This thesis examines the attitudes of UK academics toward new media as both cultural artefacts and tools, assessing the relationship of those attitudes to traditionally distinct disciplinary structures. An inclusive and conceptually informed framework was developed following a review of multi-disciplinary literatures addressing the organisation of disciplines, the management of Higher Education, and the multiple meanings of new media. The original contribution of the thesis is an enriched understanding of what new media mean to academics both symbolically and practically at a time of immense technological and organisational change. Empirical data were gathered from a sample of 209 UK academics in four academic fields which were selected strategically using a frame based on the work of Whitley (2000). The primary instrument used was a self-administered online questionnaire (distributed to 953 individuals in 112 in-scope institutions, hence the response rate is 22 percent) using Likert scales and semantic differentials to capture attitudinal statements. Illustrative, descriptive and inferential statistics were computed from this, although it must be noted that the population size could only be estimated. An analysis of commonalities and differences in emerging and conventional disciplinary structures suggests a stronger influence of the practical rather than symbolic influences of discipline on academics' attitudes toward new media. A homogenisation of attitudes is found across not only disciplines, but genders, age groups, and experience levels. At the same time, while these findings echo those of other research, strong conceptual and methodological differences remain evident in debates about new media in much scholarly literature, primarily that drawn along disciplinary lines, or for a specialist audience. This suggests two equally important positions from which academics assess new media; those rooted in disciplinary modes, and those common to multiple practitioners and audiences in the academic 'workspace'. This can be seen as symptomatic of the new managerial models for research, teaching and assessment currently prevalent within HE.

This thesis explores student writing support in higher education in the UK. It aims to investigate what can be learnt from institutional writing support provision and from students’ ways of engaging with academic writing. The thesis is set against the discourse of deficit as associated with student-writers and the critique of current writing support portrayed as insufficient in preparing students for discipline specific demands of written assessment. The study is informed by the Academic Literacies approach and considers student writing as social practice rather than as being defined solely in terms of textual and linguistic features. The study adopts an ethnographic perspective and draws on multiple sources of data: observations of writing support classes, interviews with writing tutors, academic staff and student writers, as well as samples of student writing accompanied with tutor feedback. The data are examined employing a variety of concepts from spoken and written discourse analysis, and the analysis focuses on the understanding of emic perspectives of research participants. Based on the findings, the thesis argues that the current writing provision should be viewed as offering foundational writing support which could be positioned as part of broader institutional network. It also emphasises the importance of extending writing support from being focused on textual development to the inclusion of reflection, reading and discussion as central to engagement with disciplinary writing. The thesis further suggests that academic staff should be more involved in the writing support. With their situated knowledge of writing conventions, academic staff could add to the development of a social practice approach to support provision which could handle specificity of writing requirements and interdisciplinarity of academic programmes. Finally, the thesis argues that the notion of deficit should be reconceptualised as related to institutional shortfalls in provision rather than to student-writers. Overall, the study presented in this thesis contributes to an understanding of what is involved in the teaching and learning of academic writing, expanding the Academic Literacies scholarship in that area with the hope to inspire a re-thinking and a re-design of institutional writing support in UK academia.

This piece of research focused on the perceptions of the factors which create and affect organisational culture in the 'new' university sector in England. A review of literature centred on the theories relating to cultural models, organisational cultures, funding issues, modularity and motivation. A survey method of investigation was implemented by means of a mixed research method approach, which incorporated a series of interviews and open-ended questions, attitude responses and ranking scales. Academic staff across two departments in three universities took part in the case study interviews. The staff were chosen as a purposive sample, based on the criteria that they had worked in the organization through the transition of polytechnic to university status. All interviewees completed both parts of the interview, and the analysed and summarised data were examined and compared to literature. Although literature offered a variety of frameworks to assist educational managers in becoming aware of the factors which influence organisational culture, the findings (although small in scale) illustrated clearly that structure was supported and culture ignored in the new university environments surveyed. Educational management in the 'new' universities had been experiencing numerous concerns and problems, for students, tutors and managers, as a result of the evolution of the binary divide and its consequential impact on the organisational culture.

