Consumerism-driven and professionalism-driven

innovation:meeting divergent demands in

HEAdina Dudau, University of GlasgowMelinda Szocs, University of Exeter

Why important Gap in the public sector innovation literature:

Little attention to the outcomes of the innovation processes (de Vries et al., 2014)

Dominance of qualitative studies on innovation (ibid.) Dominant view: innovation is a goal in itself; focus on

positive outcomes of innovation Contribution:

Quantitative study of the impact of innovation on the outcomes of learning and teaching in the UK HE

to enhance understanding of the impact of innovation on public service outcomes (Research objective –RO- 1)

What can we learn from innovation failure? (RO 2)

Introduction

Setting the context: HE as public service

Rise of managerialism – rise in consumerism Education as private good◦ Focus on private sphere, service management perspective◦ Emphasizes outcomes of public serv delivery for the individual◦ In education: focus on short-term goals: student satisfaction

(Mark 2013); WHAT MATTERS IS WHAT STUDENTS WANT Education as public good

◦ Focus on public sphere◦ In education: EDUCATION: PUBLIC GOOD, SO WHAT MATTERS

IS WHAT STUDENTS REQUIRE FOR EMPLOYMENT, CITIZENSHIP, ETC

Setting the context: bases for innovation

Innovation definitional terrain:◦ Perceived novelty –Rogers, 2003 ◦ Usage for the first time in the organisation – Borins, 2000◦ Discontinuity from the past (more so than a change) –

Osborne and Brown, 2005; Osborne and Brown, 2011 Types: process, product, governance & conceptual

–ours technological process innovation (de Vries et al., 2014)

Rationale (amongst others): improving effectiveness & customer satisfaction

Outcomes of innovation = ‘substantive results of the implementation of an innovation that can be… positive or negative’ (Kuipers et al. 2014)

Setting the context: Innovation

Innovation emerged as a result of students’ repeated demands for better feedback (‘what students wanted’) with the rationale of better student performance

Quasi-experiment: 3 assignments, video feedback (innovation) offered after the first, traditional enhanced feedback offered after the second (change); Honours students’ marks compared after each assignment

The study

Legend:

GOOD POINTS

UNCLEAR POINTS

WEAK POINTS

Quasi-experiment Proxy for student satisfaction (‘what students

want’): satisfaction with innovation (qual.) & rates of satisfaction with the course (quant.)

Proxy for student performance as evidence of alignment with the course ILOs (‘what students need’): marks on assignments

Data analysis: Discourse analysis (for students’ narrative about

their satisfaction with feedback) Non-parametric statistical analysis

The study

Findings from the study

Descriptive statistics indicate a marginal increase in students’ performance between assignment 1 and assignment 2; and marginal decrease in students’ performance between assignment 2 and assignment 3.

Inferential statistics (Paired Samples T-Test) indicates that these differences are not statistically significant

The results are confirmed when the analysis is replicated with non-parametric statistical tests.

THEREFORE: feedback innovation had no real impact on student performance

Findings from the study

Findings from the study

THEREFORE: Innovation appears to have had a positive effect on student satisfaction

“[the video feedback] is more personal and it covers more areas than traditional feedback”

“[Video feedback] is engaging, different, and interesting, and it also helped me understand what was expected from me”

“I appreciated the video feedback. The dialogue was personal”

The feedback innovation had a positive effect on student satisfaction (SS), but did not improve student performance (SP)

SS◦ Linked with consumerism (Mark, 2013)◦ Consumerism linked with the paradigm of education as

private good (Hensley et al., 2013)◦ Discordance between students desires and needs (Rinehart,

1993) SP (based on meeting ILOs)

◦ Consistent with the paradigm of education as public good (McMahon, 2009; Hensley et al., 2013) driven and delivered by professionals who are best equipped to ascertain what ILOs are relevant to community and employers as well as how to assess them

Discussion

Discussion –making sense of the findings

Divergence between the expectations of the professional and of the end user of the potential benefits

Distinguishing between consumerism-driven innovation and professionalism-driven innovation

Discussion

Research objective 1: to enhance understanding of the impact of innovation on public service outcome Innovation in HE will fulfil the public good agenda of HE only if it

is professionalism driven Innovation in HE will be contained in the private good paradigm

of HE, if it emerges from consumerist demands

Research objective 2: to derive lessons from innovation failure Innovation cannot fulfil all aims for all stakeholdersas student satisfaction improved but not performance (related to expectations) Pursuing divergent organisational goals (success is unlikely)

Conclusions