The example of the Taylor Institute in Darcy Norman’s blog post can be seen as a case of establishing purposeful and intentional environments to foster digital citizenship and community.  “It feels like a space that matters, and that instructors and students matter because it’s for them” (Norman, 2017). His description of creating audio visual systems for an intentional learning purpose resonated with me. I work in the health care sector, and am part of a team which is establishing our organization’s first-ever Innovation Lab. This blog inspired me to reflect on the lens I would use if I was creating an audio visual system for our Innovation Lab. What issues would I need to take into consideration? How would sustainability and stewardship factor into design choices? What shifts in role perspectives would need to happen? Norman writes that the design principles that guided the Taylor Institute were “transparency and flexibility” (Norman, 2017). These are smart choices to prioritize; leading and managing change inevitably requires an ability to demonstrate why change is necessary, and also be versatile enough to embrace new ideas along the way.
Reflecting back on my organization’s Innovation Lab, Norman’s experience with the Taylor Institute raises some salient points about sustainability of digital teaching and learning infrastructure. The collaboration carts he describes have met a number of needs for instructors and learners, but they have also come with a downside, which is the fragility of the infrastructure when there is an issue with the cart’s operations. Norman also touches on the point of warranties on the hardware and what happens when newer technologies are introduced that could render older systems obsolete. This reading gives me pause to consider how to find a balance between finding solutions that meet current user needs that won’t become obsolete within a short amount of time. Failing to do so can increase risk of failure in leading successful change which can be sustained beyond an initial investment.
The topic of role perspectives also comes up in Norman’s post. He mentions multiple times that the initial plan for the Taylor Institute was to keep the studios locked when the classes were not in session. In traditional, risk-averse, command-and-control settings, this is a very common approach to limit access to users, in fear that users might break something, or use the space in unauthorized ways. If I were launching an Innovation Lab, what lens would I use to determine who gets access? The concept of control in leading change plays out here. What opportunities are possible if change was viewed as something that can be co-created by leaders and end users, instead of something that is driven by top-down decision making?
In my initial post, I reflected on my context of being part of the establishment of an Innovation Lab in my organization, and the various perspectives involved in leading digital change. This post, informed by our readings in Unit 3, is about how data can influence and inform perspectives, decisions, and actions in the context of this digital initiative.
Since I work for a public sector organization, I am familiar with privacy laws with respect to the collection of personally identifiable information on digital platforms such as websites. For example, if my organization’s public website was soliciting user’s information such as names or e-mail addresses, we need to use a tool which has met the threshold for laws governing collecting this information. We can’t simply use any third-party form, for example, to collect user information. Thus, planning any digital initiatives in my context that involves collecting information that could form part of a user’s digital footprint needs to have data transparency built in. Presently my organization does not have a data ethics policy. We follow the provincial privacy laws in this regard. In the context of the Innovation Lab, and maybe eventually a community maker space, I wonder what data privacy infrastructure, so to speak, would be required if we intend for the Lab to be a space that’s open to the staff, students, and the community.
For example, if we intended to use the Lab for user-centred design and testing prototypes via online environments that involves quantitative and qualitative data collection, this likely couldn’t formally happen without a collection of data policy that is available to all participants to inform when and how their data is being collected and why it might be used. One of the goals of an Innovation Lab is to improve and inform the design of our public information, services, and digital experiences for patients and families. Collecting and analyzing data from users, staff, and patients is key to our discovery process. We already collect information such as recordings of website user sessions when we test the performance of online content (although IP addresses are not collected). If we extrapolate this to future design work to improve digital experience, this signals a need for a framework and policy to inform why we collect data, what we collect, how we collect it, and how participants are informed, including what options there are for opting out.
Hi Tracy,
In your context who needs to be involved to develop a framework and policy? The development of both I am sure would help inform your answers to the questions you posed at the end of your post – why, what, and how is data collected. I know it has been challenging in our institution to develop a policy on the use of learning analytics as an example – there are so many competing interests and so we end up stalled in committees.