This Thesis describes a study of the roles of heads of department in the 'new' universities, the former polytechnics. The study comprises a survey of all 105 heads of department in four 'new' universities and case studies in three of the four universities. The case studies were carried out by semi-structured interviews with the head and key members of the head's role sets in three departments in different academic disciplines. The role of the head is examined through the application of role theory and role concepts and a theoretical framework for the role is presented. The study showed that the role is complex and demanding and is subject to several conflicting pressures, many of which are similar to those experienced by heads of department in the 'old' or traditional universities. The main tensions and conflicts faced by heads are simultaneously representing their department to the university and the university to their department managing academics, particularly in terms of staff discipline and conflict between staff and acquiring and managing resources in a difficult economic climate. The dual role of the head as academic leader and manager was found to create tensions and conflicts but these were felt to be unavoidable. The need for the head of department to be an academic, rather than a professional manager was considered to be important. The main personal difficulty which heads experience is the excessive workload generated by role overload and the resultant long working hours. This presents dangers for heads in terms of its effect on their performance, personal academic profile, family life and personal health. A number of means of supporting the head are identified. These include delegation of responsibilities to others; training and development for heads; organisational mechanisms such as working groups; and the restructuring of faculties to provide flatter management structures.

The research problem of this work is that in order for an improvement project to be perceived as successful from a stakeholder perspective their requirements would need to be understood at the outset of the improvement project and that where complexity includes multiple stakeholders, with a number of objectives, these would need to be identified and prioritised. In order to provide consistent results and sustained improvement, this action should be an explicit part of the improvement methodology utilised. The aim of the research is to provide a means of identifying and prioritising stakeholder requirement at the outset of an improvement project, such that in meeting the business needs the resulting outcome provides a ‘better fit’ solution for all stakeholders. The research objectives are: 1. To establish a methodology in order to represent all stakeholders to an improvement project; 2. To develop a methodology to determine the importance of the stakeholder requirements and their relative importance; 3. To develop a means of specifying the value desired by each stakeholder; 4. To design and test a methodology that is able to inform an improvement project such that the project outcomes are aligned to stakeholder requirements; 5. To determine the utility of this methodology in improving stakeholder satisfaction with project outcomes. An investigation into relevant literature, primary field work into the effects of improvement projects, stakeholder involvement, engagement and the capture of stakeholder value, and preliminary research into ten improvement projects across five different UK universities, engaged in the application of Lean thinking to service delivery, was undertaken. This led to the conception of an improvement methodology and the empirical development over three improvement projects resulting in the design of the Voice of [the] Stakeholder (VOS), a directed self-assessment model. End-to-end application of the VOS-Model to the final improvement project of the three demonstrated the validity of the model in identifying stakeholder requirements and value and the alignment of these with the final project outcome. The wider utility was established through the application of the VOS-model to four further improvement projects. The quantifiable project outcomes in each case demonstrated the utility of the model in the delivery of an improvement solution aligned to business needs, while the qualitative stakeholder feedback confirmed the applicability of the VOS-model in the capture and representation of stakeholder requirement and value.

No description available.

The uptake and diffusion of the use of Learning Technologies in UK Higher Education is an instance of the adoption of change. There has been considerable research into the ways in which the uptake and diffusion of innovation can effect change processes. This work has identified the importance of barriers and drivers to change as a part of the process. Areas of study have included general instances, those specific to technology and those relevant to the use of learning technology in higher education. It has also been shown that a higher education institution’s organisational structure may itself inhibit or accelerate the way in which it will respond to external changes and adopt new practices. This study reviews the development and growth in the use of learning technologies. It sets these activities in the context of changes in computing and predominant theories in education and psychology from a UK and US perspective. This study goes on to describe the methodology adopted when undertaking an extensive survey of use of learning technology at the University of Southampton to make an initial case that institutional approaches associated with the known organisational models may amplify or dampen the known barriers and drivers for change. The full thesis will take forward this work by analysing this data alongside a range of previously published data undertaking additional research into institutional approaches and the use of learning technology across a range of UK Higher Education Institutions.

