This book explores the role and function of instructional designers in higher education, highlighting the real-world discrepancy between their actual contributions to organizational growth and the official job descriptions provided by universities. Investigating how higher education professionals navigate the daily conflict arising from this misalignment, it highlights a number of approaches including improvising to accommodate additional tasks, or strictly adhering job descriptions. The volume is structured around main three themes: the interpretation of instructional design and the role of instructional designers, the concept of street-level bureaucracy and coping strategies, and the contribution of instructional designers to organizational development. The research is grounded in the sociological and management theory of street-level bureaucracy, allowing the author to dissect employee behavior into microelements and connect these to the macro-outcomes of organizational development. The study employs a qualitative approach, using quantitative content analysis and qualitative interviewing on a sample of 17 instructional designers from three different regions in the US. The findings challenge institutional and practice assumptions, offering a new perspective of understanding which asks whether instructional designers are predominantly acting as street-level bureaucrats, or whether behavior and performance is framed by institutional culture and personal characteristics. The author then discusses the implications of these findings for policy, practice, theory, and future research. It will be of interest to academicians, post-graduate students, and higher education leadership professionals from fields across education, management, instructional design, sociology, and research methods.

This textbook explores major issues and concepts in organizational structure and design. It details strategic and business issues that merit consideration while framing or designing the organizational structure. Working with a range of industry examples and case studies, this volume: Relates organizational structure and design issues with organizational culture and change management, power and politics, and policies and strategies Covers several key topics, including the structure-strategy debate, viable system model, issues pertaining to organizational culture, change management, power, and conflict Discusses various models of organizational structure like matrix, global business unit, strategic business unit, hybrid, functional and divisional, modular, networked, agile, helix, etc., in relation to organizational practices and their strategic influence over the organization Enables readers to challenge organizational design in times of uncertainty Concise, lucid, and engaging, this book will be useful to students, academics, management researchers, and industry professionals in the fields of general management, organizational behaviour, and human resource management and development.

Qualitative Research: Analyzing Life presents a fresh approach to teaching and learning qualitative methods for social inquiry—one that focuses on analysis from the very beginning of the text. By exploring qualitative research through a unique analytic lens, then cumulatively elaborating on methods in each successive chapter, this innovative work cultivates a skill set and literacy base that prepares readers to work strategically with empirical materials in their own fieldwork. Renowned authors Johnny Saldaña and Matt Omasta combine clear, accessible writing and analytic insight to show that analysis, in its broadest sense, is a process undertaken throughout the entire research experience.

Partnering with Online Program Managers for Distance Education offers fresh insights into the practice, implications, and outcomes of partnerships between higher education institutions and for-profit online program managers (OPMs). As colleges and universities race to build effective, sustainable distance education programs, higher education administrators often rely on third-party OPMs for marketing and student recruitment, student support from orientation to graduation, course design and delivery, and other fee-based services. This edited collection provides a global knowledge base for understanding academic quality, policy, and management in university-OPM partnerships along with actionable strategies and frameworks for selection, evaluation, and improvement. Leaders, administrators, developers, and accreditors of digital distance learning programs in higher education will come away with evidence-based guidance and realistic perspectives into the opportunities and challenges of this fast-emerging resource.

Instructional designers hold the responsibility of selecting, sequencing, synthesizing, and summarizing unfamiliar content to subject matter experts. To successfully achieve legitimate participation in communities of practice, instructional designers need to utilize a number of communication strategies to optimize the interaction with the subject matter expert. Instructional Design: Case Studies in Communities of Practice documents real-world experiences of instructional designers and staff developers who work in communities of practice. Instructional Design: Case Studies in Communities of Practice explains the strategies and heuristics used by instructional designers when working in different settings, articulates the sophistication of communication strategies when working with subject matter experts, and provides insight into the range of knowledge, skills, and personal characteristics required to complete the tasks expected ofthem.

Giving higher education professionals the language and tools they need to seize new opportunities in digital learning. A quiet revolution is sweeping across US colleges and universities. As schools rethink how students learn - both inside and outside the classroom - technology is changing not only what should be taught but how best to teach it. From active learning and inclusive pedagogy to online and hybrid courses, traditional institutions are leveraging their fundamental strengths while challenging long-standing assumptions about how teaching and learning happen. At this intersection of learning, technology, design, and organizational change lies the foundation of a new academic discipline of digital learning. Coalescing around this new field of study is a common critical language, along with a set of theoretical frameworks, methodological practices, and shared challenges and goals. In Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education, Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney explore the context of this new discipline, show how it exists within a larger body of scholarship, and give examples of how this scholarship is being used on campuses. What Kim and Maloney demonstrate in this foundational text is an understanding that change is a complex dynamic between what happens in the classroom and the larger institutional structures and traditions at play. Ultimately, the authors make a compelling case not only for this turn to learning but also for creating new pathways for nonfaculty learning careers, understanding the limits of professional organizations and social media, and the need to establish this new interdisciplinary field of learning innovation.

Since A Nation at Risk was published in 1983, there has been widespread recognition that public education is failing in the U.S. Numerous expensive reforms have been attempted to no avail, and costs have increased dramatically. Furthermore, economic austerity requires educational systems to do more with less. This book presents convincing evidence that paradigm change – such as the change of lighting systems from the candle to the light bulb – is the only way to significantly improve student learning and simultaneously lower costs. The authors provide a thought-provoking vision of the new paradigm, including a new brain-based pedagogy, a new professional role for teachers, a new central role for technology, and even a new more empowered role for students and parents. The authors also describe three examples – a school, a school district, and a school model – that have implemented many features of the new paradigm, along with evidence of their effectiveness. Finally, this book describes ways we can transform our Industrial-Age school systems to the new paradigm, including ways our state and federal governments can help.