Risk management is an essential part of good management practice and applies to all areas of your institution's activity.
It's particularly relevant for projects with an IT or systems component. Online learning brings specific risks, and your institution needs to decide how it will manage or mitigate those risks.
Adopting an online model of learning impacts on institutional systems and policies, resourcing and operational management, teaching, assessment and student support. New risks may also emerge concerning ownership and licensing of learning content and personal data.
Using web technologies and cloud services raises risks around service continuity and long-term access and storage. New approaches to curriculum design and delivery can present risks to equity of services for all students, and around readiness and capability of staff and students.
The way your institution manages risks can affect the level of innovation and the scale of new approaches to learning. Some managers may be more risk averse than others, which can encourage staff to develop workarounds for activities that are perceived to be high risk.
Activities and methods to build trust offer powerful ways to overcome barriers around risk. Small-scale online learning projects or initiatives can be used to generate trust and address risks in non-threatening ways.
They can be useful to highlight how far the benefits of new approaches outweigh the perceived risks. Innovative practice needs a level of trust to take risks – and sometimes fail.
Your institution may already have a system or mechanism to analyse and manage risks. They will likely include:
- Identifying risks associated with the activity
- Assessing and analysing risk
- Planning responses to risk
- Ongoing risk monitoring and control.
Risk management approaches
Adopting a well-managed approach to risk, approved by the institution as a whole, may convince senior managers to endorse new online learning initiatives.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England’s (HEFCE) risk management guide1 offers practical guidance on how to enhance and embed risk management processes.
|Barriers||What you can do|
|Senior managers are risk averse||Try to establish senior management buy-in|
|Find online learning champions in senior management teams|
|Gather evidence of the impact and benefits of online learning, both within and outside the institution|
|Develop strategies and policies that support innovation and agile development|
|Staff worry about taking risks||Staff engagement activities, training and support|
|Use good examples of online learning models from other institutions|
|Staff try to create workarounds to avoid confronting institutional systems or services||Gather evidence of activities happening 'underground' to help make them mainstream|
|Middle managers can shield teaching staff as they try to innovate|
|Managers can help staff navigate through institutional systems and barriers|
- 1 Risk management in higher education: a guide to good practice - http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100202100434/http:/www.hefce...