This thesis explores the perceptions of academic staff in one department of a UK university to establish the extent to which professional values are compatible with current pressures. Drawing on contemporary literature, the meanings of professionalism in an HE context are described. An evaluation of the global, national and institutional contexts under which academics operate are presented through literature review and by evaluation of key policy documents in the institution. Together these provide the context of external and internal pressures on academic engagement. Interviews were conducted to present an understanding of the perceptions of academic staff. These interviews were analysed using thematic analysis by an inductive, data-driven approach which through codification of themes provide a framework for the presentation of the professional values of staff. The final analysis presents a cross-referencing of individual professional values against the espoused values of the institution in which the individuals operate. The results of the literature reviews demonstrate that academics operate in a culture of social and financial accountability driven by New Public Management policies which have significantly increased the marketization of higher education and promoted the commodification and consumerisation of HE. The evidence further suggests that the institution under consideration operates by utilising predominantly competitive evaluative mechanisms to influence practice that is largely directed to enhancing reputation and marketability as espoused by various university league tables. The final evaluation suggests significant areas of conflict between professional values and the current pressures on academic engagement and concludes that academic staff have reshaped their values through engagement in increasingly competitive activity that they use to provide personal utility in preference to institutional utility. The results conclude that performativity mechanisms used by the institution to measure departments and individuals have come to be seen as an opportunistic means for the sometimes deceptive demonstration of excellence and competence.

Widening Participation in UK universities is currently a key political concern. Whilst the under-representation of particular groups has been a feature of higher education for many years, participation for groups identified by gender, ethnicity and disability has seen some improvement. However, the participation of students from low social class groups remains an issue. Whilst there are a number of intervention programmes that seek to increase the numbers of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who do go on to higher education, in this thesis I work closely with a group of non-traditional students who participated in a Sutton Trust Summer School. In attempting to understand the complexities of social class participation in HE and the perceptions of an HE hierarchy, I draw heavily from Bourdieu's notions of habitus and field. The findings from this study raise numerous issues for intervention programmes such as the Sutton Trust. In presenting the findings, I explore three arenas of influence: habitus influenced by home context; habitus influenced by institutions such as school and the Sutton Trust and also the idea of living with a ‘split’ habitus - a habitus in tension. Throughout the findings sections, I draw from the experiences of the young people to argue that their ‘class’ based practices align more closely with those of the middle classes and that their decision to go to university was made early on in their educational journeys. Their pursuit of higher education with a particular focus on the types of HE institutions they were willing to consider, presents an interesting issue for those working in the widening participation arena. The students in this study were already equipped with the ability, knowledge and desire to apply to an elite institution prior to their Sutton Trust experience. I describe this position in terms of a 'trajectory interruption' where the expected trajectory of an individual can be influenced by the numerous fields of which they are a part. I draw specifically from the notion of habitus to explain how their respective 'trajectory interruptions' occurred. The 'dream of social flying'(Bourdieu 1993: 2) places these students in particular positions within the educational field - positions that are conducive to any form of trajectory interruption.

In the last thirty years there have been significant changes in the governmentality and culture of higher education in the UK; concurrently, day-to-day practice has been transformed by networked computers. This political and technical double-act may be understood as a specific articulation of what Jodi Dean has termed communicative capitalism (2010, p.2-9). This thesis investigates how such political and technocultural changes condition the subjectivity of academic staff across a range of academic activities and contexts. The theoretical model I develop draws notably on a combination of the psychoanalytic theory of Freud and Lacan, using Freud's conception of the ‘uncanny' (1919) and Althusser's theory of ideology (1970), to consider how the academic subject of technoculture is constituted by the particular domain of communicative capitalism I term the Haunted University. To develop this argument the thesis firstly establishes the ‘nature' of the contemporary university – distinguishing it from earlier models and earlier moments of reform. This is developed using cultural history sources and theoretical work from social, cultural and critical higher education studies. Secondly, I use a series of cultural studies methods to identify and explore elements of the new university formation. These include the selection and analysis of relevant digital materials (e.g. academic homepages and blogs) and small qualitative surveys of academic staff. Thirdly, the broadly Lacanian thrust of my argument is developed through leveraging theoretical work from the fields of cultural studies, philosophy, critical labour studies and higher education policy. I conclude that the series of developments and changes enacted by communicative capitalism has tended to transform academic subjectivity, bringing about what may be a permanent change in the ontology and epistemology of the academy. However, despite neoliberalism's attempt to foreclose discursive dissent, there are resistances to its project. My original contribution to knowledge is to theorise how and why the shift in academic subjectivity is being enacted, demonstrating how the technocultural, neoliberal university is beginning to haunt the academy not only from the outside, but from the inside, too.