan that highlights how change is addressed in digital learning environments which is due at the end of Unit 2 (week 4).
- Activity 3 “Initiating Change” (in week 4) provides some prompts for you to think about specific change initiatives and can help you start thinking about your final project. You do not have to create a post for this activity – it is designed to help you start to think about your final project and team assignment.
Synchronous Session: In our synchronous session last week we talked about when would be the best time to meet and it everyone agreed it would be good to meet at the start of each unit. So, we will have another meet this week, Tuesday February 4th, at 5 pm PST (and then another at the start of Unit 3). See you tomorrow!
Michelle